One question potential anabolic steroid users frequently ask is, How long do muscle gains last after you get off a steroid regimen? Some people think that’s a trick question, since many scientists still believe that the majority of gains produced by steroids consist largely of water. In fact, official position statements of several sportsmedicine organizations declare that any gains following steroid use are likely more water than muscle. On the other hand, muscle is 72 percent water anyway.
Solid gains would consist of protein and the connective tissue components of muscle. They’d tend to be more permanent than the ephemeral bloat characteristic of pure water gains. Exercise favors protein and connective tissue gains, although, depending on several other factors, such as diet, water may also accompany muscle gains and be reflected on the scales.
Doubts about the genuineness of steroid-induced gains arise from casual observations that many steroid-using athletes don’t appear to be as massive when they aren’t taking the drugs. That leads to the impression that the previously displa muscle size must be temporary and can only be maintained with a constant steroid regimen.
Another frequent observation is that while the drugs appear to promote muscular gains, they also seem to favor bodyfat losses. That’s readily apparent when you compare so-called natural bodybuilding competitors to their steroid-using peers. The drug users are not only usually more massive, but they also appear to show a far greater degree of muscular definition than the naturals. The effect is so common, in fact, that some bodybuilders who swear they’re natural are often suspect due to their steroidlike degree of muscularity. The consensus is that you just can’t get super-ripped without resorting to drugs.
So the question is, How do anabolic steroid drugs actually affect body composition, and how long do you retain gains after you stop using them? Those questions and others were examined in a recently published study that featured 35 experienced male strength athletes, 19 of whom self-administered anabolic steroids, while 16 were clean.1
To assess the men’s body composition, the researchers measured body circumferences at baseline, eight weeks and six weeks after steroid withdrawal (in the steroid users). Since another goal involved determining any differences between effects noted with short- vs. long-term steroid use, nine of the steroid users took the drugs for eight weeks, while 10 others took them for 12 to 16 weeks.
Of those in the study, 28 considered themselves bodybuilders, yet only seven competed in bodybuilding contests. While several of those subjects got their drugs with a physician’s prescription, most purchased the drugs on the black market. They designed their drug regimens after conversing with other athletes and experimenting on their own. The drugs consisted of typical injectable anabolic steroids, such as various types of nandrolones, testosterone and oral drugs such as stanozolol (Winstrol or Stromba). One key point is that all of the steroid users took a combination of drugs, a process known as stacking.
After eight weeks the steroid users showed a significant lean body mass increase of 4.5 kilograms, or just a tad under 10 pounds. In contrast, the nondrug users showed no significant changes in lean mass or weight gain. The percentage of fat in the steroid group dropped 1 percent, yet it wasn’t reflected in any loss of muscle mass. The gains in lean mass made by the steroid group persisted after the subjects had been off the drugs for six weeks.
The steroid users also showed size gains in the neck, upper arm, forearm, wrist, thigh and calves that were significantly greater than the nondrug group experienced; however, the measurements of chest circumference, waist and buttocks didn’t differ significantly between the groups.
The size gains made by the steroid users did decrease slightly when they stopped using the drugs but still remained greater than they’d been at the start of the study. Another interesting finding was that gains made by the long-term steroid users weren’t significantly different from those made by the short-term users. The authors think that debunks the long-held idea that a longer steroid cycle produces greater gains.
Another curious result was that the lean mass gains made in the upper arms of the steroid users were twice those of the legs or trunk areas. That wasn’t the result of any training differences, since all subjects trained with similar levels of exercise volume and intensity. It led the authors to conjecture that steroid stacks may affect specific body areas more than others. Taking that a step further, they’re saying that using certain drugs may target some muscle areas more than others. They mention a previous study that found greater gains in the legs and trunk after subjects used nandrolone drugs, such as Deca-Durabolin - nandrolone decanoate - -Durabolin.
The researchers also carefully measured the composition of the lean mass gains made by the steroid group. While some of the gains did include water, the majority were clearly muscle. They also note that the usual practice of getting back on drugs several weeks after being off, when gains start to recede, appears to make sense, although they warn that the long-term health effects of such cycling remain unknown.
A study published nine years ago examined the effects of body composition changes in seven healthy young men, ages 20 to 24, none of whom were bodybuilders and only one of whom exercised, after they received injections of testosterone enanthate for 12 weeks.2 The study began with five of the subjects getting a 0.75-milligram per kilogram injection of testosterone for four days. Then all seven subjects received a three-milligram per kilogram weekly dose for 12 weeks. That amounts to about 270 milligrams weekly for a 200-pound man, not considered a hefty dose of testosterone. In contrast, a later study that proved the lean-mass-building effects of testosterone used a dose of 600 milligrams a week.
Despite the paltry dose of testosterone provided in this study, the subjects still managed to average a 16-pound gain in lean body mass, which reflected a 12 percent increase above baseline lean mass measurements. They also lost an average of 3.4 kilograms of bodyfat, or 27 percent less than starting values. So a low dose of just one steroid drug led to gains in lean mass coupled with significant fat loss—even in a group that didn’t exercise!
After the subjects stoped getting testosterone injections, the lean mass gains gradually declined to the point where half were gone in two months; however, five to six months after they stopped using the drug, they still showed more lean mass than they had at the start of the study, indicating that the muscle gains were longer lasting than most people expect.
The study concluded with the observation that anabolic steroids promote greater lean mass gains than can be achieved with exercise alone and that such gains consist nearly entirely of muscle. That’s the same conclusion arrived at by a study that used a 600-milligram dose of testosterone, four years after the initial study was published.3
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, anabolic steroids do work, and the gains produced are mostly muscle coupled with a significant loss of fat, particularly subcutaneous fat. While some of the muscle increase does decline after the end of a steroid regimen, much of it remains, especially if you continue to train hard and eat correctly.
I also want to add one other observation: If you start with two people who had comparatively equal genetic bodybuilding abilities and put one of them on a steroid-stacking regimen, the drug user will nearly always defeat his or her natural counterpart in bodybuilding or another athletic competition. That’s because drugs such as anabolic steroids provide increased training recovery, as well as greater degrees of muscular size and definition. Anyone who disputes that notion is either dishonest or naive. From a health and longevity viewpoint, however, the odds are likely in favor of those who shun drug use, especially long-term use.
References
1 Hartgens, F., et al. (2001). Androgenic-anabolic steroid-induced body changes in strength athletes. Physical and Sports Medicine. 29:49-66.
2 Forbes, G.B., et al. (1992). Sequence of changes in body composition induced by testosterone and reversal of changes after the drug is stopped. JAMA. 267:397-399.
3 Bhasin, S., et al. (1996). The effects of supraphysiologic doses of testosterone on muscle size and strength in normal men. NEJM. 335:1-7.
taken from the June 2001 issue of IRONMAN, written by Jerry Brainum
Many people using steroid for the first time end up losing the weight, strength and size they gained. This is one of the key questions I get asked all the time. The answer lies in understanding the process of muscle gain.
The first thing to consider it the where the body is before the cycle. A person will generally be on a diet and training regimen that has yielded as much gains as they are going to get naturally. This is the point where steroid are usually introduced.
The next thing to consider is that there are two parts to gaining and maintaining lean muscle. The first is stimulation or training. Correct training will optimize the gains. Training stimulates the muscle fiber to stretch by increasing intramuscular pressure, also referred to as “a pump”. Once the fiber is stretched it does not shrink back. This is what creates muscle memory.
The next part is the system that supports that muscle. You can only carry as munch muscle as the system will support. The system is one of the key factors in how fast your metabolic rate is. It uses a lot of energy to maintain muscle so diet is very important is supplying the energy and nutrients it needs to do this. Rest and recovery are other factors that influences how well the body maintains muscle because the system supporting the muscle grows at a much slower pace compared to muscle growth. Initially, training causes fast muscle gain, but once the gains have reached the maximum point of what the system will maintain, your growth slows right down, and unless your training is perfect, it will stop altogether.
So to recap so far; Training stimulates the muscle to grow. It grows by stretching the muscle cell wall and this allows it to carry more fluid in the muscle. This leads to more strength and greater pups and intensity which leads to more muscle fiber expansion. In order to maintain that level of stretch, the body has to maintain that muscle but this system grows slowly.
Enter steroids. Steroids essentially do two things for you. One is that it increases fluid retention in the muscle. This means more pressure, greater intensity and greater pumps. That’s where the growth comes form on steroids The second part is that it increases the systems capacity to maintain growth. It won’t cause the system to grow indefinitely which is why, even on steroids, you reach limit of how much gains you can make.
Now you remove the steroids. Most people will gian a fair amount of lean muscle on their first cycle so some gains are kept after the cycle. In most people though, the gains are lost due to bad diet and training. Steroids compensated for this, both in the muscle and the system but when you remove the support things collapse back to where they where. I’m not going to cover the hormone issues that aggravate all this here.
So was it all a waste of time? Absolutely not. You can go back to where you where before the cycle but one important factor has changed, the muscle cell has stretched and remains stretched. This means you have a new and bigger volume to fill in the muscle cells that you did not have before. To take advantage of this you have to train correctly and with progression and you need to diet correctly. Progressive training will give a slow but steady increase in lean muscle mass and the system will have time to adapt and grow.
If you get these things right you can train your way back to the almost the size you where on steroids and more importantly, you will be able to maintain that size.
As I have mentioned above, the system supporting the muscle grows very slowly, this will not change but you have removed the restrictions of muscle fiber stretching. In essence all you need to do is grow the system and thereby volumize the muscle cells. This means the system works more efficicntly. Once you reach the point where your system and muscle size balance out, you’ll hit a wall in your training just like you hit before using steroids. This is when you will use the second cycle and so on.
A word of warning. The system grows in a reverse exponential curve. It grows fast and then the growth slows down the more time passes and the more muscle you carry. This is why you will start off by gaining a lot but the gain will become progressively less as time goes on. This hold true regardless of if you are on steroids or not. That is why bodybuilders that has been at it for 10 years end up gaining very little the longer they have been at it. There is a limit to what your body can maintain both on and off the drugs.
It is amazing what modern day bodybuilders manage to carry in muscle, but ultimately, something will have to give. Age eventually becomes the major factor and the older they get the less they will carry as the bodies systems slows down.
Use steroid correctly to gain the muscle stretch. Put all your efforts into learning how to train and diet correctly and you’ll end up with lasting results if you have discipline and patience.
Statistics: Posted by nextlevel — Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:23 am