Hesitant to Go on First Cycle

Thanks. In my country you can actually buy test straight from the pharmacy, often without a doctor’s prescription (crazy, I know!). I think deca too, but not sure.

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If you want to give AAS a go, I would suggest 300mg/wk of testosterone and 200mg/wk of Deca.
Give it a 8 week run. Assuming both products are pharmaceutical grade, if you have a reasonable amount of good genetics to compete at a fairly high level, you will make noticeable improvement in 8 weeks. Your delts should start to visually dominate your upper body.

If you don’t respond well, IMO you have an uphill battle to become a reasonably good competitor. In other words, the health risk may not justify the reward.

Only you can make the decision going forward.

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Any reason for stacking with Deca, as opposed to the usually recommended test-only cycle ?
I’d actually do this and post pictures post-cycle. If I don’t respond well I’ll just accept that competitive bodybuilding is not for me and move on!

It was always my practice to use an anabolic steroid for all my cycles. I didn’t add in testosterone until 1978. I started with orals only, in particular, Dianabol.

Testosterone-only is a practice that I had never known to be popular in the 1970’s thru 1990’s.

Why? (not judging, just interested in this way of thinking).
The only person besides me, who cares about how i look like is my GF but without a working dick, i would be worthless no matter how i look.

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@RT_Nomad @Andrewgen_Receptors I got William Llewellyn’s book: Anabolics. Found this sample cycle which seems appealing to me for the alleged joint healing benefits of Deca (is this actually true ?) What are your thoughts ?

Deca does improve collagen synthesis, but the majority of the joint benefits that Deca provides is by fluid retention padding the joint. So it mostly doesn’t improve joints as much as makes them feel good while on it.

More people injure their joints on Deca than heal them. That is because they are getting stronger quickly, something to note, and realize it isn’t some magic joint compound.

I wouldn’t use nandrolone on a first cycle. Just too many variables at once for someone without experience. If you want to run two compounds use either Anavar or Tbol. Those are simple enough and have such a low probability of negative sides that I think those variables can be handled by most.

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Two views so far. Keep up the good work guys.

No. Nandrolone does not “heal” joints. The idea of systemic nandrolone treatment some how getting to the joints and healing them is wishful thinking, rationalization, and hype.

Here’s an alternative with intra-articular injection where you are injecting directly into the joint. Seems to work for horses as well as I have detailed on here previously.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09934-y

If you are dead set on AAS then one variable at a time (testosterone for first foray and see how you respond).

My joints felt better when using Deca.

But the pain usually returned when I cycled off. That said, Deca was my favorite injectable anabolic.

All of my cycles included an oral. But I have no way of knowing if you have access to a quality oral. So you are on your own to get those.

Also, I never used more that 200mg/wk of testosterone cypionate. @mnben87 has good advice about using one initially. But if it were me, I’d start with 200mg/wk of Deca.

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I wouldn’t run Deca first cycle. Too many guys get deca dick; worth trying a few cycles in though.

Solo test at 500mg/wk is probably the best call for newbie cycle.

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Im a bit conflicted with 8 week idea. Knowing that it takes around 5 weeks to be at full potency, one is shutting himself down and signing up for a pain in the ass russian roulette called PCT for like 3 weeks worth of potential gains. Also taking into consideration that the OP is lean, i would guess that he might fuck up the eating part and not eat enough to actually gain something at all in such short window of opportunity leading him to just gain 15lbs of water bloat in first weeks, leading up to the popular myth of “stalling of the gains after 4-5weeks” and then losing the water after these 8 weeks ending up with minimal gains which would be lost during the stupid process of PCT.

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I’m not genetically lean, I’ve actually been fat for most of my life. If anything I’m actually afraid to gain too much fat during the cycle, I would have no problem eating 5000kcal+, especially if I indulge on junk food (which I plan on not doing, but desperately craving it). By the way, how much daily caloric surplus would you suggest on a 500mg test-only cycle ?
As per @RT_Nomad’s suggestion, a main goal of a first cycle would be for me to assess how well I respond to steroids to decide whether competitive bodybuilding is in the cards for me.
I cannot take the decision right now to be on test for the rest of my life.
I’m thinking right now: go on 8 weeks (I don’t mind going a bit longer if it’s recommended) of a basic cycle (test or test+deca) with near-optimal diet/training/sleep. I’ll post pictures in this forum and decide from there whether to commit or not (basically either BnC from there, or PCT and stop AAS once and for all)

If you are running a cycle as an experiment to see if you have the genetics for competitive bodybuilding, you need to go ahead with the stack. You might as well tie your hands behind your back if you are physiologically incapable of stacking AAS. Don’t use just testosterone, IMO. In fact if you can find a good oral to add to the stack that would be even better. I am not talking about large dose, but:

  • 200mg/week testosterone
  • 200mg/week Deca
  • 20 to 30 mg/day of an oral

By week 8 you will see remarkable improvement if competitive bodybuilding is a reasonable possibility for you. IMO, eat clean, but get at least 1 gram of protein for every pound of bodyweight. Make sure you are in a slight calorie surplus, but don’t put on much fat.

Note: If you respond well to AAS, you will likely find yourself psychologically addicted to the “AAS high”, whether you become a successful bodybuilder or not.

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Id say, eat so you gain around a pound a week of weight after the inital water bloat. Every week while ON without gained weight is a week wasted.

P.s - i agree with @RT_Nomad on this one. If you will decide to continue bnc OR quit forever, listen to the cycle recommended by him. Doing just test as an ultimate experiment is like ordering quick noodles as your last meal before death sentence.
Also maybe do 12 weeks OR use prop and npp as they will kick in faster for the 8 weeks.

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We’ll be waiting to see the progress you make. Give us a pic at 4 weeks into your experiment.

I would use a strength metric. You should be getting stronger if you are adding muscle. You seem to like the bench press. Find your 5 rep max (or 8 rep max) before your first AAS. Then track that rep max weekly. It might not increase the first week, but should start moving by the end of the second week

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Here’s an update, 1 month in. Started with 200mg/week test E and slowly increased to 350.
-The good: the gains were pretty f*** sick, I trained every day and ate a lot of clean foods, gained 15 pounds.


(I had already gained 10 pounds naturally over the pics I had posted where i was at my leanest).

-The bad: I’m more and more convinced that I don’t have the mental fortitude to live on gear. At the same time, I’m getting addicted to the results. I’m anxious all the time. I could hear my heart beat very hard when trying to sleep yesterday and it freaked me out, also had difficulty breathing and couldn’t fall asleep. I spend most of my time worrying about what might happen to my health and second guessing my choice to hop on gear.
There is no way to know if the heart palpitations I keep getting are just from anxiety or a side effect of the test. Sorry if I’m coming off as a pussy whining on a low dose test cycle, but sadly this is how I feel.
If I decide to quit right now what PCT protocol should I do ?

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Keep an eye out for this; as many say - this is the biggest addiction with AAS.

You on any AI? You may have elevated Estrogen, which can cause this.

These are all valid options, possibly with the addition of an AI if you are getting high E symptoms (ONLY if you’re having these symptoms).

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I had some high E2 symptoms throughout the cycle (itchy nipples and bloat mainly), tried aromasin and a dose as low as 12.5mg gave me anxiety and headaches so I stopped using an AI.
I increased injection frequency to EOD then ED and stopped having the nipple issues.
Will check the link you included. Thanks a million.
I would like to add that I was on SSRIS a few years ago as I already struggled with anxiety and depression before the gear, but these were definitely accentuated since I started.

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