Q: “I understand that heavy training is the key to building muscle, but I have some lagging muscles that just aren’t responding. Sometimes I do a lot of endurance work, but I’ve always avoided that during cycles. Could I get a size benefit from anabolic steroids while doing endurance training?”
A: There are so many things that are true most of the time, but really should not be taken as iron-clad, no-exceptions rules.
One of them has to do with light-weight, high-rep work, or with positives-only (no resistance on the return) work.
Yes, generally the way to build muscle is absolutely not as so many women like to work out, with light weights allowing very large number of repetitions. And distance running certainly will not build the muscle that sprinting can, for example.
However, when all else has failed, when everything sensible has been tried with heavy training to build a lagging muscle, sometimes brutal endurance training can be thing that wakes a muscle up (figuratively speaking.)
A personal example would be my front delts. I must have either strange genetics or a strange pattern of nervous system firing, as my front delts have always been much smaller than either the medial or rear delts. Nothing in the gym ever fixed this. No amount of military presses, Smith machine presses, front raises, plate raises, cleans, snatches, cable work, or upright rows. All kinds of programs were tried. Just not much resulted, although I could strict military press bodyweight – which to be sure is not excellent strength but isn’t terrible, particularly for having no front delts.
To my absolute astonishment, 90 minutes of outrigger canoe (Hawaiian ocean canoe) paddling three times a week at the very least doubled my front delt size, and took only months to do so. From past experience, I would never have accomplished this from weight training, and certainly never did in the past. Now, this was absolutely brutal on the shoulders: a forced death march so to speak. But they responded. Figuratively speaking, I suppose the body had no choice.
There are also of course many other cases of brutally exhausting calf work finally overcoming a plateau, or forearms finally responding after taking up brutal amounts of work.
Possibly, if you do endurance work of that sort for a lagging muscle, you might get similar benefit, and anabolic steroids most likely would help.
More generally, anabolic steroids can help avoid losses while doing endurance work.
As for doing things like 10K runs, muscle gains are unlikely from such work, except perhaps calves or tibialis if such work is entirely new to them and they find it brutal. More likely however stair work or running in sand would be better.
Most times the answer is no to your question, but sometimes yes.
About the author
Bill Roberts is an internationally-recognized expert on anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). He received a bachelor degree in Microbiology and Cell Science and completed the educational and research requirements for a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at a major American university.
Bill entered the nutritional supplement industry prior to completing his doctoral thesis but his education was invaluable so far as being able to design/improve nutritional supplement compounds, since it was in the field of designing drug molecules and secondarily some work in transdermal delivery.
His education was not specifically "geared" toward anabolic steroids other than expertise with pharmacological principles having broad applications. This has allowed Bill to provide unique insight into the field of anabolic pharmacology with knowledge of points which he would not have known otherwise.
Hello Mr. Roberts,
I am curious of your opinion regarding the use of salbutamol and diphenhydramine or ketotifen. I am an Olympic Style Weightlifter and will use a 600mcg injection of salbutamol or levosalbutamol immediately pre-training to increase power during maximal lifting. I utilize a “Bulgarian” approach to training and am essentially lifting maximal singles at every workout. I am considering switching to a 4mg oral tablet two hours pre=training instead and was wondering if you though either approach warranted the use of diphenhydramine or ketotifen to help sensitize adrenoreceptors. I only use the injection once daily, 5 or 6 times per week. I would prefer to use the oral tablets but doping control makes it more likely to pass a test using the injection given that I have a therapeutic use exemption for salbutamol.
Do you have any opinion regarding the use of testosterone/epistestosterone combination injections for both dosage and frequency? I have a compounded product that I use that is 25mg/1mg per ml testosterone/epitestosterone in proylene glycol that I use intravenously via a slow push immediately pre-training. I have figured that using it 1 ml all at once is the best because the half-life is so short that I wanted it to be present in highest amount during and immediately after training. Would I be better off splitting this into two or three injections throughout the day to keep blood levels more stable or formulating my own transdermal version of “The Cream”? I know this is a small dosage of testosterone but it has proven itself effective for my uses and I have lab verified that my T:E ratio is less than 4 when using this protocol. I also use GH but only in targeting micro dosing in order to pass drug testing. I only use 1 i.u. immediately post workout mostly because I know the use of salbutamol suppresses the exercise induced secretion of GH and the extremely high intensity/low rep type of training that I do does not facilitate GH release either. Do you think it would be possible to increase this to 2 i.u.s or perhaps even higher without being detected on the long range test if I were to monitor my igf levels to see that they did not go outside of normal range? I am grateful for your time and expertise.
Regards,
Dimitar