Steroidlike Mass Without the Use of Dangerous Drugs

How to Get Supreme Anabolic Acceleration

The following is adapted from the last chapter of the e-book Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building.

Let’s face it: Steroids enable an athlete to leapfrog hormonal roadblocks and reach a new level of physical prowess—fast—a level that would have been impossible without drugs. Hold on! Impossible without drugs? That may be a bit premature. In fact, if we analyze the way steroids work and do everything in our power to mimic those effects naturally, many of us can get results similar to what happens when we’re on mild anabolics. (We say “mild” because there’s no way you can get your body to produce five times its normal testosterone output, which is the amount a lot of bodybuilders inject.)

You read that right: steroidlike results without the steroids. Adopt the 10 ’roid-mimicking techniques we outline here, and you’ll experience new muscle growth, a strength explosion and a rush of self-confidence. We’re often accused of using, but we don’t—so we consider those accusations the ultimate compliment for a drug-free athlete! [Note: The bold type paragraphs are from Jerry Brainum’s feature “’Roids 101,” which appeared in the August ’03 IRON MAN.]

Anabolic-Hormone Surge

• Simply put, anabolic steroids are either testosterone itself or synthetic versions of testosterone.

• Recent studies confirm another route through which anabolic steroids increase muscle size: augmented release of other anabolic hormones in the body, such as growth hormone and insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF-1). The primary anabolic hormones in the body appear to have a synergistic effect in building muscle.

It should be obvious that to start the steroid-mimicking process, you want to kick your testosterone into high gear, as that’s what steroids are—synthetic versions of that anabolic and androgenic hormone. You also want to increase your growth hormone so you get a synergistic anabolic effect, as GH boosts testosterone’s potency and vice versa. Triggering an insulin uptick at specific times during the day can amplify those effects even more.

The anabolic synergy of those three hormones is the reason so many bodybuilders’ drug stacks include all of them—and the reason there are so many 250-plus-pound behemoths stalking the stages of pro bodybuilding shows. Boost yours naturally—and at the right times—and you’ll grow as never before.

The mistake most drug-free bodybuilders make is thinking that any type of weight workout will give them optimal surges in the anabolic hormones. Sure, almost any type of intense weight training increases testosterone and GH to some degree, but we’re after maximum output. To get steroidlike effects, you must have significant amounts of testosterone and GH coursing through your system.

That’s not just an educated guess. In one study men who took both GH and testosterone showed lean-mass increases three times greater than those who took testosterone alone.1 Getting the anabolic triple whammy takes specific strategies, not random workouts.

Testosterone. Intense anaerobic exercise is the key to increasing testosterone production. Research indicates that you get the biggest test surge when your program is dominated by multijoint exercises, such as squats. In fact, the larger the bodypart you’re training, the more testosterone you release. Of course you have to do enough volume, but you don’t want to overdo it. Common wisdom is that workouts lasting more than about an hour and 15 minutes cause a testosterone crash, probably due to elevated cortisol, a stress hormone that smothers anabolic hormones and eats muscle. You want to stop the workout before cortisol goes into muscle-munching Pac-Man mode.

So here are your first two steroid-mimicking strategies:

1) Make sure your workout is dominated by the big, compound exercises, two to three sets of eight to 10 reps. Do squats for quads, chins for lats, rows for midback, upright rows and presses for delts and bench presses for chest—the midrange exercises.

2) Try to keep most of your workouts at about an hour. If you use one or all of the cortisol-control strategies coming up, you may be able to push some to an hour and a half.

Growth hormone. Researchers believe that GH supercharges the anabolic properties of testosterone, and the study referred to above that got the triple-gain results verifies that. So how do you get your pituitary gland to secrete more GH and crank up test’s effects? Studies indicate that there’s a direct correlation between higher blood lactic acid levels and GH release.2 That means the more muscle burn you induce, the more GH you can stimulate.

To go for the burn, use supersets, drop sets and/or X Reps—as explained in Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building—on some sets. Also use continuous-tension exercises, which keep blood choked off from the muscle and help concentrate the burn because they give you resistance through the entire range of movement. Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler get continuous tension on most of their exercises by using only a partial range of motion, especially on exercises that have lockout. Basically, they never get close to locking out so the muscle doesn’t get a chance to rest. Exercises that enable you to lock out and rest at one end of the rep, such as squats, can still produce burn if you don’t go to lockout, so the partial technique is a good one for triggering GH release. Single-joint isolation exercises (contracted-position movements in POF protocol) also produce muscle burn.

So your third steroid-mimicking strategy is this:

3) Use continuous-tension isolation exercises to ignite muscle burn, which triggers GH release. Doing partial-range compound movements for each target muscle can help too. Drop sets, X Reps and the various X-hybrid techniques can intensify the burn, which, in turn, can increase GH.

• The answer lies in research showing that large doses of steroids, such as those commonly taken by athletes, increase the number of androgen receptors.

Any kind of intense weight training can increase androgen receptors; however, there’s evidence that elongating a muscle, as when you use a stretch-position exercise like stiff-legged deadlifts for hamstrings or overhead extensions for triceps, does a bang-up job of increasing IGF-1 receptors in the muscle. IGF-1 is a highly anabolic metabolite that can occur as a direct result of GH. So steroids increase androgen receptors in muscle, and stretch-position exercises can accomplish some of the same action. That’s why stretch-position movements are mandatory for maximizing the steroid-mimicking effects of weight training. Stretch overload has also been linked to hyperplasia, or muscle fiber division, so exercises that stretch the target muscle can trigger muscle growth in a number of different ways. And the Double-X Overload technique can make stretch-position exercises even more powerful in both of those areas.

That suggests one more steroid-mimicking strategy:

4) Use stretch-position exercises to increase androgen receptors on muscles and perhaps to spur hyperplasia. Add the Double-X Overload X-hybrid technique to some sets to supercharge their mass-building effects. Stretch-position exercises include sissy squats for quads, stiff-legged deadlifts for hamstrings, pullovers for lats, shrugs for midback, one-arm incline laterals for delts, overhead extensions for triceps, incline curls for biceps and flyes or wide-grip dips for chest.

• Steroids work by binding to specific cell receptors called androgen receptors. That initiates a cascade in the cell that results in upgraded muscle protein synthesis.

To mimic this one, you have to jam-pack your muscles with amino acids. That leads us to an infamous storage hormone and its effects.

Insulin. It can cause your body to store fat in fat cells and amino acids and creatine in muscle cells, sparking an upgrade in protein synthesis. That’s one of the main reasons steroids build muscle quickly—and precisely what you want in order to create steroidlike effects naturally.

To get the anabolic reactions without fat storage, you need to trigger an insulin surge after you train but minimize such surges at all other times of the day. Use a shake made with straight whey protein and/or hydrolyzed whey and simple carbs. Go for about 60 grams of carbs and 40 grams of whey. Immediately after an intense training session your muscles are like bone-dry sponges ready to soak up nutrients, so give them what they crave and take advantage of the anabolic window. (We use the X-Stack, available at www.Muscle-Link.com, which also includes five grams of titrated creatine.)

Fasting has also been shown to create an important anabolic window, so you may want to experiment with getting fast protein and fast carbs in the morning, as soon as you wake up. Try 20 grams of whey protein along with 30 grams of simple carbs, like grape juice. (Or use a half serving of the X-Stack; it’s designed for optimizing the postworkout anabolic window, but it works well in the morning too.)

To minimize insulin surges throughout the day, eat six small protein-based meals spaced a few hours apart. Overfeeding at any one meal, no matter what the macronutrient percentages are, causes an insulin surge at the wrong time. Don’t gorge yourself. Also, avoid eating carbs alone. Simple-sugar snacks cause insulin to skyrocket.

The basic rule is that each of your six meals should give you at least 20 grams of protein, a medium number of carbs—low-glycemic carbs are best—and a small amount of fat, preferably good fat from nuts or fish, for example.

Based on that, add three more steroid-mimicking strategies to the list:

5) Get some fast protein and fast carbs as soon as you wake up to take advantage of the secondary anabolic window created by the overnight fast (unless you raided the fridge at 2 a.m., which means you didn’t fast).

6) Drink a postworkout shake that has 40 grams of fast protein, like whey, and 60 grams of fast, or high-glycemic, carbs, like sugar, to spike insulin immediately after every workout and drive amino acids into your muscles. (The X-Stack works here).

7) Eat six small meals a day, each containing at least 20 grams of protein—30 to 40 would be better. That will keep the amino acid building blocks circulating—you never want recovering muscles to be starved for them—and avoid insulin surges that can cause fat deposition. Remember, steroids increase protein synthesis, and the only way to maximize protein use without them is to make sure there are enough aminos available to your system at all times to swing the anabolic-to-catabolic balance in favor of growth.

Catabolic Blockade

• Androgens bind with low affinity to glucocorticoid cell receptors, the cell receptors that interact with cortisol. Anything that interferes with cortisol activity, such as anabolic steroids, tilts the balance toward anabolism, not catabolism.

Enemy number one in your quest to mimic steroid actions without taking drugs is cortisol, which smothers anabolic actions, diffusing your GH and testosterone output. One way to combat cortisol is to sip a high-glycemic-sugar mixture during your workout. (We mentioned that as one of our mega-mass strategies; we’re using a half serving of our X-Stack along with the new supplement GAKIC. It’s an ammonia buffer, which helps you get more reps.) Here’s what European researcher Michael Gündill said about that strategy: “Blood glucose levels tend to fall during training. As a result, insulin secretion is repressed while the secretions of cortisol and glucagon are enhanced. You want to reverse the situation, which is easily accomplished by increasing your carb intake before your workout and/or using a carb drink through the session.”

A study reported in mid-2002 verified that drinking carbohydrate beverages during high-intensity intermittent exercise lowers cortisol levels.3 Even Kool-Aid will work, but we suggest some fast protein added to the mix to feed the muscles. Research scientist Jose Antonio, Ph.D., has written about athletes drinking flat Coke (regular, with sugar, not diet) during workouts to bolster energy—and no doubt blunt cortisol release. If you try it, make sure the carbonation is gone, or you could get nauseated.

That suggests another steroid-mimicking strategy:

8) Sip a high-carb-and-protein mixture during your workout.

Sleeping It On

• Cortisol receptors in muscle far outnumber androgen receptors. So a true anticatabolic effect would require larger doses of anabolics.

Once again, your best bet for building muscle steroid-free is to minimize cortisol, maximize anabolic hormone output and enhance recovery whenever and wherever possible. That way you optimize your androgen receptors (remember, you can build new ones with stretch-position exercises) and minimize the cortisol receptors. Do that as often as possible—even when you sleep—and your gains should skyrocket.

You’ve already seen a number of ways to maximize anabolism and de-emphasize catabolism during the day, but how do you stay in control while you’re sawing logs? Dreaming of Carmen Electra giving you a hot-oil rub will no doubt raise your testosterone, among other things, but if Dennis Rodman shows up, your cortisol will soar. Instead of focusing on Carmen, simply try to get eight to 10 hours of sleep each night—and make sure it’s uninterrupted, sound sleep. Even minor sleep disturbances can alter the hormonal response you’re after—which is maximizing growth hormone, testosterone and IGF-1.4

If you have trouble sleeping soundly, you may want to try a melatonin supplement. Melatonin is a natural hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain. It can intensify REM sleep, the good, deep sleep you’re after, and boost GH levels.5 Taking two to five milligrams before bed may help, but use it infrequently, as your body could develop a dependence on it if you use it every night.

If you’re not interested in melatonin, you may get similar effects with a cup of caffeine-free green tea. Bonus: Green tea has also been shown to help burn fat and improve antioxidant activity. If you have a small bladder, however, drinking tea before bed may do the opposite and cause a sleep interruption. So you’ll be cursing your loss of REM sleep as you take aim at the dark silhouette you hope is the toilet.

You also want to minimize cortisol release as you sleep. You’re already aware that it can burn muscle during a workout, but keep in mind that it can turn shut-eye catabolic as well. For people who work out, cortisol tends to rear its ugly muscle-wasting head in the first few hours of sleep, so take about 400 milligrams of phosphatidylserine before bed. PS is a natural lipid that’s been shown to help control cortisol release—a for-real all-natural muscle booster due to its anticatabolic properties. As we’ve seen, one reason anabolic steroids are so effective is that they interfere with cortisol levels. PS does that in a slightly different way with similar anticatabolic results.

By minimizing cortisol during sleep, you’ll set up an anabolic environment, but as you know, growth can’t happen if hypertrophic building blocks, namely, amino acids, aren’t available. To make sure your body has the muscle-repair materials it needs through most of the night, take a micellar casein-and-whey protein drink before bed. That mix contains what’s known as complete milk protein and provides a trickle-feed effect thanks to casein’s slow-digestion properties, which makes casein a must for our mega-mass strategy as well.

Your final two steroid-mimicking strategies:

9) Get eight to 10 hours of sound sleep a night. Taking melatonin or drinking green tea before bed may help.

10) Make sleep more anti­catabolic by controlling cortisol with a PS supplement before bed. Make sleep more anabolic by trickle-feeding your muscles amino acids during sleep—drink a micellar casein-and-whey protein shake before bed. (We use Pro-Fusion protein powder in water.) Note that you don’t want too much protein right before you hit the hay because you should still be in a fasted state when you wake up to create an anabolic window (see item 6). Try about 20 grams of micellar casein-and-whey protein before bed. Also, you don’t want to get so much liquid that you wake up to pee. You want restful, uninterrupted sleep.

Review the checklist on page 150 often. By following all 10 rules, along with the Mega-Mass programs that appear in Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building, you should get some of the best muscle-building results of your life, no pharmaceuticals necessary. How about radically changing your physique by adding 20 pounds of new muscle in the coming weeks? Let’s get to it!

Editor’s note: The e-book Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building is available from the X Shop at www.X-Rep.com. Jerry Brainum’s e-book, Natural Anabolics, is available at www.JerryBrainum.com.

References

1 Blackman, M.R., et al. (2002). Growth hormone and sex steroid administration in healthy older women and men. JAMA. 288:2282-2292.

2 Mulligan, S.E., et al. (1996). Influence of resistance-exercise volume on serum growth hormone and cortisol concentrations in women. J Strength Cond Res. 10:(4):256–262.

3 Bishop, N.C., et al. (2002). Influence of carbohydrate supplementation on plasma cytokine and neutrophil degranulation responses to high-intensity intermittent exercise. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Met. 12(2):145-156.

4 Mougin, F., et al. (2001). Hormonal responses to exercise after partial sleep deprivation and after a hypnotic drug-induced sleep. J Sports Sci. 19(2):89-97.

5 Forsling, M., et al. (1999). The effect of melatonin administration on pituitary hormone secretion in man. Clin Endocrinol. 51(5):637-642. IM

Mega-Mass Checklist You Can Use to Get Huge Without Steroids

1) Make sure your workout is dominated by the big, compound exercises, two to three sets of eight to 10 reps.

2) Try to keep most of your workouts to about an hour.

3) Use continuous-tension isolation exercises for muscle burn, which triggers GH release.

4) Use stretch-position exercises to increase androgen receptors on muscles and to perhaps spur hyperplasia.

5) Get some fast protein and fast carbs as soon as you wake up to take advantage of the secondary anabolic window created by the overnight fast.

6) Drink a postworkout shake that has 40 grams of fast protein, like whey, and 60 grams of fast, or high-glycemic, carbs, like sugar, to spike insulin immediately after every workout and drive amino acids into your muscles.

7) Eat six small meals a day, each containing at least 20 grams of protein—30 to 40 would be better.

8) Sip a high-glycemic-carb-and-protein mixture during your workout.

9) Get eight to 10 hours of sound sleep a night.

10) Make sleep more anti­catabolic by controlling cortisol with a PS supplement taken before bed.

More strategies that can boost your gains:

•Take three to five grams of conjugated linoleic acid—CLA—with whey protein and creatine before you train.

•Take three to five branched-chain amino acids caps with solid-food meals to boost anabolic drive.

•Take three grams of beta-alanine an hour before training to delay fatigue during your sets so you get more end-of-set growth reps.