Q: You talked about a gram per week of testosterone. Isn’t that ridiculous? What about say 200 mg?
A: It is my view that the farther one is from one’s natural, untrained state, the harder it is to gain more muscle. There comes a point where the body essentially finds a new balance and may remain at the same muscular weight (give or take a pound or two) for a year or more, even with excellent training, if hormonal conditions remain the same.
Under different hormonal conditions – for example, more testosterone – growth can resume and a new balance point, if reached, will be at a considerably higher muscular weight. At that point, even if one were to stay on that dose of drug continually, little gains would be seen. But with higher yet levels of testosterone, rapid growth could again resume.
So a person who has already made a lot of gains is probably not going to see much, if anything, from 200 mg/week testosterone. And if he used steroids to get there, and is already more muscular than he’d be as a natural trainer, he may see nothing at all, just maintenance.
A true beginner, on the other hand, can make plenty of gains with natural levels of testosterone.
From the medical standpoint, 600 mg/week has been shown to be quite safe. Furthermore, in double blind studies and so forth, doses of less than 300 mg/week generally have resulted in nothing. These studies have usually been with athletes training the same during the cycle as they were beforehand. They’re generally useless for our purposes but they do make a point here. If the dose is 300 mg/week and an athlete trains and eats the same as before, no miracle results.
Yes, I know I’ll come under criticism: you or your buddy did great on 250 mg/week. But in every case I have ever seen, such trainers were guys who were not that dedicated to lifting until they went on their cycle. They weren’t in their peak condition at the start of the cycle, and so they had some muscle memory to help them. Or they were fairly novice lifters. They trained and ate better than they ever did before. They probably would have regained 10 lb. of muscle and gained a new 10 lb. just on Placebobolan, thanks to the training, nutrition, intensity, and muscle memory. Those who ate enough to get fat will also attribute some of the fat weight as being muscle weight.
Now there is one regard where a low dose can be quite effective. This is in fat loss. Many people, especially natural endomorphs, can enjoy easy fat loss for the first time in their lives on quite moderate doses such as 250 mg/week.
I would say that 500 mg/week is a reasonable minimum for muscle gains, except for an advanced trainer, who may need a gram a week to make much further gains. To advance to today’s pro bodybuilder status, even if one has the genetics, requires more yet, not just in quantity but in supplementary drugs such as growth hormone (GH) and insulin, which I will not be discussing.
