You’re on the right track, but we need to adjust and change a few things.
I’ll address things in a topic format,
TESTOSTERONE DOSE AND DURATION:
Looks great for a first cycle, both with choice of steroid and length of use - 2 bottles at 250mg/ml and you’re set. As far as the injects go, I understand your fear, but really once you start doing them - it’s no big deal, and you will be fine with it. I’d stick to glutes and quads and save the other injection sites for a more frequent dosing protocol as the smaller muscle groups cause a faster displacement of the steroid and therefore are not as ideal with less frequent dosing.
So think of it simply as shooting your left butt cheek on Mon and your right butt cheek on Thu (or whichever days suits you). Lastly, once a week would be fine, but far from ideal, especially with only ten weeks to stabilize your levels, twice a week will give you a better experience as far as gains, sides, and overall enjoyment. As far as my recommendation on pins and stuff - I would get some 3ml syringes with a 20-22g pin to draw the oil into the syringe with, and some seperate 25gx1.5" pins to shoot with; they may take longer to inject the oil, but will help reduce your fear of the needle as they are far from painful.
AS FAR AS YOU BEING GYNO-PRONE AND ANTI-E USE:
First off, nolvadex is not what you want to be running during you cycle, sure it will work, but is far from ideal. I would suggest running an AI (aromatase inhibitor) like Arimidex. I would run the arimidex at .25mg a day from day one. Using the half-life to determine when blood levels will be high enough to potentially cause problems is a common way that I see many people use and recommend, but doesn’t really make sense or tell the story.
Also, even though blood levels take around 3-5wks (depending on dosage) to reach peak and somewhat stable levels, most of the steroid is dispersed into the blood stream within 2 days. If one were gyno-prone, one would want to start the AI right away. Especially since as blood levels increase, SHBG (sex-hormone-binding-globomin) decreases causing a faster destruction of estrogen, so even though testosterone levels might be lower for the first several weeks, so is your bodys method of estrogen control so to speak. So run the AI from day 1 all the way through your cycle.
AS FAR AS PCT:
PCT (post cycle recovery) is a period where we use SERMs (selective-estrogen-receptor-modifiers) to help stimulate natural testosterone levels, we could also simply slowly taper down our dose and slowly allow our natural production to bring itself back up - Both methods work fine,and each has their drawbacks. I much prefer a taper unless one was in a hurry to start another cycle or whatnot.
But, I’ll explain the “PCT” protocol as it is more chosen, if you want to taper or learn more about it - ask.
First to understand the half-life and the exogenous (externally supplied) testosterone levels, we would see that it would take 2-3 weeks (maybe more) for one’s exogenous levels to taper off enough for SERMS to even work, as nothing is going to work to start your natural production in a recovered state as long as exogenous levels are above endogenous production, make sense?
So by stopping your PCT at week 12 would mean that you have absolutely no PCT and are really relying on a sub-par tapering plan. You should run your AI (arimidex remember? at .25mg everyday) through week 12 and THEN start nolvadex at 20mg a day for 3-6 weeks. There is also absolutely no reason to run it above 20mg/day unless one is using it for gyno-protection, for recovery 20mg is just as good. I would plan on running it for 4 weeks as a safe guess, but no less than 3; but again that is 3 weeks AFTER your exogenous levels have fallen, so if you insist on running nolvadex as more than PCT, then you need to think of it as until week 15-16.
As far as potential HCG use. I use it and generally recommend it, but for a first cycle at 10wks, I would not bother. If you did though, I would run it at 400iu twice a week from week 2 until week 12 (the starting week of PCT). and I would shoot it the day after each shoot or maybe even just 500iu on the weekends, I use 400iu twice a week.
HCG use will keep your nuts swinging nicely, as they might start to pull up a bit (tightened scrotum), shrinkage would usually not be much with just test at 500mg, throw in some Dbol, Tren or Deca and watch out! The idea is to keep them working during the entire cycle to make it more comfortable and recovery easier. To use it as part of PCT just doesn’t make sense to me, as at that point in time if (basically) synthetic LH would work for recovery, then your endogenous LH would work too and the Hcg would be pointless and actually counter-productive.
If one were to use it weeks 10-12 as a pre-pct while the exogenous levels are falling, then I would have to wonder why one didn’t use it the entire time?
So to break down my long-ass post into a cycle:
weeks 01-10 Testosterone Enanthate at 250mg twice a week
weeks 01-12 Arimidex at .25mg everyday
weeks 13-16 Nolvadex at 20mg everyday
maybe weeks 02-12 Hcg at 400iu twice a week
