As the Weather Gets Colder, Many Begin a New Bulking Cycle

Many brothers find that even after starting a steroid cycle, their muscle growth is slow or even non-existent.

Common Questions Arise:

1. Did I buy fake drugs?

2. Is my body not suitable for steroids?

3. I'm training hard, so why am I not growing?

These questions boil down to two main issues:

1. Diet

Diet is crucial during a steroid cycle. During a bulking cycle, we can largely ignore the issue of insufficient natural hormones, allowing us to maximize our workout intensity.

However, diet must be carefully managed. Some brothers use “butter and bread” yet maintain a low-carb, low-fat diet, trying to maintain a calorie deficit in hopes of gaining only lean muscle mass and avoiding any fat gain.

While this idea is ideal, reality often differs. Even if you eat cleanly, you need sufficient calorie surplus to provide room for muscle growth. Even on a low-carb diet, fast carbs before and after workouts are essential, otherwise your body will burn a large amount of protein as energy.

As a result, the protein you worked hard to consume gets burned for energy. This calorie surplus needs to be at least 300 calories to allow your body room to grow. Otherwise, the high-quality "builders" provided by steroids will end up dismantling other muscle proteins to make up for the deficit caused by today's training.

Even the best workers cannot build a skyscraper without bricks and mortar. After a cycle, these quality workers might end up unable to even build a small hut due to constant patchwork.

2. Training

Many brothers, especially beginners, still adhere to the routine of training five times a week, completing tasks within one hour during a steroid cycle. Imagine you have a super construction team, but the damage you inflict on your target muscles is still at the previous level.

This construction team's repair speed will be unprecedented—they can repair muscle tears within hours that previously took 1-2 days. Most of the time, they'll be idle since they don’t have the initiative to build muscle without significant stimulus. Therefore, training intensity needs to be as high as possible, causing maximal muscle tear, to ensure muscles receive ample recovery. Keeping the same training intensity as before will not yield better growth during a cycle.

In conclusion, drugs are not a divine intervention or gamma rays; they cannot make you grow muscles while lying down. On the contrary, after starting a cycle, you need more intensive training and higher intake to achieve better growth.