Steroid use can go sideways pretty fast if you don’t know what you’re doing. For this reason, it’s usually suggested that as a beginner you watch your steroid intake and start off with a proper first cycle. Even if steroids are a great way to get into shape, you’re still messing with your body’s natural growth mechanisms and this needs to be dealt with some care.

This blog is for anyone who wants to boost their workouts with steroids. We’ll tell you all about the best steroids for beginners and the appropriate doses for your first steroid cycle.

What are anabolic steroids?

The best steroids to start with

Recommended first cycles for steroid beginners

What is Post Cycle Therapy (PCT) and why do you need it?

Safer and legal steroid alternatives

What are anabolic steroids and why do athletes and bodybuilders use them?

Put simply, anabolic steroids are a synthetic version of the hormone testosterone. In men, testosterone is responsible for facial hair growth and muscle mass development that kicks in around the time of puberty. So it becomes pretty clear why we’d want more of it if we’re trying to bulk up and put on more mass.

Anabolic steroids can help boost muscle growth, healing rates and increase the intensity of your workouts. With these effects, you can work out longer, overcome injuries faster and there’s a significant increase in the effectiveness of your workouts. It’s the best of all worlds.

By now, it’s no secret that athletes and bodybuilders around the world use anabolic steroids to improve their performance. Especially competitive bodybuilders since they need to bulk up really fast and often the bodies you see aren’t even naturally possible. To be the best, you’re going to need some help; you can get this help with anabolic steroids.

Many anabolic steroids help increase your red blood count and increase the oxygen going to your muscles. Performance enhancement drugs are more often than not also anabolic steroids that give your system a major boost to improve athletic performance. So it’s understandable why athletes and bodybuilders would want to use these. It gives them an edge over other competitors when it comes to professional sports. With their boosted performances they can stake a claim to become some of the best sportsmen in the world.

The best steroids to start with

Steroids affect people in different ways. These differences depend on the age, sex, genetics and environmental factors for each user. Since there’s no way that you can tell how a specific steroid is going to work for you, it’s better that you start with some information beforehand to plan your cycles out.

Experts actually suggest that you test out different steroids across successive cycles so you understand how each affects your body. Some of the best steroids for beginners include:

Dianabol

Dianabol or Dbol is an oral anabolic steroid, that’s used as a supplementary steroid rather than on its own. You won’t begin to feel the effects of the steroid immediately, but in a few weeks, the effects will really start to kick in.

Dosage

The daily dose of Dianabol for beginners is suggested at 15-30mg a day for a period of no more than 6 weeks. If you go beyond 6 weeks, this could have severe side-effects.

The Benefits

The benefits of Dianabol include:

• Improves muscle generation.
• Increases nitrogen retention and endurance.
• Increases red blood cell count for longer workouts.
• Especially effective for fat burning.
• Increases appetite.
• Increases Strength levels.
• Improves recovery rates.

The Side-Effects

The side-effects of Dianabol are:

• Gynaecomastia (Men can develop breasts)
• Your body will start retaining more water that might cause swelling in the feet and ankles.
• It can set off acne.
• Hair growth will significantly increase.
• It can also cause liver damage.

Want to know more about the side effects of Dianabol? Have a look at our Dianabol side effects post!

Nandrolone (Deca Durabolin)

Nandrolone is one of the most commonly used steroids for muscle growth. It’s also one of the preferred steroids of choice for female athletes. The steroid is injected directly in the muscle to achieve faster muscle development.

Dosage

The dose of Nandrolone for beginners is usually set at 200mg per week. This starts with 2 injections of 100mg in the first week, then a weekly injection of 200mg straight is suggested. This steroid begins to take effect in the next 4-6 weeks.

The Benefits

The advantages of using Nandrolone rather than any other steroid include:

• It increases the appetite.
• Increased muscle growth compared to fat development.
• It can boost recovery rates.
• The steroid is great for cutting mass.
• It can increase red blood count to improve endurance.
• Will increase mineral uptake for the bones.

The Side-Effects

The side effects of Nandrolone include:

• It increases your chances of becoming impotent by reducing your sperm count.
• It can cause full-body acne.
• Many people also experience intense nausea and vomiting from Nandrolone.
• It can increase male sex characteristics in women. This includes excessive hair growth, deepening of the voice and enlargement of the clitoris among other side effects.
• It can damage the liver.

Want to know more about the side effects of Nandrolone? Have a look at our Deca Durabolin side effects post!

Winstrol

Always treat Winstrol very carefully because it has a very broad set of side-effects and the dosage varies depending on the extent of your bodybuilding goals. Always consult a medical professional before you begin using, they can give you much more accurate dosage for your ideal body.

Dosage

The dosage for beginners is typically 50mg that is administered every other day, to a total of 200mg in a day. The steroid is slow to take effect so it’s usually stacked with steroids like testosterone for a much quicker effect.

The Benefits

The benefits of Winstrol are actually far greater than many other steroids on the market. These include:

• It doesn’t convert into oestrogen, so you avoid many side-effects like gynaecomastia (Breast development in men).
• Muscle development is far more rapid than with other steroids.
• It doesn’t cause any water retention or swelling.
• It doesn’t make for bulk. It helps create a lean look.
• It increases the production of red blood cells for longer and more intense workouts.
• You can use this with other steroids without enhancing the side-effects.
• It can be taken orally or injected without differences in effects.
• It doesn’t damage your liver or other major organs like most other steroids do.

The Side-Effects

The side-effects of the steroid include:

• It can set off acne.
• Insomnia
• Headaches
• Changes in your sexual desire.
• Nausea and vomiting.
• Might cause changes in skin colour or blotches.

Want to know more about the side effects of Winstrol? Have a look at our Winstrol side effects post!

Testosterone Enanthate

Interestingly enough, Testosterone Enanthate is actually the first ever performance enhancing drug/steroid that was banned from professional sports. Despite that, it is still one of the most commonly used steroid amongst body builders and athletes.

The steroid is an absolute must for use in all anabolic steroid cycles since most of these suppress the natural production of testosterone. Testosterone Enanthate can help replenish this reduced supply of testosterone to eliminate the side-effects for men.

Dosage

The dosage to Testosterone Enanthate is managed across cycles to help maintain the highest possible amount of testosterone in the blood. For beginners, the dosage suggested is usually 300-500mg weekly which can give some very apparent boosts in endurance and muscle mass.

The Benefits

The benefits of using Testosterone Enanthate include:

• Increased red blood cell count to increase your endurance.
• It is really effective for cutting weight and putting on muscle instead.
• It improves bone density and mineral uptake by the bones.

The Side-Effects

The side-effects for the steroid include:

• Nausea
• Breast Swelling in men
• Numbness
• Acne
• Enlargement of the clitoris
• Mood changes
• Shortness of breath

Recommended first cycles for steroid beginners

It should be pretty clear now that steroids can have some very bad side-effects. Some of these can actually be permanent and require medical intervention to reverse through some very invasive procedures.

For this reason, any steroid cycles for beginners should be created with plenty of research unless you want to risk serious complications.

What is a cycle?

Before we begin describing the cycle itself, it’s only appropriate that we also define what a steroid cycle is.

When you begin using steroids, these aren’t to be used for regular periods of time. Injecting huge amounts of hormones and steroids into your body can also kill you if you’re not careful with your doses.

This is why athletes and bodybuilders use steroids in cycles, to wean off the effects of the steroids and to completely flush out the steroids from their system. It’s also better to go into Post-Cycle therapy to overcome the effects of any mood changes that come as a side-effect of many anabolic steroids.

Steroid cycles usually follow a 4-8 week periods, which can be resumed once you’ve normalized from the effects of the steroids.

We’ll now move on to describe some of the best beginner steroid cycles that will optimize the effects of your workouts and also reduce the intensity of the side-effects.

Dianabol only cycle
A Dianabol cycle lasts for 8 weeks, with the first 5 weeks you use 30mg daily and then go into Post Cycle Therapy.

Winstrol Only Cycle
A Winstrol cycle also lasts for 8 weeks, where you should use 50mg daily for the first 5 weeks and then go for PCT for the final 3.

Testosterone Enanthate Only Cycle
Testosterone Enanthate cycles last for 15 weeks, where you take 500mg of testosterone enanthate weekly till week 10, you do not take the steroid for week 11 and week 12. Then you go into PCT for the remaining weeks.

Testosterone Enanthate and Dianabol Cycle
Since Dianabol is a somewhat lighter steroid, many bodybuilders tend to stack it with testosterone enanthate to improve the efficacy. A typical cycle for Testosterone Enanthate with Dianabol last for 15 weeks.

In the first 4 weeks, you take 500mg of testosterone enanthate weekly and 30mg of Dianabol daily.

From week 5 to week 10, you just take 500mg of testosterone enanthate weekly. Then you take a break for weeks 11 and 12. From weeks 13-15 you have to go into Post Cycle Therapy.

Testosterone Enanthate and Nandrolone Decanoate Cycle
The Testosterone Enanthate and Nandrolone Decanoate cycle lasts for 17 weeks. For the first 10 weeks you take 500mg of testosterone enanthate weekly combined with 400mg of Nandrolone Decanoate weekly.

You go on a break for weeks 11 to 13 and then go for Post Cycle Therapy from weeks 14 to 17.

What is Post Cycle Therapy (PCT) and why is it needed after the steroid cycle?

When you go on a steroid cycle, it suppresses the production of naturally occurring hormones in the body. So if you take testosterone, your body realizes that there’s still a lot of excessive testosterone the system and it stops producing it altogether. This is the reason why people develop many of the side-effects from steroids like erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure and gynaecomastia.

Post Cycle Therapy involves taking drugs which induce your body to begin producing these hormones naturally to avoid the side-effects. Maintaining your muscle gains after the steroid cycle, also requires that you go in PCT. If the hormone levels drop so do your gains.

So PCT served two purposes, one to help prevent the side-effects from steroids and another to help you maintain the gains you’ve made during the cycle.

The drugs you can try out to help with your Post Cycle Therapy include:

• Clomid
• Nolvadex

Safer and legal steroid alternatives

Considering the whole range of intense side-effects of using steroids, it’s usually better to not use these steroids in the first place. If you’re considering using steroids, then don’t. You could try using natural supplements which are slower to act but don’t have the same side-effects that anabolic steroids do.

In addition to the health risk, these anabolic steroids are very strictly controlled substances that can only be used as part of medical treatments. With both the legal and the medical risk involved, it’s just unwise to go on steroids in the first place.

If you’re in the market for natural supplements, you can try out CrazyBulk’s selection of natural CrazyBulk supplements that can serve as substitutes for anabolic steroids. These supplements are made from herbal extracts that can boost your muscle gains, endurance and let you work out harder for longer periods of time. It’s all the gain, none of the drawbacks.

Some supplements you can try out include:

• D-Bal ( Dianabol substitute supplement)
• Anadrole (Anadrol substitute)
• Decaduro (Deca Durabolin substitute)

Conclusion

This blog has basically said everything you need to know for your first steroid cycle. You should always remember that steroid use is a very risky business, but if you still wish to use them, we’ve also spoken of the best body building steroids for beginners.

With this blog, you should now understand what the best first time steroid cycles are and what beginners should start their steroid cycles with. You might still want to try the Crazy Bulk natural supplements, for equally as great growth without the side-effects of conventional hormones.

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