MODERN ANABOLIC ANDROGENIC STEROIDS CYCLING

A comprehensive look at modern Anabolic Androgenic Steroid cycling.

If you are planning a 10 week cycle, the goal is to be at highest blood concentrations for as many of the 10 weeks as possible.

If you use a long ester such as deca at xmg/week, it will take you 4-5 weeks to build up to max blood concentrations possible for xmg/week. So half of your cycle is not wasted, but you are not maximizing efficiency.

When coming off a cycle, the waiting period before clomid therapy begins will vary depending on the type and dose of the AAS. If you ran 400mg/week of deca for 10 weeks, a month after your last shot, will will still have around 150mg of esterified deca in your system. This is more than enough to prevent recovery. This is the reason why recovery is more difficult with a deca (or another long acting ester).

Most guys go with "time on=time off." This will not work with long esters as I have demonstrated above. For at least a month after your last shot you are in what I call a "time in-effiency" period where you are no longer reaping the benefits of you AAS but you are not recovering either. The goal of the modern cycle is to minimize this wasted time.

The key components are:

1) Front end loading this cuts down on wasted time in the beginning of your cycle waiting for the doses to reach full theraputic levels. This concept has been used before but (as far as I know) I was the first one to quantify it mathmatically. Zyg has taken the math one step further with a graph showing, visually, the importance.
The use of orals in the beginning of a cycle is a popular component of a cycle. While I don't feel it is a nessecity, it too is a (different) type of front end load.
For the advnaced BBer, dbol should be taken in the beginning of a cycle as well as loading the injectables since the anabolic response from dbol is alleged to be by a different mechanism than most injectables. If one had to chose between a dbol load and and injectable load, in most cases, the injectable load should be prefered over the dbol load.

2) Injection frequency This is crucial to obtaining even blood concentrations of androgens. Ideally, the more often injected, the better. An acceptable rule of thumb is "inject at half of the half life." For instance, if the half life of a steroid is 7 days, this should be injected at least twice weekly. For cycles that involve multiple injectables, the injections should be fractioned out and divided up based on the injectable with the shortest half life. For instance, if you were doing a test propionate and deca cycle, the old school way to do it would be to inject the prop EOD and the deca once a week. Both compounds should not be viewed as separate, but together with total androgen concentration taken into consideration. If you injected the deca only once a week, probably along with one of the propionate injections, that day will have a much larger spike on total blood androgen concentrations. Instead, the deca should be split up and taken with the propionate injections, EOD. This way there is no one day of the week that has a "spike" and even blood concentrations are maintained throughout the week.

3) Ending the cycle Switching to shorter esters toward the end of a cycle makes perfect sence however not too many guys incorporate this practice perhaps because of the lack of variety of drugs. The modern cycle should include replacing long ester injectables with shorter ones so that recovery time is made more efficient. The necesity of switching to shorter esters toward the end of a cycle depends on the type of drugs used. Longer esters such as deca and eq should be replaced with shorter acting versions of these compounds no later than four weeks before the end of a cycle. Medium length esters such as t-enanthate and cypionate should be replaced no later than three weeks before the end of a cycle. A couple examples of appropriate replacements are: trenbolone acetate and testosterone propionate. There is no need to "load" these compounds in the middle of a cycle since
1) they are already "fast acting" and
2) blood androgenconcentrations are already high.

4) Recovery With the replacement of the faster acting injectables toward the end of a cycle, the "wasted" time between the end of a cycle and beginning of clomid therapy is reduced. For instance, if 100mg TA is used ED, clomid therapy may begin in as little as 5 days after the last shot. This tremendously impoves time efficiency. Clomid therapy usually last for four weeks. An excellent thread posted by The Iron Game describes this in further detail Clomid FAQ's .
When the above recomendations are made, your cycle itself is made much more efficient and if recovery time is made more efficient as well, time "off" AAS may very well be reduced so that the overall efficiency of AAS use over time is tremendously improved.

Shock Techniques

Here are some tips on getting over plateaus:

Almost everyone will reach a point in their training program where it seems they are working their butt off but getting nowhere. This is described as a “plateau”. When you plateau, something needs to change. First, you should evaluate your program. Ask yourself: How long have I been consistent? How often do I change up my workout routine? What is my diet like? And HOW MUCH SLEEP AM I GETTING?

Chances are you have been doing the same routine for over 3 months consistently and/or your body is not getting enough of the proper nutrition it needs to grow. If nutrition is the case, that can be easily resolved with supplementation. If you have been doing the same routine for 3+ months then you may need to “shock” your muscles to get them to grow! Its always a good idea to change your routine every 3-4 weeks or so to keep them growing. That technique is known to bodybuilders as muscle confusion. Here is a list of different ways that you can confuse your muscles and get ‘em to grow past a plateau. It is not possible to use all of these techniques at once. Vary your workouts by incorporating a few of these deviations and you will see greater results from every work-out. Just remember that using some of these variations may cause over training if used on consecutive workouts.

Focus on the muscle. This in itself may be the single most important strategy used by bodybuilders to encourage muscle tissue break down. This is strictly a mental exercise. It will benefit you by allowing concentration on the particular muscle group that you are trying to stimulate. Here is an example for bench-press, but it can and must, for optimum gains, be applied to all lifts: Start by lying under the bar and completing a rep mentally. Think about what muscle you want to do the work. Then lift off the bar and focus on contracting your chest muscles to press the bar up. You may even do a rep or two with just the bar to prep your senses into what will be taking place after you add the weight. After you add the weight, don’t focus on pressing the weight up, but focus on flexing the muscles and on their contraction. The bar’s movement is simply a side effect of that contraction. An example of this technique on lat pulls: When pulling down, imagine your hands as merely hooks. Don’t focus on pulling down the bar, but imagine that you are just pulling down your elbows towards the floor.
The bar is coming down too, but only because your wrists are attached to it. Pull down your elbows but place your concentration and total focus on your lats and totally isolate them to do the pulling. Always think about the muscle that will be contracting and try to exaggerate the contraction on every movement.
Always, as with dumbbell rows, imagine your arms as only hooks that are connecting you to the weight and pull up by contracting the muscle; don’t just think of the lift as moving the bar. The bar’s movement is simply a side effect!

Varying intensity. You can sometimes challenge yourself by putting more exercises into your routine without using more time. Or you can try to get the same routine done in less time. This means less time between sets and it requires a fast recovery rate.

Heavy and light days. The best way to shock the muscle and keep it growing is to use heavy and light training days. Here is an example: On heavy days, use as much weight as you can for 3-4 reps and on light days, put on as much weight as you can for 12-15 reps.

Rest between sets can also be varied to give you some change. Try adding more rest for large muscle groups and less rest for small ones.

Forced reps are pretty popular. A forced rep is considered as trying to lift more weight than you can lift by yourself and needing your partner to help you finish the set. This is good on heavy days when you are at your failure point and you just need a little help to get that last rep. Another form of forced reps is to have your spotter force down the bar to your chest (on benchpress) on the eccentric (downward) phase of the lift by applying his bodyweight to the bar. You may need the spotter to help you get the bar back to the top of the movement.

Partial reps are a great way to get your muscles to burn. When doing partial bench press reps, you should only lift the weight about 4 inches off of your chest. This works great when used as a compound set w/ dumbbell bench or incline flys. This goes for any other exercise as well. Only do the first half of the rep. But don’t do these for squats; it’s a waste of time.

21’s are another form of partial reps. Instead of doing the full motion of the rep, do only the first half of one full motion for 7 reps. Then, do the second half of one full motion for 7 reps. Then, finish off the set with 7 reps of full motion for a total of 21 reps.

100’s are a killer exercise. This is particularly effective with bench. You simply use a weight that you think that you can lift for one hundred continuous reps.
Like burn outs, this should be done at the end of a session due to the inevitable exhaustion of glycogen stores and build up of lactic acid. It is not known how this causes any muscle growth. It defies most principles of muscle growth in that it doesn’t use enough weight to cause a tear down of tissue. Bodybuilders have realized its effectiveness. It may be that the vast amount of blood that accumalates in the muscle actually tears down the muscle fiber due to pressure.

Isolate your muscles to get the most out of a particular workout. Doing leg extensions are a great isolation workout for your thighs. For biceps I recommend doing dumbbell preacher curls. Isolation works only one specific muscle instead of a compound movement (ex. Bench= compound due to chest, triceps, and front delt involvement).

ACTIONS OF DIFFERENT ESTERS

There are many different esters that are used with anabolic steroids / androgenic steroids, but again, they all do basically the same thing. Esters vary only in their ability to reduce a steroid's water solubility. An ester like propionate for example will slow the release of a steroid for a few days, while the duration will be weeks with a decanoate ester. Esters have no effect on the tendency for the parent steroid to convert to estrogen or DHT (dihydrotestosterone: a more potent metabolite) nor will it effect the overall muscle-building potency of the compound. Any differences in results and side effects that may be noted by bodybuilders who have used various esterified versions of the same base steroid are just issues of timing. Testosterone enanthate causes estrogen related problems more readily than Sustanon, simply because with enanthate testosterone levels will peak and trough much sooner (1-2 week release duration as opposed to 3 or 4). Likewise testosterone suspension is the worst in regards to gyno and water bloat because blood hormone levels peak so quickly with this drug. Instead of waiting weeks for testosterone levels to rise to their highest point, here we are at most looking at a couple of days. Given an equal blood level of testosterone, there would be no difference in the rate of aromatization or DHT conversion between different esters. There is simply no mechanism for this to be possible.

There is however one way that we can say an ester does technically effect potency; it is calculated in the steroid weight. The heavier the ester chain, the greater is its percentage of the total weight. In the case of testosterone enanthate for example, 250mg of esterified steroid (testosterone enanthate) is equal to only 180mg of free testosterone. 70mgs out of each 250mg injection is the weight of the ester. If we wanted to be really picky, we could consider enanthate slightly MORE potent than cypionate (I know this goes against popular thinking) as its ester chain contains one less carbon atom (therefore taking up a slightly smaller percentage of total weight). Propionate would of course come out on top of the three, releasing a measurable (but not significant) amount more testosterone per injection than cypionate or enanthate.

WHAT AN ESTER IS, AND HOW IT WORKS

If you have taken an interest in anabolic steroids you have noticed the similarities on the labeling of many drugs. Let's look at testosterone for example. One can find compounds like testosterone cypionate, enanthate, propionate, heptylate; caproate, phenylpropionate, isocaproate, decanoate, acetate, the list goes on and on. In all such cases the parent hormone is testosterone, which had been modified by adding an ester (enanthate, propionate etc.) to its structure. The following question arises: What is the difference between the various esterified versions of testosterone in regards to their use in bodybuilding?

An ester is a chain composed primarily of carbon and hydrogen atoms. This chain is typically attached to the parent anabolic steroid at the 17th carbon position (beta orientation), although some compounds do carry esters at position 3 (for the purposes of this article it is not crucial to understand the exact position of the ester). Esterification of an injectable anabolic/androgenic steroid basically accomplishes one thing, it slows the release of the parent steroid from the site of injection. This happens because the ester will notably lower the water solubility of the steroid, and increase its lipid (fat) solubility. This will cause the drug to form a deposit in the muscle tissue, from which it will slowly enter into circulation as it is picked up in small quantities by the blood. Generally, the longer the ester chain, the lower the water solubility of the compound, and the longer it will take to for the full dosage to reach general circulation.

Slowing the release of the parent steroid is a great benefit in steroid medicine, as free testosterone (or other steroid hormones) previously would remain active in the body for a very short period of time (typically hours). This would necessitate an unpleasant daily injection schedule if one wished to maintain a continuous elevation of testosterone (the goal of testosterone replacement therapy). By adding an ester, the patient can visit the doctor as infrequently as once per month for his injection, instead of having to constantly re-administer the drug to achieve a therapeutic effect. Clearly without the use of an ester, therapy with an injectable anabolic/androgen would be much more difficult.

Esterification temporarily deactivates the steroid molecule. With a chain blocking the 17th beta position, binding to the androgen receptor is not possible (it can exert no activity in the body). In order for the compound to become active the ester must therefore first be removed. This automatically occurs once the compound has filtered into blood circulation, where esterase enzymes quickly cleave off (hydrolyze) the ester chain. This will restore the necessary hydroxyl (OH) group at the 17th beta position, enabling the drug to attach to the appropriate receptor. Now and only now will the steroid be able to have an effect on skeletal muscle tissue. You can start to see why considering testosterone cypionate much more potent than enanthate makes little sense, as your muscles are seeing only free testosterone no matter what ester was used to deploy it.

How to Keep Your Body in an Explosive Growth Spurt

It is important to adjust your meal planning every two weeks to ensure you adjust your caloric intake to accommodate your added muscle mass. The best way to burn extra calories is to have more muscle. A more muscular body will be able to enjoy more calories without getting fat.

At the same time if you do not add extra calories to compensate for your new muscle tissues you will sooner or later hit a plateau as a result of not eating enough.
After two weeks following the training and meal plan weigh yourself and measure body fat:


1. If your weight has increased by two to four pounds and your body fat either stayed the same or decreased leave everything as is.( this is what you want)
2. If your weight decreased add another 800 calories daily until bodyweight stabilizes then calculate your day two calories by multiplying your new maintenance daily calories by 125%.
3. If your weight stays the same then add another 500 calories per day until weight stabilizes then recalculate your day two calories by multiplying your new maintenance weight by 125%.

There are two different calorie days, day one and day two. Simply alternate between the two. After day two eat the day one calorie requirements again. When adjusting your caloric requirements every two weeks add or subtract the suggested amounts to both days.

How to Get the V-Cut Abs

V- cut -  those two lines of definition on the lower abdominals that are basically pointing to your crotch. Some people affectionately call them the “money maker” because when you can show that off you know that you are truly ripped and elite.
That “V” is shaped between the oblique muscles and some people think they are more of the abdominals because they can make a six-pack look like an eight-pack. But the v cut abs aren’t pronounced by using specialized workouts, they are earned through leanness.
They only way you will be able to see them, unless you are one of those naturally lean and shredded people that most of us hate, is by getting your body fat below 10 percent. Ideally 8 to 10 percent should result in showing off some v cut abs.
The Program
Weight training, including abdominal and core work, is recommended. However what will determine your success truly is diet and cardio.
If you were to put this into percentages it is easily 70% diet and then 15% cardio and another 15% in weight training. People think that it is the other way around and they can get by on a sub-par diet; but you can’t, at least not if you want v cut abs.
All of the excess sugar and junk you take in everyday affects how your body stores calories along with usually leading to excess calories you then fight to keep off. For this program you want to be in fat burning mode without even hitting cardio so that when you do it is twice as effective. You still need to hit the weights because muscle is important as well.
Workouts – Aim for three full body workouts a week. Utilize a program with compound exercises only and include deadlifts, squats, and clean and presses. This type of lifting program elevates hormones and the metabolism. While you won’t be on the same growth pattern, it will maintain you and get you shredded which makes you look even bigger.
Cardio – Mix in two to three sessions of steady rate cardio of about 45 minutes to 60 minutes along with two high intensity interval training sessions of about 30 minutes each week. Stagger the workouts so you don’t do two HIIT workouts in a row.
Diet – Cut back on all sugar and processed junk. Eat five to six small meals each day (or 4 meals and 2 snacks). Include protein in every meal along with either fresh fruits or fresh veggies. Dairy like yogurt and cottage cheese are fine. But you need to focus on eliminating all the garbage, especially in the morning. Breakfast needs to be your temple to start each day right and help retrain your body to shred fat rather than store it.
Try and start with scrambled egg whites and whole cut oats topped with fruit. Instead of coffee loaded with sugar and cream go black or drink plain green tea. Skip soda and beer, replacing them with water and lots of it.

Top 5 Bodybuilding Beginners Mistakes

A lot of people fall in love with the idea of wanting to build muscle. They often start out with good intentions and visualize themselves looking a certain way within a few months. More often than not they get this better image of themselves from the front cover of a magazine. All this fantasizing finally digests in their mind until they decide to hit the weights. Without thinking they haven’t really done any research and marched straight to the gym and started pumping Iron, this is were things start to go wrong.
The top 5 bodybuilding mistakes for beginners are:
Lack of commitment
Most people hit the gym thinking its going to be a quick fix and within a month or two they think they will be ready to pose for the front cover of muscle magazine, wrong. I can’t count how many of my friends have talked me into letting them train with me only to stop 5 weeks down the line. This is not only a waste of their time but also a waste of mine. After 5 weeks you should expect your muscles to feel more toned, You will even see a fairly fast increase on how much weight you can lift. But you really wont see any difference in size until 5-6 months down the line. And because it takes so long you wont notice the difference, as it is a slow progression over time. I suggest taking pictures before you start and then every 4 months onwards to compare. realistically give yourself 1 year of committed training.
Overtraining
Most beginners don’t understand that rest is also a big part of building muscle as is lifting the weights. You should generally only workout for about 45-90 minutes and not train the same muscles within 24-48 hours of each other. Its not a requirement to lift weights as often as you can for long periods of time. REST is one of the most important factors in bodybuilding.
Bad diet
Diet again is an important part of building muscle. Your body needs protein and lost of it, try and eat 25-30 grams of protein every 2-3 hrs. You also needs complex carbohydrates, try and eat 5 smaller healthy meals (protein and complex carbs combined) throughout the day so your body as always got enough nutrition rather than eating two to 3 big meals a day which your body cant digest and use all at once. Eating smaller regular meals will avoid excess food being stored as fat and give your muscles plenty of nutrition to repair themselves.
Bad form
Lifting weights incorrectly can also have a negative influence on your bodybuilding ambitions as well as cause sports injuries. If you are targeting a specific muscle always try to isolate that muscle with the weights. Always lift weights in a controlled manner and if you think you are lifting the weights wrong, ask an instructor.
Lifting too much weight
Ok this one also applies to some experienced lifters also. A few years ago down at my local gym I used to get asked by this guy (who reckoned he knew everything about bodybuilding) to spot him. He would pack the bar with as much weight as he could to do about 5 reps. Thing is, I would also have to lift the weight with him. So he ended up doing 1 rep and I helped lift the other 4 reps. He would then take his top of and pose in the mirror for 5 minutes. After 1.5 years of going to the same gym together I noticed he never made any improvement and still lifted the same weight. I also see a lot of beginners walk in the gym and lift more than they can control which also leads to bad form. My advice here is to start of low and build up. Don’t feel stupid because others seem to be lifting a lot more weight than you.