I did this taper biz in the 80s. It just prolongs recovery in my experience.
[quote]Smitty22 wrote:
I’m bout to start a test-e cycle for about 12 weeks at 250mg every 3-4 days and have been told conflicting info what do you reccomend…
I’m prone to gyno so I will be taking letro throughout and was going to do a taper but don’t need to if I don’t have to, also can you hit on the use of letro in conjunction with the taper and pct…I have posted this same question now three times with no answers and if they do ansewr they don’t my questions??? [/quote]
Well, first on the cycle length.
It depends on your situation. If there is some reason why a date 12 weeks from the start point is a key date – for example a competition or some social occurrence you are very psyched to be at your best for – okay, 12 weeks will best meet this immediate need.
But if your goals are, rather, that yes sure it will be appreciated to look better in the near future as well, really the more important thing is the result a year down the road and onwwards, then 12 weeks is not the best way to go.
For the same total amount of steroids used per year and the same ratio of “off” weeks to “on” weeks – the only way to do a fair comparison – for example 8 week cycles will be more productive for you over the longer term than 12 week. In an equal comparison, you might be comparing 3 eight week cycles per year against two 12 week cycles. The first plan can be expected to have you in better condition at the same end date as the second plan.
The reasons are that, first, earlier weeks are more productive ordinarily than later weeks in a long cycle. It’s not unusual that relatively little further is accomplished in weeks 9-12 anyway. And second, recovery is faster and easier frmo the 8 week cycles.
So, 'nuff said on that.
On the letrozole, ideally you’d get tested but as an estimate 0.36 mg (1/7th of 2.5 mg) per day is a good baseline value for ongoing use being “off” or I think for a low-dose bridge such as 100 mg/week.
It sounds as if you are planning on 500 mg/week testosterone enanthate. I would try doubling the above dose (0.72 mg day) and see how that does. A further increase may be required. (More inhibitor is needed in the presence of more T.)
Now, on your T dosage as you asked about that, especially since you are keeping estrogen under control 750 mg/week would not be too much unless you have particular DHT problems with the skin, in which case dutasteride could help. If you were using that then I’d try letrozole at 1 mg per day and see how that does.
As the half life of letrozole is at least two days and may be more like four (individual variation) take quadruple the dose on the first day. Otherwise it can take 2-6 weeks for levels to build up to steady state. Quadruple on first day, if in your case the half-life is 3 days, will immediately get you to the steady-state level.
On Nolvadex: Yes it can be used at the same time. If your estrogen levels are in fact low-normal thanks to the letrozole you don’t need to use it as a gyno-preventative. However since you a prone to it and you won’t know for a fact going into it that a given amount of letrozole will suffice, you could choose to use a little as backup. 10 mg/day should suffice.
The same frontloading consideration applies here: take 7 times as much on the first day. (Five or 6 times will also get you close.)
As for Nolvadex as PCT, it is an interesting and important question as to whether protocol ought to be changed with letrozole in the picture, keeping endogenous estrogen down to low normal. Maybe a lesser dose is equally good. But I don’t know myself. I would assume going with the traditional 20 mg/day and continuing until being confident natural T is back.
If following the “wait till reaching bridge-type blood levels before sustaining the bridge” approach I’ve described, let’s assume 6 days for the half-life of testosterone enanthate (there are various reported values, but using 6 days for figuring works well) and assume you are using 375 mg 2x/week, and assume that we okay with the cycle being only a “so-called 8 week cycle” rather than a true on, by which I mean that we are counting weeks at full dose rather than total suppressive time – the latter being how I prefer to count it.
Let’s also say the cycle starts on a Monday.
On that Monday you inject an amount equal to the ongoing usual injection (375 mg) plus the amount ordinarily injected in one half-life’s time. If the half-life were exactly a week that would be another 750 mg. Being 6 daysit averages 642 mg (750 x 6/7). So the total injection on day 1 is about 1000 mg. This immediately gets you to the steady state level instead of having to wait weeks for it to get there.
Week 8 ends with a final injection of 375 mg on Wednesday.
Call the Monday starting the next week Day 0.
At Day 6 levels are commensurate with ongoing 375 mg/week usage: leave alone. Day 12, with ongoing 187 (not really that precise) mg/week usage. Leave alone. Day 17 or so, levels are commensurate with about an ongoing 100 mg/week level and having just taken the ongoing injection. So that day can be left alone, but a half-week after that and then semi-weekly (twice a week) after that, take 50 mg to sustain the 100 mg/week bridge level.
So in terms of suppression it’s still really more like a 10 week cycle or a little more.
Now if you have access to orals or fast acting injectables you could do it as a true 8 week cycle – effective all 8 weeks and suppressive for only barely more than 8 weeks – or you could modify the above to be a true 8 week cycle by running the time of injections as only 6 weeks. That is what I would do myself if doing it that way, as the same principle applies that I can now do more cycles per year on the same amount of gear, but I know from experience that most don’t like being told to use for only 6 weeks (due to their choice of using only a long-acting) for what they plan as an 8 week cycle so I did not write the above that way. Obviously you could easily modify it.
As to how to end the injection of TE two weeks before the end of the cycle and still have the cycle finish out strongly, it’s just a question of using orals and/or fast-acting injectables to progressively support what is being lost from the dropping TE levels. It’s a more efficient way to go when possible.
And on being confident natural T is back:
If you get to the point where it would be time to start the bridge – in other words levels have fallen to being commensurate with ongoing 100 mg/week usage – and you are confident your T levels must be better than they would be at a mere 100 mg/week and it being a half-week after the last injection, then this would be some degree of basis to have confidence.
Myself I don’t start a bridging dose till I have spent a little time at nothing but natural T production just to be entirely sure.
When running cycles such as ones that are suppressive for no longer than 8 weeks, using fast-actings or orals at the end, recovery is so fast that at worst there are typically a couple of days of feeling somewhat low. Or if having only 8 weeks of suppresson but using only for example enanthate and therefore discontinuing at week 6, there are generally no low days at all.
The unhappiness so many experience comes from wanting to do cycles that are longer than generally should be the case anyway. E.g., four 7 week cycles (not that anyone does 7 week cycles, but for illustration) are going to do more for you in the same period of time as two 14 week cycles.
But short-sighted greed often results in guys choosing cycle lengths such as that.
(Even in the case of having a specific date to meet, I wouldn’t recommend 14 weeks. Two on, two off, and 10 on, assuming availability of short-actings, would be a better choice. However in the case of 12 weeks, if there were a contest at that point I would not rule out 12 straight though when there’s an opportunity to plan well ahead rather than being forced to meet a non-optimal calendar situation I don’t favor ending with more than 10.)
Wow Bill! That is some heavy duty shit!! What a way to start a new year…
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I know. i love him.
An excellent read Bill.
I too have been very wary of the taper method, based on your explanation I doubt I will try it.
I have done the Stasis-Taper method and both times it worked GREAT. I do agree that the 100mg week shouldn’t really be counted as “off” weeks though. I agree that you’re still on.
The goal of the Stasis-Taper is NOT to get to drug free status faster than traditional PCT, it does take longer. The goal is the make the transition as smooth and unnoticeable as possible.
The 100mg a week is kind of a protection against cortisol rebound and adrenal burnout until the drug used while on cycle do clear the system. It is a 6 week extension of the cycle in a way, but again just to make the transition to drug free status as smooth as possible.
Sure maybe the first two weeks could be discarded, but overall that strategy does make sense to me. Also, on that 1g a week maybe you were on a few different drugs while the 100mg a week is simply Test, to mimic what the body would produce on its own.
And is the half-life theory of “naturally occuring drug taper” really works in real life? People still feel they’re stopping cold turkey after 2 weeks even if they do come off 1g a week and they should feel “on” for 5-6 weeks until blood levels fall down below the 100mg mark.
All the people who posted their experience with the Stasis-Taper have posted positive ones (from what I’ve seen anyway). It’s not the only way, but sometimes practical results beat theory.
[quote]SwD wrote:
And is the half-life theory of “naturally occuring drug taper” really works in real life? People still feel they’re stopping cold turkey after 2 weeks even if they do come off 1g a week and they should feel “on” for 5-6 weeks until blood levels fall down below the 100mg mark.[/quote]
This is, unintentionally I’m sure, “straw man” argumentation – arguing against a false premise, and then, proving it false, claiming some unrelated thing false.
At 1000 mg/week and say a 6 day half life, 6 days after the last injection one is at blood levels commensurate with 500 mg/week.
At 12 days, 250 mg/week.
It may be hard to tell one is “on” at 250 mg/week. So we would expect some will not be able to tell they are still on after a mere 12 days since the last, for example, TE injection. And in fact that sort of thing is observed.
An expectation that “if only the half-life theory were correct then users would feel like they were still ‘on’ 5 or 6 weeks after the last injection” is just not correct.
Even if looking at the 100 mg/week mark, the 18 day point would yield a level commensurate with 125 mg/week use, so – not stopping to do an exact calculation – the 100 mg/week point would be reached in about 3 weeks, not the stated 5 or 6 weeks. But it also is not correct to expect that one would necessarily feel “on” until supplemental levels dropped that low. Okay quite likely, but not “on.”
Bill, I see what your saying but there seems to be a flaw.
There are two goals of PCT:
-
to regain endogenous T production, which can be accomplished by using a SERM and no exogenous AAS, as you state
-
to preserve muscle and strength gained during cycle.
In response to the latter, it would be a reasonable justification to say that the stasis period would allow the body to adapt to having the gained muscle even while on a lower dose of T and at the same time not giving one the negative side effects (muscle loss and feeling bad) of the short period of HPTA suppression only days after having hundreds of mgs of Test in your body. Even at 100 mg a week, or from the accumulation of previous injections (up to 300 in your blood) the HPTA would indeed be shut down, but at the same time there would be minimal, if any, muscle loss during that time. This saved muscle could make up for the subsequent extra gains made from the next cycle that can start sooner due to the lack of weeks of stasis and taper.
As an exercise, can you spot the assumption you are relying on in this argument?
no, thats obviously why i posted it… enlighten me
Well, one can post something while recognizing that there’s an assumption in there. But it turns out my asking to look was not the best method of revealing the assumption – my error.
The assumption is that the phenomenon you describe exists: that the body for some reason won’t handle well having the new muscle, with T that is only normal (say midrange) from very shortly after the cycle and there on out, but somehow if there is an interim period of moderately above normal testosterone, then the body will handle this same muscle well.
That is an assumption that happens to have no reality to it at all.
It works absolutely fine to have your normal T back promptly after a cycle rather than going through many weeks of further suppression in a hope such as you describe above.
The reason it has become common belief that tapers are necessary is because of bad cycle planning not yielding prompt recovery of natural testosterone. So the error was compounded with adding in yet further weeks of tapering.
Great stuff Bill.
So your saying that, in your opinion, you will lose the same amount of muscle during recover from an 8 week cycle as from a 24 week cycle? Now how about the dose was lowered for end of the 24 weeks? Now how about the dose is lowered for the last 16 weeks of the 24 week?
I, agree the way I explained it, such that the body ‘will get used to the new muscle’ is a very elementary way of explaining it, but i believe you see the point I was making.
(I realized the assumption I was making, and that is not only the assumption, but the question I am posing.)
I see the point you were trying to make but it doesn’t happen to work that way.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Well, one can post something while recognizing that there’s an assumption in there. But it turns out my asking to look was not the best method of revealing the assumption – my error.
The assumption is that the phenomenon you describe exists: that the body for some reason won’t handle well having the new muscle, with T that is only normal (say midrange) from very shortly after the cycle and there on out, but somehow if there is an interim period of moderately above normal testosterone, then the body will handle this same muscle well.
That is an assumption that happens to have no reality to it at all.
It works absolutely fine to have your normal T back promptly after a cycle rather than going through many weeks of further suppression in a hope such as you describe above.
The reason it has become common belief that tapers are necessary is because of bad cycle planning not yielding prompt recovery of natural testosterone. So the error was compounded with adding in yet further weeks of tapering. [/quote]
I agree. I don’t think the gains made on cycle are in large jeopardy from simply having a “normal” amount of test in your system. You’ll lose a little, but assuming you get magical instant recovery from your cycle on day 0, you’re not going to lose a lot besides water weight and/or some definition as the extra-normal androgen levels are gone.
There’s no use in keeping your blood levels in the 150-300 range. You’re still suppressed.
However, I think the stasis-taper has merit precisely BECAUSE a properly done stasis does precisely that–mimics instant recovery. Taking Bills idea, you
a) use fast acting orals or injectables to support falling levels of long estered drugs in the last few weeks of a cycle, then use a stasis following that, or
b) do not inject anything until the long estered compounds are under the 100 mg level (say 50-60 mg) , then use a stasis at 80-100 mg/week.
I like a) better. However, both these approaches minimizes the time spent in the “transition” period. The big benefit over a “regular” PCT in my mind is that you never dip below this 80-100 mg level sharply and suddenly.
In a normal cycle, using short ester, your blood level drops rapidly when you end. Using SERMS etc. you try to control the damage, but you’re still near 0 at the endogenous production for a while… On the other hand if you use method a) you drop instantly to 50-100 mg then you’re at “natural” levels instead of 0. This is a better state to be in IMVHO because you never drop test off completely, and the transition via subsequent taper – 80, 60, 40, 20 leads to easier recovery as your endogenous production picks back up. You instantly drop past the transition suppression period, but not near 0. This seems to be the primary benefit of the stasis-taper as it’s proponents see it.
**Personally it seems to me one should drop below 100mg/week before sticking, and should aim to start a bit below 100 mg (say 80mg/week, or just over the 7-8mg/day level). I just used 100 mg for easy numbers.
But I want to know if Bill thinks my reasoning is solid–or if he thinks that even considering a near “instant” drop past the transition suppression period (of 100+ mg to 300 mg ish) that a stasis at say 80 mg/ week for 4-6 weeks and then gradual taper off has no benefit.
Yes, I agree. I have no objection at all to non-suppressive (or more properly, adding only really minimally suppressing) supportive doses being taken once in a condition allowing recovery; that is to say, stasis use once levels have dropped to those allowing good recovery. It can be helpful and nice.
My objection is to needlessly drawing out the time period between having the high effective doses of the cycle itself and recovery-level doses, as the typical taper plan does: providing further substantial injections while levels are still suppressive.
I’ve got some other people’s take on this, but I’m wondering what Bill has to say:
Stasis/Taper approach seems to be received well by users of 12-14 (time compound is active in system) week cycles of a longer ester, but is it of merit to do this (proper) stasis and taper on an 8 week cycle (As laid out below), or is it not of merit due to the inherent design of the cycle (designed to not cause crash)?
Enanthate frontload on 1st inject: 670 mg, then 250mg E3D W1-6
Proviron (W1-8 25mg 2X/D)
DBol (W5-8 10mg 3X/D)
Arim (W3-4 .25mg/D, W5-7 .5mg/D, W8 .25mg/D)
Nolva (frontload on 1st dose: 140 mg, then 20mg ED W9-12
So just to clear up my question, is there any merit to including 10mg ED injects of prop during PCT as a minimally suppressing supportive dose?
Help? Hurt? Not really needed? Thanks!
[quote]BulletproofTiger wrote:
I’ve got some other people’s take on this, but I’m wondering what Bill has to say:
Stasis/Taper approach seems to be received well by users of 12-14 (time compound is active in system) week cycles of a longer ester, but is it of merit to do this (proper) stasis and taper on an 8 week cycle (As laid out below), or is it not of merit due to the inherent design of the cycle (designed to not cause crash)?
Enanthate frontload on 1st inject: 670 mg, then 250mg E3D W1-6
Proviron (W1-8 25mg 2X/D)
DBol (W5-8 10mg 3X/D)
Arim (W3-4 .25mg/D, W5-7 .5mg/D, W8 .25mg/D)
Nolva (frontload on 1st dose: 140 mg, then 20mg ED W9-12
So just to clear up my question, is there any merit to including 10mg ED injects of prop during PCT as a minimally suppressing supportive dose?
Help? Hurt? Not really needed? Thanks![/quote]
I don’t really like some things about your cycle proposal, but that’s neither here nor there and I’ll leave others to critique it. In answer to your question–No, a stasis-taper is not needed for an 8 week cycle. You can do it just fine, it’s just not needed and many people do fine with a “regular” PCT.
Most of the fans of the stasis-taper approach on this board are also those who have been on longer cycles and want a relatively pain-free way to transition off. IMVHO this is where it shines the most.
Not that you couldn’t do it successfully from a shorter cycle, but many people seem to prefer the “regular” PCT when doing shorter cycles, simply to save the amount of pinning required.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
BulletproofTiger wrote:
I’ve got some other people’s take on this, but I’m wondering what Bill has to say:
Stasis/Taper approach seems to be received well by users of 12-14 (time compound is active in system) week cycles of a longer ester, but is it of merit to do this (proper) stasis and taper on an 8 week cycle (As laid out below), or is it not of merit due to the inherent design of the cycle (designed to not cause crash)?
Enanthate frontload on 1st inject: 670 mg, then 250mg E3D W1-6
Proviron (W1-8 25mg 2X/D)
DBol (W5-8 10mg 3X/D)
Arim (W3-4 .25mg/D, W5-7 .5mg/D, W8 .25mg/D)
Nolva (frontload on 1st dose: 140 mg, then 20mg ED W9-12
So just to clear up my question, is there any merit to including 10mg ED injects of prop during PCT as a minimally suppressing supportive dose?
Help? Hurt? Not really needed? Thanks!
I don’t really like some things about your cycle proposal, but that’s neither here nor there and I’ll leave others to critique it. In answer to your question–No, a stasis-taper is not needed for an 8 week cycle. You can do it just fine, it’s just not needed and many people do fine with a “regular” PCT.
Most of the fans of the stasis-taper approach on this board are also those who have been on longer cycles and want a relatively pain-free way to transition off. IMVHO this is where it shines the most.
Not that you couldn’t do it successfully from a shorter cycle, but many people seem to prefer the “regular” PCT when doing shorter cycles, simply to save the amount of pinning required.[/quote]
True it is neither here nor there. I’ll PM you.