Patriot Health Digest
“A bottle of steroids has never lifted a weight!”
Just how much can steroids help you? According to some studies, steroids are powerful enough to build muscle, trigger fat loss, and increase strength, even if you didn’t ever touch a barbell.
Show me the science!
In one particular study, researchers enrolled 43 resistance-trained males who had never injected steroids and were between 19 and 40 years old.
The males were divided up into the following four groups: The no-lifting group who had taken a placebo; A no-lifting group that took real T; A lifting group who received placebo shots; A lifting group who received testosterone injections.
The two groups of males that received the real Testosterone enanthate injected 600 mg of the drug per week for a total of 10 weeks. For physician-prescribed replacement therapy, males normally take about 100 mg each week, sometimes 200 mg each week. Injecting 600 mg each week put the participants well into the “steroid” category.
The result? The males who took T and never lifted weights added 10% more muscle.
Those who received testosterone and trained had gained even more – 14% muscle. But adding 10% of muscle without having to step foot into a gym? Yeah, large doses of T will do that.
The placebo group that worked out added about 3.5% muscle mass. Which means the group that didn’t even touch weights and injected T added more muscle mass than the natural weightlifters during this 10-week study.
The no-exercising T-takers also saw significant size gains in their quadriceps and triceps.
Do steroids help you gain strength without having to work out?
In the same study, researchers measured the strength gains in the four groups.
The group that received 600 mg of testosterone each week – but didn’t weight train at all– raised their squat power by 28 pounds. Their strength with bench press increased as well.
Yes, the lifters within the steroidal group and the placebo group in this study gained more strength but remember, participants who boosted their squat strength by 28 pounds didn’t do squats, or other exercise, during that 10 week period.
By the way, the participants that used steroids’ and trained had an average 83-pound increase in squat strength. That is 28 pounds more than the exercising group who did not take testosterone.
Do you retain the gains from steroidal use when not working out?
In the fat loss study from above, the participants were tested after 5 months being off T. The body composition changes they received from the testosterone were almost completely gone. They had lost most of their muscle that they gained and regained the fat.
Now, if they would have been working out, we can assume a large portion of that muscle added with steroids could have been retained. This is common among competitive bodybuilders: they do not keep all of their gains made in a cycle but do retain some of the gains if they keep working out.
Author: Scott Dowdy
