Looking for Evidence: One 20-Week Cycle vs Blast & Cruise for Best Recovery

[RC200]

Hello guys, I’m 22 years old and my natural testosterone baseline is around 780 ng/dL. Before anything else, I want to make it clear that I value my health above everything else. I plan on getting comprehensive bloodwork every month, monitoring my blood pressure, and making adjustments whenever necessary instead of blindly running a cycle. My goal is to reach the physique I’ve always wanted while I’m still young, train as hard as I possibly can, keep my nutrition and recovery on point, and then come off instead of relying on TRT forever.


My plan is to start at 300 mg of testosterone per week for 4–6 weeks, get bloodwork, and if everything still looks good, increase the dose by 100 mg and stay there for a total of around 20 weeks. At the end of the cycle, I’ll see how much progress I made, and if I’m satisfied with my physique, I’ll PCT and come off completely.


If I’m not satisfied, my backup plan would be to cruise on around 250 mg of testosterone while cutting, fixing any blood markers that may have been affected, and waiting until everything looks healthy again. Once everything is back in a good place, I would do one final 16-week Testosterone + Primobolan cycle, reach my ultimate physique goal, and then PCT off completely. I also plan on using HCG throughout the entire cycle because preserving testicular function and giving myself the best possible chance of recovering afterward is extremely important to me.


My biggest question is about long-term recovery. For the best chance of getting my natural testosterone back close to my original baseline of 780 ng/dL, or hopefully somewhere near it, would one 20-week cycle followed by PCT give me a noticeably better chance of recovery than doing a 16-week blast, a 16-week cruise, another 16-week blast, and then one PCT at the very end? I understand the blast-and-cruise route would keep me suppressed for much longer, but in my mind it would also make it much more likely that I actually reach the physique I’ve always wanted while still keeping everything under control with bloodwork.


For PCT, my plan would be to stop testosterone, any AI if I end up needing one, and any other on-cycle compounds, then wait for the testosterone enanthate to clear out of my system (around 2 weeks) before starting recovery. After that, I would use HCG before starting the SERMs, then run HMG together with HCG for a few weeks while overlapping with Nolvadex and Clomid, adjusting things based on bloodwork and how recovery is going. I also plan on supporting recovery with a caloric surplus, lower training volume, good sleep, and regular bloodwork, and waiting until my natural hormone levels have recovered before making any future decisions.


I know there are no guarantees with any of this, but I’m trying to understand how much more damaging the longer blast-and-cruise route would actually be compared to doing one longer cycle and coming off. Since I’m 22 years old and starting with a naturally high testosterone level, is it realistic to think I could recover somewhere close to baseline after the blast-and-cruise route, or would the single-cycle approach clearly give me a much better chance? I’m mainly looking for people who have experience, bloodwork, or actual evidence comparing these two approaches.

(Also I don’t want to lose my hair so should I add topical finasteride or pill form ?)

 

[Meetketchup]

You are asking a question that nobody has the answer to and that is how you will respond after the cycle. Everyone is different. Some guys never regain their natural test levels after one cycle and some can run gear for 5 years, come off and regain their natty test levels.

You go in knowing the risk you might need TRT for life in the worst-case scenario.

You are 22 and I doubt are anywhere near your genetic limit. Please post a pic of your physique and how long you have been training.

 

[Dano22]

Nobody is satisfied after 20 weeks , they up the dose. If you care about your health and T levels then don’t mess with it

 

[RC200]

Nobody is satisfied after 20 weeks , they up the dose. If you care about your health and T levels then don’t mess with it

Might have to do the blast and cruise, then pct and pray, if not I’m completely fine in being on trt with optimal levels all my life.

 

[RC200]

You are asking a question that nobody has the answer to and that is how you will respond after the cycle. Everyone is different. Some guys never regain their natural test levels after one cycle and some can run gear for 5 years, come off and regain their natty test levels.

You go in knowing the risk you might need TRT for life in the worst-case scenario.

You are 22 and I doubt are anywhere near your genetic limit. Please post a pic of your physique and how long you have been training.

Oh I’m far from it , but it seems very logical to me to do this to reach it, many people might not agree with my way of thinking but either way I will be training as hard as possible knowing I’m enhanced + seeing the progress (chefs kiss)

 

[Meetketchup]

many people might not agree with my way of thinking

Many of us have been doing this for 25+ years and some of us have coached hundreds/thousands of people in your position. It's a bad move and an important life decision most 22-year-olds who are not advanced in bodybuilding/competing and will regret it. If you don't have a very solid base which you admit you don't and will mostly likely loose what you gain on cycle. It's the truth whether you want to believe it or not. Make as much gains as possible and get close to your genetic limit natty and THEN think about gear. The "chef's kiss" comes after that not before the meal is served.

I said my peace and wish you the best.

 

[RC200]

Damn you did me with that chefs kiss line mirin

 

[Swilly91]

Everyone wants instant gratification and doesn’t want to put in the work to get where they want to be! I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t matter how much gear you push, it’s not magic! You can get so much more out of your natural testosterone being as high as it is and not have to worry about PCT’s or anything else!

 

[elit3keraed]

OK, look you can sit here and say you’re gonna train your ass off and everything’s gonna be perfect on cycle but you don’t actually know whether or not you’re going to.

The fact that you know you’re not near your genetic potential/limit and your mindset is that you should take these drugs to get there faster tells me that you probably aren’t as dedicated/strict/whatever you think you are. And that’s not me trying to just be a hater that’s me coming from a place where I’ve seen tons of dudes swear up and down that they’ll do better on cycle or just flat out, get their shit together on cycle and then they don’t.

Hell, I’ve seen natural guys slack while on cycle because they notice that they can still make pretty decent progress training the same way they did naturally. So rather than go balls, the walls like they swore they would. They just continued the same thing they were doing pre-cycle or even lowered the amount of effort they were putting in. They wind up wasting half their potential because they used it as a crutch.


Running hCG is good. You want to run it if you plan on having kids or plan on coming off because it will make it easier in the long run. But if your concern is your health markers being out of whack after four weeks and then going into an essentially indefinite cruise until those health markers, resolve themselves, then you can’t say your concerned about health above all else. Because if you are getting negative markers after four weeks on injectable testosterone then there is something inherently wrong that’s not going to be resolved by staying on testosterone. If injecting it causes the issue injecting it without raising the dosage, isn’t going to resolve it.

You also don’t need to be adding multiple compounds to your first cycle. Getting blood work done in four weeks and saying OK everything looks good. Let’s add more compounds is not the way to go about it because you may not notice problems until the 6 to 8 week mark, but now you have two compounds in and you don’t know which one you need to pull or reduce.

Primo is a very subjective drug because some people can run 1:1. Some people need to run 2:1 test to Primo, some need 3:1 because it will crush their estrogen. But you may not actually feel the low estrogen side effects you’ll just be causing damage to your body. And if you get blood work done, then you’re gonna be 6 to 8 weeks into Primo after being on already for 4 to 6 weeks and now you’re gonna manipulate the dosage to try to find what works for you and by the time you go to get more bloods done you’re already going into PCT.

Personally 12 to 14 weeks would be more than enough of a test run. Unless you’re a hyper responder to testosterone, taking 300 mg isn’t going to put you anywhere insane over baseline. Will you see benefits, sure, but running it as a “intro” then doing Blood then running a 16 week cycle with a slightly higher dose just makes no sense. Your testosterone is already in the high range. Then again total testosterone is kind of irrelevant other markers like estradiol and free testosterone is what’s really important.

Take 300 to 350 for 12 weeks then come off. PCT and once your PCT is done stay off for another 12 weeks and then do it all over again with a higher dosage and see how you do mid cycle with your estrogen conversion. And then when you finish that cycle in PCT and stay off for a proper amount of time, then you can jump into another cycle and add a compound.

That way when you start having sides, you’ll know OK last time I ran testosterone by itself. I didn’t have these issues so it must be this extra drug I added. And then you can manipulate the dose of that drug accordingly.

If you’re worried about health and longevity, then you cycle patiently, which is part of health and longevity is being patient. That means you’re only going to be able to run to maybe three good cycles per year assuming your bloodwork is consistently coming back good after PCT and coming back good while on cycle and coming back good before cycle. That also means you take time to test each compound instead of just stacking multiple compounds for your first cycle.


Hell, I’ve been on testosterone since I was 20 because I was clinically diagnosed as needing TRT. I run majority of the compounds that you can get from sponsors on this board. I ran them all when I was fat as hell. I am now half the body fat I was back then and I’m running individual compounds instead of just stacking everything because my bodies response to them now is way different than it was at 25 to 30% body fat.

Personally, I say that you spend another year training your ass off naturally, tracking every gram of protein, carbs, and fat you put in your body, and then see where you’re at. I’m willing to wager that you could still make some pretty significant progress with a year of truly hard lifting and dedicated eating without putting your hormones through the ringer