Right now I should really be doing some serious studying (comp science). Since studying is boring, and comp science is even more boring, I thought I'd make a post about cycling steroids instead. Much more fun!

Anyway, almost every day this board gets at least one request for evaluation of a cycle, or even requests to set up entire cycles. The same questions are often asked time and time again. Being an ambitious motherfucker I thougth I'd make an attempt to set up some general guidelines on how to construct a sound cycle, and hopefully the guidelines will apply to both newbies and more advanced users, and my goal is that after reading this post even a complete beginner will be able to set up a reasonable proposal for a cycle.

Since I'm far from an expert or authority on steroid use, I'm hoping that other experienced users will add their 2 cents to what I write, in case there's something in my post that doesn't make sense.

I thought I'd start the post off with some general guidelines applying to all sorts of cycles, then continue with some more spesific advice on different cycles and different stacks later on.

My rule no 1 in steroid cycling, is _always_ include testosterone in your stack! Doesn't matter if it's a bulking cycle, a cutting cycle, a strength cycle, whatever - testo should _always_ be included! First of all, testo is the greatest massbuilder you'll ever find, and being a natural hormone, and an injectable, it carries fewer side effects than most steroids. Second of all, and this is perhaps more important; _all_ steroids shut down your HPT (hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular) axis, meaning your body won't produce testosterone anymore. Testosterone is not only good for building muscle, it's also a necessity for proper brainfunction, among other factors. Therefore, even if you for some reason don't want to use large amounts of testo, you should at least include 100-200 mg week to your stack, just to keep your brain functioning like it's supposed to.

My rule no 2; if you're gonna juice, do it properly! I'm so sick of all these half-hearted "cycles" I see suggested on all the boards. 250 mg of this, 100 mg of that, and that's it, then when the cycle's done they sit there wondering why the hell they didn't get any results. If you think there's much of a difference in terms of side effects in doing 500 mg testo or 1000 mg testo/week (or 2000 for that matter), you're in for a big surprise!! There's hardly any difference at all. The main difference is in the results you see. Forget all the crap you hear about 250 mg sust/week is all you need if you're a beginner, or "a beginner will grow on just about anything". Truth is a beginner to _weight-training_ will grow on just about anything, but a beginner to weight-training shouldn't be juicing in the first place! A steroid novice should have enough years of decent hard weight training under his belt to ensure he has enough mass that 250 mg sust won't do jack shit to him!

Rule no 3; don't make things more complicated than necessary. When creating a cycle, don't think you need to throw in as many different steroids as possible in order to get results. Let me present an example. All the time I see guys proposing cycles that look something like this:

500 mg testo/week,
200 mg deca/week
40 mg dbol/day.

I ask myself, what's the point of the deca and the dbol in that stack? The only advantage deca offers is it's low androgenic, which might come in handy for girls or other persons who for some reason is concerned about their cycle not being androgenic, but when you're using testo and dbol in the same stack, I doubt you're worried about androgenism, so what's the point of the deca? It's a poor massbuilder, it's expensive, and it's not even that low in side effects.
Next question, what's the point of the dbol in this stack? Presumably it's there because it's a good massbuilder (which it is), _but_ remember dbol carries more side effects than testo, so unless you're allready using so much testo that adding more is impractical, I see no need to use dbol, when all you need to do instead is simply up the testo dosages! Much healthier that way, and the results are the same.
So my proposed stack for the individual wanting to do the stack above, would be simply something like this:

1250 mg testo/week

Nothing more complicated than that!

Rule no 4; don't make the cycle too short. All the time I see people doing cycles in that last 5-6 weeks, or it last 8 weeks, but for the last three of those eight weeks all they use is like 200 mg primo/week, and no testo, cause they ended that in week 4 or something. Their argument for this is usually; "well, on my first cycle I gained nothing after the 4th week, so I thought this time I could just as well end the cycle at that point". This reveals at least two misconceptions, first, if you gained nothing after the 4th week in your cycle, your cycle was constructed wrong! Simple as that! More than likely you started tapering down way too quickly. Second, just because you don't gain any additional bodyweight doesn't mean you're not still building muscle. As you taper off your cycle, and your stack becomes less androgenic, the amount of water retention in your body will decline. If your bodyweight stays the same while your water retention declines, that's gotta mean your either gaining fat weight, or pure muscle weight. Chances are it's muscle! What you will find if you end the cycle after 4-5 weeks, is you lose a lot more muscle than you would have if you did a longer cycle with a better taper.
A proper length for a cycle the way I see it is at least 8-12 weeks.

Rule no 5; forget about tapering up! Some people like to do cycles where they start off mild then increase their dosages in a pyramid fashion, then decrease them again as they approach the end of the cycle. Usually they do this in a fashion that ensures they'll have sufficient amounts of steroids for mass building purposes in their system only for a few weeks in the middle of their cycle, and surprise surprise! these people usually report to be making gains only for like 2 or three weeks out of their total 8-10 weeks on the juice. That's not a good way to be doing a cycle in my opinion. Start off with a good decent dosage, that you know will yield you good gains right from the start. You can still increase your dosages at some point in your cycle if you feel you're no longer gaining like you want to make though, the point is just you will no longer be doing weeks of ridiculously low dosages that yields no gains at all.

Rule no 6; choose the right steroids.

Mass cycle: if you're a beginner, testo is all you need! If you weigh 220 or more, start off with 1000 mg testo/week, and keep it there for 8 weeks. Do one week at 500 mg and call it a day (of course you'll be using clomid after that, or better yet, throughout the entire cycle). If you're more advanced, you can add other stuff, like anadrol, dbol, halo, trenbolone, etc, but remember, like I said earlier, it makes no sense to add anything at all if you're not allready maxing out on the testo dosages!! That means 1000 mg +/week people!
Don't include the following steroids into your mass cycle, unless you have too much money you want to waste:
primo, winny, deca, andriol, eq, and probably a few others I've forgotten.

Strength cycle; here it's important to know if the goal is to add strength but little or no bodyweight, or if it's simply a bodybuilding cycle with emphasis on strength. If it's the latter you may just as well turn to the advice above, on mass cycles, cause the drugs mentioned there are the best for strength _and_ size gains, period!
If you don't want to add bodyweight, you must look into stuff like trenbolone, halo, maybe methyltest, but you still need to include a little testo, like explained above.

Cutting cycle; too boring!! I hate dieting and have never done a cutting cycle in my life. Ask someone else! haha

Yeah, btw almost forgot; if you're interested in _real_ gains; forget about cycling!!

I wasn't going to talk about nutrition or training in this thread, since I took it for granted that people realize they need to pay attention to their diet and training according to their goals - on the juice or not. Since so many started talking about diet, suffice to say I too find diet to be of major importance to your results! So let me add a new rule to the ones above about just that:

Rule no 7; never forget that food is the major and most important anabolic in your arsenal!!!

I'd also like to pick up where I left off on rule no 6, cause in hindsight I remember that even if cutting cycles are indeed boring, I think I've got a couple of things to say about them afterall...

Rule no 6 continued...

Cutting cycles: some people seem to believe the crap in WAR and other books about primo making you grow even on a restricted calorie diet. In those books you will also read that winny, primo, anavar, tren, etc are good for cutting, whereas the heavy androgens are not. What a bunch of crap!!! The heavy androgens are with few exceptions also way more anabolic than the low androgens, and the more anabolic the steroid, the more mass it will help you retain on a calorie restricted diet. Simple as that!! So dieting or not, your cycles should _always_ include testosterone! And no one is gonna make me believe primo will help you keep more of your muscle on a diet than say anadrol!! Of course if you're preparing for a meet, you'll need to cut down on the androgens as the date of the meet approaches (or use lots of anti-aromatases and diuretics), but then again, if you're preparing for a meet, you don't need this information anyway.

That said, it has been shown that anavar (oxandrolone) will actually help you burn visceral fat on your midsection! It's the only steroid to do so, so anavar could probably have a place in your cutting cycle stack. But, and this is a big BUT (no, not a big butt there are other drugs that are far more effective in helping burning fat than the steroids themselves. The steroids are there to help you maintain mass while dieting - not to aid in the fat burning process!

"So when do I use the mild stuff like primo or winny?", you ask. That's a good question - I've wondered that myself! They are crappy steroids that give crappy results. Give them to your girlfriend! hehe
Seriously, they have a place for those times when among other things water retention is a big concern to you (like the last couple weeks before a show). Also, they can be employed to give your body a break from the greater toll of the heavy androgens, since with the mild stuff there will be less increase in bloodpressure, less prostate enlargment, less toll on the liver and kidneys, etc.

quote:

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Originally posted by Painkiller:
Seen(and posted)it before..its originally written by The Manimal

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You are right, but it worth to be readen by people who has not seen it earlier.

Anyway, my 2 documents from the past:

about Sustanon cycling http://www.ifbb.cz/sustanon_en.htm

about making cycles http://www.ifbb.cz/cycles_en.htm

1. LOW DOSES ARE FINE IF THEY GET RESULTS. MY FIRST CYCLE EVER WAS LESS THAN 500MG/WEEK TEST CYP AND TEST PROP AND I GAINED ABOUT 35LBS IN FIVE WEEKS.

2. D-BOL IS GOOD SHIT. THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON WITH D-BOL THAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT. I'VE HEARD OTHERS SAY THE SAME THING.

3. CYCLES DO NOT HAVE TO BE 8-12 WEEKS TO KEEP SIZE AND STRENGTH GAINS.

THERE'S MORE, BUT THOSE ARE THE MAIN POINTS I WANTED TO MAKE.

Big Johnson you must be massive all these cycles and all these gains on each cycle.

Do you have arguments for use of Clomid throughout?

In general this is good shit. How about adding another 3 big ones, so we have the traditional Ten Commandments?