Fitness influencer Clavicular says he started taking testosterone at 14, calls natural training ‘a waste’

Clavicular revealed on the “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” podcast that he abandoned natural weightlifting as a teenager in favor of taking testosterone.

On Tuesday’s episode, the fitness and looksmaxxing personality – known for his controversial focus on “looksmaxxing” – called traditional training without performance-enhancing drugs a “complete waste of time.”

Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters, told Hannity that his interest in fitness began in his family’s basement gym in Hoboken, New Jersey. After researching workout routines online, he decided that making progress naturally was too slow.

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“I started reading different articles and forum posts about how to properly train as one would being a beginner to the gym, and that’s sort of where I came to the conclusion that there’s no reason to train naturally,” Clavicular said.

“It’s a complete waste of my time when I have this mechanism I could utilize, which was testosterone, to make the results in a much more efficient timeline. So why wouldn’t I?”

The decision led Clavicular to secretly acquire performance-enhancing drugs at a young age, he shared.

“I used to have to camp out by the mailbox and pretend to be sick from school,” he said, adding that he intercepted shipments of testosterone at age 14 to hide them from his parents.

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Hannity, a father of two, pointed out that many parents would react with anger and concern, prompting Clavicular to admit that his parents disciplined him repeatedly throughout his teenage years.

“Throughout high school, if I would do a f— up, I would get sent [to my grandmother’s],” he said. “Then, after I got expelled from university for peptides and ‘roids, that’s where I got sent off to.”

Clavicular said his academic career came to an abrupt halt after his public social media posts about his steroid use caught up with him.

“Throughout my entire life, I’ve kind of been documenting everything in a pretty public way,” he said. “I was talking about different cycles I was running, and then someone just sent the forum posts to my university, and it was done.”

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While public discussions surrounding low testosterone levels and hormone health have grown in recent years – often focusing on symptoms like fatigue, low libido and loss of muscle mass – endocrinologists and medical experts consistently warn against nonmedical androgen use.

In adolescents and young adults, unsupervised anabolic steroid and peptide usage can carry severe health risks, including stunted skeletal growth, premature cardiovascular strain, liver damage, psychiatric mood alterations and irreversible fertility suppression, according to the Endocrine Society.

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Medical professionals emphasize that while hormone therapy can be beneficial for men with legitimate medical deficiencies, using testosterone as a shortcut for muscle growth bypasses essential metabolic and biological safeguards.