Yeesh! First off my review of pro-roid was NOT for a narcotic, (I can write those up for myself) It was for a non-steroidal and so it was removed; my bad. I was searching for European/Asian meds that are not yet FDA approved. I wrote the review for others. I was a first time customer and I can tell you I wish local retailers had that quality of service. Actually the speed of the transaction from start to finish was, ready for this....72 hours!

Anyhow I have been lifting for strength gains mostly related to organized contact-sports for 30 years. For you young guns, take heed. Genetics aside heavy compound movements take their toll. Yes good form and yes progressive increases in resistance and yes lots of stretching and warming up still, (again genetics aside) the machine breaks down. Hey that's why death is inevitable, right?

And to answer another of the comments, of course I have greatly reduced the weights that I push and pull. For the past 5 years its all been about maintenance and healthy nutrition/supplementation regimens.

I have 4 herniated discs which I thought were bad till the stenosis kicked in! I'll cut this short and tell you what I think greatly contributed to these injuries and HERE IS MY WARNING to you kiddies. In my late teens I became good friends with a guy I met at the gym. He was the first competitive bodybuilder I knew. You know, that difference between the lifters and the real-deal dudes. You know me and my pals were all chest and arm focused but "Eddy" well, he was complete.

Anyhow he took me under his wing and introduced me to aspects of building ones body that were totally foreign to me. He always said the 3 things that determine transforming the body were diet, diet and diet. Now "Eddy" had wicked legs and I wanted those suckers. So, squat, squat, squat! He always called the squat rack, "the office" or "Mr. Dusty", (dusty because nobody used it).

Within a year I was doing deep, slow proper squats with three plates. Of course Deca, Test and d-ball may have helped a bit. Finally my legs were in proportion to the rest of my body. Because, "Ed" was my training partner, I worked out where he worked out. Well when I would go back to my old gym and see the boys, I would try and impress them with my squatting. Nothing better than humiliating your pals at the rack! That is where I pushed it like the young fool I was. Crappy form squats with 4 1/2 plates and knee wraps. At that point I could do proper form squats with 3 1/2 lates for 10 reps with no help from a spotter. To be clear, I never had an injury from it. No stop n drop stuff at all; my injuries were cumulative.

Hey it's a fine line right? You are young and naturally aggressive, competitive and then your blood is teeming with synthetics! And my Lord, that fear and anticipation of the bar bowing over your traps with all those big, beautiful black 45 pounders! Mmmmmm. Crap all I could ever think of was, "fuck me, I'm squatting the same weight as Arnold in Pumping Iron"!! And that post-squat meal and sleep, oh my. And that brutally delicious pain walking down stairs the next day; proof positive that they were a growin.

Man I'm rambling, sorry. I think I can put it in a very simple way. Our bodies are like any other machine. Lets look at say your shoulders OK? So the ligaments and tendons that comprise the shoulder can perform say 10,000 movements, say a lateral dumbell raise over your life time. Now take a bodybuilder who does shoulders twice every 10 days.

4 sets of 12 reps of those lateral raises is 48 lifts every 10 days. That comes out to 1,752 of that movement a year. In under 6 years you have used up all of that movement that your body can manage over a lifetime. This math does not take into account performing that movement during the course of your days outside the gym. Obviously it is just a theory but in my line of work I have performed hundreds of shoulder reconstructions and the worst cases I have seen on joints are the bodybuilders.

That is my 3 cents folks.

Peace