Here is my last training programm! I made 10 kilos in less than half a year (being already big and experienced weightlifter and bodybuilder). My brother gained 20 kilos in one year… It is increadible, and you’ll have to go to the gym only two times a week and spend there only one hour per visit! Isn’t it awesome to spend less money, to spend less time and to grow bigger and stronger?
Let’s go!

Tuesday:

1. Bench press – 5×5 (2 sets warming-up, 3 sets with the maximum weight you can do 5 repetitions)

2. Weight retention 1×60 seconds (isometric exercise helping to strenghten your tendons) weight must be 30% heavier than the maximum weight you can do in this exercise!

3. Squats – 1×10 (warming up), 1×20 (you must take the maximum possible weight to do this exercise)

4. Pull-ups! The maximum number that you can.

Saturday:

1. Shoulder press – 5×5 (2 sets warming-up, 3 sets with the maximum weight you can do 5 repetitions)

2. Biceps curls – 5×5 (2 sets warming-up, 3 sets with the maximum weight you can do 5 repetitions)

3. Deadlifts – 5×5 (2 sets warming-up, 3 sets with the maximum weight you can do 5 repetitions)

In the last set of all the exercises you should obtain the muscular breakdown. If you feel that you can do one more repetition? then you must increase weight next time in this exercise. This simple program works for all people including “hardgainers” and so on. This is the programm for experienced powerlifters and bodybuilders and for the beginners as well! Enjoy your everyday growing muscles!

No matter who you are, I believe that you can build thickly muscled and chiseled biceps regardless of your size or body weight. Having said this, the fact remains that not all of us have the genetic potential to become Mr. Olympia (and most of us probably don’t want that much development anyway). The exact role of genetics in bodybuilding is not fully understood. One thing is certain – you’ve got to train smart to maximize whatever genetic potential you have to build massive, well-defined biceps.

Some people use “bad genetics” as a convenient excuse for quitting their training programs when they fail to see quick results. Don’t fall into this trap. You must remember to set your own goals and work to achieve them without comparing yourself to anyone else. Besides, how can you know what your genetic potential actually is until you’ve spent every effort and tried every available workout to maximize it?

Regardless of your genetic makeup, most of your biceps building success will depend upon the consistency and technical aspects of your training and proper nutrition. Moreover, you should understand that not every workout is going to deliver your desired results because there is no single exercise or workout plan that works for everyone. Depending on your body type and genetic abilities, some workouts will give you great results, some will work only modestly and others won’t work for you at all.

Biceps Training To Fit Your Body Type

To maximize your genetic potential to build big, muscular biceps you’ve got to understand your body type. In purest terms, the human body comes in three physiological forms: ectomorphic, endomorphic and mesomorphic. An ectomorph is the typical “hard gainer” who has general difficulty in gaining weight, especially muscle mass. Ectomorphs are usually tall with long, lean limbs, narrow shoulders and a relatively fragile bone structure. Ectomorphs also tend to have a high metabolism that causes the calorie burn that can eat into protein stores needed to build muscle after a workout.

Endomorphs are at the opposite end of the body type spectrum. Endomorphs tend to have rounded or “stocky” bodies with a slower metabolism that makes it easy for them to gain muscle. Unfortunately, this slow metabolism also means that endomorphs can get fat very easily. Endomorphs are particularly well-suited for powerlifting movements, but their tendency to hold on to calories makes high-repetition and cardiovascular training critical to their ability to achieve superior muscular shape and definition.

In between the ectomporhic and endomorphic body types is the mesomorph. Mesomorphs tend to have a naturally strong, balanced and athletic physique with an ability to gain and display muscle much more easily than the other body types (think NFL linebackers or world class sprinters). Although mesomorphs have a higher metabolism than endomorphs, they don’t have the ectomporhic ability to naturally burn calories and must therefore carefully monitor their food intake to avoid getting fat.

While pure ectomorphs, endomorphs and mesomorphs theoretically exist, the reality is that most people have mixed body types (e.g., “mesomorph-endomorph”). When it comes to training in a way that best fits your body type, there are subtle but important differences depending on whether you’re primarily an ectomorph, endomorph or mesomorph. If you’re mostly ectomorphic, you should emphasize low repetition mass building techniques with extended training intervals that minimize cardiovascular exercise.

On the other hand, if you’re primarily endormorphic you should emphasize high repetition training cycles with extended intervals that regularly include high intensity cardiovascular workouts. Finally, if you’re mostly mesomorphic your biceps should respond well to both low and high repetition training with moderate amounts of high intensity cardiovascular training for enhanced muscularity. The bottom line is that you must work with whatever genetic potential you have to build the big, muscular biceps that you desire. And you’ll never reach that potential if you quit too soon because of “bad genetics.”

ght (c) 2009 RMAX INTERNATIONAL

How did I come to learn a once-Olympic Games sport of club swinging? Well, I coached the US Team at the World Police Sambo championships in Lithuania. While there, I trained with the team from Tajikistan who taught me about Zurkhane – a 1,600 year old tradition of physical culture… including the oldest form of strength conditioning known to mankind – club swinging.

In 1993, I unfortunately allowed my arm to be broken at the World University Games (also known as the Universiade – the Olympics for University athletic teams), when facing my Russian counter-point for the gold medal. Had I tapped out, it would have cost the US more team points; rather than losing by technical superiority (my opponent won on points.) I managed to finish the match without injury disqualification (if your opponent breaks your limb in Sombo, you lose, but I hid this from the referee). That silver medal was the most important victory of my career, because it taught me the value of “connective tissue strength.” My concealment of the injury led to avascular necrosis in my scaphoid: a condition that locked my hand in vice-like pain unable to hold anything. When your sport involves being able to grip a man and throw him to the ground, the inability to hold anything is career ending.

What I discovered as a child – overcoming my physical and learning “defects” allowed me to not quit martial art… as it become a discipline of self-development. In fact, 12 years later, I came out of retirement and won the US Open International San Shou Championships at the age of 36, with only 6 weeks to prepare for a fighting sport I had never competed in. How did I do it? Well, if you know anything about the physical and learning disabilities I faced as a child, all of the conventional approaches failed.

Aerobics, bodybuilding, powerlifting, cross-training, Olympic lifting each were created within the past 100 years. None of these conventional methods are appropriate for combat sports – which are in my opinion, the ultimate test of physical fitness. As the USA National Coach, I sought out forging a conditioning program that was specifically designed to increase the safety, performance, health and career longevity of myself and my athletes.

With my academic background in philosophy and physical education, I infused modern sport science into this montage of scattered folk movements in order to create a systematic approach to a “health-first” method of increasing connective tissue strength. This is where the tractional forces (weight swinging) became more important to me than compressional forces (weight lifting.) Club swinging evolved from the centuries proven tradition of swinging weight in three dimensions rather than lifting it in two dimensions.

I was exposed to kettlebells in my six years as the 1st Westerner to intern behind the “Iron Curtain” of the former USSR, studying with their special operations (Spetsnaz) trainers, and the national and Olympic coaches of their national boxing, kickboxing, fencing, judo and sambo teams. Kettlebells were a middle ground between conventional and multi-dimensional, multi-planar training. The kettlebell somewhat displaces its center of mass, and earning the distinction of “Master Coach” in kettlebell lifting by the world champion and now US National Coach, Valery Fedorenko, allowed me to truly understand the nature of the tool and how it can be best used for connective tissue health.

A displaced center of mass creates a leverage challenge, which in turns creates positive neurological force production without the injury to connective tissue caused by conventional weight-lifting. With compressional forces (squeezing down on the joint), the greater the actual weight, the more damage you create to soft, connective tissue. I discovered this to be the reason that many weightlifters are riddled with soft tissue, joint and spinal injuries. However, a displaced center of mass in weight-swinging (such as Indian clubs and Russian kettlebells) needs much less actual weight to be swung yet producing superior force through the tractional swinging.

Tractional swinging allows space within the joints (increasing synovial and ground substance flow), rounds off the bony profiles of joint salts and calcium deposits (preventing osteoarthritis) as well as stimulating the osteoclastic/osteoblastic effect of increased bone growth (offsettting osteoporosis). As a result, I came to learn over many years of trials that weight-swinging allowing someonf of my “shallow end of the gene pool” greater heights of strength conditioning, but without the problematic injuries associated with conventional weight-training.

However, the kettlebell has a conventional handle which rests on the skeletal structure (pulls against the fingers like a kettlebell, dumbbell or barbell), unlike the Indian clubs which “distract” through the grip (pulls through the grip like a rope thus requiring connective tissue strength development). Greater weight to the joints means more soft tissue damage, because of the accumulation of trauma. The injuries so common in kettlebell, dumbbell and barbell lifting are prevented by the design of the club – with the weight pulling through the grip rather than against it.)

Unlike weight-lifting, where you must increase the weight of the implement in order to increase the force production, the club is swung. Swinging weight increases torque, which in turn, increases force developing greater connective tissue strength. Conventional weight lifting is restricted to linear increases of force with increased weight added. Weight swinging increases exponentially: swinging twice as fast produces four times the torque. Superior force production meant superior connective tissue strength for me in a fraction of the time and without the litany of injuries associated with weight-lifting.

Most importantly, weight-lifting can only be moved in two planes. This limited range of motion attempts to isolate particular muscles. Isolation, however, is a myth long since debunked. The body is composed of an interconnected myofascial web: a double-bag system. The “inner bag” contains bone and cartilage, and where it cling wraps the bone it’s called periosteum, and over the joints, it’s called joint capsule. The “outer bag” contains an electric jelly we refer to as muscle and covering it we call it fascia. Where that outer bag is tacked down to the inner bag, we call those attachments or insertion points. Our bones and joints float in a sea of continuous tension, and our bones act as compressive struts pushing outwards while this double-bagged web pulls inward in a unique balance which one of my mentors Dr. Steven Levin named biotensegrity” (the biological “integrity of tension.”)

Weight-swinging is tri-planar: moving through the sagittal, coronal and frontal planes – strengthening the myofascial chains across their full range of motion. This increases soft tissue elasticity rather than traumatizing it like the two dimensional movements of weight-lifting. Soft tissue elasticity diminishes as we age and is primarily responsible for most injuries for athletes and the aging. This is why these apparently disparate groups (young athletes and the aging communities) are my largest audiences.

Moving in three dimension washing the joint capsules with nutrition and lubrication, breaks up fascial adhesions, smoothes off boney profiles (abating osteoarthritis), and distracts the bones (abating osteoporosis). Weight-lifting equipment cannot do this.

You see the obvious development of the arms, shoulders, upper back and chest of weight-swinging enthusiasts. However, the most misunderstood difference between weight-swinging and weight-lifting is to connect the superior force production of torque to core activation. It becomes an extension of the body, which is why you see such incredibly powerful abs, obliques and strong lower backs of weight-swingers. Furthermore, all exercises are full bodily intensive: creating incredibly powerful glutes, hams, quads and calves from the leg drive.

Weight-swinging has been from age 4 to 87. Many classes are full of “baby boomers” who are looking to become pain free, agile and graceful, as well as strong, powerful and fit. Weight-swinging, whether medicine balls, clubbells (the modern version of old Indian clubs), kettlebells, at home can benefit everyone, especially in economic times where spending thousands of dollars a year on a health club membership may be outside of the budget.

Compound exercises require certain muscle groups to work simultaneously and in coordination with each other. For example, in the bench press, military press and T-bar row, your arms work in coordination with your chest, shoulders and back, respectively. Although these compound movements can produce significant growth in your larger muscle areas, in most instances these exercises do not sufficiently isolate your arms to stimulate maximum growth. Isolation training, however, is specifically intended to put maximum resistance on your biceps by forcing them to power the weightlifting movement throughout each exercise.

I frequently come across articles in which a so-called “expert” will insist that you must choose between isolation and compound exercises in setting up your weight training program. The usual argument asserts that compound exercises are absolutely better than isolation techniques without any consideration of your specific training objective.

In reality, it’s a false debate because the question of whether isolation or compound exercises are best for you depends entirely on your training goals. For example, if your objective is to develop sport specific strength that requires coordinated muscular exertion, you should focus your training on compound exercises that enhance this type of development.

But if your goal is to maximize the size and strength of a particular muscle area – as in trying to build big, muscular biceps – you need a program based primarily on isolation training techniques that are supplemented with compound exercises. While isolation training will stimulate maximum growth in your biceps, compound exercises will support that growth and ensure balanced and coordinated development of your entire upper body.

The comparative efficiency of isolation training for building big, muscular biceps is further illustrated in the following scenario. Suppose that you’re planning to drive 100 miles from Bicepsville to Triceps Town on one tank of gas. If you take Road A, you will only get 20 miles per gallon, stop every 10 miles at a toll booth, get stuck in heavy traffic and take 4 hours to complete your trip. On the other hand, if you select Road B, your gas mileage will jump to 30 miles per gallon, you will encounter no tolls or traffic, and you will drive into Triceps Town in only 2 hours. Given these alternatives and your desire to reach your destination as efficiently as possible, which route would you choose?

The obvious choice is Road B, since this route provides the most time and energy efficient route to your destination. Similarly, when choosing among arm training exercises, you must always consider their comparative efficiency. Your time and energy, like gasoline, are finite resources. Barring injury or a lack of necessary equipment, you should always select weightlifting movements that offer the most “bang for the buck.” In other words, in creating a biceps building workout, you should always emphasize isolation training over compound exercises. This rule applies even if you enjoy the compound exercises more than the isolation movements.

If you’re serious about building big, muscular biceps you must be willing to push yourself beyond what you may now consider your training limits. You must challenge yourself not only in terms of acquiring new knowledge (as I hope you’re getting from this article), but also in a willingness to try new exercises and workouts, some of which you may initially not enjoy. If you’ve been primarily doing compound exercises in your training up to this point, isolation training may initially seem difficult. But if really want to maximize your biceps building potential, you’ve got to do it!

Every bodybuilder, powerlifter or fitness enthusiast has exercises that he or she avoids. As with food, cars or clothing, it’s natural to have preferences among weight training exercises. But exercise avoidance can slow or even stop our progress. This is particularly true when applied to biceps training. It is axiomatic that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points – and a biceps building program consisting primarily of isolation training and supplemented with compound exercises provides the most direct route to superior biceps development.

Having clearly defined goals and objectives is just the first step in adding purpose and direction to your life, increasing your self-esteem, and improving your health.

While you’re thinking about what you’ve done and what you haven’t done, take a few minutes to rekindle the fire with new health and fitness goals. Consult with a fitness expert of fitness guru to help you determine your goals. Make them big; make yourself reach for them. These goals serve as a tremendous motivator to exercise regularly, eat right, and live life to the fullest.

Be Creative

A challenging goal causes you to step out of your comfort zone to accomplish it. Make your goal REALLY challenging. Something that you really want, and you’re willing to do what it takes to get there. It also reflects who you are, your values.

Be More Consistent

As simple as getting to the gym, going to your workout area at home, or wherever you exercise. Are you working out 2, maybe 3 times a week? Aim for 5-6 days a week. LIFE is exercise!

Improve Your Strength

You can realistically increase your strength by about 5% per month, even if you’re an advanced trainer. That’s about a 5 lb. increase in the amount of weight you can lift. Set a goal for a particular exercise, like the bench press, and track your progress with a log to see how far you’ve come.

Improve Your Muscular Endurance

Your reps will increase by 2-3 over a month, if you use the same weight for the entire month. Here’s a thought: if you can’t do very many chin ups, set a goal for how many you can do at the end of 4 weeks. Improving muscle endurance is great for carving out definition.

Increase Your Distance

Doesn’t matter if it’s walking, jogging, Stairmaster, biking, indoor, outdoor etc. How long does it take you to walk/run/etc. a mile? 15 minutes? See how much further you can cover in those same 15 minutes.

Learn A New Exercise Or Routine

Add variety to your workouts by adding or replacing exercises with new ones. Try in-line skating. Elliptical training. Jump-roping. An exercise class like kickboxing or Tai-chi. Just try something different. Then be a master at it.

Enter A Contest

Enter fitness contests including run/walks, cycling events, fitness and physique competitions, marathons, powerlifting and weightlifting events, etc. If you’ve never participated at a competition before, find a low-key competitive opportunity, train for it, and for cripes sakes, have FUN.

Enter DIFFERENT Contests

If you’ve been doing 5K runs for a long time, try running a marathon. Or maybe you want a break from it, so you concentrate on developing more muscle to enter into a fitness or physique competition.

Strengthen Your Community – Make New Friends

This comes almost naturally when you’re involved with friendly competition. Be conscious to reach out and meet new friends at the gym and competitive events. The camaraderie with your fellow "competitors" inspires and motivates you to achieve more.

Hire A Coach

The advice of a knowledgeable, competent, personable coach can make your road to success a more enjoyable journey. A good coach advises and empowers you on how to set goals, and craft a plan to achieve them faster.

Keep A Training Log

Record how you feel, physically and mentally, in addition to your training notes (weight, reps, rest periods, sets, etc.). You’ll understand your training better. Are you especially sluggish in mid-afternoon? Then you know you need to schedule your workouts when your energy levels are higher.

Enjoy The Journey

Nothing is more important in reaching your goal than to enjoy the passion of the pursuit. Celebrate the smaller victories along the way, and learn from life’s lessons. Share your success with your coach, friends, and family. You deserve a pat on the back! Keep it up!

First, you’re going to have to adjust your form. If you’re reading this article, there is a possibility that you’re probably not able to unleash your full potential because of the technique you’re using. You will need to ask yourself if you want to keep a bodybuilding posteur or one of a powerlifter. The powerlifting posteur and the bodybuilding one are pretty much the same, it’s just that you will have more of an arch in your back with the powerlifting stance.

Either way, there are many other ways to diagnose if you’re set up wrong. If you have wide shoulders and longer arms, you’re going to need to place your hands wider apart. This will activate more of the chest, enabling you to lift more. This is one of the biggest problems with people bench pressing.

After you have your grip set up correctly, you will want to pinch your shoulder blades together and if you want to generate more power, slightly arch your back while leaving your butt on the floor. This will only add more pressure to your chest, so don’t worry, it’s not cheating.

I’m hoping you know this by now, but make sure you breath in a lot of air before you lower the weight and then exhail as you push. Next we’re going to talk about your routine. This will be the determiner of how much you gain on your bench press. Your routine should change very often to constantly provide growth to your muscles. The biggest routine problem with people is that they don’t go heavy and always do high reps.

To gain weight to your bench press you MUST TRAIN HEAVY. This does not mean every week of the year, but low repititions, usually around 3-5 reps and heavier weight obveously, will increase your one rep max. This gives your muscles a different overload and really gives it what a taste of the max is like. I’ve seen many people that can put up 225 for 10+ reps but cannot even come close to their ‘calculated’ bench press because their muscles simply cannot cope with it. Training heavy helps your balance and strength.

You also cannot bench press every day. Don’t do it! DO NOT DO IT! It doesn’t matter if you’re sore or not. You need time to recover from each chest workout and training similar muscle groups day after day will just lead to overtraining. You also need to get enough sleep and consume enough calories to aid your growth.

Switching up your routine and using some of these methods will definately improve your bench press.

Pull ups are hard, but they are one of the few true tests of strength. I say this because some powerlifters can bench 600 or squat 800, but they also weigh 300+ and can barely manage 5 pull ups. This is one of the few exercises where you can measure relative fitness by comparing the ratio of the number of pull ups completed to bodyweight.

Some of you might get mad at me, talking about powerlifters training for strength rather than endurance, but the fact of the matter is that when I was powerlifting I could still do 15 pull ups at 195 lbs.

Now, let me take you back to high school gym class; the year was 1993, I was 15 years old. Mr. Buatti the gym teacher, who happens to bare a striking resemblance to Coach Buzzcut, called my name to stand up in front of the class and do an many pull ups as I can. The football jocks each knocked out from 10 to 20 and the wiry tough kid with only 3 fingers on one hand completed 14 of them. I got 3. It was humiliating.

Now we come back to the present. Recently I started doing pull ups again after a year layoff. On my first set, I got 5 reps. A week later I was up to 8 reps. Just yesterday I did a set of 11 reps. But I want more. I have done 18 pull ups before; I have also done 5 pull ups with a 45 lb plate hanging off a belt. So, how can I get back to that place? How can YOU get to that place?

The Pyramid Pull Up Strategy

This is the description of a little program that I have used to increase my pull ups quickly in the past.

Here are the instructions:

1. Start by doing one pull up.

2. Rest for 10 seconds, but don’t hang there. Stand on something and take all the tension off your arms and back.

3. Do one pull up more than you did in the previous step.

4. Go back to step 2 and repeat until you can’t complete the required reps.

5. Take a break for 2 minutes and do it again. Complete 2-3 sets.

You might feel weak because normally you can do 10 or 12 pull ups in a set, and you finish this exercise with a set of 6. We need to look at an example to see why this is so effective.

Normally I could do 3 sets of 11, 9, and 7 reps for a total of 27 reps at bodyweight. Using the pyramid I ended up doing sets of 1,2,3,4,5,6 then 1,2,3,4,3 and 1,2,3,1 for a total of 41 reps at bodyweight in nearly the same amount of time. That’s nearly a 50% increase in the number of reps in just one day!

Which protocol do you think will force your body to adapt and grow stronger?

Try completing a pull up pyramid twice a week for 1 month then see what your new 1 set max is. Over the course of 4 weeks I have gone from 5 reps to 11 reps by doing the pyramid once a week and 1 regular set of pull ups every other morning.

You’ve been training for years, and you’ve developed a fairly impressive bench press, right?  Most of the guys in the gym can’t touch you.  I mean, you warm up with 225.  You rep out with a spotter at 315.  And yes, you have successfully moved 401 on your own.  You’re a big guy, and above all, a strong dude.  But it seems that in recent months, you haven’t been able to get much stronger.

It happens to all of us.  It’s called a plateau and essentially, it means you have reached a point in your training where gains have temporarily stopped coming.  It’s very normal, especially as you get closer to your absolute peak physical performance potential.  Ronnie Coleman may have added 50 pounds to his bench press maximum for the first 5 or 6 years of his career, but even his numbers have stopped advancing in recent years.  There is a peak for all of us.

Luckily, unless you’re benching in the 550s, you have a long way to go until you reach your absolute physical peak.  What you’re facing now is just a temporary plateau, due to your inability to challenge your body in new ways.  Well, you are in luck.  Today we’re going to discuss some new ideas which can help to challenge your body to grow once again, adapting to a new workload and subsequently making gains in your bench press numbers.  Here are some tips.

Gain a little weight

It’s very hard to grow new muscle, without eating more food, and gaining more weight.  And it’s very hard to get stronger without some new muscle.  Add 300 to 500 new calories to your daily diet, and see if your numbers don’t start to climb again.  Just be sure that the new calories don’t come in the form of a candy bar.  Rather, they should be from an additional whey shake or protein breast.

Change your rep scheme

If you’re a powerlifter, there’s a very good chance you’ve been training with a 5 x 5 rep scheme, or something similar.  Spend 2 or 3 workouts using a 10-12 repetition range.  Then return to the 5 x 5 rep scheme and see if the added muscle fiber recruitment you caused by training with the higher repetitions has led to any new strength.  You may be surprised!

Get a training partner

If you train alone, that has to change.  We have all had those moments where we know that we have one repetition left in us – maybe.  However, if you’re training alone, you usually cannot risk going for it.  You know that at the very least, you’re going to fail and be embarrassed.  And at the very most, you could seriously injure yourself if you lose control of the bar.  Plus, if you drop the bar enough time, the gym owner may escort you out the door.  Training with a partner eliminates all of these worries. You can train until absolute failure, and push yourself even when you’re not sure if you will succeed.  Someone will always have your back!

Are you looking for a steroid to bring out the beast in you?  I’m not referring to something that’ll give you a nice pump, a few veins, and a kick in the pants for your workout.  Take some ECA is you’re just seeking something along those lines.  I’m referring to Halotestin, or Halo.

Halo has two purposes.  Many powerlifters take a single 10 mg pill prior to their workout.  For an hour, it changes them from man into animal.  We’re talking throwing around weights, yelling, nailing personal bests while cursing like a sailor – that kind of aggression.  Halo makes for some great workouts.  For decades, world-class powerlifters have used Halo (in untested events, of course) immediately prior to meets as well. 

Halo is also useful for bodybuilders seeking to add more hardness and stay focused as the final weeks of a pre-contest diet pass.  We all know that you feel like a zombie for that last month before the show.  Food is boiled and bland.  Cardio is long and endless.  You can’t sleep at night, and you’re using 75% of your previous weight on all your lifts.  You feel terrible.  However, the addition of Halo to your stack will return you to normal, and perhaps better, in very short order!  Halo causes no water retention – quite the opposite, actually.  Halo will bring out muscularity and cuts, and increase your power at the same time.

It sounds like a perfect drug, right?  Maybe we should use Halo year-round?  Think again, junior.  Halo is a highly toxic anabolic steroid.  If you plan on using it all year, you might as well place an order for a new liver now.  It’s just too toxic to be used in the long-term.

Dosing for workouts should be 10 mg prior to lifting, as mentioned.  As the final days of pre-contest dieting arrive, adding a second 10 mg dose in the morning immediately after awakening is acceptable.   If you’re a bigger athlete and you understand the threats to your health, you can take up to 40 mg per day, for 4 to 6 weeks, with little chance of long-term damage.  As always, you should have a blood panel completed before taking Halo, and during, to ensure your liver enzyme levels are staying in the manageable range.

Halo can be detected in your urine for up to 5 days after use.  This makes it not feasible to use on the day of a strength event.  Rather, it could be the catalyst in your training for those weeks leading up to it, ending with a taper approximately 8-9 days out to be completely safe.  If you’re competing in a higher level (state or national competition) there are metabolite tests which exist that can measure Halo use up to 8 weeks before testing.  Use Halo as a kick in the pants for the serious athlete.  It is never to be considered a tool that can be used year-round.  Consider it the ‘dynamite’ in your tool chest.  Very dangerous and powerful, but you can only use it once!

Normal 0

For many users of anabolic steroids, the ideal age to begin using is in the late twenties, when testosterone production begins to fall. At this point, the body’s natural ability to build muscle begins to decline, and a synthetic source of hormones may be required if one wishes to continue building muscle size and strength at the same rate.

However, there are a group of steroid users in America who start entirely too early. They begin using steroids as early at 14 years old. Some choose to use for sports purposes. They may have an older brother or friend with access to, or experience in, anabolic steroids, and they may wish to be more competitive in high school sports. With the advent of college sports (and many athletes being drafted for professional sports directly out of high school), more and more high school athletes are considering the use of steroids to perform better at sports. Also, there is a group that uses steroids simply for vanity purposes. They wish to be muscular, but don’t devote the required time in the gym or follow simple nutrition requirements. They take the shortcut, but end up short-circuiting their body’s hormone production levels for life so they can reach a bodyweight of 180. It’s a sad phenomenon, and all too common, especially given the ability for many of these children to obtain steroids using the Internet.

For youths who choose to take steroids, the side effects can be many. During puberty, steroid use can cause a great deal of damage. The bones are not done growing – but they stop growing shortly after their first steroid cycle. Additionally, their testosterone levels are already ridiculously high. To add synthetic hormones to the mix causes such normal teenage side effects such as acne to suddenly become unmanageable. Additionally, there are a bevy of side effects including damage to sexual reproduction organs, hair loss, and liver damage. Before age 20, the body is still growing. To introduce steroids into that growth causes many ill side effects. Many side effects – and the extent to which they occur – may still be unknown, as teenage steroid users are very unlikely to self-report on their illegal abuses.

For bodybuilders and powerlifters in their mid-20s, the risks of steroid use are well known. If you choose to use at this age to spurn growth that you are no longer experiencing, that is your choice. You are an adult and free to make your own decisions as to what risks to endure in order to see continued growth. For teenage lifters, there should be no debate whatsoever. Steroid use at that age can have terrible side effects, and can cause a lifetime of heartache for a level of muscle already attainable at that age (thanks to elevated testosterone levels) with correct training and diet.