Note: I am not, nor am going to use steroids. I am not seeking illegal information here.
Is it necessary to continue to take steroids if a person does not want to loose muscle mass? I know that it eventually supplants most of your naturally produced hormone, so would any gains made be lost if someone were to immediately stop taking the drugs? What if they slowly tapered off?
I disagree to an extent.
They will of course lose, or reduce, from the peak, but you will still keep some of the gain. It is not as if the only thing that is giving your muscles mass is the steroids themselves. Steroids accelerate the building of muscle mass, but you still have to build it. Once built, a lot of it stays. Otherwise put, if you now lift 100lbs, then do a few cycles of steroids while exercising and eating and get to lifting 200lbs- once you stop you are not going to go back down to 100lbs. What you do go down to will depend on your genetics and future exercising routine. You could even surpass 200lbs without them if you continue to exercise heavily and eat right, etc. They just accelerate, they don’t do the work for you.
I worked for a medical delivery company, and we delivered prescriptions too. The owner wasn’t the most ethical of people, to say the least. He always had spare drugs around. Anywho, he and another worker got their hands on some steroids and started an exercise routine, took the 'roids for only 1 cycle, and then stopped. The before and after pictures were impressive, and they kept most of the mass they built up (lugging xray trays up 5 flights of steps does give you a workout). They also said that afterwards they didn’t notice any negative effects and yada yada yada. I have been tempted to do it, but I never have.
-Tcat
Well it depends. A good deal of the stereotypical post-steroid muscle loss is due to poor post cycle planning. You can’t just load your body up with artificial testosterone levels (which cause your bodies estrogen and cortisol levels to go awry too) then quit overnight w/o because your body won’t produce any natural testosterone and you still have tons of cortisol and estrogen floating around in your system. However if a person uses post cycle therapy that is a different story, they can slowly nurture their body back to an almost normal hormonal level over 4 weeks.
I would say if you are not past your ‘genetic limit’ (whatever that means) in regards to how much muscle you can gain and maintain and you have competent post cycle therapy you should keep most or all of what you gain. Especially if its a first or second cycle.
If you can keep intake modest, and gradually come off a cycle, you can minimize the effects.
You don’t ‘lose muscle’, and sometimes **you don’t lose strength directly ** as a result. However, it is common for steroids to be abused, which can lead to one’s body cutting back on testosterone producton (maybe permanently). When it takes a while to get test production back up, you could lose strength.
My experience is this: Scaling back and coming off gradually minimizes the impact. However, the psychological barriers might be the worst. For 6-10 weeks, everything was about more, faster, better, bigger. Post steroids, it’s about accepting a 5-10% loss, which stills equals a net gain.
But the perception of lost strength and the inability to understand the net gain can quickly lead to steroid abuse (or addiction).
Bingo. Most people do lose the muscle cause they don’t know what they’re doing, but those that do can retain it.
What Philster said should be read and re-read. While there are all sorts of ways of dealing with the physical effects, the psychological effects are the real pisser.
This is anecdotal, and assumes weight-lifter type cycles being done, but when you go off, you will lose some size and strength. How much depends on how hard you keep training after, and how much of what you did, but it seems that there is almost always some loss of size and strength. You’ll still be above where you started, but off from the peak of your cycle.