@madman Thank you for the input!
The dose of T + ND you are using has absolutely nothing to do with trt.
Yes, I understand that people have different views on the topic with dosing. I am just currently experimenting with higher doses - more on this a bit later.
What were you expecting as you are only 4 weeks in using a decanoate ester and you have not even reached a steady-state?
You are right, I am not safe forever. But as I said, I am running bloods every 4 weeks, so if things start getting south, I will cut the dose. I might do that anyway, just to be safe, even if things continue being good.
you were either anemic pre-trt, had lower levels naturally or you donate frequently
I ran several complete blood tests in the spawn of a few months before starting TRT and everything was good and fairly consistent. Hemoglobin was between 149 - 153 g/L and Hematocrit was between 44 - 46%. Those haven't changed significantly so far, as I stated. My Iron/Ferritin levels were good as well. I've never donated blood in my life.
In the former, the prescribed dose for nandrolone is 50-100 mg/week maximum as higher doses are absolutely not needed.
You might be right, but as I couldn't find super solid information about the dose regarding joint pain relieve, I decided to go on the higher side to be safe. At least if it doesn't help at this dose, I would 100% know it's not because of the dose. Do you have some solid information that above 100mg is completely not necessary for joint pain?
or in cases where a T only protocol results in too many side-effects than in order to counteract such the dose of T will be lowered and ND would be added
That's kind of my case as well though, but in a slightly different context. If I want to experiment with a higher those, it will be much wiser to use 200 Test / 200 Nandrolone compared to 400 Test. The chance is that the side effects will probably be much heavier in the latter case.
I need to apologise by the way - I said no side effects, but in fact I have one. I started holding quite a bit of water - about 14 lbs or so since I started TRT. That is probably mostly due to the high dose of testosterone. It is fairly annoying in terms of appearance and I am looking at ways to manage that at the moment.
The only reason one would add 200-200+mg/week of nandrolone to a high end dosed trt protocol is to enhance muscle/strength gains.
Again I don't care much about muscle gain, I would prefer to stay around the same body weight. Some re-composition would be nice though, because I have quite a bit of fat still. Some strength gain will be nice, but I was quite strong before TRT anyway and that's not mandatory. By far the biggest reason to try a high dose is the enhanced recovery effect. I am training MMA + Gym about 5 days a week. Before TRT this was literally killing my body and I couldn't maintain it for long periods of time. I was also getting injured far too often. I've spent a long time looking into it and made sure everything is proper. I always had a really good sleep, eating well, drinking a lot of water, training smart, etc. But nothing was helping. My body was recovering much slower than the average hobbyist in the sport. Then I found that I am hypo-gonadal and that was a perfect explanation of my problems.
I haven't had the chance to get back to MMA due to Covid yet, but I am really looking forward to it. For the moment I am hitting the gym hard and trying to get in a good shape. And a bit preemptively I decided to experiment with slightly higher TRT doses, to make sure my body will have plenty of hormones to improve the recovery rates. If that helps or I start getting bad side effects, I will make sure I reduce the dose and run something safer.
I don't think I have much residual tendinosis, but my tendons were getting upset from training very easily for sure. Do you think TRT/Nandrolone might help with that? If it does I plan to be running it long term, using the minimum dose I can afford to be symptom free at.
And to contribute to the topic a bit more - I forgot to mention that my SHBG is really low as well - it's been staying around 12 for months now, and it wasn't much higher before starting TRT - around 16. So far injecting M/W/F works really well for me, I haven't tried a different frequency.