[Galactasm]

I read one of the linked articles in the article, the one that said men who take steroids and don’t exercise gain more muscle mass than men who don’t take steroids but do exercise. I should admit that I’m personally biased against the conclusion but I find the results interesting. I had a few nitpicks however:

1. I question how optimal the training stimulus was. They said it was controlled and they worked out 3 times a week and for the squat/bench press they started out at 4 sets of 6 reps varying between 70/80/90 % initial one rep max and then increased weights after 5 weeks and increased the number of sets to 5. I think it’s obvious that more exercise would result in more muscle mass gain up to a certain point and I think the amount of volume they’re doing is really suboptimal even for a more average weight lifter. I didn’t see them go into more detail about the workout routine which would’ve been nice.

2. With such a minimal routine, muscle mass gain is going to be limited to the areas that are being exercised. Taking steroids is going to increase all muscle mass throughout the body. The placebo + exercise group had a slightly higher increase in strength, very slight, but still higher than the steroid + no exercise group. If they wanted, a weight lifter could change the routine to maximize overall muscle mass gain. Presumably they weren’t really hitting some muscle groups (shoulders, hamstrings, calves, back, core). They weren’t doing deadlifts. So it makes sense that the steroid + no exercise group had higher muscle mass gain because they were experiencing a full body stimulus whereas the exercise + placebo were not (even if they were I question how optimal the routine was since as far as I could tell they didn’t release detailed workout routine).

3. This is even more nitpicky, but there is going to be a limited ceiling with no external stimulus (exercise). In the long run the steroid + no-ex group will plateau whereas the placebo + ex group will be able to increase muscle for much longer.

So I guess I disagree with the conclusion “men who take steroids but don’t exercise gain more muscle mass than no steroids + exercise” despite the results supporting it.