Cycle for recovery

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Totalwar99

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Nov 16, 2018
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I have been lifting seriously for 4 years. I have done two cycles before of test c at 250g twice weekly. My last cycle was around 1 and 1/2 -2 years ago. I get achne and after doing the cycles I decided i feel good enough without steriods so i havent done another since. I felt amazing on them but didnt have a huge drive to go back on.
Recently I over stressed my Lats from working out to much naturally mixed with work. Its been about 4 months i have been injured and i have stayed away from weight lifting to let it heal. Sadly i work as a waiter so carrying large bowls and plates etc all the time hasnt let my lats rest and recover. I am going to see a phyical therapist soon to see if that helps.
I cant stay out of work for long periods of time 1-2 weeks max. After all the research I have done the biggest substance to help with muscle strain is Deca. For example this study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2777803/. (its mice but its related to muscle damage and recovery)
I tried to wait and let heal and i would be healed already if it wasn't for work. Cost wise it would be cheaper for me to do a cycle while doing small physical therapy workouts (the one my therapist is going to have me do) and working. My idea is this,

12 week cycle
Deca 150-250 once a week
Test c or e 250 once a week

Clomid or something similar for post cycle 30 days~

For the first 4-6 weeks I will still be resting save for work (physical therapy as well). Starting light workouts when doctor gives the ok. I know this isn't the best cycle but as I can not take much time off work and need to recover which i am currently unable to. All my research shows deca is the best and only option i have for muscle strain.
From all the research I have done Deca if it wasnt taboo in the US would be the normal percription for this kind of injury (my doctor hinted as much as well but since i cant get advice for dosages from him i thought i would ask here). I do want to limit achne etc while on cycle so are the any other suggestions on this cycle?
 
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Hey there, welcome to BL :)

I'm not sure I entirely follow what your injury is? There aren't many soft-tissue injuries that would take 4 months to recover from except a full tear or something called tendinosis (which is not tendonitis, but is like a chronic form of tendonitis, which many guys often develop in their forearms). Otherwise, you could have calcifications and adhesions from where a minor/mild muscle tear or tendon rupture (technically a similar thing - a muscle is basically one complete 'muscle-tendon unit') healed, which might need breaking up.

I would resolve both of these conditions in the same way: with a combination of deep (ie very painful) tissue massage around both lats and ancillary (supporting) muscles, intense stretching, and the gradual reintroduction of lat-training but only the negative-portion (eccentric phase) of the rep. These things can resolve much of the pain almost immediately, although true recovery will take a fair bit longer.

Deca does great things for building muscle mass, but if the issue is fibrotic (scar) tissue build up or overworked tendons, it's not going to do much to fix that original issue.
 
I?d agree with CFC to find out what the injury is first, since it sounds like you haven?t really had diagnostics done, as there aren?t many muscle tissue injuries (especially just strains) that would take that long to heal.

I just partially tore the teres major muscle in my back about two weeks ago for example and it?s almost completely healed in two weeks (with rest, anti inflammatory meds, massage, and granted I am running growth hormone). I?ve rehabed two other muscle tears this year in 4 weeks or less as well.
 
My injury from what my general care doctor said is a mild muscle tear/ stress (idk why but the two terms are interchangeable?) with hasn't healed due to being re-injured/stressed constantly due to my job using said muscle often. The muscle in question is the latissimus dorsi which is used to hold your arms up in front of you when holding any kind of weight in this case plates and bowls from kitchen to tables as i am a server. And our bowls can be very large and heavy as well as carrying stacks of plates and bowls from tables to dish washing area. So the mild tear/ muscle strain isnt allowed to be healed due to my inability to take long periods of time off work. From what my doctor said back muscles take 6-12 weeks to heal due to not being able to really stay off them in regular activity and the reason its taking longer for me again is due to work (that and my doctor is a idiot and didnt send me to physical therapy when i originally went in 3 months ago told me just to rest which i did staying out of the gym). The reason im think of deca is in the reading ive done and the experiment linked in my post it is stated deca helps with muscle damage/tears from injurys by reducing healing time (HGH is another one that helps but is greatly more expensive).

Sadly due to the muscle in question being hurt I cant really work out any body part aside from legs via leg press. The reason im thinking of a deca cycle is enhanced recovery during Physical therapy which would be the stuff CFC suggested for as minimal time off work as possible hopefully only 2 weeks in total rather than a possible month. HGH would be the best choice but again due to price deca is really my only affordable option.
 
If youre going for healing, go with HGH. a months worth would be plenty IME and would only run you $150 or so for good/tested generics
 
What dosages? Used to only find 600~ worth for sale but that was 1-2 years ago looks like there's smaller 200~ ones now (100iu).
 
Totalwar99 said:
My injury from what my general care doctor said is a mild muscle tear/ stress (idk why but the two terms are interchangeable?) with hasn't healed due to being re-injured/stressed constantly due to my job using said muscle often. The muscle in question is the latissimus dorsi which is used to hold your arms up in front of you when holding any kind of weight in this case plates and bowls from kitchen to tables as i am a server. And our bowls can be very large and heavy as well as carrying stacks of plates and bowls from tables to dish washing area. So the mild tear/ muscle strain isnt allowed to be healed due to my inability to take long periods of time off work. From what my doctor said back muscles take 6-12 weeks to heal due to not being able to really stay off them in regular activity and the reason its taking longer for me again is due to work (that and my doctor is a idiot and didnt send me to physical therapy when i originally went in 3 months ago told me just to rest which i did staying out of the gym). The reason im think of deca is in the reading ive done and the experiment linked in my post it is stated deca helps with muscle damage/tears from injurys by reducing healing time (HGH is another one that helps but is greatly more expensive).

Sadly due to the muscle in question being hurt I cant really work out any body part aside from legs via leg press. The reason im thinking of a deca cycle is enhanced recovery during Physical therapy which would be the stuff CFC suggested for as minimal time off work as possible hopefully only 2 weeks in total rather than a possible month. HGH would be the best choice but again due to price deca is really my only affordable option.
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Hey mate, so one of my IRL jobs is as an injury rehab specialist. What tends to happen when you continually work an injured muscle is the body produces a lot of very sticky fibrous 'glue-like' collagen around the injured tissues like a scaffold, to help protect the muscle.

Because of the length of time since you originally injured it, it is very likely the injury itself would have been 'healed' to the extent it's going to by now. But because you're continually using the muscle, it remains mildly inflamed, and so more collagen will tend to get laid on the existing fibrous/scarring scaffold.

Unfortunately that collagen prevents the muscle fibres contracting and working properly, causing them to kind of 'stick' and rub against each other, which increases the inflammation and increases the development of harder scar tissue.

Generally speaking, the best solution to this is to start with a nice deep massage (with heat therapy to help soften it first). You need to break up some of that collagen, to let the muscle fibres start to function properly again, and to straighten out the tendon tissue fibres (which also grow kinda wonky, which again increases friction and inflammation).

Stretching that starts out very gently and timidly but over a few days becomes deeper and deeper until you're really lengthening the fibres would come next.

And finally, after a week or two, you can start the eccentric muscle training to help 'turn off' the inflamed tendon fibres and make them grow in the right direction, which should calm things down.

I would try all three of these before resorting to boosting IGF-1 through deca use. Simply increasing the amount of bulk around the growing scaffold of collagen/fibrotic scar tissue may 'spread the load' a bit more, but won't help to fix the root issue.

If you can't get someone to massage the affected area, try using a roller and doing some DIY work on it. You've nothing to lose by trying :)
 
Totalwar99 said:
What dosages? Used to only find 600~ worth for sale but that was 1-2 years ago looks like there's smaller 200~ ones now (100iu).
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2-3iu per day. The most popular ones on the market all come from one place and they are overdosed 25-50% so you?re realky getting 3-4iu out of those doses though.

I?ll second the eccentric strengthening as well, had helped me rehab most of my injuries
 
Wow just looked into 3iu dosages its like .03ml, thats pretty crazy how small the dosages are. Ill have to look into differant needles than test ones i have lol. Thank you for the help. HGH at this price does seem like a better option.
 
Totalwar99 said:
Wow just looked into 3iu dosages its like .03ml, thats pretty crazy how small the dosages are. Ill have to look into differant needles than test ones i have lol. Thank you for the help. HGH at this price does seem like a better option.
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The dosage isn?t set, just depends on how much water you reconstitute it with. I use 1ml per vial which equates to 0.25ml for 2.5iu daily. It?s water based so you just use insulin needles
 
Sorry for bumping an old thread but here is my progress report, I went to PT in December till the end of February felt recovered and as told by PT to start working out lightly and so I did. About a month and a half into working out 1-2 times a week lightly to get my body back into it my back started bugging me while sitting. I stopped working out as soon as it started bugging me and my doc sent me back to PT. They said it was a mild strain due to my first PT not having me do abs strengthening to match the back ones she did have me do for the lat muscle tear and that the current was just a mild one and it would go away quickly. I did all the stretches they told me to and stayed off. It kept going away and flaring up every couple weeks just mild annoyance when sitting etc. they discharged me with it still bugging me and I was told to do light workouts to strengthen it. I did extremely light workouts for 1 week and stopped due to it bugging me too much (before i left pt this time i had them check all my forms for lifting, sitting, standing etc). Then started the above-recommended HGH cycle while continuing my stretches and staying off it. I am a few days away from ending the 1 month of hgh and it still feels stressed, mostly bugging me when I'm sitting or laying down. It is nowhere as painful as before the first time i went to PT so i do think its just being overstressed even though i do my best to stay off of it? I am going to see if i can be sent to a different PT place as my second PT had me doing an hour of stretches twice a day which i think was to much although my core is back up to strength and that was supposed to be the problem but hasn't changed anything and i think stressed it more as it was just to much. This has been a complete year off working out now and i just want to be healed i did wait and did everything i was told by PT to do and stayed off it and even waited to try hgh till i was done with the second round of PT to make sure it was fixed.

Long story out of the way, it comes and goes for 1-2 weeks each time currently no matter how much i stay off it, any recommendations? I have read studies that anabolics help with light strains but honestly Im at the end of my rope, i struggle with acne during and after cycles that i don't want to deal with it but not being able to work out and being injured is getting old especially after I waited and rested and did everything PT told me to do.
 
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So basically they said you have muscular imbalance between the erectors in your back and abs? To put it simply
 
Yes, that's what the second PT said as to why I got reinjured and that's what we worked on and fixed but the stressed back/mild strain as he put it hasn't gone away. Basically, the first PT didn't do any stretches/workouts for the front as they were supposed to when a back injury happens? Even more so as I had been injured since last july and off of it for for 5 months by the time i saw them.
 
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Did you end up running Deca? I know Deca / HGH would be your best bet for injury recovery. My old boss in construction / excavation was told by a doctor he would need 3-6 months of rest time out of work for a torn ACL was running Deca and showed up to work a week after the surgery, no issues no complications and his doctor literally was at a loss for words.
 
I didn’t do deca, only hgh for 30 days as I wanted to try the safer side first (less side effects/risks) then move on if needed which it looks like I probably need to sadly. I already get acne with test 500 cycles I’ve done years ago and was hoping to avoid any if I could. I do want to thank CFC for his previous recommendations and was hoping PT was going to fix it without anything else ?.

If I end up doing deca I was thinking like the original post

250 test e or c weekly
250 deca weekly
(Probably split these in half for 125 of each twice a week)
Arimidex and accutane either during or as post cycle?

Like I said my biggest fear is acne like previous cycles and this will be about half the test I’ve done before so hopefully it’s milder but has the addition of deca.
 
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Totalwar99 said:
I didn’t do deca, only hgh for 30 days as I wanted to try the safer side first (less side effects/risks) then move on if needed which it looks like I probably need to sadly. I already get acne with test 500 cycles I’ve done years ago and was hoping to avoid any if I could. I do want to thank CFC for his previous recommendations and was hoping PT was going to fix it without anything else ?.

If I end up doing deca I was thinking like the original post

250 test e or c weekly
250 deca weekly
(Probably split these in half for 125 of each twice a week)
Arimidex and accutane either during or as post cycle?

Like I said my biggest fear is acne like previous cycles and this will be about half the test I’ve done before so hopefully it’s milder but has the addition of deca.
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I got some of the worst acne from Test you’ve probably ever seen. A mountain of scars and pimples on my back and shoulders, but I have since conquered it.

The biggest thing that affected me was:
You need to be as steady and consistent with arimidex and your shots as possible and your dosages need to be as close to exact as possible.

Second you need good test no shitty oils when my acne was the worst I was running an India pharmacy brand and it must have been some real cheap oil, my acne was terrible. You need MCT or good grape seed oil base.

And third, and the biggest reason I was getting all that acne is my estrogen was too high. I didn’t even start taking arimidex until about 2 years into doing steroids. I only got some because a growth behind my nipple scared me, little did I know my other side effects were estrogen related.

Hope this helps
 
Mine has continued after my last cycle two years ago but it’s only on my back (during the cycle was back, shoulders, chest) and it’s 1-2 at a time which is why I was hesitant about doing another cycle unless I absolutely needed it. Antibiotics help along with dawn soap, it completely stopped while I’ve been injured though as I’m not rubbing against anything with heavy weight. Last time was test c this time was thinking of changing to e
 
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First I want to thank everyone for their insight and help.

Since I still get acne and as thinking of doing accutane anyways since it’s not going away well after my last cycle and this injury has me at my wits end I was thinking of this, let me know how it sounds as I don’t know any else to ask for a second opinion especially since I did the rest and see approach and so far it hasn’t worked ? I’m still doing all my stretches and foam rolling everyday while waiting to go back to pt.

Two cycles starting one month from now in hopefully my final round of PT ? depending on the new PT’s opinion on the status of the injury maybe a wait little longer although since from what my doctor said yesterday it’s just a mild strain which he doesn’t know why it hasn’t healed.

12week
250 test c weekly
300 deca weekly
.5 Arimidex daily

30-50 days of pct
50mg Climod daily

Then either doing it on both or just the second cycle doing accutane 100-200 days (as recommended time is 16+ weeks) of 50mg starting at the beginning of the cycle or starting at the PCT start date?

I don’t know if doing accutane is ok on cycle but I have read it’s side effects are harsh and I’ve read people using it on cycle but nothing solid about how that effects it use. And I will be on minocycline 100mg the whole time.
 
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Totalwar99 said:
First I want to thank everyone for their insight and help.

Since I still get acne and as thinking of doing accutane anyways since it’s not going away well after my last cycle and this injury has me at my wits end I was thinking of this, let me know how it sounds as I don’t know any else to ask for a second opinion especially since I did the rest and see approach and so far it hasn’t worked ? I’m still doing all my stretches and foam rolling everyday while waiting to go back to pt.

Two cycles starting one month from now in hopefully my final round of PT ? depending on the new PT’s opinion on the status of the injury maybe a wait little longer although since from what my doctor said yesterday it’s just a mild strain which he doesn’t know why it hasn’t healed.

12week
250 test c weekly
300 deca weekly
.5 Arimidex daily

30-50 days of pct
50mg Climod daily

Then either doing it on both or just the second cycle doing accutane 100-200 days (as recommended time is 16+ weeks) of 50mg starting at the beginning of the cycle or starting at the PCT start date?

I don’t know if doing accutane is ok on cycle but I have read it’s side effects are harsh and I’ve read people using it on cycle but nothing solid about how that effects it use. And I will be on minocycline 100mg the whole time.
Click to expand...

Don't bother with PCT...

Refrain from using accutane:

Eliminating grains, sugars, sweets, potatoes and corn helps radically improve acne for most people. This is because refined carbohydrates set off a chain reaction involving insulin, hormones, and bacteria, ultimately causing an acne breakout!

It has been shown that eating refined carbohydrates and sugar leads to a surge of insulin and an insulin-like growth factor called IGF-1 in your body. Highly processed grains such as refined breads and cereals are digested quickly, raising your sugar level. Your body responds to the excess sugar by producing high levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1).

This can lead to an excess of male hormones, which cause pores in your skin to secrete sebum, a greasy substance that attracts acne-promoting bacteria. Additionally, IGF-1 causes skin cells known as keratinocytes to multiply, a process that is associated with acne.
 
Genetic Freak said:
Don't bother with PCT...

Refrain from using accutane:

Eliminating grains, sugars, sweets, potatoes and corn helps radically improve acne for most people. This is because refined carbohydrates set off a chain reaction involving insulin, hormones, and bacteria, ultimately causing an acne breakout!

It has been shown that eating refined carbohydrates and sugar leads to a surge of insulin and an insulin-like growth factor called IGF-1 in your body. Highly processed grains such as refined breads and cereals are digested quickly, raising your sugar level. Your body responds to the excess sugar by producing high levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1).

This can lead to an excess of male hormones, which cause pores in your skin to secrete sebum, a greasy substance that attracts acne-promoting bacteria. Additionally, IGF-1 causes skin cells known as keratinocytes to multiply, a process that is associated with acne.
Click to expand...
I have a mostly keto diet of steak, meatballs, chicken, etc. most of my calories come from fat currently with the occasional rice, I could eat more vegetables though I don’t think I eat anywhere near enough
 
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