+ 1 New relatively young guy (26M)
Hello! I am 26 years old (almost 27) roughly 174lb at roughly 12% bodyfat, and I am 5'8". I love reading about AAS, and so far this forum has been a blessing filled with many, many anecdotes that I am having a wonderful time reading! As my bio states, AAS (more broadly PEDs and peptides, as well ancillaries) are my hyperfixation(s), and I have done a LOT of reading, and I feel that I am about ready (knowledge wise) to start cycling. Does anyone have any advice from their personal experiences that they think need to be shared more often/that are more niche opinions? I would greatly appreciate anything you all have to say!
EDIT: More info I forgot to add until right after I posted it lol
6 years total training, less than optimally for the first year/year and a half, but then I decided to lock in. Diet is good (Pescatarian). Stress levels are slightly high right now but that is mostly due to family issues, hopefully all will go well.
I plan on running a basic 500mg test/wk for 20wks cycle sometime soon.
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If you have no morals like me then Randomdude will get you jacked all day any day. Left or right. front or back. Make sure to get the punch card. Discount code is Sum Young Guy
LOL
I’m a firm believer in minimum effective dose.
I’ve learned that there are a lot more gains you can get out of gear before you need to crank the doses and add a ton of compounds.
It’s frequently that I meet dudes at the gym half my size and taking double my doses.
Do whatever you want, but if you want the best gains you cannot just rely on gear.
Idk what kind of advice to give until you can tell us what cycle you are going to run, and how exactly you plan to execute it. Do you care to elaborate?
Apologies, I edited my OP to include the cycle I plan on running.
20wks at a 500kcal surplus above my TDEE, using aromasin as necessary when symptoms of high e2 arise (I will stock up enough to run 25mg EOD, although that is incredibly unlikely it is better to have more than you need than to need more than you have).
Pipeliner47Aromasin really should be used ED (6.25mg) I even start it a few days before the cycle begins. Just figured you may want to look into its half life and build up time
idk about smaller doses, but 25mg aromasin lowers e2 in men by 50% at -6 hours after dosing and it takes a few days to get back to normal, because it is a suicidal AI. I will start out at 12.5mg whenever I experience high e2 sides and will adjust from there if I crash it or it doesnt do enough.
So I wouldn't prophylactically take Aromasin unless high e2 sides do occur. Now with your stats that you are showing there could be a small chance you might not actually need any ai use at all while on 500mg cause you are lean, so you wont aromatize to much, also everyone aromatizes at different rates and you could be someone who could blast 500mg of Test weekly and have a e2 reading of 50 pg/nl. Now it very much is a good thing that you are going to have ai on hand, and is very smart of you. I also wanna say you should pin daily to reduce e2, this will help you tremendously!
Overall I think It is a good first cycle...maybe a little excessive, you could still easily grow like a weed on just 200-300mg of Test and chances are much higher that you wont have to worry about e2 at all. Good on you for trying to make your first cycle simple with just test. One question though are you planning on doing a Blast & Cruise, or is this a one off cycle that will be followed up with a PCT?
I also hope you will be taking a pre cycle blood test and another blood test after 5 weeks when the Test is fully saturated, and don't forget another blood test when the cycle ends. Blood work is the best piece of information an enhanced lifter can get, and the more blood panels done the better. You should also look into getting a blood pressure cuff to monitor BP daily. You should also look into proper hydration to keep RBC and Hematocrit in check, this is to keep BP good, and to not induce clots or stroke... Baby Aspirin is your friend. Yes Test will raise these values even with good hydration, but at least when you have good hydration you can mitigate some damage. I also recommend looking into other Ancillaries like Telmisartan for BP for if it starts to creep up to high while on cycle.
If you want to get Labs done cheap, go to Hello Goodlabs, and use my code ZBAVHS for 20% off the price of your blood panel. These guys are the most affordable imo. Below I will list some Panels that any guy running gear should be aware of and should look into.
Pregnenolone
CRP
Ferritin
Estradiol Ultrasensitive
CBC
CMP
Testosterone, Free, and Total - uncapped
Lipid Panel + ApoB
TSH + Free T3 + Free T4
IGF-1
Homocysteine
GGT
Prolactin
Hemoglobin A1c
Cystatin C
SHBG
FSH + LH
DHEA-S
Thank you for taking the time to give a detailed answer!
I will definitely look more into the bloods aspect of things a bit more.
Good job pluggin the code. I was about to do the same thing LOL
Oh you know it brother lol
^^THIS.
You're young. Plan on having kids? Keep in mind you are endangering your fertility. You will want to plan for that with the keen awareness that you may not want kids now, but that could very well change in 5-10 years.
When you say "diet is good," what does that mean? Do you know your macros? I was banging and clanging in my 20s, and "eating good," but drinking beer, not tracking anything, not weighing food, going out with friends routinely, not managing my sleep hygiene etc., etc. I am glad I did not waste good AAS during that developmental stage. If you've been "locked in" for five years, that's great, and you may have maxed out some natty gains that a lot of younger guys leave on the table when they jump on.
Khandum spelled a lot of important things out for you above and you should listen to it all.
I am aware that I am putting my fertility in danger, and as you said right now, I am okay with that, but I might not be when I start to settle down. How beneficial do you think hCG is for keeping chances of infertility lower?
Right now I am in a maintenance phase. 3000 +/-100 kcal per day, 190P/400C/70F, hitting all macro targets pretty consistently (at least 5 days out of the week) and always staying within 100kcal of my daily goal of 3000kcal.
I think there is a pubmed article about trying to fix sperm count with HCG and Clomid. It worked from what I recall, but the sperm were mutated. Producing kids from mutated sperm seems like not the best idea. This was something I came across in passing, and it’s not an area of interest for me so maybe that is suspect. Essentially I am saying that I think you should research the potential negatives thoroughly. Say 5 years from now you get all jacked and find the woman of your dreams and she wants a baby, but you can’t. Try to make sure you are sure.
I will have to find that article, thank you for bringing it to my attention! Yeah, mutated sperm seems much less than ideal, it seems like I have a lot more reading and considering to do lol.
This is it.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8214562/
Thank you!