Steroid Mid-cycle Changes

I’ve been there several times myself in the past; you’re on a cycle and something feels off and you need to make change mid-cycle changes. It’s not being a quitter simply because you recognize something doesn’t feel right and needs to be modified.

There are a lot of factors that come into play while on a cycle. Things like stress, recovery, testosterone and estrogen levels, estradiol, free testosterone, and prolactin levels are among several of these issues that can fluctuate during cycle. A user can experience anything from mood elevation, depression, brain fog, lethargy, and depression just to name a few.

The key to all of this is to find ways to continue forward. Trust me, there are far more quitters in the world of iron than guys who are in it for the long game. Be smart and make sure you’re doing things the right way!

Click the play button below to listen to Steroid Mid-cycle Changes

Prefer to read? You’ll find a transcript of the podcast below!

What’s up everybody? I hope you have all been well. Thanks for tuning into another JDB podcast.

You would not believe what happened to me today. I actually had a pleasant experience at a Walmart, believe it or not. Now, I hate Walmart, but the cost of groceries has gotten so extreme that I’m like, “you know what? Maybe I’ll just start doing Walmart again.”

The problem is with meats and fish. That’s the problem. If you go to some of these higher end grocery stores, they just charge so much more for chicken, fish and steaks and with the amount of that stuff that I eat and as regularly as I eat it, it’s adding up.

I used to be that guy that’s like, “No. Fuck it. I’ll pay the extra money not to deal with the bullshit.” But now, I deal with a little shit to get what I need to get. I mean, the grocery bill, it’s getting steep. It’s getting steep. Inflation is crazy. Everybody knows that.

But anyway, I walked into Walmart earlier and the place is pretty empty and I was greeted by the fucking greeter. That almost never happens. And there was a register open. I didn’t have to use the you scan, which is okay if you have a few items, but if you have a grocery cart full of shit that just takes forever and it’s aggravating and you’re not going to get through the process without the thing saying, “Ehh, go get a cashier, you’re fucked.”

But this time there was a register open. Not only was there a register open, there was another girl that was bagging my groceries, bagging my shit, in a fucking Walmart. Can you believe that? I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Then, not only did the greeter greet me when I walked in, he said goodbye to me. Have a nice day. I was like, holy shit. Maybe they’re friendly when the place is empty because they don’t have to deal with as much bullshit. But it was a pleasant experience at Walmart. It’s a first. It’s a first. It’s a monumental event.

Anyway, the only reason the place is empty is they’re calling for a really nasty storm today and everybody went out yesterday and got their stuff because they were freaking out and I’m just like, “Dude, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it.”

I don’t like being around crowds like that. I’ll eat some cans of tuna fish, right? I was out of chicken, out of steak, out of tilapia. Let me bust out the can opener and eat these cans of tuna fish and I fucking hate tuna. God, I hate tuna fish. But you know what? I would have rather eaten that than have dealt with the grocery stores yesterday. But anyway, I had a great experience today at Walmart.

All right, I’m going to touch on this more down the road once I’ve been on this protocol a little bit longer, but I did start TB500 and BPC-157. For those of you that don’t know, and I’m sure a lot of you do, these are peptides that are intended to rebuild tendons, connective tissues, cure arthritis, and just kind of fix you.

I tore my triceps three years ago and I had to have surgery. I’ve talked about this here and there. I don’t like dwelling on injuries, but the long and short of it is, it’s been a pain in the ass. It’s never come back 100% and it really gets annoying when you’re doing a set of presses and the right arm feels like the weight could just fly up. And then the left arm at the distal tendon attachment, right at the elbow, feels like a knife going in the elbow.

I’m just at the point where I’m sick of living on ibuprofen. I’m tired of dealing with the inflammation and the pain. It’s been a few years. I’ve tried other things. I’ve done the HGH route, I’ve done Deca. I’ve done everything but this. I’ve done massage therapy, the Grafton technique, ultrasound. You name it, I’ve fucking done it.

What happens is I’ll train and if it’s a day I’m doing a pressing movement or some light triceps work because I’m still not training triceps really, really heavy. I just do a lot of reps, I pump them up, and my arms are still pretty good size, actually. That’s why I know light training with hard contractions can benefit you, because I didn’t really lose that much size in that arm. It damn near looks close to the good arm, the right arm, but I’m still not happy with it and it’s aggravating.

It’s aggravating because it’s a double edged sword. If I go a little heavier that day, I pay for it. I come home, the tendons killing me that evening. I’m popping ibuprofen to try to get the swelling to go down.

So I’m doing a pretty aggressive protocol with BPC-157, which is supposed to be something that is beneficial if you inject at the site of the injury, and then the TB500, which is more like systemic. I’m doing them both and I’m going to run a pretty aggressive eight week protocol.

I’ve only been doing them for a few days, but I can tell you this much so far, a lot of places that you can get these things, there’s really no quality control. I opted for a place that there was. I’ve seen the lab results and whatnot. I’m not here to hand out sources. I’m just telling you that I felt comfortable with what I was getting. Within just a few days, I have noticed a reduction in inflammation.

I’m thinking about changing my training. I think what I’m going to do is I’m going back to a push day where I hit the light triceps work, chest presses with moderate weight. I still don’t do a lot with barbells, I can use dumbbells, but I have to change my form a little bit where I’m stopping three quarters of the way up, which I generally do anyway to keep tension on the muscle. But if I was to bring the dumbbells in, like to touch each other, which I really don’t anyway, but even if I bring them in just a little bit on accident, I feel it, man. That tendon starts aching.

So it’s been a lot of machines and Hammer strength machines and the Smith machine and Nautilus machines. It’s been a lot of that. It’s been a lot of training for pump, time under attention, but the stability of that arm kind of sucks after the tendon was reconnected. And I’m sick of it. And I’m like, “look, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it right, and I’m going to do it for eight weeks and see where it goes.”

So what I’m thinking about doing is doing a push day where the delts, the chest and the triceps are combined followed by possibly a day off or legs and then I’ll do the back and biceps. Most commonly it’s known as a push/pull split, but I’m going to do more like a push/pull, leg day, pull, off day, leg day, something like that, right? I just prioritize my legs.

I’ll do what I have to do to stay active to burn calories and be in the gym. But I’m really going to try to back off of that tendon and still stimulate it when I work it out, but give it a little more time in between because I don’t want to waste anything. Who wants to rebuild something just to further damage it?

But I will let you guys know more about how this is working for me as time goes on. And I’ll give you the lowdown on what I use for dosing, how often I did it and just the changes I’ve noticed.

So far though, I have noticed a slight reduction in inflammation. I can tell you that happened pretty quick. So I’m looking forward to what this brings in the future because I’m not going to stop training, man. Right?

Maybe the problem was I didn’t wait long enough to get back to training after the tendon was reattached. I was kind of a dumb ass. I was in the gym with my cast on stacking the pec deck. So my arm was stuck at like a 45 in the cast and I’m like, “hey, this works, let me do the pec deck.”

Within a month after that surgery, I think there was a day I belted out like 500 push ups that day. It wasn’t so painful that I couldn’t do it. It was annoying, but I just like to train. I was going crazy. I was going to crawl out of my skin if I couldn’t get in the gym. I’m not one of these guys that can just take a year lay off from the gym. I can’t do it.

On the plus side, my legs got really good because I prioritized the hell out of my legs. I experimented with some different ways to train my legs, different foot positions on the presses. I don’t really do barbell squats anymore, but I will do a good deep, slow Smith machine squat and kind of blast up out of the hole. I will do that.

I don’t go quite as heavy as I used to, I still can, but I don’t wrap my knees like I used to. I haven’t used knee wraps in years. Funny thing is, my knees are like the best joint in my body now. When I was barbell squatting, my knees hurt all the time. All the time. I had constant lower back pump but I always had knee pain. And funny enough, when I started changing my foot position around, especially on a leg press, changing it to the point where most people would look at it and be like “doesn’t that hurt your knees?”

No. I’m sure if I went like a couple of thousand pounds it would. But what it did is I think it built up some area in my quad closer to the knee to protect the knees. Like I said, my knees are one of my best joints now. It’d probably be better after this protocol with these peptides. I’m hoping.

So anyway, more on that to come. What I really want to get into this podcast though, is I want to talk about something that actually one of my training clients that I communicate with almost on a daily, really cool guy, 61 years old, he builds and races cars, he listens to death metal and he’s a really cool guy. He’s not like any other 61 year old dude I’ve ever worked with or know for that matter, but super great guy. And he brought up this idea for this podcast and I’ll give credit where credit is due.

He was talking about mid cycle changes – when you need to look at things and basically how you’re feeling and what they’re doing for you mid cycle and when you need to make those changes.

He was kind of going through it and he was having blood pressure issues with Deca and we just decided that wasn’t a good compound for him and we X’ed it out. Even on a lower amount he was having issues. Some people do. If you have blood pressure issues, Deca is not a good compound.

So we switched off to Equipoise and I started a new cycle myself. I front loaded the first two weeks with Equipoise. I say front loaded. I know most commonly people talk about front loading as like using a different compound. Like if they were going to front load a cycle with Test Prop, they would say run the first three or four weeks at 500, 700 milligrams a week of Prop and then drop it. If they were running, like say they run Test E or Cypionate behind it, then by that point it would already be kicked in and they would just continue on with their long chain Test. Okay?

Traditionally that’s what front loading is. With EQ, when I say front load, I used to run my EQ like this a lot where I would take more the first two weeks. So when it did kick in it banged it really hard. And then after that first two weeks I would lower it to say 600 a week.

I did that a lot in the past. When I had EQ that was dosed at say 200 milligrams per milliliter, I’d run 800 a week for the first two weeks. After that dropped to six, maybe four, but most commonly 600. 600 seemed like my sweet spot with Equipoise and I’ve done it before but it’s been a long time since I did it.

So this cycle I did it with some 300 mg EQ and knowing the place that it came from, it was probably a little bit over 300. So what I thought was 900 a week might have been more like a gram a week and I kept my Test at 200 a week. I’ve done this a lot in the past with 800 and then dropped to six.

This time though, it was hitting me different. I started feeling ill, I started feeling like death and I was wondering, “what in the fuck is going on?” I was running Winstrol tabs with it, another compound that it’s been a long time since I ran, but Winstrol works well with me, really well with me in the strength department actually.

And I know people say, “Why do you want to run Winstrol with its drying effects if you’re talking about your tendon and you’re running these peptides?” Well, I’m only running 25 a day of Winny and I’m not dried out to the point… I’m not low enough body fat yet to the point where it’s causing me joint issues.

But what I thought was happening is I thought that the Winstrol, I just don’t handle it well anymore. It’s an oral. Maybe it’s hitting my liver. Maybe that’s what’s got me feeling like this because it’s very hard… When you look at everything as a whole. Sometimes you just don’t know what’s what.

And like I said, I’d never felt this way before on Equipoise. Never. I think there was one time I ran EQ in the past where I felt a little anxiety from it but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. But other than that, nothing man. I’ve never had any crazy side effects. I always had good results from EQ.

I know some guys think EQ is a weak compound, but I think it’s a quality compound. I think the best one you could compare it to would be Primobolan, but maybe a little bit more on the way of side-effects as far as the red blood cell count that can become elevated.

And I was under the old belief that EQ does aromatize at about half the rate of Testosterone. Well, the literature and the lab work sometimes says two different things, and not everybody’s exactly the same when it comes to this. EQ has been known to crash estrogen. All right? And that’s what I was dealing with. I’m thinking to myself, it must be the Winny. So let me drop the Winstrol tabs for a few days. Let me see if I don’t come around.

The way I was feeling was I was feeling very flat, personality wise. I was out of my head. I wasn’t with it. It was almost like I had brain fog. It was like I was in an out of body experience. It was weird, but I didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel like myself, and I didn’t like that.

Now this only went on for a couple of weeks, maybe about a week, where it was like, bad, bad. But I would get to the point where I would go to the gym and I’d go through the motions, but I wasn’t into the workouts. It wasn’t like, “Fuck, yeah, I’m into it. I’m feeling that. Hell yeah, let’s hit this next set.” It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t want to be there, even though I was lifting a little bit heavier, not much heavier, because the cycle had kind of just begun, but somewhat heavier. I didn’t give a shit. I really just wasn’t into it, man. Something was off.

So I did some more research on Equipoise, and I started hearing some feedback that wasn’t synonymous with the literature on Equipoise. Then the more I thought about it, the more I said, “that’s exactly what you’re fucking dealing with. You crashed your damn estrogen.”

I’m running no anti-estrogens. I hardly ever run anti-estrogens, to be honest with you. We’ll get into anti-estrogens and my thoughts on anti-estrogens and how people are really going overboard with them later in this podcast. Part of the reason that they’re going overboard with them is they just got their dosing too damn high. They just do.

Especially when you’re considering people that are new to certain compounds or new to steroid cycles in general, where they don’t really know how something is going to react and they don’t know what’s what. This is another reason that I always tell people, you’re better off starting a little bit lower. If you’ve ran Test before as your first cycle, and it’s two or three cycles down the road and you want to throw in another compound, leave it Test and one other compound.

There’s no reason to use Test and Deca and Dbol and Tren, because things can happen. You can feel off. Your nipples start getting irritated and itchy and shit, and you don’t fucking know what’s what. Is it prolactin induced gyno? Is it estrogen induced gyno? Is it lethargy from heavy orals? Is it stress from growing and what your body’s going through?

That’s one thing, and I’m not trying to get off a tangent, sometimes it’s hard for me to stay on track. The most common side effect of any cycle that I’ve ever had is lethargy. Whether that’s lethargy from the body taking in a hormone in an abundance, or the body making changes and growing.

Think about it. You’re lifting, a lot of times, heavier weights than you would normally be lifting. Even if you’re dieting, you have these hormones that are making you stronger than you would be without them, despite your caloric deficit. What the fuck is it? You don’t know what it is.

Okay, this cycle, I had three things:

I had testosterone in a TRT amount, which I will probably not do again. Front loading EQ, that damn high. That was my issue.

I had oral Winstrol. I don’t take injectable Winstrol. Fuck that. The only way I’ll take injectable Winstrol is if it’s oil based. I’ve only had one or two decent experiences with injectable water based Winstrol, but for the most part, those shots will fuck you up.

I think 90% of infections can come back to injectable Winny. It’s just the particulates in the water get trapped in the muscle fibers. Most of the time, there’s really no way around it unless somebody really, really knows what they’re doing when they put it together, and they’ve put together a ton of Winstrol, and they know how to mitigate that. It’s just not a compound I like to gamble with in an injectable sense.

So I was taking test, oral Winstrol and Equipoise. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, right? Oh, and I’ve been running Cardarine too, but I was using that before I jumped on the cycle, and I never felt off from that. If anything, I felt more energetic from Cardarine, and I feel good with it.

So long story short, I had to really look at everything. I had to lay everything out and say, all right, there’s two things I’m going to do right here immediately.

The first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to drop the tabs for a few days and see if I don’t come around. Guess what? I didn’t come around. It wasn’t the tabs. So I started it again few days later because it’s not the problem. They’re orals. They’re in and out of you. Right? You would start kind of coming around for a little bit better pretty quick if that was the issue.

I said, “well, you know, it’s 25 milligrams a day. I am on a liver protectant. Is there some liver damage going on here?” Maybe slightly, but it hasn’t been a long time that I’ve been on this, and I’m only on 25 a day. I just don’t think that’s it. My last labs look great as far as my liver values were concerned. I just don’t think that’s it.” It wasn’t like I started off with ALT and AST numbers that were fucking 100 or 150. So I resumed that.

I said, “all right, what am I going to do with crashed estrogen?” I didn’t have the joint pain issue yet, which I was surprised I didn’t, but I didn’t. Commonly people with really, really crashed estrogen. they have joint pain and I’ve been there. It’s just been a long time. I haven’t crashed my estrogen in a long time because usually I have a system and I have these compounds that I’ll rotate in and out and I know what I’m doing and I’m very experienced with them.

But this time was different. So I said, you know what, I’m going to hit some HCG. Because I know HCG with the stimulation of the LH and FSH production does cause a little bit of estrogen elevation, which in this sense might be good.

So I hit some HCG. I didn’t go crazy with it. I did 2000 units a week for the first two weeks. And then going into my third week, which I’m about to go into my third week in a couple of days, I’m going to go to 500 a week.

But I’ve straightened it out because I got some Test Prop. Prop is fast acting. And I said it was too much of an offset. Way too much of an offset. 200 a week of Test Cypionate to… let’s say 900 to a gram a week of EQ. Just way too off, way too off. And like I said, I used to handle it fine. I never had this issue, but sometimes things change.

I used to love Dbol. Dbol did me great in my twenties. I can’t run it anymore. I feel like shit on Dbol. I have no appetite. I feel like crap. If anything, my workouts are worse on Dbol than when I’m not on it. But in my twenties, oh my God, I was a tank when I was running Dbol.

Is it a bad compound? It depends on who you are. I’m not a fan of it now, but there’s people that run test and Dbol and look fantastic. There’s fuckers that take Dbol and they’re dieting. Not many, but there’s some people that do and they look great.

So I came in with a Prop, 300 a week of the Prop. Now, when I go over my TRT dosing, If I’m going to around 500 a week of test as opposed to the 200 a week TRT that I’m normally on. I just like to do it with Prop.

Now let me get into the anti-E deal. I like to do it with Prop because I don’t like to use a lot of anti-estrogens and I feel like the longer esters have the ability to aromatize more, and I feel like if something does happen, you’re stuck with it for a couple of weeks.

I don’t like the water retention from high test. I’m not a high test guy. I’m still not a high Test guy. Even though I crashed my estrogen, I’m pretty sure that’s what I did. I crashed the shit out of my fucking estrogen. I’m not a high test guy.

So what I did is I kind of gritted and bared it out for the two weeks when I was taking the higher amount of EQ. Some of this shit, it just takes time. It just takes time. Even if you try to mitigate the sides and correct it, which is what I was trying to do with the HCG and the additional 300 a week of the Propionate, it still takes time.

But the good news for me is I recognized it quickly. I knew I had to make a change. So I’m talking mid cycle changes or changes during the cycle. At this point it wasn’t mid. It was kind of in the beginning.

All right, I’m going to raise the test and I’m going to lower the EQ. As a matter of fact, my original plan was to drop from 900 to 600. Although I do feel like the EQ is a little more than 300. I know it is. I know it is. I haven’t felt this way before in the past. I know it’s a higher amount. I dropped it to, on paper, 450 a week instead of the 600 I was originally going to do.

Because here’s the thing. If you feel like fucking shit, I don’t give a damn how you look. I don’t care what your performance is like in the gym. It is not worth it, man. Life is too damn short to be feeling like fucking crap. When you’re feeling so ill that you’re in the gym and you should be enjoying what you’re doing, that’s your release, you should be getting into the workouts… If I can’t get into the workouts, it’s not benefiting me that much.

So the difference is some people are committed and they don’t give a damn how they feel because this is what they ordered for their cycle and they are going to see it out. Side effects or not, feeling like shit or not, they are going to see it out.

I was one of those guys in the past when I was stupid and I was younger and my money wasn’t as good and gear was harder to come by, I committed. I remember this one time I took some 500 milligram Testosterone Enanthate. Stupid shit. Don’t ever fucking do it. Don’t ever use 500 milligram test. I’m telling you, if you do, I’m going to be here to tell you ‘I told you so’ because you’re a fucking dumb ass. It is going to light you up. It is going to light you up.

I had like half of a basketball sticking out of my ass. It was so bad that I couldn’t even lay down on a bench press flat comfortably because one of my ass cheeks was raised and red and sore. You know, I did the following week? I had another fucking shot of the shit and I think the third week I had another shot of the shit. Now, that one I ended up coming around and thinking just toss that shit in the trash. It was just too unbearable.

But I have had stuff in the past that like, God Almighty, man. I was just in pain the entire 10 to 12 week cycle. Was there legitimacy to the compound? I’m sure there was, but it was dirty. It was put together wrong. Somebody used too much benzyl alcohol or something, or there’s too much hormone per concentration of oil. Because that can do it, too. And usually when you start getting higher with a lot of those compounds, they have to add Ethyl oleate to it, or EO for short, to cut down on that bite and EO is not good to put in your body.

But I used to be that guy until I realized life is too damn short to feel like shit. There can come a point with some of this shit when your results will be worse using it because your body is trying to fight something off. It is trying to repair something. It is trying to fix something that is not right with itself from where you injected bad shit or too much of something or you had something and your ratio is off.

It’s all about a ratio. It’s about a ratio of estrogen to testosterone. Men need some estrogen. You do need some. You don’t want it high, but you want to have some. Because I’ll tell you this much, man. Crashed estrogen I think is almost worse than low testosterone. I really do, man.

One of the only times it’s really been low was when I was trying to qualify for TRT and I came off doing it myself and went through the next six or eight weeks feeling like ass. I felt pretty shitty. I had anxiety. I didn’t have much of a libido. I felt pretty bad, but I did not feel out of my fucking head like with crashed estrogen. Crashed estrogen, I think it’s almost worse than low test. You just feel ill. With low test, I didn’t really feel ill. I felt out of it. I didn’t really feel like myself.

But a lot of guys get used to it. I always say the same thing. You’re too close to the forest to see the trees. I know you guys heard me say that time and time again, but it’s the best analogy that I could come up with, because you learn to live with it, I guess. But this is different, right? Crashed estrogen is like, “I need to fix this shit.” It was the weirdest thing, man.

Let’s say I was walking through a parking lot and there was somebody following me with a fucking gun. I wouldn’t even notice it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I wasn’t aware of my surroundings. I wasn’t there. In my head, I wasn’t there, and I knew something was wrong. And my wife’s like, “you’re not acting like yourself.” I was like, “Yeah, I know. Something’s off. I’m going to fix it. It’s not going to take long. I’m going to fix it.” And I did fix it. I fixed that shit within a matter of one week.

I came in with a Prop. I think the HCG did help to some degree, but here’s where a lot of guys go wrong. When they do try to correct something, they over correct. That’s something else you have to be careful of, is over correcting. Some people might just say, “oh, fuck, man, I got to get my estrogen up. I’ve crashed it. So I’m going to run a shit ton of HCG.” Right?

I know with HCG, one important thing is you don’t want to introduce too much into one shot. You want to space it out. I myself would not pop 2500 units of HCG in one injection. I wouldn’t. Some people do. I would space it out. There’s nothing wrong with 2500 units a week, but I would do, say, 1250 on a Monday, 1250 on a Thursday. Small. It’s better to err on the side of a little less than to just do something all at once, introduce something into your body all at once, and all of a sudden something happens.

I’ve never had gyno. I’ve never had gyno before in my life from anything. That’s the least of my worries. I’ve never even had itchy fucking nipples on a cycle, never. Part of the reason is I’m probably less prone to it, but I try not to go overboard with shit. I don’t. That EQ front load. Yeah, that was probably overboard with shit. But still, all things considered, if you factor that in with the 200 a week of test and 25 a day of Winstrol, it’s not a lot compared to what some people run.

90% of the time I live by the ‘no more than 1 gram a week per total gear’ rule. That’s all things combined under 1000 milligrams a week. Sometimes I go over a little. I have gone over a lot in the past. Not a lot or maybe about twice that much. I don’t think I’ve ever ran more than 2 grams a week of gear ever in my life and that, for me, was high. I don’t need to.

Maybe there are certain things that I don’t handle as well in high amounts. Some guys can run a gram or 2 grams a week of test and they feel fantastic. I am not one of them. If I go to a gram a week of test, the opposite happens of what you think would happen when you load somebody up with testosterone. My sex drive goes away. I feel lethargic. I feel shitty. I don’t feel awake enough to really want to go to the gym. That’s what happens. But I know myself. I know that’s what happens.

But as time goes on, like I said earlier in this podcast, different people can respond to things differently. The same person that could handle Trenbolone at 500 milligrams a week a couple of years ago may want to murder somebody on it now. Maybe their body just doesn’t want to do it now.

So as much of a committed guy as I am, as much of a disciplined person as I am, what is the point of doing any of this if you cannot enjoy your fucking life? What is the point of looking good if you can’t look in the mirror and see it because you feel ill? It doesn’t matter.

If you’re dieting really hard, okay? And this is not a point that I suggest most people get to, but anyone that’s getting ready for something just needs a goal. Maybe they’re going to compete. That last four or six weeks before that is misery. They’re not enjoying life.

But when you look back on the pictures and whatnot, you’d be like, “Damn. Damn, dude, that was me. Holy shit, I looked awesome.” You don’t feel that same way, though, when you’re going through it. But you persevered. You hit the goal. You can look back on it, and it’s great.

If you’re not getting ready for anything and this is just a lifestyle that you enjoy. You like being in the gym. You like living a healthy lifestyle. You like trying to eat clean. What in the hell is the point of staying on something… in either a combination of shit, an off ratio of shit, or a bad choice of compound that’s going to make you feel like death? There’s no point in doing that at all. No point at all. Like I said, life is too short for it.

Luckily for me, I recognized it. I made the changes. I wasn’t so overboard in anything. Other than feeling like ass, I really didn’t have any side effects, but some people do. One of the mistakes I see a lot of guys doing now is they’re living on anti estrogens or AI, aromatase inhibitors, and it’s not good to take those things in an abundance. It really isn’t. If you’re on TRT and your estrogen levels come in normal range with no AIs, why the fuck would you take an AI? It’s pointless.

But what a lot of guys do is when they raise the doses of everything, it’s like they’re rolling the dice. “How much AI? How much AI should I use?” I don’t know. Everybody’s different.

“Should I use 1mg day of a Anastrozole? Should I use half milligram a day? Should I use half a milligram three times a week? What do I do? I don’t know. Let me shake a stick and try this out.” Then before they know it, they don’t feel right. Something’s off. They’ve either used too much or they haven’t used enough.

So, there’s a lot more guesswork involved and you know what? Not everybody is getting lab work every two weeks. Most guys are getting labs every 12 weeks or every 24 weeks. You know why? Because lab work is expensive and even if you have insurance, insurance is only going to cover lab work so often, at least to my knowledge.

Labs are great if you have the financial means to constantly get labs, but you can’t always go off of that. If your lab work is scheduled in another month and you’ve crashed your estrogen now, you may not be in a position to go get lab work right now. All you can do is go with your gut or your knowledge and your research of what you think it might be. And the more shit that’s in the mix, the more ‘what ifs’ you’re all over the map.

As long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve been bodybuilding for close to 27 years now, I’ve been gearing up for around 21 years. Most of the time I cycle, I still only run test and one other compound and I look pretty damn good. I don’t need to use a ton of shit.

A, I’m more concerned about my health now. I’ll be 42 in two days, so happy birthday to me.

And B, the size game is pretty much done with. I’ve said this before a ton of times. It’s constant refinement and I really do care more about how I feel now. More than anything, I want to feel good. I’ll have periods where I’m cutting really hard and I’ll bring it back down to a single digit body fat. But if I could be 225, 230, let’s say 10%, 11%, just have a really good look, and walk around like that all the time, still be able to do things with my family, still be able to enjoy the little moments and not be so out of it, or so ill that I can’t, I’m winning.

I’ve seen so many guys, they come and go with this shit. It’s like a flash in a pan, man. It’s like when they were on top and they were looking sick for that year or two that they competed or were in the gym before they let life derail them and they fucking quit. Yeah, they were great, but longevity is the key.

I like this lifestyle. I want to stay involved in this lifestyle. Part of the reason I’m running TB500 and BPC-157, I kind of look at it as like a total body healing attempt, right? Take my arthritis away, make me whole again. Fix my fucking elbows. My elbows have kind of gotten shitty over the years. Even the one that I didn’t detach, it’s still a little arthritic. And I’ve run some joint supplements, but they only do so much. The joint powders, the Animal Flex, and some of the other joint formulas, the Glucosamine… it only does so much, so I figured I’d try this.

But yeah, what’s the point? I can still run minimal shit and like I said, I hadn’t used EQ in a while. I lean more towards Nandrolone. I’m a huge Deca fan. I fucking love Deca. I love Deca. I like NPP even more, depending on what I’m trying to do.

If I’m just trying to run something for joint properties and sense of well-being, I do have a better sense of well-being when I run Deca despite what a lot of people tell you about Deca, and it makes my libido higher. It’s weird. I don’t notice the erectile dysfunction with Deca unless I was to take it, like, a lot higher than the test. Typically I can take Nandrolone a couple of hundred milligrams higher than my test. I really don’t have an issue like that. But this time I said, “you know what? You’ve run Nandrolone enough. Let’s switch off to Equipoise and see what that does.” And yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. I crashed a shit out of my damn estrogen within the first two weeks of it, but I’m out of the woods now.

So the thing is this, man, where it really gets complicated is if you’re running something that promotes prolactin buildup and estrogen conversion at the same time. So let’s say you’re running Tren and Test enanthate or Sustanon. I feel like the estrogen is even worse with Sustanon because you do have some even longer estrogen there. It just kind of builds up more. It can convert more. Then it’s like now all of a sudden, you start getting irritated nipples. It’s like, “well, what the fuck is it?”

Well, the first thing a lot of people want to gravitate to is an AI. But it might not be it. It might be the Tren that’s doing it. Could be the Deca that’s doing it if you’re running a Deca. Deca and Tren, I’m sure a lot of you guys do know, but that can be a different type of gyno. Anostrozole, or trade name Arimadex, or Aromasin might not do shit for that. You might need Cabergoline or Pramipexole.

Guess what? Those two aren’t good to stay on, okay? That’s the problem. See, they can cause damage too. They’re good to use short term to mitigate the issue, but the real answer is you need to lower the amount or possibly consider a different compound.

There are just certain compounds that do not work well with some people. Some guys can’t handle Test Prop, the smoothest Prop in the world, they can’t handle it. It just lights them up. Their body just doesn’t react well to it. I don’t really have an issue with Prop, but I know plenty of guys, they could pull a freaking milliliter out of the same vial I’m drawing from and all of a sudden they’re fucking lit up.

Well, if you want to stay on that and deal with that kind of pain and be a dumb ass, be my guest, but it’s not worth it. It’s just not worth it to be in that pain, right?

And here’s the thing – Good gear doesn’t cause pain, for the most part. If you’re running something and you stick that shit in your body and it’s lighting you up and it’s swollen and it’s red or hot to the touch, chances are you got some trash that you’re putting in your body. What I would do is throw that fucking trash in the trash and find a better place.

So that’s all I got for you guys today. Ask yourselves, if you feel like crap, is it worth it?

And in my case, how much better would I look? I’m at the point where a few hundred milligrams more here or less doesn’t make that big of a difference for me anymore. Most of my growing days, I think, are coming to an end. My goals are different.

Let’s say I was running 2 or 3 grams of gear a week as opposed to a gram, I’m not really going to look that much better, sometimes maybe not any better at all.

Sometimes too much gear makes you look fucking worse. It does. I know nobody wants to believe me on that, but sometimes too much shit will make you look worse because you’re dealing with more things, more factors, more side effects.

It can fuck up your performance in the gym. There’s a ton of shit that will do this, guys. HGH. Everybody says it’s the miracle drug, the fucking anti-aging drug. Eat whatever you want and burn fat. Yeah, that’s bullshit. That’s bullshit. You can believe that if you want to. Go ahead, take a bunch of growth and eat whatever you want and see what happens.

But, You could take a lot of growth, now all of a sudden you can’t stay awake, you’re lethargic, your fucking hands can’t even grip a barbell because your carpal tunnel is so bad. Your sleep goes to shit. It’s waking you up in the middle of the night. Is that healthy? What is that doing for you? It’s probably making you feel like shit. Is it worth it? Is it worth it?

I don’t know if you guys have ever talked to somebody that’s a really big guy. I’m talking 200 and 300 pounds, professional bodybuilder. Some of these guys, you try talking to them, it’s like talking to a fucking zombie. They’re not even there. They’re not there. You know why they’re not there? Because the shit has them so thrown off, they don’t even probably remember their fucking name. It does that. These things can change you.

And I really feel like.. Look, I’m not saying I’m natural, and I’m not saying that being natural is cool, because it’s definitely fucking not. Haha. But what I am saying is I think that the body wants to feel somewhat like itself and I feel like if you do have a little bit of that there and the body still can operate kind of more normally, like the way it wants to function…

I don’t know if I’m explaining this in a good way or not. I feel like the results and the benefits can be even more. It’s doing more with less is really what it is and that’s just the camp I come from. That’s what I’m about.

So, if you’re having an issue with something, I want you to take a step back. I want you to look at everything as a whole. I want you to use your fucking brain and ask yourself, “Is it worth it? Is there something I need to change?”

Never mind the fact that you still have two vials of this left over and you feel like if you fucking quit now, you’re wasting it. You’re wasting your life away by staying the course of something that’s making you feel not right. All right? You’re wasting it.

I hate to say it like that, wasting your life away, but really, you are. You’re not present. You’re not there. You’re not in the moment. Things you should be having a good time doing, going to your kids ball games, birthday party, whatever…

You don’t have to eat fucking cake. You don’t have to eat any hot dogs, but what I’m saying is, damn, wouldn’t it be nice to actually be present? To not be sitting there watching a ball game on the bleachers, just thinking to yourself, “What the fuck is wrong with me? I feel like shit. Well, maybe I need to do this or that. I know what I can do. I can come in with this…”

Who the fuck wants to go through that shit all the time? It’s not worth it. Use your heads.

As always, train hard. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, this is JD. I’m out.