Could testosterone be hurting gains - bear with me here

[GSXRvi6]

This is just an observation and out loud thinking, I've just observed something odd in my own body, had a buddy observe something similar, and have been reading about the old school body builders and how many of them used very little to no testosterone (I'm not suggesting no testosterone cycles).

I'm thinking this through as I type so I apologize if it appears as a long winded ramble.

Observations on doses:
On two different occasions I have ran a low dose of Primo and Tren on top of my TRT and got results, FAR less that what many guys on here say to run, 200mg of Primo per week and around 100mg of tren per week (not together). I've also never taken more than 40mg of var per day or 30mg of winny per day so I assumed many people on here have bad gear, don't respond to it, or are full of it. When messing with new gear (new lab or type) I also take a really low dose to see how I respond to it before I decided to add it in to a full cycle (I'm on TRT and do not PCT).

My last "good" cycle I ran low amounts of test, tren, and var, the results were steller and sides were low. I was getting compliments in the gym, people noticed and said so. Shortly after things went to hell at work and I put on a bunch of fat (long hours, catered unhealthy food etc.) but I retained almost all my strength I gained from the cycle, I lost a couple of reps here and there that was it.

I'm still recovering from a pretty wicked injury and surgery from about 2 years ago so I've been taking it easy, but recently I decided I'm healed enough to start pushing again, so I decided on a very aggressive cycle, 1 gram of test, 600mg of npp (I tolerate 19-nors well especially NPP) and some DBOL at the start (normal support, DA, AI etc), crazy amount of gear, I respond well to low amounts it was time to dip my toe in the big dose water and see if these big amounts worked better, an experiment to see if the hype was real, I figured worse case I can back it down if things went south or come off all together.

Well it sucked. My results sucked too.

I thought my NPP must have been bunk, which didn't make sense because the source/lab had worked so well before. I wasn't getting anything from it, the long lasting NPP pumps, night sweats, anything (NPP gives me mild night sweats). I dropped the NPP and Dbol (I was holding some water but not real bad, using plenty of AI) and switched to the big gun pulled out the tren ace. 200mg, nothing, 400 mg, nothing, 500mg, some mild results... what the hell. This was the same tren that worked so well the time before at minimal doses!

And the acne, holy crap worst ever. I'm normally a fanatic about taking care of my skin while on cycle so much so my skin gets clearer just because I take so much better care of it, no matter what I did it got worse, this was several weeks in so I decided to abort, no point in running bloods or finishing it out, I was getting sides and almost no benefit throwing down quite a bit of gear which isn't free so I started backing down all of my doses (stepping down vs all at once down to TRT).

Then something magical happened -

As I stepped everything down, when I got below 500mg of test it's like the tren "turned on" - strength started shooting up quick, got the "tren look" (yall that know what I mean know what I mean), I was over 10 weeks in with crappy results and the last couple of weeks it was like a rocket was lit under me - and I was taking WAY less gear.

Long story short, experimented with lots of gear, results sucks, sides were bad, complete waste but I learned a few things, and I'm left with some questions.

Theory as to why the results were so poor:

I was using WAY too much test (too much of everything in general but test was the nail in the tire) -

In my mind, the binding affinity of tren is so much better than test, that there should be no competition going on, regardless of the amount of test the tren should be able to do it's job for a number of reasons.

What I think happened (I have no proof, this is a gut feel). All that test was floating around free with nothing to do, since I was using lots of AI that left plenty of test to be converted to DHT - which has a crazy high binding affinity, I've read it's affinity is 5X higher than testosterone, enough to be competition for compounds like NPP and even Tren.

All that DHT lead to large amounts of acne, hence my worst ever acne breakout.

As I lowered my gear doses at some point my DHT levels fell low enough the tren was able to start doing it's job.

I talked to a buddy who knows a guy that did a cycle with no test and the results were way better than expected (again not saying it should be done). That got me thinking the reason a lot of guys on here need a lot of gear is because they use test as their base and use way too much, so they have to up their other compounds to compensate.

I'm going to run an experiment on my next cycle - I'm going to run 200mg of test on my next cycle, I bet I will have less sides and better results. Maybe you need a gram of test if your packing the mass of Ronnie but I'm thinking too much test resulted in too much DHT killed my cycle. When I do my mid cycle blood work I"m going to check DHT, I've never ran that test before and now I wish I had the results from this botched cycle to compare.

Anyone else ever experience something similar? Is my theory too far off base?

Are the guys running large doses of Test also running large doses of 5a inhibitors to keep DHT in check?

[MuscleScience]

I don't run test at all, to many sides.

Plus the compounds are competing for space on the same Androgen receptors. This is how some classes of cancer drugs work, by blocking Estrogen (SERMs) in women, and DHT in men (SARMS ).

I'm not sure I see the need tbh.

[InternalFire]

Interesting indeed, I recall from reading and researching regards the amount of gear that is optimal, its not easy to find out, in general - too much gear - more sides, sufficient or lesser amount of gear - good/great results and less sides. Most from what I found was all personal people reports that leads to conclusion of trial and error. The main part is that - there is specific amount of receptors and when these get saturated by one of the dominating compounds body naturally dumps/converts the overflow of whatever extra compound present not required to something else. If I get it right, its the receptor binding competition that is happening when two or more compounds are present. To my understanding, over time when the mass is gained via blast and cruise method (or one was on TRT and cycled on and off remaining on TRT dose) the amount of receptors present in the body increases, hence the tolerance for greater amount of compounds.

I don't run test at all, to many sides.

Plus the compounds are competing for space on the same Androgen receptors. This is how some classes of cancer drugs work, by blocking Estrogen (SERMs) in women, and DHT in men (SARMS ).

I'm not sure I see the need tbh.

Care to elaborate more? If you dont run test as a base, introducing other compounds shuts your HPTA down while on cycle, so how do you respond not having optimal levels of test while on cycle (having crashing natural test levels throughout the cycle)?

Do you want to say that you make a complete use of whatever natural test you have circulating in your body while running specific compound for a short time and then do PCT to restart your natural test production to return to baseline or do you run HCG /Clomid during the cycle to keep the natural test production stimulated?

[MuscleScience]

Interesting indeed, I recall from reading and researching regards the amount of gear that is optimal, its not easy to find out, in general - too much gear - more sides, sufficient or lesser amount of gear - good/great results and less sides. Most from what I found was all personal people reports that leads to conclusion of trial and error. The main part is that - there is specific amount of receptors and when these get saturated by one of the dominating compounds body naturally dumps/converts the overflow of whatever extra compound present not required to something else. If I get it right, its the receptor binding competition that is happening when two or more compounds are present. To my understanding, over time when the mass is gained via blast and cruise method (or one was on TRT and cycled on and off remaining on TRT dose) the amount of receptors present in the body increases, hence the tolerance for greater amount of compounds. Care to elaborate more? If you dont run test as a base, introducing other compounds shuts your HPTA down while on cycle, so how do you respond not having optimal levels of test while on cycle (having crashing natural test levels throughout the cycle)? Do you want to say that you make a complete use of whatever natural test you have circulating in your body while running specific compound for a short time and then do PCT to restart your natural test production to return to baseline or do you run HCG/Clomid during the cycle to keep the natural test production stimulated?

Shut down is shut down, if you run a compound that is like Tren and has something like 100000x the binding affinity that DHT has, how could DHT ever hope to bind. In Chemisty if you mix two compounds into a solution. The strongest binding compound must be out dosed by the same factor that it is out competed by. (generally speaking of course)

For example carbon monoxide has a binding affinity 200x great than Oxygen in the hemoglobin molecule. Because of this strong association it is released at a very slow rate and effectively blocks oxygen from binding. It takes administration of 100% oxygen to slowly reverse the effects. Atmospheric oxygen is basically 21%, so you can see the example.


My rational is, for me. For test to have any effect on my body in a positive way. I would need to run test at least as high or higher than say Tren to get any positive benefit. My thinking is a trt dosage would be virtually worthless but would carry all the same associated sides as test. Because you have all that outbound Test floating around getting converted to estrogen or even unbound intra cellular DHT perhaps.

I know running an AI prevents that, but then you get the sides of that. At what point is the risk verses benefit to much?

[MuscleScience]

Do you want to say that you make a complete use of whatever natural test you have circulating in your body while running specific compound for a short time and then do PCT to restart your natural test production to return to baseline or do you run HCG/Clomid during the cycle to keep the natural test production stimulated?

To answer the second part, running HCG or clomid is probably a good idea to keep you Gonads and adrenals pumping out T. But then again, what good does it do? Clomid and HCG give me horrible sides, so there is no point for me to run them. If my goal is to maximize results and minimize negative effects.

If I run Deca at 400mg/week or Tren at 300mg per week. I get really great results but only minimal amounts of night sweats. If I add test and all the other stuff in there. I get horrible sides and no added benefit. But then again I'm kinda a pussy anyway...lol