Test Taper Protocol

If you were running enanthate, you could train hard for that first week or so while you still have high blood levels of test, but it probably isn’t necessary. You need to back off the volume big time. Train intense (in this case meaning heavy weight) in the lower rep range, I personally do sets of 5-6, and a lot less of those. I do a push, pull and leg 3 day a week split.

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MODS!!!

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[quote]World1187 wrote:
MODS!!!

STICKY THIS PLEASE!!![/quote]

+1
There are far too many new guys and experienced ones alike that would like to use this method and cant quite grasp it.

[quote]pushharder wrote:
At what point should tribulus products be introduced into the taper if at all?[/quote]

By all means use trib during your actual cycle, in place of hcg, but dont use it following in the waiting period or the taper, as you want to be back at natural homeostasis for this period of time.

Following the end of the taper, feel free to use it again.

STICKY THIS MODS!!!

"By all means use trib during your actual cycle, in place of hcg, but dont use it following in the waiting period or the taper, as you want to be back at natural homeostasis for this period of time.

Following the end of the taper, feel free to use it again."

Really? I’m quite surprised at this… and you just saved me some money.

I thought using Trib would actually help quicken our way to “natural homeostasis” since it helps our body produce hormones, and is not an hormone itself.

And I thought it was pretty much useless while on cycle since there’s so much exogenous stuff doing the magic.

Could you elaborate a bit since it’ll be a sticky thread - at least it should be!

STICKY MODS!!!

FELLAS, PLEASE ALERT THE MODS, THIS IS JUST AS VITAL A PART OF AAS USAGE AS THE STEROID NEWBIE CYCLE THREADS.

World

STICKY!!!

[quote]SwD wrote:
"By all means use trib during your actual cycle, in place of hcg, but dont use it following in the waiting period or the taper, as you want to be back at natural homeostasis for this period of time.

Following the end of the taper, feel free to use it again."

Really? I’m quite surprised at this… and you just saved me some money.

I thought using Trib would actually help quicken our way to “natural homeostasis” since it helps our body produce hormones, and is not an hormone itself.

And I thought it was pretty much useless while on cycle since there’s so much exogenous stuff doing the magic.

Could you elaborate a bit since it’ll be a sticky thread - at least it should be![/quote]

Trib, actually works similar to the way HCG works, not nolvadex or clomid. So in fact it is mildly suppressive to your own hpta - that is why it should be cycled, and loses its affect after a little while.

That is also why you can use it while on cycle similar to how you would use hcg.

personally I dont bother with it myself. It was a great product for use as a natural bodybuilder, but once I switched to chemically enhanced, the trib just isnt strong enough for my liking.

OK. Thanks for the answer.

“It was a great product for use as a natural bodybuilder, but once I switched to chemically enhanced, the trib just isnt strong enough for my liking.”

That’s why I thought about using it during the taper part. It takes a little while for the Trib to exert the full effect so while the dose of exogenous Test keeps getting lower and lower I thought Trib would help get the boys back at full natural speed quicker. And I feel it works well enough while 100% off - but it’s nothing compared to chemicals.

I knew you have to cycle it but I didn’t know that it is mildly suppressive to our own hpta.

To get back to the thread main topic: besides those would do a Test-Masteron combo, you basically recommand no extra compound at all besides Test during the statis and taper period?

It finally got the sticky :).

It’s almost as if the forum officially accepted this PCT method as the only one worth sticking.

Ideas are getting awfully bottlenecked around here lately, although nobody fancies themselves biased.

congrats shwartz…and prisoner on getting this stickied. It is a good thread and deserves to be read by everyone. I think you guys did a really good job of laying it out.

Contrl - I agree with you. There are other methods of PCT that everyone should at least be aware of. I think that it would be good to have some sort of a summary of the other common protocols if you care to write it.

  1. SERM only (nolva or clomid post cycle)
  2. HCG (low dose) on cycle and SERM post cycle
  3. HCG (high dose) at end of cycle followed by use of a SERM
  4. HCG (low dose) only for short cycles like bill roberts short tren cycles
  5. IGF-1, Tribulus, or anything else you can throw at your system to help with PCT

There are lots of other methods used. I guess there are a lot of users that have responded well to the taper protocol so it has kinda won as the generally accepted “best pct”.

FG

I responded better to Nolvadex only and a lipid-heavy diet, but I’m not ruling the taper method as necessarily better or worse. Only what worked best for me.

If you compare the numbers, there must be 50 people who have used/succeeded with SERM-only PCT for every 1 who has used the taper. It’s numerically irrelevant.

All I’m saying is we should be weary of collectively endorsing one specific method while turning a blind eye to anything else, much less branding anything “best.” Anytime a newbie around here mentions a SERM PCT, it’s only a matter of minutes before the “omfg!!! just use teh test taperz!!!11!” comments begin.

My understanding was that T-Nation flourished on diversity and opinionative differences.

[quote]Contrl wrote:
." Anytime a newbie around here mentions a SERM PCT, it’s only a matter of minutes before the “omfg!!! just use teh test taperz!!!11!” comments begin.

My understanding was that T-Nation flourished on diversity and opinionative differences.[/quote]

That’s funny because it wasn’t so long ago that that was the feedback to the taper.

This forum is all about helping people - steering them in the right direction. There are a lot of people out there who get ‘advices’ from bros who shouldn’t be handing out advise. Having this as a sticky helps people know that it is a credible option, and there are enough people out there who have done the taper and are backing it’s use.

I’m sure it will save a lot of people from messing up post cycle in the future.

I know some may not agree with me, but there are better practices out there - I dissagree that there are different ways of doing things that are equal - not in medical terms. In medicine, doses and drugs are administered the same way all the time, because research and trial and error has accepted it as being that way.

All I know is that since I put out the taper method, I don’t have anyone PMing me regarding their predicament of a failed PCT and a “what are they going to do now?” kind of post. Those tend to have all but dried up.

This is a great thread, getting saved on favourites. My new test taper protocol courtesy of Prisoner.

Thanks a bunch mate!

Joe

agreed.

nolva does absolutely nothing for my recovery. It works in all the other ways it is supposed to but does nothing for my balls or libido. i did a little experiment by running 4 weeks of nolva well after my last cycle just on it’s own to see what it did in the absence of having done a cycle. the result was:

  • i dropped water weight
  • looked much tighter in my chest
  • got no boost at all in libido or any other areas that would indicate perceived increased test levels
  • by the end of the 4 weeks i actually noticed a slight drop in perceived test levels

My thoughts on the taper are:

  • very good in terms of having a smooth transition with no crash
  • i sort of felt like it was a long slow death to a cycle requiring too much time to finally die
  • if i do it again (which is very likely) i would do it longer that i previously did if doing a cycle of more than 12 weeks

i wonder if you could do something to speed it up like combine the taper with a low dose HCG protocol so that your nuts didn’t have to slowly come back to life. I am thinking something like this:

W 1-8 Test Enth 300mg E3D
W 1-9 HCG 250iu 2x/w
W 9-12 Test Enth 40mg E3D
W 13-16 Test Taper

It would need to be just enough HCG to keep the nuts going but not so much as to de-sensitize the lydig cells…

whether this would have an added negative feedback on LH/FSH levels leading to greater HTPA suppression in the non-testicular areas that would negate the benifit of not having them atrophied…I don’t know…I don’t understand the HTPA that well…

bushy and prisoner - I need your book learning on this one.

prisoner - I know you don’t like people bastardizing your shit so I am sorry but I am curious about this. I think the protocol can be better somehow.

The taper just makes good physiological sense to me. I’m a systems engineer by trade and so my thinking is mired in feedback control. The whole endocrine system is basically just one complicated feedback control system. One person’s system is not exactly the same as another’s, but the basic principles of how to coax it to work again must be the same; only the dosages and durations would differ.

Then again, like Bushy stated, the traditional PCT of using a SERM with or without an AI with or without HCG has been good for many…me included. I personally cannot dismiss the traditional approaches because of this.

But when it comes down to $$, the taper is WAY cheaper…at least for me compared to the traditional approaches. So, this is why I personally will use the taper whenever I go back on again.

Prisoner has shared some very intriguing research info with respect to the use of 100 mg T/week + SERM and it not effecting the HPTA. The number of “100” obviously is an average, and different levels will effect different people’s HPTA differently. Though I’m notorious for my use of low dosages, I had never really tried just around 100 mg T + SERM to see how it effected my HPTA. This is now just as intriguing to me as my potential 1000 mg/week of T cycle I have been planning on doing.

Then again…I’m still sort of liking my “natural” status these days…