Bill Roberts has talked about using only 400mg/week of primo to minimize inhibition. Well I was wondering if I could do 2 weeks of moderate-heavy steroid use then for 4 weeks use only 400mg primo/week and still have little inhibition. If not then, how long could I use only 400mg/week of primo until it would start to cause a problem with inhibition. Help me out on this one somebody.
It depends on what you’re trying to do. If you
are trying to keep moderate enough so that overall, after having done say five or more cycles, you STILL don’t have any testicle shrinkage (despite not having used HCG) and overall your hypothalamus and pituitary have been producing as much total LHRH and LH as
they would have without the steroids, then no
you cannot be on 400 mg Primo during your off weeks.
When Clomid is used, 2 on / 4 off allows this situation where overall, on average, T production stays about the same, because the off weeks will actually be higher than usual. With the 400 mg Primo, you’ll have two weeks of total or near-total inhibition, followed by two weeks of partial suppression. That averages out in the negatives.
However, say that you’re willing to use HCG,
and prefer the idea of being probably about
moderately-low-normal during the “off” weeks
that use Primo to the idea of just going
continuously with a suppressive dose. In this
scenario, sure, I would expect, though I haven’t done it and don’t know anyone who has,
that you could do three or more such cycles back to back and still recover quickly when you decide to go off (which might well not be the
case with 18 weeks of straight heavy steroid
use.) No guarantees though.
If you’re just using 400 mg/week Primo and
using it every week, longest I personally
know of is 10 weeks, with the blood test still something like
450 ng/dL total testosterone if I recall
correctly.
Thanks for the help. I still have a few questions though. Should I start with 800 mg on day 1? Should I inject 400mg once a week or 200 mg twice a week? For every week I’m on how long how long should I be off? Thanks.
It’s best to inject an additional 50-100% of
the weekly dose on day 1, so as to immediately
get up to the blood levels you’d expect with
your weekly dose, since you have to make up
for having no drug already in the system unlike
the case with later weeks. So 600-800 mg on
day 1. This is more important in a 2 week cycle than in say an 8 week cycle… in the longer cycle, if the first week has relatively low
levels which slowly build up over weeks 2 and
3, then it’s not a huge deal… you just got
off to a slow start. But in a 2 week cycle,
you just threw away a major percentage
of the cycle if you don’t use the loading
dose on day 1.
For maintenance, taking half the weekly dose
twice per week is better than taking it all
in one weekly dose, since levels will drop
by more than 50% between injections if you take that approach.
How many weeks off you should be versus on,
depends entirely on where you want to be
on the scale of conservatism and health while
still getting very nice results, vs. the other end of going for the absolute most results with no regard to health. Different people will
have different ideas of where on that scale
is optimal for them.
Being off 2 weeks for every week of use (on 1/3 of the time) is
conservative, can be expected to be better for the health than more aggressive plans, and
still will deliver results that most lifters
will be very happy with.
The reverse side of that, where you’re on
two weeks for every week you take off (on 2/3 of the time), gives
somewhat more results – results that someone
who is competing will need, though he may not
need to be on quite this often – but is much
less conservative obviously.
Being on half and half is, obviously, sort of
in the middle… with sufficient dedication
and effort can give results about like being
on 2/3 of the time, while being intermediate
in effect on health… long term, you’d want
HCG if you’re following this plan.
Having zero off weeks is simply unnecessary.
Gains are equally good when there are some
off weeks during the year.
So it’s just a question of where you want to
be. It can also depend on the situation. If you’re reasonably lean and want to add muscle,
you’ll get fast results – fast enough to have
friends and neighbors getting suspicious – being on 1/3 of the time. But if you have a lot
of fat to lose too, then you may appreciate
the support of anabolics during dieting weeks,
so being on 2/3 of the time, temporarily,
might be more appropriate while losing the
fat. Enough calories and protein to gain muscle
but very little fat for 2 weeks – say 20 cal/lb and 2 to 2.5 g protein/lb – then 2-3
weeks of heavy dieting, then 1-2 weeks of
maintenance calories (15 cal/lb.) But as
part of a long term plan, being on 1/3 of
the time is probably a better idea unless
somehow your living depends on having that last 5 lb of muscle.
In my reply on percentage of time off vs. on, I was assuming use of doses of steroids during on weeks sufficient to give fast gains.
If someone had a very conservative plan, like
using 200 mg per week of Primo Depot and no other steroid, and also cycled it with say alternately Clomid and Tribex to keep testosterone production up, I’d be comfortable
with being on that literally all the time.
Well, not necessarily for 40 years straight,
simply because it’s unknown, but I’d have no problem with a few years of such use. Even
the longterm use, at those levels, would
probably have no more adverse impact than
whatever impact there might be (might be,
it isn’t proven) from just tending to have
somewhat higher than average but still normal testosterone levels. I’d do it.
Since Primo’s anabolic to inhibition ratio is very high do you believe that gains off a long 10 week cycle would be better kept if one were to use 200-400mg per week of Primo Depot until test levels are normal? Should this “off” period be maintained until another long cycle?
Bill, thanks for the help. You’ve helped me out more than I imagined anyone could. But let me make this clear: I don’t necessarily want to use the primo as a means of building muscle all the time but rather as a surefire anticatabolic aid all the time, and let the muscle gains come from hard work. In a sense I will be using it as a crutch but not at the expense of being terribly unhealthy. This is why I don’t want to use things like testosterone for long cycles. So I can use 200-400 mg primo every week with tribex and/or clomid for a long time and not experience any major side effects? Thanks again.
John, I’ve long recommended switching to
Primo at the end of a cycle, as the only
injectable, for the reasons you state.
I personally prefer to not “bridge” as you’re
describing for 2 reasons. One, as long as you’re using an injectable, you can’t tell
by perception whether your natural T is doing
well or not. (Of course, you could solve this
problem with blood tests, but that’s inconvenient, expensive, and most guys aren’t
going to do it.) And second, having a structured drug/training program that deliberately includes clean weeks as part
of a productive program, keeps you recognizing
that you don’t need drugs to do well in the
gym – they just speed your results, and this
is best scheduled as a periodic thing rather
than continuous. When you’re injecting all
the time, every week, pretty soon you become
dependent psychologically on the drug – can’t
train without it. I’ve seen it a lot of times, both sides of the coin, and have experienced it myself too.
However, aside from those factors, using moderate Primo during all off weeks would
certainly slow or avoid losses during off
weeks. Whether there would be more gains
per year is very hard to say, since so far
as I can tell, even with very heavy steroid
use not just 400 mg/week Primo, being completely off 1/3 of the year still gives
every bit as much results as being on continuously, and being completely off half the time gives almost as much results. So long term, I don’t think that
having a moderate number of completely off weeks reduces yearly gains.
I’d think of the long term benefit of prolonged low dose Primo more as being an “instead of” heavy steroid use option, rather than “in addition to.”