My example says it’s men the same age a decade later. (What the studies show)
I looked at a few studies determining healthy testosterone levels in men. All numbers are accurate in the example besides the 5% drop off per decade. The papers I’ve seen say it’s a bigger drop off or around that number or slightly less. Depends on where you’re looking it up.
That was the point exactly. Still, the numbers are largely correct.
I thought I’d post it here since it is somewhat related.
Some of you may have seen this new T-nation article.
It claims there’s profound benefits to low dose cycling. It says that people say there are less side effects while a study shows there are serious gains. The article ends with the statement that natural and even mild cycling is a big difference.
I beg to differ with all of those claims.
The study did not use experienced trainees. It’s absolutely clear that the results are staggering if you compare a noob+roids and a newbie-roids.
There are no serious gains without serious side effects.
Natural and mild cycling might be a difference in some performance aspects but from a pure muscular development standpoint you wont be getting much over your Natural Limit by cycling 300 mg Test per week. Granted the difference might be noticeable when cruising on 300 mg.
@tareload s alter ego can speak to 2
@mnben87 can speak to 3
The article also points to guys on low dosages too gain 10 lbs in weeks making it sound like muscle.
I think the article is misleading in a few ways.
And I agree a 300 mg of test cycle in an advanced lifter isn’t going to do much. Consistently I’ve seen this. They guys who really get anything out of gear seem to use a lot of it. Yeah, 300 mg cruise for a year will be a difference.
I have to agree with @mnben87 . From what I’ve seen, the more experienced a natural lifter is, the more gear they’ll have to run to get any real effect from it.
Good point. The one study everyone references when advocating for whatever test dose they think is best is that any amount will build muscle, but they don’t go into the side effects of even a “mild” 300mg cycle. Yeah you’ll get muscle, but are the risk really that much less than 600mg?
Thanks for posting.
I dont think that dude is coming back…
I am excluding TRT in below.
These dudes had some experience and were rated as having about 3 RT sessions per week over last 12 months.
I read the whole article and conclude the trainees are all weak as hell and should not be on any AAS at all at 25 years old. Why in the world would you be on AAS cycle or start AAS cycle with a 100 to 120 kg bench at 25 years old?
Here is an approach that will save you 6 weeks on AAS and claim 300 lb “bench” to your Insta**** buddies:
Also, is this child abuse? Discuss? Props though as she is stronger than our trainees in the paper 
300 mg/week of T for 6 weeks and all i got was 20 lb on my bench and 9 lb of water weight. I want my money back.
So what do these guys do now? Go back off? If yes, then what was the point?
Hope the article doesnt give ammo for young dummy to go run a cycle. What do you do after cycle? Post to TNation and ask for PCT info?
Cue the discussion on safe methods.
I will agree also. If i think about it, when i was 15 and started lifting, we had this local web site, simmilar to FB - we didnt have “global” internet so we only got the local web sites, so that was where the people were talking and we had this group there, and we used to meet up and go eat and train etc… Basically there were like 15 ppl of different ages and experiences and we all slowly moved into taking gear.
It is true that at around 18, all the kids started to take like deca-dbol, or test-deca and i believe we did like 500 test and 350 deca as a first cycle, and honestly NO ONE blew up. Because it was believed that if you are not 200-220lbs natty depending on heigh, you cant touch gear as the only guy selling it was the guy who said it, haha. So we all went out of our way to meet his requirements and probably maxed our potential so much, that all the gear did was just some water and much much less gains than expected + we did the 12 weeks on 12 weeks off stupidity, basically ending up gaining very little.
Back then no one was thinking like kids here who fcking weight like a tall girl and do steroids. Then, of course they get super size. My GF did a few weeks of stanazolol, she gained 20lbs, and her 1 rep max deadlift became an easy 10 repper in those weeks.
So yea, i guess if you start pointlessly pre-maturely then your gains seem to be better and maybe thats where the belief of steroids putting on crazy size in the first cycle comes from.
I tried this and i like the idea on paper but it does not work. At least for me. I believe low-moderate dose cycles for a longer time is a good approach to cut, tho. As cutting takes time and a lot of how we look lean also is determined by drugs in the system.
As far as building muscle goes - if you are intermediate/advanced i start to think that Tony Huges approach could be better. Based of what @RT_Nomad has also said many times - that he felt benefits of steroids declining after week 6, the idea of short crazy blasts become more and more interesting.
The idea is that you basically take all your 12 week cycle and you do it in 4 weeks, haha. This goes hand in hand with training - i mean, if training heavy, no one can sustain progressive overload with overload techniques for 12 weeks week to week. Same with food - i could focus on 6 weeks of force feeding and i could force feed better food knowing it is just these 6 weeks, instead of 6 months, for example.
I really dont think that 300mgs of test will build much for someone who is like 240lbs and lifting for 10 years.
We also have a bit of fucked up thinking about cycles because of lies that pro bodybuilders say they took. Like the recent video of Jay Cutler saying he only took a bit of different stuff and talking like he DIDNT NEED MUCH. I mean… sounds reasonable if we think he has these super genetics but then again - what does he mean by “didnt need much” ? He was crying over losing to Ronnie for years. If he is so driven as he says, he would have doubled the dosage enough times to beat Ronnie in the second attempt. Dont tell me he ate 12 times a day, did 2 cardio sessions a day, but didnt even consider to take more than 700mgs total. LMAO. What a load of shit.
I think the same thing with Lee Priest. If 4-500 mg/wk got him to place well in the Olympia, you would think he would try a gram lol.
I believe we should acknowledge that it was HGH and insulin that is responsible for the freaky large physiques. It is my opinion that Arnold is the pinnacle non-HGH-insulin physique. Maybe Arnold took the optimal AAS level.
Please note: IMO, Arnold greatly lacked thigh development. That could call in question his AAS-only dominance had HGH-insulin never been used by any competitor.
Do you think Tom Platz was taking HGH and Insulin? I don’t know if that was before his time or not.
I am not sure any competitor has had better legs then him in any era. Bigger maybe, but the look of his legs was freaky, but I would still want them on my body. I wouldn’t want Big Ramy’s legs on me.
Just amazing!
Off the top of my head, I don’t think the top bodybuilders found the right combination of HGH and insulin until the mid to late1980’s. So, I would say that Platz might have been essentially an AAS-only competitor.
I believe I took my first HGH (from human cadavers) around 1982. And this was before the athlete was adding insulin. If I recall correctly it wasn’t until 1989 that I took my first use of synthetic HGH. I still never took insulin.
(Talk about AAS not being safe: I was greatly concerned of the risk I took taking human cadaver HGH, that I found out after taking. Supposedly, within five years of taking some “bad” human cadaver HGH people died from some brain disease.)
You are probably good by now.
Note for those using u-hCG the same risk is theoretically possible.
But I haven’t come across a case yet. Maybe @unreal24278 has?
Cited article:
Talk about timed release brain disease. Sounds like a bummer.
@RT_Nomad I’ll make a thread stating “u-hCG use is not safe”. 
@lordgains let me know if you have anything as well. We may need to wait a little longer 
Linkout:
This graph I don’t like. I have no idea what it means? I would need to know what the numbers are.
However, I can understand the Vin diagram very well.
Insanely heterogenous distribution of myostatin on Tom’s skeletal muscle mass by region.
Yeah, you would have to click the link for more context. I see you are on one of your lazy days 
I already posted Tom Platz and the Vin Diagram. Now I have to read something 
