Thanks for the tag, mate. Sorry for taking a while to comment but I knew there was potential for me to ramble here and I wanted to make sure I had time to write out my thoughts properly.
So Flip’s right in that I would cycle on for a while, PCT, then come off. I’d stay off for a few months then when I felt the time was right, I’d go back on.
And I got bigger, but, if I’m being really honest, I’m not sure I got all that much bigger than I would have had I just trained naturally.
Obviously when I was on cycle I got bigger faster than when I was natural. That’s a given, but the thing to consider is what happens when you’re off.
During your off periods, you are fighting tooth and nail to keep as much as what you’ve gained as you can. I’m sure there’s genetic variability in how much people keep (in as much as I’m sure there’s genetic variability in literally every aspect of muscle-building) post-cycle, but you find yourself spending most of your time trying to maintain or regain what you’ve lost, rather than actually improving.
To throw some (admittedly arbitrary) numbers out there: say you gain 12lbs on cycle. You do your PCT and now you’re “normal” again so straight away you’ve lost 4lbs of that (water bloat and increased glycogen storage), but you’re still 8lbs up which isn’t a bad gain for 12 weeks considering pretty much none of it was fat.
But now your ass ain’t gaining for months - it’s trying to maintain that 8lbs. Looking back, I’m honestly not sure just how much more muscle the cycle nets when you consider if you’d been natural you’d have been gaining the whole time. In a 6 month period, you would probably gain close to the same. It can also be pretty disheartening to bust your ass for 4 months and still not be quite as good as you were 6 months ago when you were on cycle, not to mention the cost of the steroids themselves (admittedly pretty cheap as drugs go) and the health risks involved.
Again, this all comes down to genetics. My hummingbird metabolism makes it hard for me to gain compared to others, and my response to AAS has always been pretty average. You’ve got guys like Dusty Hanshaw on the Olympia stage at 1400mg total per week, or even dudes like Lee Priest who didn’t even need that. I’m not one of those guys.
The game changer is, as Flip alluded to earlier, when you blast and cruise. Even guys that drop down to a true TRT dose (as in what a doctor prescribes as a therapeutic dose) between cycles seem to keep way more muscle and gain way more between cycles. You would think that if you got your normal testosterone back into a healthy range that there wouldn’t be a difference, as, after all, the test levels are the same, right? I might not be able to explain it but I’ve seen it a million times with my own eyes, and I’m sure other steroid users will tell you the same. If you want to really gain - and keep - the steroid size, then you need to stay on.
So now I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that if I want the physique I’ve always wanted to achieve I’ll need to blast and cruise, which is what I’m going to do. I also feel like for the first time in my life I’m in a place where I can actually make this decision, so I have. I have achieved a lot of what I’ve always wanted to achieve in a lot of areas of my life, and this is the area I want to feel like a success in next. I’m not some dumbass 21 year old kid blasting tren like “durrr Imma be the next Ronnie Cutler…” I’m a grown man with responsibilities who understands exactly the consequences of every decision.
You’re a smart dude, Waittz. I’m sure whatever decision you make will be the right one because you’re too smart to do something stupid.
