When “walking” around this or any other forum I always read a lot of people starting to use AAS without researching and without knowing where they are going to be into.

There are some mistakes that we all had done, surely, and because of that we don’t want the newbies to do it but there are also some mistakes that we do even we are experienced in this world.

And in between those ones, there is one that is always always on the top of the mistakes: what do I want to accomplish when using AAS? Which also means: why do I want to use them?

Sharing stats, diet and training logs doesn’t really help for us to let you know if goals for your cycle can be achieve. And, believe me, most of the times the objectives are not correctly set up which leads to frustration after giving your best and not getting what you expected.

So, yes, if the column of every cycle is based in diet, training and resting, the basement, the part that nobody sees but that make that column been build straight are the goals and the expectations you have for each cycle.

When any person come to me asking for help in order to design his cycle I’m always asking that: “What are your objectives?" You will be surprised how many of them give a vague answer: I want to lose weight, I want to look better, I want to get an IFBB pro card… All those, sorry to say, are objectives not depending just on you as there are a lot of external factors that can have affect on them. Not a lot of people, but some, are answering things like: I want to be happy while doing it, I want to do it to demonstrate myself I can and things like that. I meant, internal reasons that depend on themselves 100%.

So I would say the only way why a person is not achieving his objectives while being in a cycle is because the objectives are not correctly chosen.

There are some characteristics the objective should have:

Specific: You have to say what do you want and in what frame time you want to achieve it. It´s better to say “I want to lift 250lbs while doing squats” than to say “I want to lift more weight”.

Measurable: You need to be able to measure the process you are doing to get to know if you are closer to achieve your challenge or not.

Real: And by real mean that can be achievable, that can be fiscally achievable. “Mate, you have been in the gym for a week, forget about moving 250 lbs with any of you rmuscles now and forget about doing it in the next 6 months.” Also means you have to ask yourself if you have the potential to do it. If you have everything you need to get it. You can’t get to move 250 lbs if you are just training with dumbells.

Frame time: We really need to settle a calendar in order to measure our progress and to check if we got our goals. But do it properly: if you don’t settle a calendar maybe you won’t get it and if you settle a calendar very close to today maybe you won’t get it and you will be frustrated.

It won’t really take more than 10 minutes to settle a proper objective and in my opinion it should be done before making any other arrangement for you cycle.

As I mentioned before a good goal will prevent you from frustration and will help you progressing as you will see your changes and how you are getting closer and closer to it.