This thread took a strange turn of direction, I feel.
Seriously guys, we don't fully understand all the interactions myostatin has with the body so I wouldn't even bother getting hung up on whether a steroid or cycle has limitations based on the myostatin amounts. Training and eating certain foods also affects myostatin. Much of myostatin changes is completely dependent on external stimuli/factors. The "stalling out" effect people get when they try and do perpetual bulking is much more than just myostatin shutting things down. Your insulin sensitivity likely sucks at that point too. You have a higher fat content as well, which means estrogen levels increase, which does a myriad of both good and bad things to the body in terms of anabolism. The best thing to focus on is understand HOW to get bigger rather than trying to understand each individual molecular activity in a vacuum. Just eat progressively. Train progressively more intense. And take breaks from time to time and go the other direction - lowering carbs, adding in cardio, changing the diet/protein amounts and changing the supplements you use.
It's not hard. And yes, Datbtrue called it "toggling" which to this day has been the single most honest thing I've ever read in terms of what works to get people bigger over time. Truth is, it takes all that stuff I just mentioned above but most of all - consistency and persistence.
Something else to point out - you guys are acknowledging that myostatin limits gains after a certain point. This further underscores the importance of toggling your diet and routine every 6/8/10 weeks. All the major growth you get is usually a rebound growth that happens in the first4 weeks after a hard cut. Why do you think that is?
You can take one person who decides to bulk for 30 weeks straight to try and put on as much mass as possible and you can take another person with the exact same genetics (hypothetical purposes) and have him bulk/cut/bulk in the same period...or really even less, say 24 weeks time and he will make more muscular gains and be leaner than the other person in the end. Toggling is the only way around your body's natural resistance to getting swole. Why do you think bodybuilders are so big? I'll tell you this: if eating a ton of food and increasing steroid consumption builds myostatin resistance, what do you think will happen if you cut calories overall and reduce the dosage of steroids? Even temporarily? Care to guess?
Most people think bb'rs are huge because they take lots of steroids but in the same instance not really knowing for sure how much or what the bb'r is actually taking. Non-competitive folks just assume that:
1) He takes gear or way more gear than normal lifters
2) He has better genetics and responds to said gear way better
And that is the most pathetic cop-out that I've unfortunately witnessed people to have for why they aren't adding slabs of muscle to their frame each year.
Competing each year requires that I toggle at least once. I'm a small guy but for the past 2 years, I will have added 5-7lbs of muscle each time and coming in leaner each time. Mind you, I take less total gear than I used to and this is without doing a "bulk" season where I actually put in effort to eat healthy, solid meals. I just ate whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted to. Imagine if I put the time into my off season bulking like I did in my comp prep season? Truth is, a successful bodybuilder figured out that if he is extremely efficient in his cutting cycle - as in he does not lose much if any muscle mass, he can get much, much leaner and turn around and get awesome rebound growth over the next 4-8 weeks - almost discriminately making lean gains only.
The point, if I can allow myself to finally get to it, is that while EQ or certain steroids may affect myostatin significantly at times, the best thing to do is to give your body a reason to decrease it's myostatin levels as well as increasing it's insulin sensitivity. We call this "priming the body" and it works REALLY, REALLY well. Follow a good priming season with EQ and you'll be blown away at how lean you'll stay while you get much, much bigger.
So for those wanting to give EQ a try, do it during a rebound period. A good plan should look something like this:
Cutting/Priming phase
- Low androgen use
- Utilize fat burners
- Progressively lower carb intake
- Progressive increase cardio of all types
- Supplement with R-ALA, Cinnamon, Chromium, Vanadyl Sulfate, Metformin, Berberine, etc.
- Use a fat burner
- If comfortable, use Humulin-R in very low doses only when eating starches (to retain as much muscle as possible)
- Do this for 8-10 weeks or until you get down to less than 9% BF (preferably 6% though)
Re-Bound bulk (when myostatin is very low)
- Moderate to high androgen use (change up the compounds too. Long ester preferred. EQ is good here)
- Increase carb intake quickly and to very high amounts (if you were cutting on 2K calories, you need to start here @ 2.5K to 3K calories)
- Macros something like 35%P / 50%C / 15% F
- Train legs 2-3 days per week
- Train full spectrum of rep ranges and intensity
- Progressively increase weights and calories (maybe 100-200kcals per week)
- Add SEO's into lagging muscle groups if necessary. Something like MCT oil and synovial fluid works well
Polish and lock in phase
- Learn to keep the mass and most of the strength as you come down in dosages of gear
- Make adjustments to macros to something healthier and more sustainable if necessary
- Do this for 3 months (to make the new found mass a more semi-permanent type of gains)
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I would bet money that many people would be able to come out with 8-12lbs more lean mass and anywhere from 4-6lbs less fat mass than when they started. All this accomplished within 16-24 weeks time.
