Frontloading Debate

Ok, I've seen this debate on different boards, and also in a thread here at MC. Here is an extremely interesting post I found at muscletalk UK regarding frontloading. I have yet to hear an explanation of why this doesn't work as outlined below:

Courtesy of Bigfella:

"Here is an example to simplify the activity for anyone not a believer in how it works, we will take a straight dose of 400mg/week in our example and see how blood levels are affected through the first few weeks, we will, for ease of maths, ignore the ester weight which is irrelevant to the outcome anyway other than dose difference. We will assume the steroid has a half-life of 7 days.

Week 1 start 400mg administered, after 7 days, 200mg left, so 200mg dose delivered in that week.
Week 2 400mg admin to give total 600mg, after 7 days, 300mg left, so 300mg delivered in that week.
Week 3 400mg admin to give 700mg total, after 7 days, 350mg left, so 350mg delivered in that week.
Week 4 400mg admin to give total 750mg, after 7 days, 375mg left, so 375mg delivered in that week.

As we can see even by the close of play in week 4, we are only getting 375mg of steroid in that week, it has slowly risen from 200mg, 300mg, 350mg to 375mg by week 4, it will continue creeping until you are getting the full weekly dose in a single week.

Now let us view the same dose, only following a front-load, we will double the weekly dose for week 1 only, everything else will remain the same.

Week 1 800mg administered, after 7 days, 400mg left, so 400mg delivered in that week.

There you have it! We have achieved the peak cycle dose (not exceeded it) by the end of week 1 as opposed to still short at end week 4 with a straight dose, you can continue adding the dose and halfing and see it stays constant at 400mg/week delivered.....Result!!! The benefit of achieving peak doses earlier in the cycle? Obviously achieving the gaining part of the cycle earlier is the benefit rather than waiting 4 to 5 weeks for the dose to peak and level out somewhat.

A good rule of thumb to front-loading is to take the dose you are to administer each half-life and double it upto the first half-life period in the cycle, this will not overshoot your peak, so there is no dropping of levels at any later date. It is also beneficial to the maintenance of even blood concentrations to split that weekly dose up as evenly distributed through the week as possible"

Also, some people use the term "frontloading" when they speak of using Dbol or prop at the beginning of a cycle w/ longer esters for a kick start. This isn't the same as frontloading... it's more like "Kickstarting".

I like the good ole kick start with 300mg of prop a week along with the 750mg of enanthate a week.....

I Like your front loading post. Makes sense.

Or you could just inject ED to get the same effect.

Zylo said:

Or you could just inject ED to get the same effect.

Click to expand...

That defeats the object a little.For me,the whole reason i choose longer esters is to avoid too many shots.What you say does make perfect sense bro,but only to those that can handle e/d shots.

If you don't like injections and the goal is to get the gear active in your body as quick as possible at the start of your cycle, then yea, I'd say frontloading is the way to go.

From a muscle building point of view, I think ED injections are the way to go, at the start of and during cycle. At the start of cycle, your body can metabolize the gear little by little each day and it will become bioavailable very quickly. During cycle, the steroid levels in your body will be consistently higher and at more stable levels. Having higher test levels is the whole point of using gear right? If you inject once or twice per week during cycle, your steroid levels drop off a lot in between injections.

That all depends on the half-life of a particular compound or which compound you're using, doesn't it? I'd rather have less needle holes in my body, IMO. Some compounds are esters which don't release quickly (thus not bioavailable that fast) so it wouldn't be worth it to inject that many times just to build up the levels in the blood.

I raised this topic at CEM and you guys have got to see this thread that ran on that board RE: frontloading. You need a master's degree to understand half of it, but very interesting nontheless.

http://www.cuttingedgemuscle.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3197&highlight=frontloading

tonykemp said:

That all depends on the half-life of a particular compound or which compound you're using, doesn't it? I'd rather have less needle holes in my body, IMO. Some compounds are esters which don't release quickly (thus not bioavailable that fast) so it wouldn't be worth it to inject that many times just to build up the levels in the blood.

Click to expand...

I found some useful information from other posts on other boards and put it together here for us to take a look at


Some Info FOR Frontloading:

The key thing to remember when it comes to half-life’s is that they will always be reduced by half of what’s remaining on a proportional and timely basis.

I’m going to use Testosterone Cypionate as my example in this demonstration since it is a commonly used AAS for beginners and pros alike.
Testosterone Cypionate half-life is 8 days (Davis’s Drug Guide for Nurses 9th Ed.)

500mg Test Cyp every 8 days
Day 1 – 500mg (remember that the bioavailability at this point is 0 because it takes 8 days to metabolize 250mg, and this will be true for every dose that follows)

Day 9 – 500mg (remember what was stated on day 1), so at this point you have 250mg remaining in the body from day 1 because your body has used 250mg over the past 8 days)

Day 17 – 500mg, at this point you have 250 from Day 9 and 125 from day 1 (don’t confuse yourself here, the body does not process 250mg every 8 days, it simply reduces the remaining by half every 8 days)

Day 25 – 500mg, at this point you have 250mg from Day 17, 125 from Day 9, and now just 62.5 remaining from day 1

Day 33 – 500mg, at this point you have 250mg from Day 25, 125 from Day 17, 62.5 from Day 9, and 31.7 from day 1.

The easy way to keep going on with this formula is to take the smallest number (31.7 in this case) and reduce it by half, then add it to your existing numbers for the total, and then repeat.

The total looks like this:
The first 8 days your body will metabolize 250mg
The second 8 days your body will metabolize half of the remaining 250 (125) and half of the 500 (250) administered on day 9 for a total of 375.
The third 8 days your body will metabolize 250, 125, and 62.5 for a total of 437.5. This is one reason it takes a couple of weeks to start noticing the effects of this drug.
To keep figuring out the bioavailability just keep reducing your smallest number by half and adding it to the total as described earlier.

Here is a chart demonstrating the bioavailability and how long it takes to even reach that 500mg per 8 day mark. For this demonstration we will use 8 days for 1 wk.
Wk 1 – 250mg
Wk 2 – 375mg
Wk 3 – 437.5mg
Wk 4 – 469.2mg
Wk 5 – 485mg
Wk 6 – 492.9mg
Wk 7 – 496.8mg
Wk 8 – 498.7mg
And so on….

So what does all this mean? Well for one it brings up a very important issue of frontloading. To frontload, you simply double your weekly dose just for that first week. It would look like this:
Wk 1 – 1000mg Cyp
Wk 2 – 500mg Cyp
Wk 3 – 500mg Cyp
And continue on at the normal 500mg/wk

The way this works is simple, during week 1 your body will metabolize 500mg of the first dose leaving you with 500 remaining. The second week your body will metabolize 250mg from the first dose and also 250 from the second dose for a total of 500. Now do you see how beneficial frontloading really is? You will stay constant at 500mg/wk throughout your cycle instead of tapering up by not frontloading.

All that has been described in this post is hypothetically based on the principles of half-life’s. Nevertheless, this should give you a general idea of how much your body is using in any one given week. This holds true for every AAS and medication there is, after all that’s what medication administration is based on so don’t argue with me about this, argue with science and the millions of doctors who actually get paid to come up with this stuff.


Some Info FOR Injecting Every Day:

The goal of injecting steriods is to increase blood levels of testosterone much higher than can be achieved normally. One of our criteria in doing this is to keep blood levels as stable as possible throughout cycle to provide the best environment for growth and to avoid as many sides as possible. I believe many side effects are caused by the spikes and dips created by once or twice a week injections, even using long esters. A way to reduce these sides would be to use a proper half life to determine when to inject or more importantly how much to frontload with.

Now most half lives are calculated on 1.5 x the number of carbon atoms to determine 1/2 life in days. Thats wrong! If you go to PubMed or AMJ you can look up numerous studies showing a much shorter half life(@ .7 per carbon atom)

That difference is because esters decay at a logarithmic rate, meaning the more esterified hormone in the injection depot, the more is released. This release rate slows as the amount of esterified hormone in the depot is reduced over time.
The general rule is about 0.7 X the number of carbons atoms in a linear ester . However when the body builder needs to keep in mind is that the majority of the esterified hormone is released, regardless of the ester, with the first 24hrs of injection because of the logarithmic rate of decay.


What does this mean in simple terms?
I'll useTestosterone Enthante in an 8 week cycle as an example:

Assume a 5 day half life for enthanate based on .7 x it's carbons.
Injecting 579mg on day one of your cycle will provide stable levels of 550 mg per week for the duration of your cycle provided you replentish 75 mg EVERY DAY.
INJECT
Day 1- 579- giving you 550 mg in 24 hours
Day 2 75 giving you 550 mg
Day 3 75 550
Day 4 75 550
Day 5 75 550
Day 6 75 550
Day 7 75 550
Day 8 75 550
Day 9 75 550
Day10 75 550
Day11 75 550
Day12 75 550

and so on until day 57 when you stop injections