[joecolombia]

I am currently training for an upcoming crossfit tournament where i live, and it is a pretty big deal. Started training really hard since december but have been doing crossfit for the last 3 years. Since december I started using BCAA`s, protein shakes, creatine and several variations of preworkout, and have noticed a slow but constant progress throughout my workouts.

I don`t want to get into roids because it is a really complicated dosage and would have to assume a certain amount of risk in regards with ball shrinking and whynot.

Is there a 100% safe supplement or any kind of aid that boosts your performance apart from the good ol` roids?

I want strength and physical condition, since crossfit requires both.

What kind of supplements are you having and how does that workout for you?

[TheFinalEpic]

Quit Crossfit.

But in all seriousness, nothing beats steroids my friend. There is nothing that will even come close. I'm sure a few guys on here will second me when I say that it's really not that complicated to dose them for a starter cycle (you're not going to go step on stage) that can pack on pounds of muscle and strength. I'm personally waiting until around age 26-27 to start, but I know many people that have just started, and we're talking astronomical gains: 30 lbs of mass, adding a plate to deadlifts and 50+ lbs to bench.

All I can say is eat a ton, sleep a ton, and train a ton. My biggest gains (100% natural) were when I squatted 4x a week, ate in excess of 4k calories a day, and slept religiously 8-10 hours a night. You can expect to gain 20ish pounds if you haven't been doing this. Olympic lifts, which I know cross fit focuses on to some degree, are also very important. Move heavy ass weight, and focus on the compounds. That's all it takes. Most supplements are fairy dust at best and dangerous at worst.

[joecolombia]

(01-17-2016 10:57 PM)TheFinalEpic Wrote:  

Quit Crossfit.

But in all seriousness, nothing beats steroids my friend. There is nothing that will even come close. I'm sure a few guys on here will second me when I say that it's really not that complicated to dose them for a starter cycle (you're not going to go step on stage) that can pack on pounds of muscle and strength. I'm personally waiting until around age 26-27 to start, but I know many people that have just started, and we're talking astronomical gains: 30 lbs of mass, adding a plate to deadlifts and 50+ lbs to bench.

All I can say is eat a ton, sleep a ton, and train a ton. My biggest gains (100% natural) were when I squatted 4x a week, ate in excess of 4k calories a day, and slept religiously 8-10 hours a night. You can expect to gain 20ish pounds if you haven't been doing this. Olympic lifts, which I know cross fit focuses on to some degree, are also very important. Move heavy ass weight, and focus on the compounds. That's all it takes. Most supplements are fairy dust at best and dangerous at worst.

The thing with roids is that a cycle can go south really easily. Just a wrong dosage, a bad quality roid or anything like that can leave you fucked up for life.

Squat, bench and generally my strength has improven quite bit, but a friend of mine did steroids a while back and his gains are off the charts... a bit unfair if you ask me.

I know there is a point where your body won`t give you any more progress, but i want to see where that is for me, and how can i get there faster.

I do crossfit because I got bored of doing regular gym. It is always different and lots of fun most of the time.

[Teutatis]

I've never done them and have no intention of doing them but there's nothing in the world that can be remotely compared to steroids. If you're looking for a magical pill there's none. Without steroids the only thing you can do is maintain a general healthy life style, which is, sleep a lot, eat healthy, train hard, be happy, avoid stress and be mentally resilient to the pain and discomfort.

[MiscBrah]

(01-17-2016 11:13 PM)joecolombia Wrote:  

The thing with roids is that a cycle can go south really easily. Just a wrong dosage, a bad quality roid or anything like that can leave you fucked up for life.

Steroids won't fuck you up for life. If you are bored of the gym, box, do MMA, start rock climbing, run, swim, anything but crossfit.

As for performance boosting supplements, they're really aren't any. Before you compete you could take 400-600mg of caffeine. That'll make you a bit stronger and will provide some placebo.

The main thing is to make sure you are well hydrated, had a good nights rest, and ate some good food. That will boost your performance more than any exotic herb.

[TheFinalEpic]

I wouldn't consider it outside the supervision of a medical professional, but they definitely can be done safely. I don't know how old you are, but TRT is largely advocated in this community, and for good reason.

I also wouldn't look at it as unfair. If someone took the risk and reaped the reward in another facet of life, we'd say they did what was necessary. I look at it the same way, you're not in the same league as him anymore, the second a person takes steroids, you are "competing" against a major leaguer while you're still playing AA ball; they're two very different leagues.

The fastest way is consistent work, proper nutrition, and tons of sleep. If you're unwilling to take steroids, I'd highly resist pheromones or something to that extent. Supplements will give you steroid-like results if you're deficient in something (zinc for a lot of guys), beyond that, their effects are marginal if not much more than placebo.

I was kidding, however it gets a bad rep in that people don't go through full range of motion, or utilize momentum and/or terrible form. One thing I would make sure to avoid is the high rep olympic lifts. They are exceptionally technical lifts and anything beyond 1-3 reps is plain stupidity.

If you really want to have some fun with weights, do what I did before unfortunately getting injured: Bodybuild, but with a focus on powerlifting and olympic lifts. There's a few guys out there that train in this method, most notably Mike O'Hearn and Amit Sapir (more oly style), and their physiques are hard to beat because of the density that can be built.

[Anabasis to Desta]

Have you looked into SARM's like Ostarine?

I've heard good things about them.

[MiscBrah]

(01-17-2016 11:32 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

Have you looked into SARM's like Ostarine?

I've heard good things about them.

^^I've heard some decent things too Anabasis but they can still shut you down depending on the dose. I'd recommend to OP if you are going to venture down the road of PEDs do the real thing, not prohormones or SARMS.

[TheFinalEpic]

(01-17-2016 11:32 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

Have you looked into SARM's like Ostarine?

I've heard good things about them.

I've read this tends to be more of a PCT (post cycle therapy) type of drug. You won't see steroid-like gains, however I do believe that there has to be something there, would be interested if anyone's actually tried it.

[Phoenix]

Yeah I looked into Ostarine, but it seems to have a bad anti-libido side-effect. It appears it selectively targets muscle tissue but also downregulates the HPGA, the combined effect being demasculinizing effects (except for muscle).

We're all still waiting for that magical "zero side effect swoleifier". Doesn't exist yet.

[TheFinalEpic]

Anavar is probably the closest to "safe" we have now, but the anabolic affects are low. Women use it because it doesn't have the androgynous side effects that synthetic testosterones do, so they still look like women while getting shredded. You have to stack these things, and cancel out the negative with anti-estrogens.

[MiscBrah]

I respectfully disagree TheFinalEpic

Anavar can still shut you down and unless in a high dose, often produces less gains that your natural test. Not to mention its often faked and expensive...

I would venture to say MGF (Mechano Growth Factor) is the safest thing we have right now purely for muscle growth without risk of shutdown.

I don't understand though that after a certain age, why would you still want to be natural? Get on TRT and then you can start messing with Ostarine or whatever you want

[Jazzman92]

Maybe try test boosters. They work by increasing the levels of lh and fsh released by the anterior pituitary gland. This leads to a natural increase in testosterone levels. Ive heard most of them are a waste of money but i cant say from personal experience. I do have a friend who uses one called tribulus though and he said it works very well for him. He uses 3x the recomended dosage and cycles on and off it similar to how you would with steroids

[Hannibal]

I'm writing this under the assumption that you have your diet and sleep figured out. So that means you already have optimal testosterone levels because of diet and a test booster is not necessary.

Anything that improves your mental focus will also boost physical performance. Caffeine is banned in the Olympics for this very reason. Russian sports science dictates that stimulants "heighten arousal", as in the level of excitement. I'm not talking about sexual arousal, but the kind where you pump yourself up before getting into a fistfight. Your one rep max is going to be a bit higher if you slam a caffeine pill beforehand.

So caffeine, nicotine, ephedra, yohimbe/yohimbine, if it's a stimulant that allows you to focus it will help somewhat. Nootropics like noopept might help too. This all depends on what is legal in your country, also take the absolute lowest dosage and go from there. I don't know anything about steroids but I'm sure these peewee league enhancers do not compare.

Creatine is the "only" non steroidal muscle builder that actually works, but you have to be fairly swole for it to work at all. I'm putting TRT under the steroids category here.

As far as one ready made product that has most of those stimulants, I recommend this.



I took two scoops and didn't sleep for a day and a half. Take maybe half a scoop starting out and see what happens. I know you said you're already taking different preworkouts, but many of them are glorified pony piss.

If you're looking for sources/citations, search for what Paul Carter over at lift-run-bang has to say about creatine.

As far as other "hacks", you could try doing your conditioning by breathing through a straw. There are also elevation training masks. This would increase your conditioning in an uncomfortable hurry.

[H1N1]

Honestly, as a natural lifter, I think the best thing most trainees can do for increasing lifts is to increase their conditioning level. I appreciate that doing crossfit you may already be in decent shape for conditioning (although in my limited experience most CFers are not as fit as they'd like to think). However, if you think there is scope to improve your fitness, I'm certain that you'll see a corresponding, though perhaps delayed, increase in the levels of your strength.

Better conditioning improves recovery, allows you to take shorter breaks between sets, and can (to a far lesser extent) reproduce many of the effects of steroids. It's pure bro science based exclusively on my experience with myself and other guys I've trained with, but I find that I am far more energetic, alert, and outright aggressive when my conditioning is through the roof. Back when I was boxing for 3-4 hours 4 nights per week, and running 5 days per week, as well as doing high rep calisthenics during the day, I felt invincible. Now that I mostly just lift, and work on my conditioning by myself, I find that if I plateau, the best thing I can do is to put the weights into maintenance mode for a month, and go after the conditioning hard.

[CPG]

(01-17-2016 11:32 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

Have you looked into SARM's like Ostarine?

I've heard good things about them.

I'll second ostarine--I learned about it from a Good Looking Loser post a few months back and was curious enough to try it out, I'm finishing up an 8 week run now and have been happy with it. I already ordered more and will be running it again after taking some downtime.

My background was similar--I wanted faster gains than just whey + creatine would give me, without having to run a full supported cycle followed by PCT like steroids require--and SARMs fit the bill best. Also, they're legal...I ordered mine right online without having to go through a research chemical site or the like.

I haven't researched other SARMs to quite the same extent. I also considered LGD-4033 as people report greater gains from it, but the side effect profile is much larger. In particular, T suppression is far more common on LGD so I went with Osterine in the hope that I don't get suppression from it.

Here's some cliff notes on osterine:

• SARMs ("Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator") bind only with certain androgen receptors, rather than steroids which also effect organs like the prostate
• You don't have the direct testoreone-to-estrogen increase you get from steroids, so unless you're prone to gyno you can pass on an taking an anti-estrogen
• T suppression is a possibility, I couldn't find hard data on frequency so going from reading people's logs it seems roughly a 50/50 risk. The only research papers are on low doses used to treat muscle wasting and it wasn't suppressive in those studies, however, using it at a bodybuilder does (ie 25 or 37.5mg) does risk suppression over a longer period of time. If you do get suppressed, you can either wait it out or use over-the-counter PCT as the effects are more minor than a steroid cycle
• You're not going to get steroid level results. Your results should exceed natty by quite a bit. Personally, I dropped creatine and took just ostarine to test it out, and the performance boost was considerably more noticeable than on creatine. I haven't ran steroids so I can't compare it to them.
  

Quote:

Is there a 100% safe supplement or any kind of aid that boosts your performance apart from the good ol` roids?

I want strength and physical condition, since crossfit requires both.

What kind of supplements are you having and how does that workout for you?

While there's no such thing as 100% safe, ostarine is the closest I know of. Gains are moderate but satisfying, and at least for me I haven't had sides. I've been adding weight and reps much faster than I was before taking it.

If you're curious, check out the GLL post here and also I learned quite a bit from reading user experiences in this thread on Anabolic Minds

[NewMeta]

lol crossfit

My input to this thread: There was another thread that talked about the long sauna sessions as a way of increasing endurance and strength, google some research on this if interested, it isn't something I personally have tried because my gym does not have one but it looked promising.

Now for the real talk, because for all the effort and investment you put into "performance enhancers" that are not steroids, you probably might as well do steroids.

I have friends who buy literally everything pushed by the fitness industry, whey protein, creatine, BCAA's, beta alanine, pre-workout etc... That doesn't even factor in general health supplements like multivits, fish oil, vitamin D, zinc, green tea extract or whatever. That is a ton of cash, you could take a few holidays with that over the course of a year. Or buy yourself a couple of cycles...

And yet, I still end up stronger than them with only taking fish oil, zinc and a multivit as far as health supps goes, I've been doing that all my life though so it was never specifically consumed to increase performance. I occasionally do whey protein and creatine but because I make just as much gains when not on them I rarely feel the need to buy. It is my personal opinion that so long as you do the 90% of what is important which is:

-Train hard
-Sleep well
-Eat a lot

Then who cares about health supplements that probably dont work anyway, waste of money for what is very realistically attainable without. I mean...especially considering its crossfit since youre going to be using bad form and momentum to complete all your feats of "strength" anyway

[General Mayhem]

(01-18-2016 05:26 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

Honestly, as a natural lifter, I think the best thing most trainees can do for increasing lifts is to increase their conditioning level. I appreciate that doing crossfit you may already be in decent shape for conditioning (although in my limited experience most CFers are not as fit as they'd like to think). However, if you think there is scope to improve your fitness, I'm certain that you'll see a corresponding, though perhaps delayed, increase in the levels of your strength.

Better conditioning improves recovery, allows you to take shorter breaks between sets, and can (to a far lesser extent) reproduce many of the effects of steroids. It's pure bro science based exclusively on my experience with myself and other guys I've trained with, but I find that I am far more energetic, alert, and outright aggressive when my conditioning is through the roof. Back when I was boxing for 3-4 hours 4 nights per week, and running 5 days per week, as well as doing high rep calisthenics during the day, I felt invincible. Now that I mostly just lift, and work on my conditioning by myself, I find that if I plateau, the best thing I can do is to put the weights into maintenance mode for a month, and go after the conditioning hard.

I can vouch for this. I think there might be some mental factors at play.

Knowing that you force yourself to endure a harder routine than almost anyone can cause you to walk around like you have two boulders dangling between your legs.

That kind of energy just compounds on itself and leads to the gainz.

[The Beast1]

As for non steroid performance boosters, pro-hormones might do what you want.

I tried a DHEA cream that would give me definite boosts in performance. I broke a couple of plataes, but the come down from coming off of it (more than 6 weeks) meant your natural test levels would drop. Miserable and moody.

I don't remember the name of it, but the last I checked it was $200 which is stupid. I bought it for $60 back in the day. At that price i'd rather just do real gear.

[Neo]

(01-17-2016 11:13 PM)joecolombia Wrote:  

The thing with roids is that a cycle can go south really easily. Just a wrong dosage, a bad quality roid or anything like that can leave you fucked up for life.

Squat, bench and generally my strength has improven quite bit, but a friend of mine did steroids a while back and his gains are off the charts... a bit unfair if you ask me.

I know there is a point where your body won`t give you any more progress, but i want to see where that is for me, and how can i get there faster.

I do crossfit because I got bored of doing regular gym. It is always different and lots of fun most of the time.

The dangers are overblown. If you really want to compete and you're not getting tested, just juice.

[joecolombia]

(01-18-2016 11:43 AM)CPG Wrote:  

(01-17-2016 11:32 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

Have you looked into SARM's like Ostarine?

I've heard good things about them.

I'll second ostarine--I learned about it from a Good Looking Loser post a few months back and was curious enough to try it out, I'm finishing up an 8 week run now and have been happy with it. I already ordered more and will be running it again after taking some downtime.

My background was similar--I wanted faster gains than just whey + creatine would give me, without having to run a full supported cycle followed by PCT like steroids require--and SARMs fit the bill best. Also, they're legal...I ordered mine right online without having to go through a research chemical site or the like.

I haven't researched other SARMs to quite the same extent. I also considered LGD-4033 as people report greater gains from it, but the side effect profile is much larger. In particular, T suppression is far more common on LGD so I went with Osterine in the hope that I don't get suppression from it.

Here's some cliff notes on osterine:

• SARMs ("Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator") bind only with certain androgen receptors, rather than steroids which also effect organs like the prostate
• You don't have the direct testoreone-to-estrogen increase you get from steroids, so unless you're prone to gyno you can pass on an taking an anti-estrogen
• T suppression is a possibility, I couldn't find hard data on frequency so going from reading people's logs it seems roughly a 50/50 risk. The only research papers are on low doses used to treat muscle wasting and it wasn't suppressive in those studies, however, using it at a bodybuilder does (ie 25 or 37.5mg) does risk suppression over a longer period of time. If you do get suppressed, you can either wait it out or use over-the-counter PCT as the effects are more minor than a steroid cycle
• You're not going to get steroid level results. Your results should exceed natty by quite a bit. Personally, I dropped creatine and took just ostarine to test it out, and the performance boost was considerably more noticeable than on creatine. I haven't ran steroids so I can't compare it to them.
  

Quote:

Is there a 100% safe supplement or any kind of aid that boosts your performance apart from the good ol` roids?

I want strength and physical condition, since crossfit requires both.

What kind of supplements are you having and how does that workout for you?

While there's no such thing as 100% safe, ostarine is the closest I know of. Gains are moderate but satisfying, and at least for me I haven't had sides. I've been adding weight and reps much faster than I was before taking it.

If you're curious, check out the GLL post here and also I learned quite a bit from reading user experiences in this thread on Anabolic Minds

Sounds like a good bet. I am not against steroids, i just think it is a big leap i am not willing to take, at elast not yet.

How many pounds have you increased since you began with ostarine? and how are the side effects treating you?

is it worth it?

[rudebwoy]

Some will argue over supplements that supposedly work, I will say if you train hard enough you can get the desired results.

I am not a fan of crossfit, it seems a bit neurotic for me and a fad that needs to go away.

Have you thought about a personal trainer or getting a workout partner?

[CPG]

Quote:

Sounds like a good bet. I am not against steroids, i just think it is a big leap i am not willing to take, at elast not yet.

How many pounds have you increased since you began with ostarine? and how are the side effects treating you?

is it worth it?

Yeah that's my attitude on steroids as well, I've read up and thought about them but I'm not yet ready to go to the dark side. I've enjoyed my dalliance in the grey with SARMs, I'll come back to 'roids if/when I feel a need for something more extreme.

The pounds on the bar have gone up steadily. I've yet to have a workout where I haven't progressed at least a few of the lifts, while when I followed the same bulking protocol on creatine I did sometimes plateau.

My recovery has also been better, before taking ostarine I occasionally overdid it on a workout early in the week and was dragging later on, while since adding it in I've rarely been sore.

Unfortunately I didn't track my LBM change carefully, as this was a personal experiment and not something I planned to post about it until I saw your thread. I can see a clear difference and I got some compliments from friends over the holidays, but to show you hard numbers I'll have to point you to some of the progress logs out there.

Before starting it I skimmed over a bunch of logs on body building forums, the consensus came down to much of what Chris said in the GLL post: do 6 to 8 weeks and expect somewhere in the 5 to 10 lb gain range, as long as you're not already at your genetic limit. If you Google "osterine bulking log" you'll get plenty of reading material on other people's results.

Sides-wise I've gotten off easy. No change in libido or mood, so either it hasn't been T-suppressive or the effects are weak enough not to affect me.

In week 2 I had a couple days in a row where I was getting flushed after meals (like I had just had a carb load) which was strange but harmless, and around week 5 I noticed some headaches and fuzziness for a few days which have since passed.

It's worth it for me--clear benefits, minimal sides, acceptable cost. Whether it makes sense for you or not depends on if the cost is reasonable and if you have troublesome sides. The risk factors for trying it are low--if you notice a sudden plummet in libido you can stop taking it and it'll clear up shortly.

That Anabolic Minds thread had a number of suggestions on things to keep on hand in case you saw any gyno or the like, I don't think it's a big risk but if you're feeling cautious you could grab some of that too. I picked up a few of their recommendations in case I feel anything off when I go back to normal.

[joecolombia]

(01-18-2016 06:09 PM)CPG Wrote:  

Quote:

Sounds like a good bet. I am not against steroids, i just think it is a big leap i am not willing to take, at elast not yet.

How many pounds have you increased since you began with ostarine? and how are the side effects treating you?

is it worth it?

Yeah that's my attitude on steroids as well, I've read up and thought about them but I'm not yet ready to go to the dark side. I've enjoyed my dalliance in the grey with SARMs, I'll come back to 'roids if/when I feel a need for something more extreme.

The pounds on the bar have gone up steadily. I've yet to have a workout where I haven't progressed at least a few of the lifts, while when I followed the same bulking protocol on creatine I did sometimes plateau.

My recovery has also been better, before taking ostarine I occasionally overdid it on a workout early in the week and was dragging later on, while since adding it in I've rarely been sore.

Unfortunately I didn't track my LBM change carefully, as this was a personal experiment and not something I planned to post about it until I saw your thread. I can see a clear difference and I got some compliments from friends over the holidays, but to show you hard numbers I'll have to point you to some of the progress logs out there.

Before starting it I skimmed over a bunch of logs on body building forums, the consensus came down to much of what Chris said in the GLL post: do 6 to 8 weeks and expect somewhere in the 5 to 10 lb gain range, as long as you're not already at your genetic limit. If you Google "osterine bulking log" you'll get plenty of reading material on other people's results.

Sides-wise I've gotten off easy. No change in libido or mood, so either it hasn't been T-suppressive or the effects are weak enough not to affect me.

In week 2 I had a couple days in a row where I was getting flushed after meals (like I had just had a carb load) which was strange but harmless, and around week 5 I noticed some headaches and fuzziness for a few days which have since passed.

It's worth it for me--clear benefits, minimal sides, acceptable cost. Whether it makes sense for you or not depends on if the cost is reasonable and if you have troublesome sides. The risk factors for trying it are low--if you notice a sudden plummet in libido you can stop taking it and it'll clear up shortly.

That Anabolic Minds thread had a number of suggestions on things to keep on hand in case you saw any gyno or the like, I don't think it's a big risk but if you're feeling cautious you could grab some of that too. I picked up a few of their recommendations in case I feel anything off when I go back to normal.

That actually sounds pretty good. Enough to improve and get better benchmarks, but not so much to "commit" into a bigger thing. That`s my drill.

I will look into it before I take a final decision but the way you are showing it to me looks like the best bet for a non steroids user, since the thing that worries me the most is the libido problems, hypergonadism and all of the side effects related to roids.

Ostarine looks like the perfect grey area between the two.

Will look foward into avaliability and pricing around my area!

[joecolombia]

(01-18-2016 04:38 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  

Some will argue over supplements that supposedly work, I will say if you train hard enough you can get the desired results.

I am not a fan of crossfit, it seems a bit neurotic for me and a fad that needs to go away.

Have you thought about a personal trainer or getting a workout partner?

It is a bit neurotic, but if you take it apart, it is basically a standard training but arranged in different ways. You end up training the same muscle groups you would in a globo gym or somthing like that.

Everyone has its preferences though...

For me, the workout partner is the best mental booster you have avaliable. It is as simple as finding someone better than you, sticking to his process and reaching his time caps, pr`s, etc.

Pushing yourself with others.