Second Cycle Building for Dummies: How To Choose the Best Compounds For Your Goals

Put down that tren...

The world of PED use is confusing.

Mainstream misinformation, varying responses to each compound, and different “styles” of gear use make it hard to even figure out who knows what they’re talking about.

Fortunately, I’m here to make things simple for you. By the end of this article, you will have at least a general understanding of how to choose a second compound for your goals, how to determine dosing, and which compounds are good in which scenarios.

Test Base

The first thing every good cycle needs is a testosterone base. Technically, this can be anything that provides adequate estrogen conversion for things like mood, libido, mental state, muscle accrual, organ health, and so much more.

You COULD use HCG or dbol, as both will provide adequate estrogen conversion, but there’s no reason to not use testosterone.

You’ll build more muscle, avoid the liver stress of dbol, and have much higher testosterone levels than would be possible with HCG alone.

Nobody really uses any base apart from testosterone anyway. It’s cheap.

So our first compound is, and always should be, testosterone.

Choosing a second compound

Our next step is to choose a compound to use alongside testosterone, or deciding whether we’re even going to do so.

If you want to take 800mg of all testosterone, rather than 500 testosterone and 300 primo (when I give doses like this always assume I mean per week), you can. But, you’ll probably need an aromatase inhibitor (AI).

A big part of compound selection is to dial in estradiol levels at the given dose of testosterone. Or put simply, we need to make sure we do not get estrogenic side-effects from our dose of testosterone.

Since testosterone aromatizes into estrogen, higher doses of testosterone lead to higher estrogen. But, there is some variation here.

People both aromatize, and experience side-effects, at different rates. Some can use 750mg of testosterone per week and have 0 side-effects. Others can take 200mg per week and get gynecomastia.

That’s why it’s important to use only testosterone, and find out what doses you can tolerate without side-effects, before moving on and adding compounds. (Check out my previous article titled: “First Cycle For Dummies” for more on that)

AIs aren’t the only way to deal with high estrogen. You could also use a steroid that acts as an AI and can be used to lower estrogen into range.