I guess the question to pick your brain for educational purposes is if you can think of any specific cases where it would be a good idea to frontload/kickstart?
Not really. People have argued to me before about blasts or short cycles etc, and that's a good question and something to consider.
So let's say you're an average guy and you want to do a short 4 week tapered 'blast'. Let's also say for argument's sake your weekly test level is a decidedly average 25mg (about 3.5mg/day).
[NB: Bear in mind that to circumvent people talking about half-lives etc etc, all these numbers relate to
blood concentrations of AAS - in other words the actual levels your body is working with, and not necessarily the doses you injected]
Now you start a cycle at 100mg week 1 (accounting for bioavailability, ester weight, hormone release and your natural HPTA shutdown - ie minus 25mg test/wk etc).
So week 1 = 400% increase above baseline test. That's fucking enormous! If that hasn't already optimised or begun the process for just about every hormone-related physiological system going for anabolism, then I'll eat my hat. Kids spend a fortune on 'natural' test boosters that boast paltry (but still impressive) 20% increases or whatever.
Now week 2, we taper that up to 200mg. Now we're only talking about a 100% gain. Still fantastic, but not in the same ballpark. Still, the systems optimising from week 1 will still be going full speed ahead, and the body hasn't even contemplated trying to slow this train down yet.
Week 3, 400mg. Now that's another 100% increase - an exponential gain. The body will be trying to slow this shit down now, and probably myostatin is being upregulated and insulin desensitising in response to massively elevated IGF-1 levels and so on. But we're still a
long way ahead at the stage.
Week 4, 600mg. The final 50% increase. We want this to be a blast, we don't want grams of AAS in the body, and we don't want it to linger for weeks after this point, so the taper has slowed. The extremely rapid increase in protein synthesis from week 1-3 has probably slowed anyway, and even 800mg wouldn't have overcome it. But still, it was a decent blast and we didn't cause massive physical harm with any huge doses on this protocol.
Now let's take this, and start the blast with a frontload/kickstart (the numbers look the same every week here, but obvs to hit 800mg week 1, you are taking more AAS week 1 due to half-lives etc). Your cycle is only 4 weeks, so you'll not bother with any kind of taper:
So week 1 = 800mg test. A whopping 3200% increase in test levels. Um, does anybody seriously think there will be
any qualitative or quantitative improvement in protein synthesis over a still insane 400% increase in test?? Does anybody seriously believe the body has some special adaptive mechanism to accommodate or respond to such an absurd relative increase in circulating androgen levels?
It's just numbers for the sake of it. I guess you'll bloat nicely, put on some lovely water, strain the heart and cardiovascular system more than necessary. But that isn't additional protein synthesis.
Week 2 = 800mg test. You're looking at 0% increase. Your body did not like your 3200% increase in test. It thought you were frankly being poisoned! It's doing everything it can to upregulate every homeostatic system going. Gains appear to be slowing fast, mostly because by the end of week 2/3 your body has slowed adding water weight.
Week 3 = 800mg test. Another 0% increase. Now your body is catching up. Protein synthesis has probably fallen below that on the tapered up blast cycle where test levels are still nicely zooming up 100% per week. You might think you're not gaining any muscle and would be inclined to raise the dose, but that's probably just because no additional water was added this week (whereas protein synthesis was still humming along).
Week 4 = 800mg test. Yep, more 0% increases. You probably only gained a pound or so this week unless you were on a rebound. Homeostasis caught up and protein synthesis dropped to pretty average values. Thus
you determine that 800mg was too low of a dose and that for the next blast, you'll double the dose. That's broscience at its finest.
The frontloaded/kickstarted cycle used almost 3x the amount of gear, 3x the cost, 3x the health risks(?), 3x the water bloat(?). But 3x the gains? I highly doubt it.
