3 Weeks On/3 Weeks Off

The infamous and influential sprint coach Charlie Francis had his athletes (including Ben Johnson) on low-dose, oral-only cycles for 3 weeks, followed by a 3 week break, followed by another cycle, and so on. The theory was that the HPTA wouldn't experience serious suppression within the 3 week cycle, and then could bounce back fairly quickly in the 3 week recovery period. "Low-dose" was like 10-30mg of dbol a day.

Query 1: How long could you do this without experiencing major suppression and need a longer recovery period/PCT? 12 weeks (3 cycles)? Less? More?

Query 2: How much would adding low-dose, short-estered testosterone as a base impact the amount of suppression during cycles this short?

I sprint too. I tried to run Winny 40mg/ED like this and gave up after only a week - my joints hurt too bad. Then I waited a few weeks and did it with Anavar 40mg/ED for a full 3 weeks. Again, my joints hurt like hell, presumably from the anti-estrogen effect of the Var (my estrogen is naturally very low). Pain went away in about 2-3 weeks. The week after the cycle, my mood was foul but my libido was fine - so I, again, chalk up the mood disturbances to an estrogen crash.

So I'd like to try to add just a bit of test prop to the mix this time, just so I can have some extra test aromatizing to estrogen to counteract the anti-e properties of the orals. But I want to know if I have to stretch out the PCTs significantly longer.

PS: I was extremely impressed with the strength and speed gains from just 3 weeks on 40mg/Var. Also, many many thanks to DocToxin for recommending MDHT, which is simply incredible as a race-day addition.

Bump.

I suspect the correct answer to my second question is "suppression rates will vary significantly from person to person, no way to predict it, get your bloods."

I also imagine I'll get "always use a test base, no matter what, and while you're at it run a real 12 week test-only cycle @ 500mg/week." Not interested in that though.

My thoughts:

Option A:
* 40mg Var ED
* 50mg Test Prop EOD
* 3 weeks on, 5 weeks off, 3 cycles

Option B:
* 40mg Var ED
* 150mg Test E, 1x a week
* 3 weeks on, 5 weeks off, 3 cycles


I'm a noob and I'm not very intelligent. However, my appreciation of this stuff is that (1) all exogenous AAS are suppressive, (2) higher levels of AAS increase the rate of suppression/shutdown. So shorter, lighter cycles = fewer gains but also = easier recovery.

I think I recovered my HPTA function fairly quickly with the 3 week oral-only stuff. I'm just curious if adding testosterone to the mix, even at replacement dose, is going to dramatically change the recovery time. I'm super conservative about this stuff since I'm already on clomid full-time for hypogonadism and clearly have a rather fragile HPTA.