I have seen that. Where guys with very low SHGB basicly pee their T out before the body can use it and guys with very high SHGB tie there T up so fast there is hardly any Free T.
IMO guys with very low or high SHGB have something else, health wise, going on and the doc don’t seem to know how to fix it.
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Well…to be fair an unbiased, I’m not sure we can factor in the “feelings” side based on the testimony of BB’s at a professional level…mainly because the stress that they put on their bodies (extreme bulking and cutting phases pre comp) is ten times more than the average joe just taking steroids to bulk or people like us that use them for therapy purposes. I couldn’t imagine that a pro would ever “feel” good no matter what his levels of T are.
Fair enough.
no. going too high doesn’t feel good.
again, no. I think you’re downplaying the impact of hormones on mental state tremendously. With as many blasts as I have under my belt at this point, I can absolutely guarantee it’s not a placebo thing.
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So what do you blast and what is too high? I don’t spend much time on the Pharma board so I don’t know what a typical blast is. Are they guys going by mg or total T measured in the body?
I’ve gone as high as 1500/week, and I do fine on that. I don’t plan on going higher. My ‘typical’ blasts are 750-1500, and it just depends on what else, if anything, I’m running.
There is no such thing as typical. It’s all dependent on goals, what you can tolerate mentally and physically, etc. Everybody is different. I would say gym rats without highly competitive goals really have no reason to go above 750. Maybe 1g if that’s all you’re running and you have plenty of cycles under your belt.
Again, everyone is different. I think MOST people, when blasting, are just going by mg’s. I don’t really see a reason to keep tabs on total T when blasting. You know that running more gear will raise your T number. No need to track exactly what it gets to. I never get T tested.
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I assume you end up running an AI when you blast so much? Also, do you notice an exponentially different change the more you blast? Like 6 weeks at 750 nets 8lbs LBM vs 20lb LBM at 1.5g?
That’s not how it works for me. I’m the same weight, approximately, that I was 2 years ago. I will say, I’ve never gained 20 lbs, lean or otherwise, from a steroid cycle of any length. I gauge the success of a cycle by how my lifts improve. I compete in a weight class-based sport, so I can’t gain weight right now.
I do not run an AI. I used to, and it was too easy to crash E2. If I take anything, it’s nolva at 20mg/day.
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Interesting. So when you blast you keep the reps low and ramp up to increasing your 1RM? The aim is keeping hypertrophy at a minimum?
I should clarify. I don’t compete in powerlifting, I compete in strongman. So the answer to your question is ‘depends on the event.’ Plenty of max rep events, aside from the 1rm events. And there are carries, medleys, etc.
I don’t do anything specifically in my workouts to prevent hypertrophy. My muscles can grow as long as I lose comparable bodyfat. But in the context of improving lifts/strength, a lot of the development/growth is in ancillary muscles that don’t necessarily weigh much. You can get stronger without necessarily weighing more on the scale (although weight is a limiting factor).
At the end of the day, growth/bodyweight increase is based on diet, not steroids. People who get heavier while on steroids are also eating sufficiently to do so. If you eat at maintenance level, you can still get stronger, just not as fast or as much as you would if you ate more. Does that make sense?
Some examples: when I weighed 210, my best log press was around 240-250, my best deadlift was around 600. That was 2 years ago. Now, my bodyweight is under 200, and I can press a 285 log, and deadlift about the same. And it wasn’t a major body recomp either, I was still pretty lean at 210, I was vascular with abs then too.
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Had my 4 month blood work today. Been running 500mg for 6+ months. Some numbers are high, but not too concerning as I know I ran my first extended (10wk) oral cycle and only recovered for approximately a month on this.
Format is: type; 2018/10/09 results; 2018/06/04 results
HDL; 44; 38
LDL; 148; 126
AST; 43; 33
ALT; 41; 32
RBC; 585; 558
HCT; 43.6; 44.3
E2; 29.5; 22.2
I remain about the same. I’d say I’m an average gym bro at 80 to 83kg. I’ll only notice recomps on orals. I don’t look like I’m on 500mg, I only take 500mg because I feel that this is my TRT dose.
I stay at 2600-3000kcal a day (not too strict) eating chicken, cheese, and brown rice with veggies 4x a day and a tablespoon of olive oil to bump the calories up so the cheese won’t constipate me. I’ll up the caloric intake at times to promote growth.
With that said, even though I look like the average guy, I can tell that I’m stronger and have more endurance than most with lower bf (at least judging by how they carry) and more lbm than me.
As far as my AI goes, I run 25mg aromasin EOD to stick around 22 but I range from 5-10 one day to 22 the next. It just so happened that these tests reflect the magic 22 number and multiple others are 5-10 when just testing E2.
I know this wasn’t for me, but when I blast, which I’d say just throwing an oral in my 500mg “TRT dose” (in quotations cause that might not be the consensus of a dose), it’s to push the same weight for more reps so I can get over plateaus and add kgs after the orals as muscle will grow and recover quicker than tendons and ligaments. So if I up the reps as opposed to the weight first, I hypothetically have less of a chance of injury.
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Impaired insulin sensitivity is associated with low SHBG, most of my blood tests demonstrate low shbg I’m both glucose and fructose intolerant.
Are you talking about test, I could’ve sworn you used a bit more than that (total MG’s) a few weeks prior to competition.
Depends if you’re like me and have crippling anxiety about this stuff, it’s a good measure to measure total T, I’d never be comfortable knowing I was walking around with a TT over 2000ng/dl (although as I get more experienced this will change)
Would you describe the impact as positive or negative?
Yes but say you put two guys on the same diet, training routine and one guy is on cycle and the other guy isn’t, the guy on cycle will gain quite a bit more muscle mass and potentially strength (depending on how close he is to his genetic limit). People on anabolic steroids are also able to get far bigger than people who aren’t on AAS, the vast majority of guys who aren’t on sauce can’t get to 220+lbs lean if they aren’t tall (anything at or above… 5,10 is tall as it’s above the average height, someone my height might not even be able to get to 180 lean, lean being at or less than 10 percent BF. With anabolic steroids, the threshold of how big one can get is much higher (even more so if you add HGH and slin), retaining muscle mass on a cut is also easier, as the body doesn’t enter a highly catabolic state… I forgot where I’m going with this. Wait, no I remembered. Although diet has a huge role in how much muscle mass and strength one gains, anabolic steroids undeniably augment the weight gain significantly. If two joes were to eat at maintenance, one was on cycle and one wasn’t and they both trained (considering they have the same genetics, so lets say they’re identical twins), the guy on cycle will gain more muscle mass.
yes, specifically test. I was running 1500 test and 600 EQ.
can go both ways, and it’s kind of open to interpretation, how people like to feel, ya know?
Dbol, to me, is unequivocally a feel good drug. It always makes me feel very confident, energetic, etc. But some other effects are more ambiguous on the good/bad scale. Sex drive is a good example. Is a crazy high sex drive good? Depends on your life situation, right? If you’ve got a girlfriend who wants to fuck 5 times a day, cool. It’ll probably work out. If you don’t, it may lead to some undesirable behavior… lol.
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yes. I was referring specifically to bodyweight, lbs on the scale. Clearly, AAS will help you have a better body composition at ANY bodyweight. That, in a nutshell, is why we take them.
This is technically incorrect, and why I stress really being careful with word choices. There are 600 lbs people in America. They are bigger than bodybuilders. Just not more muscular.
I didn’t scroll up to re read what I was responding to before, but I believe all I was doing was answering a question about how many lbs on the scale I expect to put on in a given cycle, at a given dose. Not how many lean lbs. And honestly, I don’t have a way of tracking how many lean lbs I put on when I stay the same bodyweight on a cycle, as all I’m tracking is numbers in the gym, and bodyweight itself.