The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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The study you are thinking of is probably this one. I would highly recommend against interpenetrating this as all the benefits of strength training with just some side effects.
(1) They measured fat-free mass not muscle mass. Steroids like Tren make you uptake water in the muscles, you get "fullness" in the form of water when taking anabolics, but the study wasn't long enough to measure real substantial muscle growth. This also explains the cross-sectional area measurement. The water thing is just like a turbo version of what happens with creatine.
(2) The strength increase in the training non-steriod group was greater than the steroid only group. The additional strength in the steroid group is probably largely attributable to two factors
This study does come up all the time, but it was wayyyy to short to conclude that you will gain more actual muscle not training on gear than resistant training. If you talk to any experienced bodybuilder who is open about steroids they all think training is still important. If you don't stimulate your body for specific muscle protein synthesis all you will do is end up looking freakish and ogre like, not jacked and fit looking.
The side-effects are also no joke, even if you don't care about potentially nuking your nuts, Tren in particular can absolutely make your mood terrible.
Finally, I have to say I'm skeptical you've tried enough actual resistance training to dismiss it as a better primary option. Six months is barely long enough to try one training method. Can you really say you've given your full effort to trying: traditional bro split style stuff, calisthenics, pure strength training, crossift style stuff, and circuit training? I saw below you are already talking about training twice a week. Starting strength can be done in three 60 minute sessions a week (if you can superset your warmups for upcoming exercises between working sets). Is that really too much to ask? If you eat enough the gains will be obvious. You could easily put 100 pounds on a novice squat in 6 months. Faster progress than that, aided by steroids, is enough to tear tendons off the bone.
I highly appreciate you tracking down the study, far more reliable than my hazy memories of someone making claims on Reddit!
When I considered that taking tren might beat working out, I wasn't actually implying my plan was to take it and sit on my ass, I'd do my best to augment it with strength training, even if I would strongly prefer to get better results with less work.
So it's not like I'm under the impression that I can or should go that route, the only way I know of to become permabuff without exercise is to be born with a myostatin knockout mutation, like some lucky people or Highland cattle haha.
I was aiming for pure strength training at the time and working out about 3-4 times a week and targeting different muscle groups as I went. I won't claim it was a perfect showing, but I do hate cardio (I ran HIIT for 6 months, and I hated it!).
Either way, I appreciate your input, and thank you for clearing things up!
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