That's exactly my stance. All the studies are short term, under 1 year. The guys get measured but they retain more than just lean tissue. Just blasting AAS will temporarily add weight and size but it won't last and it's mostly fake.
How do we know that blasting 600 here and there and trying to keep it with a cruise is better than a constant 200-350 total Test/Nan over the course of 3,5,10 yrs. Add legal orals and GH/IGF-1 boosting compounds..
We have all these legal low dose tools to our disposal, to run for life! The guys who blast tend to be reckless and don't last very long anyway, they don't even know what they are putting on their body from UGLs. You see them blow up and shrink bc they can't hold the size and live a normal life without health issues. I think what we have keeps us gaining slowly and steadily without having to quit bc of serious health issues. It's a marthaon, slow and steady and eventually you will pass the reckless guy.
I can see my physique change weekly, strength is already very close to when I was taking 600-1000mg test. I would take this for life over gambling with UGLs and shrinking from blasting.
Most training natty will reach their genetic potential within 3-4 years and even then during the first year is when you make the best newbie gains and much less over the following years if we are speaking in terms of pure dry gains.
Bulking up gaining muscle mass (water bloat/glycogen), adipose.....sure your gains may very well seem amazing.
Look at any natty training in the gym and I am talking about the ones dedicated to training hard and eating right.....years later after they have plateaued (muscle/strength) they just end up spinning their wheels indefinitely.
Genetics has the final say and naturally, one can only hold so much muscle top it off that most are stuck with average test levels at best and even then eventually T declines to much lower levels than one had in their youth/prime!
Hoping on trt using therapeutic doses of T let alone ND and following a proper diet/training protocol will definitely enhance muscle/strength gains and recovery but pure dry gains would be modest at best and far from significant even when staying on therapeutic doses long-term.
Why because the body will adapt to said level of hormones and you will not continue to gain indefinitely no matter how hard you continue to train or how much food you stuff down your pie hole!
The next step is increasing your dose of T/AAS let alone stacking various compounds if you want to continue to make further gains in muscle tissue and increase strength.
If your strength is on par with when you were taking 600 mg let alone a gram of test/week then I would say your gear was highly underdosed.
That is absurd, to say the least!