Powerlifting – An Eight-Week Steroid Stack of Testosterone Enanthate and Dianabol

drtbear1967

Musclechemistry Board Certified Member
<article class="post-13115 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail category-articles tag-ask-bill-roberts tag-powerlifting entry" itemtype="http://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope=""><header class="entry-header">[h=1]Powerlifting – An Eight-Week Steroid Stack of Testosterone Enanthate and Dianabol

By Bill Roberts[/h]</header>Q: “I’m a powerlifter planning my first cycle, aiming for both size and strength increases. If doing a cycle of testosterone enanthate at 500 mg/week, a Dianabol kickstart at 25 mg/day for four weeks, HCG at 250 IU 3x/week, and Aromasin as an anti-estrogen what would be the best idea for recovery? I’m thinking of doing 12 weeks. I keep hearing to make testosterone enanthate cycles long as they don’t tend to kick in until week 6 or later. Would I be better off keeping it to 8-10 weeks and increasing the dosage slightly and frontloading? Or should I just do the 12 weeks of my original plan. I wanted to do 3 cycles of 8 weeks a year as per your recommendations but it seems that would not work well with a long ester, is this true?”

A: Testosterone enanthate absolutely can be used effectively in cycle lengths such as 8 weeks. When results are poor before the 6 week point, it’s the result of one or more of these: inadequate dosing, failure to frontload, training problems, and/or nutritional problems.

When having a planned usage level of, for example 500 mg/week, if you frontload you’d inject for example 600 mg on the first day. This would bring you promptly the same levels you’ll sustain during the cycle.

Those who from the start only inject 250 mg at a time begin with levels that are no higher than what’s obtained with time with ongoing 200 mg/week usage. It’s no wonder that their results don’t kick in for a long time.

So, frontload.

With testosterone enanthate, on Day 1 take your regular dosage amount plus about 5/7ths, or about 70%, of your weekly dose. The milligram amount does not have to be exact.

I’d suggest increasing the Dianabol duration to 6 weeks, and make it the last 6 weeks of the cycle rather than the first.

I’d consider increasing the testosterone to 750 mg/week during the non-Dianabol weeks.

So under that plan, your first injection would be 250 mg plus about 535 mg, which is close enough to the convenient value of 750 mg. After that, inject 3x/weekly. On starting the Dianabol, you could reduce the testosterone to twice weekly, or could maintain 750 mg/week, according to preference. On the last week, do only the first testosterone injection; the duration of action will carry you through the rest of the week.

I’d discontinue the HCG in the week before last.

I’d prefer for the cycle to be 8 weeks, as recovery will be better.

Aromasin can do a perfectly good job of controlling estrogen in a cycle like this, but I don’t find it possible to predict the needed dose accurately. If you have to use Aromasin, my starting guess would be 25 mg once per 3 days. I’d prefer letrozole at 1 mg/day as it’s more predictable. As to why this is, Aromasin is a suicide inhibitor which destroys the aromatase enzyme and the amount needed for correct amount of destruction is somewhat unpredictable. In contrast, letrozole or anastrozole are competitive inhibitors with effect directly related to blood level. This tends to be more predictable.
It’s possible to do PCT with only an aromatase inhibitor, but I’d prefer instead using Clomid or Nolvadex according to the usual protocols.

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I don't understand front loading really. I tried it and others I know have and it seems the general consensus that you should use that same amount of gear that you are going to use and stretch it out for 12 weeks. Just my 2 cents but it sees to me that front loads could be a waste of gear especially with beginners. If you want short cycles you should use short esters, just makes more sense to me.
 
Front loading has to do with the half life of what you're using. Basically, the theory is that by doing it, you get your levels up quicker then sustain that level through the cycle giving you results sooner instead of waiting weeks for it to kick in.
 
Front loading has to do with the half life of what you're using. Basically, the theory is that by doing it, you get your levels up quicker then sustain that level through the cycle giving you results sooner instead of waiting weeks for it to kick in.

That is my understanding as well. What works for some, doesn't work for others.
 
Theres a lot I don't quite understand in this. First I think frontloading is a crock of shit, I will post up an article in a second explaining why. Secondly I don't understand lowering the test dose on the weeks your not using dianabol. Either keep it consistent or steadily raise the dose. Third, it's almost like hes writing off Aromasin. "If you have to use Aromasin, then blah blah" Hes saying its unpredictable... yah maybe at 25mg's every 3 days like he suggests. The terminal half life of aromasin is like 9 hours. So why the fuck would you dose it every 72 hours. Also aromasin lowers I believe e2 and e1 whereas arimidex is better at lowering e1. I have a write up regarding this i can post also.
Also you don't have to deal with rebound with aromasin and it boosts igf1 levels making it great for PCT. I've read you're not even supposed to use arimidex and nolvadex together in pct. For the reason though I can't remember.

and on top of all that I think 8 weeks of test e is a waist. Who's seen that chart that shows peak blood cenctrations, that shit doesn't even max out until like the 7th or 8th week...

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by the way no offence to drtbear. I've read a lot of stuff from bill Roberts and i'm sure he knows far more than i'll ever know. but I still like to argue shit when I think i'm even close to being right.
 
Why you should never frontload ('kickstart') a cycle: homeostasis



Basically, all bodybuilders are in a battle against homeostasis. We try to overcome the body's tendency to not gain mass by eating more food, training more frequently or harder, taking more supplements, and so on. The idea being that more of [whatever] sends a stronger message for protein synthesis. Let's call all these compounds and techniques 'growth factors'.

Well eventually, as we all know, these growth factors stop working. We ramp up the training intensity, take more creatine and so on, but growth plateaus regardless. You may be on a bulk cramming down the burgers, but the body finds a way to overcome this and prevent the growth message getting through - probably by elevating myostatin levels, among other mechanisms.

At this point bodyfat may go up quickly, but LBM gain is closing in on zero net growth. So we have to take a break, usually shrink back a bit, and let the body get used to the absence of all these growth factors - creating a new 'normal' or set-point.

In the process myostatin and all the other inhibitory mechanisms drop back too - with a slight lag, hence the loss of mass. At this point, hopefully we're holding more mass than when we started the last bulking cycle, and now we're ready to go and repeat it all over again, in the hope of retaining even more at the end of it; rinse repeat; rinse repeat.

Steroids fit into this homeostatic cycle in exactly the same way as the other growth factors, albeit to a much higher degree. The growth benefit they confer is not an absolute factor. Just like with increasing training intensity or food intake, it's the relative change compared to what you were doing before that accounts for their benefit.

To make this obvious, let's use an example:


Person A has been on a cycle of 1000mg test for a while and his growth has plateaued. So he increases the dose by 500mg for the next 10 weeks (it could just as easily be a different compound he's adding instead, btw). And suddenly, he experiences some new growth. Just what we want and what we would expect.

Person B has also been training for years and his growth is at a plateau. So he's just starting a cycle, which is 500mg test total for 10 weeks.

In other words, they are both doing exactly the same thing in adding 500mg testosterone to their bodies after hitting a plateau.

But all other things being equal, who is going to gain more from that 500mg over the next 10 weeks?


No prizes for guessing Person B.


Person B is experiencing a dramatic change in his testosterone levels of several multiples of what he produces naturally. Meanwhile Person A was only increasing his testosterone level by 50%. For Person A to even have a chance at a similar result, he'd probably need to take something like 3-4000mg, which would be a relatively similar increase.

Now if you take this pattern, and programme it into just a regular cycle, you can see that ultimately the most effective strategy for overcoming homeostasis on AAS is to continuously create as much relative change as you can. To be constantly tapering-up the dose from the lowest effective level.

Now I ask anyone, if you intend to frontload your cycle with 1000mg of testosterone for a few weeks (or an oral steroid or whatever), how the fuck do you plan on creating much relative change after? You're starting out so high, the only way up is through the stratosphere. And since it's only a frontload, your serum levels may actually start to decline after peaking in the first month!

So fine, you'll bloat up quickly at first and it will look like an amazing idea because the changes come on fast and you'll leave Mr Tortoise behind. But good luck if you thought those bloated 10lbs were solid real muscle. And good luck maintaining that pace for a solid 12 weeks of continuous real growth while your testosterone levels flatten out or even decline. The body's homeostatic mechanisms kick in so quickly that you're fighting a losing battle from that point onwards.

Meanwhile Mr Tortoise, who started out low and slow but keeps upping the dose, soon overtakes you despite still being on less AAS, all the while staying harder and drier and never once resembling the bloated watery Pufferfish you became thanks to your frontload.

Which is why I say frontloading is one of the most retarded practices there is. By boosting AAS levels up to a peak within the first weeks, you are literally killing off your future growth potential. You're wasting your most effective tool for growth (relative change) by throwing it all in at the start. And you're deluding yourself that the rapid changes you saw were real keepable gains post-cycle.

The clever approach to cycling - and indeed bodybuilding in general, given our battle with homeostasis - is to always be 'confusing' the body (and overcoming myostatin) by upping whatever variable you're playing with (be it food intake, training intensity, supplements or AAS) from a low starting point.

Thus I advise guys to do the complete opposite of frontloading. Start your cycle on a dose that's barely over natural levels, so you can then spend the next 12-15+ weeks gradually raising the dose, achieving the solid relative change we all want, while still staying at a sensible level and without experiencing all the negative side-effects that high doses entail.

This should be commonsense, even on the most anecdotal level and to the most novice trainee - after all, we all know our bodies plateau sometime after we make a change. So to be constantly changing (periodising) and tapering up various compounds and strategies from their lowest effective level is self-evidently the most efficient way to build muscle.
 
I've gotten better results from kick starting cycles with dbol or anadrol...then they quit working so I would kick start with prop (I'm a pussy with that stuff)

now I just wait not in that big of a hurry

then again been well over a year since I've done anything
 
Theres a lot I don't quite understand in this. First I think frontloading is a crock of shit, I will post up an article in a second explaining why. Secondly I don't understand lowering the test dose on the weeks your not using dianabol. Either keep it consistent or steadily raise the dose. Third, it's almost like hes writing off Aromasin. "If you have to use Aromasin, then blah blah" Hes saying its unpredictable... yah maybe at 25mg's every 3 days like he suggests. The terminal half life of aromasin is like 9 hours. So why the fuck would you dose it every 72 hours. Also aromasin lowers I believe e2 and e1 whereas arimidex is better at lowering e1. I have a write up regarding this i can post also.
Also you don't have to deal with rebound with aromasin and it boosts igf1 levels making it great for PCT. I've read you're not even supposed to use arimidex and nolvadex together in pct. For the reason though I can't remember.

and on top of all that I think 8 weeks of test e is a waist. Who's seen that chart that shows peak blood cenctrations, that shit doesn't even max out until like the 7th or 8th week...

- - - Updated - - -

by the way no offence to drtbear. I've read a lot of stuff from bill Roberts and i'm sure he knows far more than i'll ever know. but I still like to argue shit when I think i'm even close to being right.

No offense taken.
 
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