You can skip to the ***s to avoid my boring background story..
My background:
Very active in (traditional) martial arts for 12 years starting around age 9. Easily able to maintain 10-12% bf @ 165-175lbs eating as much of whatever I wanted. I purposely avoided gaining mass as it adversely effected my speed and flexibility (I liked that I could do chair splits cold, hit someone multiple times before they could react, or tolerate most any joint lock without tapping out). All workouts consisted of bodyweight or very low weights - think old Chinese monk type exercises.
Eventually moved too far away from any school that I would consider going to and got extremely lazy. Started “experimenting” with large quantities of recreational drugs and body, mind, and training went to shit. During this time a roommate had given me a PH stack of some kind to run, which I (stupidly) did, without any major negative sides (unless you consider pouring sweat and feeling like you’ve been doing lines all day negative).
Fast forward a bit. Got married, grew up a bit, but also got to a very squishy 240lbs. Over the last 4-5 years I have experimented with different diet plans and workout routines. I dropped all the way down to 155lbs but still 15-17% bf. Solid (mostly) clean bulk to ~200lbs and cut back down to 180lbs @ 14% bf. This brings me to my first researched and planned cycle….
I no longer just ingest random chemicals without cracking out researching first. After lurking around here (and some other places), I decided to run a 4 week cycle of Beast due to it seeming so short, sweet, and to the point (unlike this post J ).
***
Wk 1-12 DAA bulk powder @ 4mg/day
Wk 3 Beast @ 20mg
Wk 4-5 Beast @ 30mg
Wk 6 Beast @ 40mg
Wk 3-6 Forged Liver @ 2/day
Wk 3-10 Unleashed @ 3/day
Wk 7-11 Forged Post @ 2/day
Wk 7-11 Forma @ 5am/5pm
Multi, fish oil, creatine, BCAAs, pre workout, milk thistle, valerian, melatonin used throughout.
During week 5 (3rd week of Beast), I had disaster with my house that required people staying with us and a bunch of work which really screwed up my workouts and diet. I’m still a bit pissed about it but I guess shit happens. Overall a great experience with few mentionable negatives.
I had some irritability issues during week 5 and some motivation/insomnia issues around the same time. Oddly, bumping the dosage up to 40 seemed to make them go away. It could also be that I finished replacing my roof and deck too.. too many other things changed around that time to say if it was the dosage change for sure.
In the end, I went from 182lbs to 195lbs and seemed to maintain around 14% bf (maybe lost a bit) on the cycle. Noticed more definition (especially in tris, back, and quads) and my waist went down .5”. At the end of PCT I weigh in at 192.5. My goal was to gain 20lbs and keep 15lbs so I fell a little short. I think my 1 off week and my routine being more strength oriented held me back, but I’m not complaining at all.
I’d just like to thank everyone here for the wealth of information and apologize for my long winded post.
My background:
Very active in (traditional) martial arts for 12 years starting around age 9. Easily able to maintain 10-12% bf @ 165-175lbs eating as much of whatever I wanted. I purposely avoided gaining mass as it adversely effected my speed and flexibility (I liked that I could do chair splits cold, hit someone multiple times before they could react, or tolerate most any joint lock without tapping out). All workouts consisted of bodyweight or very low weights - think old Chinese monk type exercises.
Eventually moved too far away from any school that I would consider going to and got extremely lazy. Started “experimenting” with large quantities of recreational drugs and body, mind, and training went to shit. During this time a roommate had given me a PH stack of some kind to run, which I (stupidly) did, without any major negative sides (unless you consider pouring sweat and feeling like you’ve been doing lines all day negative).
Fast forward a bit. Got married, grew up a bit, but also got to a very squishy 240lbs. Over the last 4-5 years I have experimented with different diet plans and workout routines. I dropped all the way down to 155lbs but still 15-17% bf. Solid (mostly) clean bulk to ~200lbs and cut back down to 180lbs @ 14% bf. This brings me to my first researched and planned cycle….
I no longer just ingest random chemicals without cracking out researching first. After lurking around here (and some other places), I decided to run a 4 week cycle of Beast due to it seeming so short, sweet, and to the point (unlike this post J ).
***
Wk 1-12 DAA bulk powder @ 4mg/day
Wk 3 Beast @ 20mg
Wk 4-5 Beast @ 30mg
Wk 6 Beast @ 40mg
Wk 3-6 Forged Liver @ 2/day
Wk 3-10 Unleashed @ 3/day
Wk 7-11 Forged Post @ 2/day
Wk 7-11 Forma @ 5am/5pm
Multi, fish oil, creatine, BCAAs, pre workout, milk thistle, valerian, melatonin used throughout.
During week 5 (3rd week of Beast), I had disaster with my house that required people staying with us and a bunch of work which really screwed up my workouts and diet. I’m still a bit pissed about it but I guess shit happens. Overall a great experience with few mentionable negatives.
I had some irritability issues during week 5 and some motivation/insomnia issues around the same time. Oddly, bumping the dosage up to 40 seemed to make them go away. It could also be that I finished replacing my roof and deck too.. too many other things changed around that time to say if it was the dosage change for sure.
In the end, I went from 182lbs to 195lbs and seemed to maintain around 14% bf (maybe lost a bit) on the cycle. Noticed more definition (especially in tris, back, and quads) and my waist went down .5”. At the end of PCT I weigh in at 192.5. My goal was to gain 20lbs and keep 15lbs so I fell a little short. I think my 1 off week and my routine being more strength oriented held me back, but I’m not complaining at all.
I’d just like to thank everyone here for the wealth of information and apologize for my long winded post.