Equipoise (boldenone undecylenate) is historically a veterinary steroid but for some time has been available as an UGL human preparation as well.
In the past, the principal reason for Equipoise’s use was it’s easy availability as a Mexican veterinary product. Presently, for the most part there is little specific reason to use Equipoise in an anabolic steroid cycle. There is nothing that it does anabolically that Masteron, Primobolan, Deca, or trenbolone will not do. In terms of side effects, likewise it has no advantage over Masteron or Primobolan, unless one desires the occasional side effect of increased appetite, or the side effect of its moderate conversion to estrogen. This can be useful if no other aromatizing steroid is being used.
Effectiveness of Equipoise
This is not intended to disparage the compound: it certainly can be put to good use in a steroid cycle. Its potency (effect per milligram) is comparable to most other injectable steroids, though less than that of trenbolone, and so for example addition of 400 mg/week is a substantial boost to most cycles. Alternately, if substituting boldenone for another injectable this can be done on a milligram-for-milligram basis.
Half-Life of Equipoise
A serious drawback of Equipoise is its long half-life, which is probably at least 12 days. This results in an extended period of time after the last injection during which levels are neither sufficiently high for optimal anabolism, nor low enough to allow recovery to occur. A solution for this problem is to use Equipoise in only the earlier part of a cycle.
Frontloading Equipoise
Another effect of the long half-life is that to achieve reasonably prompt effect, a large frontload is needed. I recommend that the first injection be an amount equal to 1.7 – 1.8 times the amount that will be used per week, plus the amount of the usual injection. So if for example the ongoing dosing will be 200 mg twice per week, on the first day the frontload should be about 900 mg.
Most do not do this, and as a result they experience little effect from Equipoise until many weeks into the cycle. For this reason, it’s widely claimed that Equipoise cycles need to be long or otherwise they do not work, but this really is not so. Instead the problem is failure to frontload, or failure to fronload sufficiently.
Another solution is to use the propionate ester, which now has some limited availability in powder form.
Equipoise Side Effects
Boldenone is metabolized by aromatase to estradiol, but to a lesser a degree than testosterone. It also is metabolized by the 5-AR enzyme, in this case to 17b-hydroxyandrost-1-ene-3-one, commonly but incorrectly called “1-testosterone” and sometimes called dihydroboldenone. This molecule’s potency is similar to that of boldenone, so the molecule is neither potentiated or deactivated by the 5-AR enzyme and therefore that metabolism is unimportant.
Stacking Equipoise with Other Steroids
Boldenone might be used in a couple of interesting ways, for example in combination with trenbolone to allow a lower dose of trenbolone while retaining similar anabolic effect and providing a needed amount of aromatizing steroid. It might also combined with Masteron or Primobolan, instead of testosterone, in self-prescribed HRT. The advantage would be reduced production of DHT. However, these uses have yet to be much explored.
But in general, for most Equipoise is not a first-call anabolic steroid. Not for reason of any real lacks, but simply because there are other choices that generally will work as well for the overall cycle plan.
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.