T3 and the Modern Athlete Part 2
By: TJ
In part 1 of T3 and the Modern Athlete I touched on various properties of T3 and mainly its use by male athletes for cutting body fat. In Part 2 I’d like to dig deeper and discuss a few other areas of T3 usage, among them the popular T3/
Clen cycle, T3 in bulking cycles, rebound weight gain and women’s cycles. Response to Part 1 was overwhelming to say the least and I realize Part 2 is way over due, I hope it was worth the wait and answers the questions you still have on T3. As with Part 1 please realize that this article is the opinion of the author based on personal experience and the experiences of friends, ex training partners, gym mates and clients it is not intended to be a recommendation to use T3 nor is it intended to be a medical “how to”, ultimately how you use it and whether or not you use it for athletic performance gains is your choice and yours alone. With that said let’s dig in!!
1. Thyroid Suppression
2. T3/Clenbuterol Cycle
3. T3 in bulking cycles
4. Women’s Cycle
5. Timing of dose
6. Rebound Weight Gain
Thyroid Suppression
Let’s start with the biggest misconception still around where T3 is concerned, that is suppression of natural thyroid output. I’m amazed that this drug has been used now for the past several years by literally thousands of athletes with few if any reported cases of thyroid shutdown yet the 1st thing someone says when a person asks about T3 is “it will shut down your natural thyroid and you’ll be on T3 the rest of your life”. Numerous studies have been done and show that cessation of exogenous T3 does not shut down your natural thyroid. The 1st study was done in 1951 by M. Greer (1) and showed that patients that were misdiagnosed as hypothyroidism that later had their medicine withdrawn showed no shutdown of their natural thyroid as their thyroid returned to normal within 2 weeks. His studies also showed that it didn’t matter if the patients thyroid had been medically suppressed for 30 years or a few days they both returned to normal within two weeks. Hence my mentioning in Part 1 of a sluggish thyroid post T3 cycle and my suggestion that you continue to eat clean, do cardio and use a fat burner like the Ephedrine/Caffeine/Aspirin stack,
Clenbuterol or an over the counter fat burner until your natural thyroid output returns to normal. Numerous studies have been done since Greer’s that have confirmed his findings. As with any medicine there are always exceptions to the rule and there have been a few people who claim to have had their own thyroid function permanently damaged by T3 usage but in my experience this only occurred when ridiculously high dosages were used, if you adhere to the dosages recommended here in you should be fine.
T3/Clenbuterol Cycle
This has to be the most often used cutting combo used today for fat loss in weight trained athletes, or at least the most talked about. Both drugs when used on their own are effective fat burners through differing pathways, but used together they have a synergistic effect and create a very potent fat burning cycle. The medical reasoning for this is long and complicated and not necessary to understand at this point but it is out there for anyone to research should you need to know, in simple terms each not only do their own job but also help the other’s fat burning process so that in effect, as they say, 1+1=3. So what dose do you use for each drug? For the T3 I suggest you use the same dose scheme I outlined in Part 1, again I took some flack over the lower dosing as some feel you should go higher but as I said from my experience anything over 75mcg-100mcg/day (for men, women’s dosage should go no higher than 50mcg/day) usually burns much too much muscle tissue in addition to fat tissue, unless that is your goal I would stay with as small a dose as you can get away with where you can still tolerate the increased body temp, for most men that is 75-100mcg/day, for most women that is 50mcg/day max. *Using
Clen will increase your body temp also so you will have to monitor both drug dosages to see what you can comfortably tolerate.
Clenbuterol dosing is a very individual thing, some cycles recommend 160mcg/day at the maximum dosage some 80mcg/day but the 1 thing most agree on is to start low and ease your dosage upwards as you feel comfortable with it the 1st time you use it. With subsequent cycles you can start at your maximum tolerable dose or slightly lower and then increase the dosage over a few days until you reach your maximum again as some people report the maximum they can use differs from 1 cycle to another. Which brand and whether you use tabs vs. liquids could also have something to do with the differing max doses. I would suggest you start your 1st cycle of
Clen with 20mcg/day and increase by 20mcg/day until you reach the upper maximum you can use based on the side effects. The most common side effects are shaking, jitteriness, anxiety and raising of body temperature, basically the feelings you get when you’ve had way too much caffeine or cold medication are what your looking out for. When those sides get to be too much cut back to the last tolerable dose. A popular
Clenbuterol cycle is 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. For men I would suggest starting at 20mcg/day and going up to 100-120mcg/day or like I said whatever you can tolerate, stay there until day 14 then end the cycle, women should try half that max dose but if you can tolerate more and want to use it then go for it this is definitely a trial and error process. Take 2 weeks off and then repeat if desired, again starting at or near your maximum dose that you figured out with the 1st cycle. When stacking with T3 the question becomes what do you do on the 2 weeks your off
Clen but still are on T3? That’s really an individual decision for you to make, you could rotate an ECA stack or a Gugglesterone with the
Clen cycle so that your doing 1 for 2 weeks then the other for 2 weeks. Or you could simply take 2 weeks off after the end of the
Clen where your only on the T3 for the next 2 weeks, you’ll be at your mid to max dosage of T3 by then so you’ll still be burning fat just fine. Then after the 4 weeks of T3 you’ll be done with both the T3 and the
Clen and you could start a ECA stack for 2 weeks if you are ending the cutting cycle and want to protect yourself against rebound weight gain while waiting for your natural thyroid levels to return to normal. If you have more fat to lose you can cycle off T3 for 2 weeks as I said in Part 1 and repeat the cycle again. When to use
Clen again will depend on when you used it last, remember 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. There’s nothing to say you can’t cycle T3 ad ECA together while you wait to add the
Clen back in, just remember whenever you come off the T3 you want something in your system to help burn fat while you wait for your natural thyroid to return to normal. Also remember that
Clen cycles are like T3 cycles in that there’s several different cycle’s currently popular, and you’ll most likely get different advice to the length and type of cycle by asking more than one person. The advice I give is based on those I’ve had use it and report back to me their results and feeling on it. I’m all for experimenting but until something comes along that proves to be better I’ll stick with the 2 weeks on/2 weeks off cycle advice where
Clen is concerned.
T3 in Bulking Cycles
I briefly touched on using T3 in bulking cycles and many members seemed confused as to how a fat burner could help with a bulking cycle. T3 is a drug mainly known for raising one’s metabolism and burning fat, and possibly muscle tissue, when used at higher dosages (> 75-100 mcg/day for men, > 50mcg/day for women), but at lower dosages (12.5-25mcg/day for men, ½ that for women) it causes a faster conversion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. It’s the increased conversion and absorption of nutrients that increases the results of your bulking cycle when you use it with a bulking cycle. When you run a bulking cycle you do so in conjunction with a higher protein/higher calorie diet because we know in order to grow muscle we need to feed the body nutrients, so there are plenty of nutrients to be converted, thus the bulking cycle gets a “push” if you will yielding better results. I can tell that literally every single person who has taken my advice and tried using a small amount of T3 daily with their bulking cycle has reported better gains than they usually get without it. I’ve even had success using 25mcg/day every other day with a bulking cycle. When you consider the low cost of T3 at such small a dosage it’s definitely a cheap insurance to better gains.
Women’s Cycles
Although women have been known to use T3 with good success I always hesitate to recommend a cycle to them for the simple reason that women seem to be much more sensitive to T3 than men are. The rebound weight gain can be significant if the post T3 period isn’t monitored stringently and an over the counter fat burner isn’t used. That said if you’re still set on using it here is a simple straightforward 21 day cycle, again using the 3 day ramp up and ramp down method.
Days 1-3...............12.5mcg/day
Days 4-6...............25mcg/day
Days 7-9...............37.5mcg/day
Days 10-12...........50mcg/day
Days 13-15............37.5mcg/day
Days 16-18............25mcg/day
Days 19-21……….12.5mcg/day
If you want to run it longer than 21 days, you can add in more days at the maximum dosage or use it in 4 day blocks with the ramp up and ramp down. Again please remember women are more sensitive to T3 than men and the rebound weight gain can be much more significant if your not ultra vigilant with the post T3 period, keep eating a very clean diet with calories below maintenance, and use either Gugglesterones, ECA stack or any other over the counter fat burner you feel comfortable with to help boost your natural metabolism until your system recovers, which could be anywhere from a few days to about 2-3 weeks.
Dosage Timing
T3 has a ½ life that doesn’t necessitate multiple daily dosing, so taking your entire daily dose at once is usually recommended. That said if your cycle requires you to take 100mcg/day or more I usually recommend splitting the dosage in ½ and taking it twice per day just to insure if you are sensitive to the drugs possible side effects you limit the exposure. Again I would suggest taking it in the morning, then around dinner time if a 2nd dose is necessary. I know that for myself, certain brands cause an upset stomach if I take more than 50mcg at a time, so at 75-100mcg/day I’d split it into 50mcg in the morning and the balance at nighttime.
Rebound Weight Gain
Rebound weight gain is inevitable when using T3, the best you can hope for is to minimize it. A good start is to make sure you use at least a small amount of a steroid with the cycle, this will help you to hold on to the muscle mass you already have. The best thing you can do is to take a post cycle over the counter fat loss product such as ECA stack, Gugglesterones or some other similar product. What your looking for here is the continuance of the fat loss while your system returns to your normal thyroid output. This should occur with in 2-3 weeks, so during that time continue to eat clean, do cardio, drink plenty of water and take the over the counter fat loss product. You’ll know when your thyroid has returned to normal when your body temp returns to normal. Women are especially warned to be very vigilant here, most people are eager to eat more when their cycle ends but this is not the time when using T3, you need to make sure your metabolism has been restored before splurging a bit.
I hope Part 2 answered the questions you still had on T3 after reading Part 1, if there is enough interest I’ll write Part 3 there are still some areas I haven’t covered, the synergy of T3 with GH and AAS being one of them. If you have any other areas you’d like seen covered post up on them and I’ll see if there is enough to put together a Part 3. Also try to remember the dosages I suggest here may seem low to some of you but this article is directed toward the recreational athlete not the elite athlete, elite athletes generally take more of everything and although I don't personally think T3 needs to be one of those drugs used at higher dosages other will disagree with me there. Good luck with your T3 usage and if you have any personal questions feel free to PM or e-mail me.
TJ
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