Steroid Guide Review

Most are interested in having and understanding the answers to very simple questions, such as, “Which steroids should I use? How much of them should be used, and for how long? What other drugs are needed in combination with the steroids?” However there is no single correct answer for everyone.I do need to stress that there is no recommendation that anyone “should” use these drugs. We are discussing use by those who have already made that decision for themselves.

The first thing to be considered is, “What are the goals?” And perhaps the second thing to be considered is, “Are those goals reasonable or should they be changed?” All too often I am asked questions from people who wish to add a lot of muscle and cut a lot of fat simultaneously and who want to use the mildest and safest drugs and they want to know what they should do.

What they should do is to come up with some goals that do not contradict each other. In this article, we will consider goals and how to achieve them. In all cases we refer to use by male users. Females must use much lower doses to avoid virilization problems, and in fact even low dose use may lead to irreversible lowering of voice, increase of facial hair, etc. Therefore, use by women is a separate issue which is not being addressed here.

Cycle Planning
The next thing to be considered, after “What drug?” and “What dose?” is how long the drug should be used, or what pattern should be used if the drugs are varied.

Now again, we must consider the goals of the user. If we are speaking of an IFBB pro it simply is not realistic in today’s age to suggest that he should ever come off the drugs at all while competing. Others are not taking time off, and he would fall behind if he did choose to take off weeks and allow his system to return to normal periodically. Therefore, I am addressing here the concerns of the more average athlete who does not desire to be on drugs perpetually, and desires to maintain most of his gains while off drugs.

If gains are to be retained, losses at the end of the cycle must be avoided. Such losses occur if the natural hormonal axis, involving the hypothalamus, pituitary, and testes, is not producing normal levels of testosterone by the time that anabolic drugs are no longer providing significant levels to the system.

Incidentally, inhibition of each of these organs is somewhat independent of the others, and different factors are involved for each. We’ll look at those issues in a future article.

The risk factors for inhibition are principally length of the cycle, choice of AAS, dosage of AAS, and in the case of orals, dosage pattern of AAS.

Very simply, the longer the cycle, the greater the chance of recovery problems. And in calculating the cycle length, one must take into account the half life of the drug, and the time required for levels to injected drug to fall below inhibitory levels. This will be several half lives. Thus, some people speak of 2 week cycles using Sustanon, with 2 weeks “off,” which is then repeated. But they are incorrect in believing that they are doing 2 week cycles. Because substantial and inhibitory amounts of Sustanon will remain in the system during the “off” weeks, there is no recovery. If a person strings 4 of these cycles together, for example, he will have been on steroids for 16 weeks and may well have a difficult time recovering natural testosterone production afterwards. Thus, this is no solution.

The same type of scheme, however, can be quite successful with testosterone propionate with use of antiestrogens, as reported for example by Alexander Filippidis in a case study. With this shorter acting drug, there is actual time off between cycles.

Single short cycles, with many weeks allowed before beginning another new cycle, don’t seem so efficient. Usually, real strength gains don’t begin coming until the third week or so. While muscular weight may be gained in the first two weeks, it seems that the body is also adapting itself in a manner which will make growth very efficient in the next few weeks: or rather it would, if AAS were still available. Thus, I can’t recommend doing isolated cycles which are shorter than four weeks at the minimum, and really five or six weeks is probably more reasonable. Only in the case of short acting drugs, with very frequent cycles, are two or three week cycles a good idea in my opinion.

While it makes little sense to cut a stand-alone cycle too short, while the body is still ready to gain rapidly, on the other hand, heavy use beyond say 10 weeks becomes fairly likely to result in recovery problems. Furthermore, after the body has already grown a good deal and has been growing for many weeks, it is less ready to grow more. Thus, long cycles are inefficient in that regard, and furthermore are likely to result in greater losses after the cycle. Perhaps 6 weeks of heavy use and two to four weeks of light use is approximately optimal for conservative users.

The choice of AAS is quite critical towards the end of the cycle, so far as inhibition is concerned, but the inhibition issue is not so vital at the beginning. In other words, if one hits the system heavily at the beginning, but then lightly at the end, recovery will be better than if the reverse strategy were employed.

Primobolan, while not an exceptionally strong anabolic per milligram, seems to have a better ratio of anabolic to inhibitory activity than any other steroid, and is my recommendation as the injectable to use in the last weeks of a cycle. It is not absolutely clear though that this is an intrinsic property of Primobolan. It may be due to the fact that Primobolan does not convert to estrogen, and perhaps (this is speculation) low dose trenbolone might give an equally favorable anabolic/inhibitory ratio.

Dosage for this use is somewhat less clear. Some have made excellent recoveries on a gram of Primobolan per week. In the US, however, such use would be quite expensive. In general, though, I don’t know if most people will recover well with that dose. 400 mg/week is still sufficient to saturate the androgen receptors (ARs) and is a more conservative approach for the last weeks of a cycle.

Where oral anabolics are concerned, once-a-day dosing results in much less inhibition than divided doses. It’s unknown what time of day is best, but morning has been used successfully, and makes sense since that timing will result in little drug being in the system at night and early morning, when LH and natural testosterone production are highest. Thus, switching to once a day dosing in the last few weeks would make sense.

Our goal throughout the cycle as a whole, however, cannot simply be to minimize inhibition. If it were, the answer would be simply to take no AAS at all, or to use very little.

In the early phases of the cycle, inhibition must simply be accepted if serious gains are desired. This is not because inhibition itself in any way leads to gains, but simply because there is inhibition mediated by the androgen receptor, and therefore high levels of androgen will cause some inhibition. And as long as inhibition is occurring anyway, gains may as well be as much as possible. I see no point in half-measures. Either be gaining as much as possible, or be setting yourself up for recovery while still making some decent gains or at least maintaining gains.

For the early part of the cycle, the inhibitory properties of the AAS used are of less importance than the mass-gaining properties.

Two anabolics reign supreme: testosterone and trenbolone (which is found in Parabolan or in illicit injectable preparations of Finaplix.) These AAS appear more effective for mass building than any other injectables.

They may be stacked to advantage: since one is unlikely to be able to afford or to obtain large amounts of Parabolan, it is worthwhile to add testosterone in order to obtain a higher total dose and greater results. Furthermore, there may be a synergistic effect. However, trenbolone itself, particularly in combination with Dianabol, can give excellent results. Oral AAS add their own benefits, not because of binding to different receptors, but probably because of their direct action on the liver, which produces various growth factors.

Ultimately, there cannot be one answer for everyone. Different users will have different needs. The above is generally good advice for reasonably conservative bodybuilders who wish substantial results. Those desiring either more moderate or more extreme results would need to adjust their plans accordingly.