Hi everyone,
I’m 37 years old and a pro Bareknuckle boxer. I haven’t fought for a year now due to recurring injuries. The main one is my ankle which plays up for months at a time, then i get a few months out of it then it goes again. In the meantime I still train boxing but am unable to squat, run or do anything too strenuous. I work around it generally. I usually keep to a strength routine of 3 sessions a week - compound lifts advised by a coach I had a few years back and continued on my own. Progress just keeps being set back with injuries though.
I also train boxing a few times a week depending on my schedule. In a fight camp everything is ramped up to way more obviously (5/6 cardio/boxing & 3 strength sessions a week ish).
I work 13 hour night shifts. Week on week off. Which is not ideal, but mans gotta do what mans gotta do.
I’ve done two cycles of test E in the past 500mg a week split in 2 doses. One cycle i did before fighting at the age of 30 (10 week) and one in a year gap of competing - 2 years ago (12 week) - i did pct for both. That last cycle was because my ankle was so bad i could barely walk on it at the end of a nightshift. After that cycle, i was able to train for 9 to 12 months with minimal injuries and my ankle cleared up completely allowing me to train like i wanted to for the 2 fight camps.
The ankle is unworkable again right now and starting a fight camp doesn’t seem realistic. I wanted to get on TRT but this official company turned me down, saying my test level are normal even though I attempted to cheat the test a bit - stayed awake all night on shift and the. got the bloods done! That was 150 bucks wasted for the consultation and i’m reluctant to go to another company for the same to happen again.
TRT was my plan but doing that the right way seems not to be an option. Thanks for reading this far.
My questions would be.
Could I do TRT alone effectively? At what dose? With the purpose being to get my ankle to a workable point to train at pro athlete level again, do any of you know people using test for injury recovery like i have and at the trt dose? Is it easy to read the bloods yourself and understand it?
Or
Should I do a test cycle like I have experience with and good results from? My main question with this is, do any of you know officially if the effects of a test cycle would help my ankle for 9 or so months after the cycle is finished? It did for me previously or maybe i was lucky, has this been proven in studies or is it generally known. I wouldnt be on the cycle for my actual fight, due to the weight gain. I would aim to finish a cycle mid to end of camp. Or even do the cycle before i take a fight and get into camp like i did previously as my ankle was good for 9 months after the last one. Do any of you have any more info on this specifically?
My main thing is to be able to train to the level i want to. Obvs gaining strength and all that is great but i just need to be able to turn up to training consistently- thats the goal.
I get the comments about unfairness with ped’s etc but the first guy I fought was an ex brit bodybuilding champ Who was clearly on something, and had benefited his entire life from peds. It’s bareknuckle fighting, not olympic boxing and its not tested.
I have 3 years of pro fighting left at max if everything goes well. I want to make the most of them and am seeking your guy’s lifetime experience with this stuff.
Cheers lads