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#8 So who's this Grendel character? Every month I get contacted by several potential writers, submitting work for review. For one reason or another, most doesn't make the cut. I'll be honest with you, there have been times over the last six months that I've wondered how in the hell I was going to produce enough work to fill the next issue. My life is bodybuilding, bodybuilding, bodybuilding, and sometimes I just need a Snickers, ya know? Needless to say, after reading this article, you're going to see why I'm so excited about Grendel's future participation with AE. Interestingly enough, I was producing an article called Steroid Follies for April that covered many of these same issues. Never one to not readily abandon a project is someone else is willing to do it for you, I asked Grendel to work on the article and here's what he came up with. Please be sure and email both myself and Grendel and let us know what you think!! Long live Grendel… Anabolic steroids are a fascinating topic. Not just a topic that fascinates bodybuilders, but one that seems to capture the attention of the entire world. Unfortunately, this fascination, coupled with the tabloid mentality of a less than knowledgeable mainstream media, has given rise to a host of "steroid myths", so to speak. Further compounding this problem is the fact that most bodybuilding publications do little to inform, they are simply supplement catalogs combined with photographs of bodybuilders and scantily clad females. I've always been amazed at the cavalier attitude most athletes exhibit about steroids. Many have this "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude. Unfortunately, this kind of mentality breeds ignorance, and perpetuates many of the fallacies regarding steroids that circulate in our sport. All too often the only source of information many athletes rely on is that which circulates amongst their fellow steroid using buddies at the gym. The biggest guy at the gym is often considered the authority on steroids, despite the fact that his knowledge base may not extend past what he's read in Flex or MuscleMag International. Bodybuilding is not rocket science. Some of the biggest, most muscular men in the sport are some of the dumbest individuals I have ever met. I'm not perpetuating the stereotype that bodybuilders are dumb, every sport has its share of idiots at the top. My point is that some athletes are so genetically blessed that they succeed despite their lack of even basic knowledge of nutrition, supplementation, or anabolic pharmacology. However, the majority of athletes involved in bodybuilding do not fall into that category. Most athletes need every possible advantage to achieve their physique goals. I really don't care if you understand how IGF-1 works on a cellular level. While that may be a topic that some find interesting, it really doesn't matter in your daily attempts to add mass and improve your physique. However, believing some of the more common misconceptions about steroids can actually be very counterproductive to achieving your bodybuilding goals. Without further ado, lets address some of these issues! FOOD IS YOUR MOST ANABOLIC AGENT Pop Quiz. What's the most powerful of all these anabolic agents…halotestin; anadriol-50, testosterone, or a double bacon cheeseburger? The cheeseburger! This point cannot be stressed enough. It doesn't matter if you are taking perfect dosages of the most powerful drugs with a full range of complimentary anti-estrogens, etc stacking with growth hormone and insulin like growth factor (if that even does anything…) you WILL NOT grow large without excessive amounts of food. I will not go into this much because Jason has already done an excellent job in his article Eating for Extreme Mass. I will simply re-iterate the most important thing for any bodybuilder trying to get obscenely large; care only about total protein intake and total calorie intake. Nothing else matters except that and adequate hydration. You have to be eating every two hours. Consider eating your job, it's not something you do to support your body's natural cycles of feeding-you are pushing your body to grow to a level it has never done before (except perhaps as a baby); you need a constant influx of calories and protein. If, by some miracle, you have the time and money to prepare and eat 6-8 meals that each consist of a thousand clean calories go ahead and do that. But, realistically, it's much better to stuff yourself with ice cream and hamburgers. TAPERING CYCLES IS BULLSHIT Any amount of injected testosterone (or its derivatives) in the amount required to produce gains is going to shut down your natural production. Studies show sterility (temporarily, guys and gals) at dosages around 200 mg of testosterone per week, from which you can assume that your natural testosterone production has come to a halt. Keeping this fact in mind, you need to find the weekly dosage of hormones you want to use to get your gains and stick to it throughout your cycle. Now granted receptor sites are being occupied and only a small portion of them are becoming "free". Think of it like a parking garage. When the movie is showing the garage is packed, but a few people will trickle out early opening spots for the few desperately circling cars. If you had extremely limited amounts of drugs you could load up your sites with a great deal of drugs then use very small amounts to fill up those open receptors as they become available. This is impractical. Your best option is find a weekly dosage of androgens (say 750 mg per week) and keep on it for the 6-8 weeks you are on. You may want to switch esters of the drugs (esters generally change solubility and absorption time) as your cycle nears its end so that you can be sure when the drugs are out of your system, but that's about it. Let your "helper" drugs like HCG, clomid and nolvadex get your body back online. Non-testosterone drugs, like nandrolone (trade name deca-durabolin) or trenbolone acetate (parabolan-want to buy some…here the best thing to do…build a time machine and travel back to the 1980s because that was the last time it was manufactured…) absolutely should not be tapered in my opinion. TESTOSTERONE IS TESTOSTERONE Cypionate leans you out. Undecoanate makes your dick bigger….whatever, this is all bullshit spread throughout the gym. There is no difference in the biochemical changes to your body based on what ester of testosterone you are taking. If the milligram (almost wrote gram there) dosage is equal you cannot say whether 1000 mg of propionate is better then 1000 mg of cypionate. The difference between these compounds has to do with period of action in the body, pharmacokinetics . Some testosterone esters last only briefly in the body and require daily injections (propionate and solution). Other esters are more slowly absorbed and have longer periods of time (ethanate). As long as you know the time table for these drugs you need to only decide on the dosage level (frankly between 600-1000 mg of testosterone a week is required to grow) and the dosing scheme. 700 mg of propionate per week should be given as daily 100 mg injections; longer lasting compounds can be given less frequently. But don't be a moron, if a drug takes several days or a week to start working in the body you are not going to see gains right away whereas you would see rapid change with a faster androgen. Perhaps this is where the misinformation began… Regardless do not be misled by gym myth. There is no reason why any ester of testosterone is any better with the exception of timing. Take whatever you can get. BODY
TYPE WILL DETERMINE YOUR STEROID GAINS AND SHOULD Genetics determine largely how many androgen receptors you have, but the difference is not going to account for the varying results that people see from steroids. There are too many unknown factors. Still, I assure you, Lee Priest will get more results from a moderate cycle (like he claims to use) then most of us will. But lets be real…if you are a bodybuilder your goal is to look the best you can, carry the most muscle with least fat. We all know that the basic body types (ecto,meso,endo-morph) are not entirely accurate, but lets use them as a general guidelines. Ectomorphs are going to be naturally lean…therefor your primary cycles should be heavy bulking cycles were you eat like shit. After the cycle you are going to lean out naturally. I have Ectomorph friends who don't want to eat Burger King because they don't want to get a gut. Fuck that. If you have never been fat its unlikely that you can even get fat. Mesomorphs are just genetic bastards and should be shot…they can get away with murder when on steroids. Their cycles are going to be the most effective. Endomorphs are capable of making tremendous size gains on cycles but are not going to stay as lean, even though steroids do tend to "lean" you out. Therefore, it is my recommendation that an endomorph use primarily cutting type cycles where the steroids prevent muscle wasting while stored body-fat is removed. Not to say that endomorphs should never bulk up, but you will look better at 220 with 10 percent body fat then you will at 255 with 17 percent body fat. A good rule is never to go above about 12 percent body fat except in the rarest of circumstances. Lastly there is information that suggests that endomorphs may be more insulin-resistant. Therefore, they should probably avoid the use of insulin while ectomorphs will see more gains from proper insulin use. CUTTING STEROIDS ARE A MISNOMER All steroids are generally going to promote the same process; increases protein synthesis and a general redistribution of body composition towards more lean mass. The term "cutting" drug as applied to steroids should really be "pre-contest". Pre-contest bodybuilders are concerned with not holding water and looking hard. If you are just trying to get down to a nice summer level of body fat then is doesn't make that much difference whether you hold water during your cycle. You are not being judged as strictly as a contest body-builder…unless the retention is just obscene don't sweat it. Anavar, primobolan, winstrol…these are the most coveted of dieting drugs. But they are not some holy grail of leanness. They simply do not cause the same degree of edema (read water retention a.k.a. bloating…) that other androgens do. Testosterone is actually the most powerful of the "cutting" drugs. So if you are not going into a contest forget about those more exotic drugs. Go with heavy dosages of testosterone and see how far that gets you. Remember…qualities like "hardness" require that the muscle be readily apparent. What good would halotestin-hardened muscles be if they are hidden behind fat? CLENBUTEROL IS NOT ANABOLIC At least not in humans. The studies that show clenbuterol to be anabolic were done in animals such as cows and chickens. Clenbuterol is a beta-antagonist to adrenic receptors. It blocks these receptor sites. The anabolic action of clenbuterol is though to be because of antagonism occurring on 4th beta-adrenic receptor (b4); humans do not have sufficient amounts of these receptors to be comparable to animals. Clenbuterol is a nutrient partitioning agent and may promote lean muscle growth by "directing" nutrients to that end, but there is no anabolic action that is comparable to steroids. YOU
WANT TO INCREASE YOUR RECEPTOR CAPACITY DURING A CYCLE AND CLEAN Hard contraction of muscle (read heavy resistance training) in itself causes receptors to be up regulating. This means that more receptors become available. This is important because the body, in an attempt to maintain its sense of balance, is going to shut down receptors as a response to elevated hormone levels. Exercise brings these sites back online. So go hard and heavy during your cycle and stay hard and heavy (but less total volume) when you are off. This will free up the most number of receptors. Agents that increase your metabolism will also speed up receptor up-regulation on and off a cycle. T-3 thyroid hormone liothyronine (trade name Cytomel) in low dosages not only increases protein synthesis (making anabolic agents more effective) but speeds up metabolism. However, since Cytomel can be catabolic it is not recommended following a steroid cycle (by all means it should be a part of any cycle); Cytomel has other problems too but that's a different article. Clenbuterol (and its legal cousin ephedrine) increase your basal metabolism rate by increasing, among other things, the conversion rate of T-4 (a storage form of thyroid hormone) into its metabolically active brother T-3. Viola, increased receptor recovery. Clenbuterol and ECA should be used during and after a cycle. Of course DNP will help too…but I will not even suggest its use. THE BODY WILL MAINTAIN HOMOSTASIS The body will spare no expense to bring itself back to a baseline level. This means that long periods of hormone therapy will cause drastic feedback. It is in this retaliation that most of the side effects of steroid use come about. However the body is less likely to respond as drastically to shorter more frequent periods of interruption. The up shoot of this is that steroid cycles should be shorter and more frequent. If you want to spend 12 weeks a year on steroids then do that in 2 six week bursts with a month or 6 weeks off in between. YOU WILL NOT LOSE ALL YOUR GAINS I think I hear this more then any other statement about steroids…people think that your gains are totally temporary. That should not and need not be true at all. Granted most steroids cause water retention, when the androgen levels fall your going to drop some water…maybe 8 pounds or so. But that is not muscle loss. The way that you lose muscle on a cycle is by being sloppy. If you were a poor bodybuilder with bad habits before you started your "therapy" I will bet that, without the help of great genetics, you lose more of your gains. Steroids do not teach people bad habits, but they help cover them up. You can get away with crazy shit and still come out looking good. But when the drugs are gone and you try a marathon two hour workout, go back to eating three thousand calories a day, or party all night and fuck up your sleep cycle you will discover that your old friend catabolism is more then willing take a bite of your muscles. When you come of a cycle be smart. Keep your calories high. A good suggestion is that as long as you are using clomid, which should be at least 14 days after your last injection, you should keep your calories up and protein very high. Take it easy in the gym, keep the workouts short. You will find that you keep more of your gains then you thought. So that's all from me for this month. I imagine you will be hearing more from me in the coming issues (if Jason permits, of course). Send me your feedback at childe_roland@hotmail.com. Please also email Jason at jason@anabolicextreme.com and let him know what you thought of my first piece. I will be happy to answer any questions and insult any nay-sayers! Until then. Copyright 2000 Jason Meuller and Anabolic Extreme. This material may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the express written permission of the copyright owners. |