Mag-10, the Anabolic diet, and Ian King programs

I’m planning to try my first cycle of Mag-10 in a couple of weeks, and want to make sure everything is right to go. But after reading the recommended way of working with Mag-10, I’ve got a couple of questions. The “plan for success” section on the Biotest site, and the Growth-Surge articles here talk about going on what looks like a high carb, moderate-high protien and low fat diet, along with “balls to the wall” training routine, to make effective use of the Mag-10. Trouble is I have found I thrive on the (Di Pasquale) Anabolic diet/T-Dawg high fat very low carb diet. I’m also working through Ian King’s Limping series (I thought I would do the Mag-10 cycle during the third phase), which while tough and painful, isn’t “balls to the wall” like I used to do (and got nowhere with…). So, does Mag-10 only work with what the articles say to do? What have other T-Maggers found?

I just did a Mag 10 cycle (my first) cut back carbs to less then 100G. Did about 350 gms. of protien about 100 Fat. Put on 8 ibs. of muscle and very little fat after I cut the carbs down. I had tons of energy to workout balls to the wall while on Mag 10.

With MAG-10, your performance and recovery should be improved (keep in mind I’ve never used MAG-10, so this is just theory to me). I’ve been under the impression that carbs are one of the primary food sources used to heal the damage done during a workout, so I recommend using carbs to facilitate recovery.

Maybe with the enhanced recovery from MAG-10, the carbs are as important and a calorie becomes a calorie. But, you should be eating anabolically. This leads me to believe that you will be keeping some extra calories as fat anyway. With a fat-primary diet, your body already has the metabolism set up to convert fats into energy. Might want to stay there.

If you are set on doing an Anabolic Diet type of thing, you may want to carb-up once in the middle of the week along with the weekend (say you’re training M,T,R,F you may want to carb up Wed. and Sat.) while on Mag-10. I would also definitely include some sort of post-workout carbs (can’t remember if this is a no-no in the Anabolic Diet). I have found this to be extremely successful in my current bulking cycle, where I am having most of my carbs during/post training, and on two carb-up days per week. Carbs make up around 15% of my caloric intake on the non-carb up days, with most of them coming in my Surge during/post training. My results have been great so far, even without Mag-10…all that being said, I have never gone low carb on an androgen-assisted bulk, and had my best results with Mag-10 when taking carbs up to 50% of my daily caloric intake.

Thanks for these comments. I’ve been taking a post-workout carb drink, even though it’s not explicitly mentioned in the Anabolic Diet (I guess I’m really doing the T-Dawg diet, but with lower carbs during the week). I also do a carb up meal (not a day, though) a couple of times a week also. It seems I don’t need many carbs to function. The real test will be whether Mag-10 “changes everything” while on it, such that some of my current rules have to be changed. I’m about 198lb, 9.8-10.2% (Fat track calipers), so I work on around 4000 cal per day - easy to do when your diet calls for a lot of fat.

So what have people found regarding their workouts - just keep doing what you always did, or change to a routine that would normally cause overtraining, and let Mag-10 do its stuff?

I was actually just talking with Joel Marion about how I ended up overtrained towards the end of this Summer despite the fact I was taking Mag-10 at the time. You will definitely be able to get away with a bit more than usual, but perhaps what you’re already doing is pushing the limits of too much. I think Ian King mentioned this awhile back too. Only you know what your limits are, but I would say you might want to keep working through the limping series and whatever you’re doing for the rest of your body without upping the volume too much. See how it goes, and evaluate from there. Your diet while on Mag will really be the determining factor in how much you gain anyway.

Great advice, Steve - thanks. I’ll stick to what I’m doing now workout-wise (Limping series, phase 3), and also stay with the Anabolic diet approach, and see what happens. Should be fun.