First Cycle, 6 Weeks of Orals Only

Pharma / TRT
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[quote]pump21 wrote:
Yea well thanks for the info Bill, it’s been awesome. Every new post guides my own research and I’ve learned a ton more in these past 2 days than I have in the entire time looking by myself.

I hear that 4 weeks is a decent cycle for TA, is that what you would run? I can afford a 6 week cycle of TA and Dbol if I don’t spend much on anti E’s until PCT, but if 4 weeks is enough then by far it would work for me.

I hear running Nolvadex during the cycle will impede some of the gains, but to avoid side-effects, I was thinking about running 100mg Nolv/day and then adding the HCG and Aromisin PCT only, while staying on 100mg Nolv. I looked up using high amounts of HCG PCT and you’re definitely right, I didn’t see that anything good came from it.

[/quote]

More research young grasshopper.

Nolva is not the best for use with Tren. Also, 100mg is excessive. At most, users dose it for 40mgs a few days until gyno subsides. Then drop to 20mgs. for a few more days. Most just use the 20mgs. A lot of this has to do with knowing how your body responds to Test and how susceptible you are to aromatization.

You need an AI. Read up on the sticky. Your best AI’s for Tren use will probably be Arimidex and Letro.

Also, don’t try to save money by not having an AI handy. This can prove to be a case of all out regret if/when gyno kicks in.

Another point: I would not recommend Tren for a first cycle. Tren and DBol have excellent synergy, but your post on the Nolva doses let me know you are not mentally or physically prepared to handle what may come your way through the use of Tren.

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Actually no aromatase inhibitor is needed for trenbolone itself, as trenbolone does not aromatize. However if using an aromatizing drug such as Dianabol along with it, then the AI might be called for on account of that drug.

Anadrol, incidentally, also does not aromatize nor does Winstrol.

While I have done TA plus Anadrol, as the only androgens, for the sake of knowledge (I was wondering if maybe deliberately generating no estrogen might be a useful thing in the week or so up to a contest, for those that compete, and needed to try it myself before going any further with that thought) it is not good for sustained periods as when estrogen goes subnormal, so does sex drive, and there are probably non-obvious other bad effects as well, such as loss of bone mass and probably reduced gains. However all it takes to solve that is getting estrogen back with a little bit of testosterone (whether taken directly or from ongoing use of HCG) or taking an aromatizing steroid along with the non-aromatizables.

There’s a study in the veterinary literature examining whether there is progestagenic effect of trenbolone in the animal studied (I forget which, probably steers but not sure) and finding none. There’s a study showing binding but not saying anything about whether activity results. Of course, blockers bind but don’t yield activity, so simply binding shows nothing as to activity.

A mistake may have occurred in coming to conclusions from the literature due to some (or even one person, with others propagating the error, as occurs endlessly in “steroid books”) perhaps confusing allyl trenbolone, a different compound which is a progestin, with trenbolone. Just as a guess as to how some could be saying something for which there is no evidence and which, as you point out, doesn’t make sense.

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[quote]xXDevilDogXx wrote:

More research young grasshopper.

Nolva is not the best for use with Tren. Also, 100mg is excessive. At most, users dose it for 40mgs a few days until gyno subsides. Then drop to 20mgs. for a few more days. Most just use the 20mgs. A lot of this has to do with knowing how your body responds to Test and how susceptible you are to aromatization.

You need an AI. Read up on the sticky. Your best AI’s for Tren use will probably be Arimidex and Letro.

Also, don’t try to save money by not having an AI handy. This can prove to be a case of all out regret if/when gyno kicks in.

Another point: I would not recommend Tren for a first cycle. Tren and DBol have excellent synergy, but your post on the Nolva doses let me know you are not mentally or physically prepared to handle what may come your way through the use of Tren.[/quote]

That’s part of why I was leaning away from injects for the first cycle. I have no clue how I’ll respond. From what I have read, I can stop taking orals and the sides will dissappear quicker than an inject, but that’s just hearsay.

My friend took Test/Anadrol for his first cycle and had great results, but that might just be from his genetics. He didn’t read anything beforehand, and now has some small little acorns down there (no PCT), but he gained 40# on the cycle and retained 30 of it. I think his anti-e stack consisted of the first deal he saw on Google.

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I get the impression that you have a reasoning that there is no point or you don’t see the point in taking more than one anabolic steroid.

That general philosophy actually is correct most of the time for most classes of drugs. That is because if a drug works by only one mechanism of action, as most do, then generally there is no reason to combine drugs. For example there is no point in taking both Advil and Alleve. Take one or the other.

However, testosterone has more than one mechanism of action. One way of categorizing this is to say that one class of activity is androgen-receptor mediated, and there is also other activity that is not.

Some synthetic androgens are good in one of these regards, some in the other. Few are like testosterone in being good at both.

As it happens, most orals are not very potent at androgen-receptor mediated activity but are good at non-AR-mediated activity.

So when you take just Dianabol for example or just Anadrol, you’re getting half the equation so to speak, and just taking more of the drug doesn’t solve the problem.

This is the main reason oral-only cycles have a poor reputation among experienced users.

It is true that the problem can be overcome by combining with an oral that is good at AR-mediated activity, such as oxandrolone or high-dose Primobolan, but in practice most don’t do this either out of cost or out of not knowing that this would solve that aspect of the problem.

It is an interesting question as to whether Oral Turinabol is or is not good at AR-mediated activity. I don’t know of specific scientific data on that (doesn’t mean there can’t be any, as I haven’t searched specifically for that.) When I was working with a lot of athletes, OT was not generally available and so I have no results in that regard. I have tried it personally in combination with TA and it did not add all that much. I have not tried it with Dianabol-only or Anadrol-only and so don’t know if it would greatly improve their results or not. My guess is it’s quite possible but I don’t know.

As OT is not terribly expensive it’s possible that this could be a good solution – also possible it is not.

In any case however these orals (oral Primobolan being acceptable) are liver toxic whereas virtually none of the injectables are (Winstrol being the exception.)

So what you are doing with an oral is trading the trivial problem of injecting for the problem of liver toxicity. Why this would be thought an admirable trade-off is not clear to me.

But as there is no way that I know of other than testosterone use to get good non-AR-mediated activity from an injectable, it does make sense to use orals to accomplish that objective. But why double the amount of load placed on the liver – or at anyh rate double the milligrams, approximately speaking – when not necessary to do so, and it’s not necessary to do so to get good AR-mediated activity.

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For that matter, the reason for preferring the orals over injected testosterone for obtaining good non-AR-mediated activity was because testosterone had side effects, caused by problematic metabolites (DHT and estrogen) that the synthetics avoided or, depending on the case, partially avoided.

However now that we have dutasteride and letrozole, this really is not the issue it was before.

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Well those last 2 posts really confused me so I’ve spent some time looking around, and I think I’m just going to run an inject with oral supp.

I was thinking about a 6 week cycle of test/dbol, running test the whole 6 weeks and cutting the dbol out after week 4. Don’t really want to taper because honestly I don’t have the time or money, but I was wondering if you would cut the test back a bit since I’ll be stacking it with the dbol.

The only problem with test is side effects. I already have some pretty thin hair, so DHT could be a pretty big problem for me, and I have no idea where I would get dutaseride.

You also mentioned letrozole, do you prefer that out of other anti-e’s? And if you do, may I ask why?

So to recap, my improved cycle would look like:

Test E - (500mg??)/week
Dbol - 25mg/day

PCT:
Nolvadex - (40mg??)/day
HCG - 100mg/day until cutting it at week 4
Aromasin(?) - 20mg/day
VitE - 1000iu/day

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My preference would be test prop for a 6 week cycle instead of test enanthate.

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Why would you prefer TestP over TestE? From what I gather, TestP is more expensive and causes slightly less water retention but otherwise is about the same results wise. I could have bad info though.

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[quote]pump21 wrote:
Why would you prefer TestP over TestE? From what I gather, TestP is more expensive and causes slightly less water retention but otherwise is about the same results wise. I could have bad info though.[/quote]

6 weeks is a short cycle.

Test E will take too long to kick.

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Makes sense, I actually just found out my guy has them for the same price so there’s no difference really. Guess I’ll be running test P!

Do you guys think the PCT is solid? As soon as that’s set, I’ll go get all my gear and then get ready to start a log.

Edit: I was looking around and testP is 100mg/ml, where testE is 200mg/ml. Should I still run 500mg/week? That’s gonna get damn expensive

Also, what would you recommend for the Anti-E while on cycle in case gyno pops up? Should I just stock a little extra Nolva or get some Clomid?

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Get an Aromatase Inhibitor to prevent estrogen conversion while on cycle. Nolva should be used as a back up plan if gyno occurs unexpectedly

Test Prop kicks in within a week or two while Test Enanthate kicks in after about 3-4 weeks. It’s up to you which one you chose. For a 6 week cycle the logical choice would be Test P. More frequent injections are required but the results occur sooner, in most cases. If you want to inject less often run the cycle longer.

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Another option is front loading the test e to get get blood levels up quickly. Bill Roberts has been talking about this of late. I cannot attest to the startegy’s efficacity, but below is a copy of some of Bill’s recent words.

Bill Roberts recent post:

If it’s the case that the blood levels associated with ongoing use of the doses you plan give you what you want, why have the first week or so way below those levels and the second week just coming up on them? Why not get to them right away?

A big part of why many say “Nothing happened in my first two weeks” is because they didn’t frontload.

If you frontload, and are using a substantial dose you ought to see a substantial increase in scale weight by day 4. Usually not so or not anything like it if not frontloading and using the same dose, unless the planned dose is so high that even being at partial levels is good enough.

For example if planning on using 4.5 grams per week (1.5 g three times per week), then just doing it straight, no frontloading, will still give a reasonable start. But most do not use such doses, nor need to – not even an NPC competitor typically needs that much. I mention it only to be thorough, not because it is often relevant, it isn’t.

Mlettier, let’s not use 13 days for the half-life of testosterone cypionate as I don’t think that is right. Let’s use 8 days. Aside from having a literature reference on that (which doesn’t prove it’s exactly right) it seems in practice to be about right or maybe even a touch long, for example it might really be 7 days.

But using 8 days and let’s say your planned rate was 750 mg/week (it wasn’t clear to me exactly what you were looking at in that regard, but if that isn’t the rate, substituting another number and redoing the calculation will work fine.)

So if the half-life is 8 days and the planned rate is 750 mg/week, the planned average amount of use per half-life is 750 mg times 8 divided by 7, or 857 mg.

If planning to inject that 750 mg as 250 mg three times per week, then the first injection is, or should approximate, 857 mg plus 250 mg. Which would be about 1107 mg. There’s no need to be so extremely precise, so for example 1000 mg or 1125 or 1250 mg would be acceptable substitutes.

The amount needed to get to what will be the ongoing level already

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Bill Robert’s conclusion to above post:

having been provided, the next injection and all others need be only the ongoing 250 mg injections.

Basically, the first injection gets you right away to where you plan to be, and the following injections keep you there.

In contrast, if you just injected 250 mg on day 1, not only would your levels not be commensurate with the 750 mg/week level, nor would they be commensurate with the 250 mg/week level: they would be commensurate with about the 125 mg/week level or slightly less. So the cycle is starting off with an absolute whimper when done this way. Not the way to go.

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[quote]Dynamo Hum wrote:
Bill Robert’s conclusion to above post:

having been provided, the next injection and all others need be only the ongoing 250 mg injections.

Basically, the first injection gets you right away to where you plan to be, and the following injections keep you there.

In contrast, if you just injected 250 mg on day 1, not only would your levels not be commensurate with the 750 mg/week level, nor would they be commensurate with the 250 mg/week level: they would be commensurate with about the 125 mg/week level or slightly less. So the cycle is starting off with an absolute whimper when done this way. Not the way to go.
[/quote]

Wow great information, it’s definitely something to think about. Bill mentioned Letrozole earlier. Is that his AI of choice? Most people I talk to use Aromasin, but I’ve never once heard of Letrozole until he brought it up. Since I haven’t gotten anything yet, I was wondering if Letrozole is a better or cheaper option.

As far as the dosage goes, I was planning 500mg/week with 20 or 30mg of dbol/day, which I’ll decide once I try 20mg for about a week or so.

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Bill’s preference is Letrozole. He says it has less side effects than Adex. Most people on this forum use Adex. Adex is cheap and Letro is even cheaper I hear. I have only used Adex to date. Brook also uses Letro.

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Letro is probably the most potent of the AI’s.

Only problem is that its somewhat more difficult to dose as the effective dose seems to vary by person and its strong so very small amounts cause very large differences.

I recommend Adex to most people that are new to AI’s, its probably one of the simpler ones to run and has the least risk of driving your E too low compared to most.

Aromasin is a bit outdated/less effective compared to most AI’s currently available imo.

Certainly you can use letro, but your going to have to start low and try to trial and error your dosage.

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I looked up on some people’s dosing on Letro they ar-r.com and they definitely dosed real low (.3 to 2.5mg, usually high if gyno pops up). I’m going to go with that now because I can make that crap last forever, both my buddy and me can use just one bottle between the two of us.

Thanks for the tip!

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Anytime bud…