A word of advice to you newbie hard gainers

**grumpee** · 04-04-2011, 10:59 PM

Lately I have been seeing many new members posting and asking for advice on running a cycle because they can't gain any muscle. Yeah a large majority of them are either not eating correctly or enough or not working out correctly. But a small percentage of you might be suffering from low test levels. I see it all the time in the TRT/HRT forums. If you think your eating correctly and lifting right and you still can not gain anything over a period of time you might consider going to get your test levels checked before jumping into running a cycle. Because if you just jump in and pin 500 mgs of test for 10-12 weeks, run a PCT you run a good chance of having a even lower test level after your PCT after your natural test production kicks back in. I'm just saying find the root of the problem before making it worse.

I for example was one of them.

The first 26-27 years of my life I was in extremely awesome shape . Had good muscle mass, low body fat and more than enough strength. Worked physical labor since I could walk until I hit 26-27 years old when I got promoted to a desk job then after that opened up my own company. I worked 6-7 days a week, 10-15 hours a day. I ate like crap and never got exercise. Well I put on a good 60 plus pounds of fat over the next 5 years.

In July of 2009 I said enough is enough. I was always tired, did not sleep but maybe 4-5 hours a night and got IBS really bad. So I decided to get back in the gym and start eating correctly before it was to late. I dropped 60 plus pounds of fat and started bulking again to get my old self back. Well after many months in the gym lifting my ass off and eating like a horse . I was getting frustrated because I was not gaining any muscle and my lifts were not going up. Decided to get blood work and discovered my total test was like 291 on a scale of 280-900. After asking my Dr for help he said my test levels were fine and tried giving me some antidepressants and denied me TRT. After a few weeks of doing more research on this board I decided to self prescribe myself TRT. I starting pinning 200 mgs a week and my whole life changed for the better. I started packing on mass again, my lifts were going up, I was sleeping better, my IBS was gone and my sex drive had really came back. That was a year ago this month.

I Am by no means condoning putting your self on TRT but before you go jumping balls deep in to a AAS cycle at least try to go about finding the root cause of your problem.

Just thought this might be helpful to a few of you new members out there is why I posted my story. AAS is not for everyone .

**grumpee** · 04-04-2011, 11:03 PM

Again I would like to add that the percent is low who have low test and its a high percent for diet related. Trust me I have seen a lot of your diets and I cut on way more cals than some of you bulk on. Don't even get me started on the macros either, lol...

**Honkey_Kong** · 04-05-2011, 01:08 AM

Grumpee, I think people should before they run a cycle get their test levels checked. If nothing more than to see where they should be after PCT (so they know if they're recovered). But this could also spot potential problems like you pointed out. But I doubt many people run blood-work before or after their cycles like they should.