If you’re going about your workout program, putting in the time and hard work, there’s no denying the fact you expect to see maximum results. You aren’t in the gym every day grueling it out with heavy weights, pushing through fatigue, and trying to do more than your body is capable of for no reason. You want to get stronger, faster, bigger, and be the absolute best you can be.
As such, you’re probably interested in supplemental help that may be available to help you do just that.
While most people know the basics: creatine, whey protein powder, fish oil, and glutamine to help get you started off on the right foot, you can really expand from there, taking your supplement regimen to a whole new level.
Enter a prohormone supplement. These supplements are designed to help you skyrocket your results while still keeping your body safe and healthy. Unlike their alternatives, which can cause long-term health effects, prohormones are safe for the man who has no pre-existing health concerns.
So who should consider a prohormone? What benefits will you gain? There are many reasons why you might turn to a prohormone supplement so learning these can help you best determine if this is something you’ll want to think about.
Here are the times it’s a good idea.
You’re Dieting
This may go against what you’d normally think but one of the best times to use a prohormone supplement is actually when you’re dieting. Most people think of prohormones as something to be used to get bigger – more ‘jacked’. And while they certainly can be, they’re also hugely beneficial for preserving lean muscle mass when in a calorie reduced state.
When you begin dieting to get leaner and reduce your calories down, there is a very high risk of lean muscle mass loss taking place. Should you begin losing lean muscle mass, you’ll get weaker, your metabolic rate will go down, and all that hard work you’ve put in at the gym will essentially be for waste.
One of the most important things you must do when dieting is make sure that you are doing everything possible to maintain lean body tissue. There are three key ways you can do that:
- Make sure you lift heavy weight (preferably the same amount of weight you were lifting before) on all your lifts. This is essential as it sends the signal to the muscle cells that they need to maintain their strength.
- Keep the total protein content in your diet higher. This way, even if some protein is utilized as a fuel source (since you have fewer incoming carbs and fats), you’ll still have enough protein left over to help promote lean muscle mass retention.
- Utilize prohormones to keep your hormonal profile optimized to help preserve lean muscle mass. If your testosterone levels start to drop (or estrogen starts to climb), as they often do when dieting, you will be priming the body for muscle loss.
By doing these three things, you position yourself for dieting success. It does you no good to diet and lose half muscle and half fat. You want to be dieting to lose 100% body fat – or as close to it as possible.
You’re Aging
Hitting a plateau is a frustrating time. Especially when you’re trying what seems like everything to making progress. Do consider that there may be internal factors inside the body driving this plateau and you may not get out until you change that.
Another reason you might look into utilizing prohormones is simply because you’re getting older. It’s very normal to find yourself with decreasing testosterone levels as you grow older and this can have a huge influence on your ability to build and maintain lean muscle mass.
It may feel like despite doing everything you did in previous years to help build muscle, you just aren’t seeing any success.
This can usually be overcome by getting your hormones back to a more optimized state. With testosterone running higher, your body will begin increasing the speed in which protein synthesis is taking place, resulting in more lean muscle mass being built.
You’ve Hit A Plateau
Another time when it can come in helpful to utilize a prohormone supplement is if you’ve hit a plateau in your journey. Perhaps you’ve been working very hard and seeing great results and then things just slow to a crawl.
When this happens, sometimes you just need a bit of a jumpstart to get going. You might try changing your routine around a bit or adding a few more calories to your diet plan, but if the root of the problem is your hormones, neither of these is going to help out all that much.
In fact, if you simply add more calories, you might find that you actually just start gaining weight rather than losing weight. When you don’t have sufficient testosterone present to utilize the calories to build lean muscle mass, there’s a higher chance they’ll wind up stored as body fat.
This will be especially the case if you’re getting older as noted above. Testosterone can decrease each and every year if you don’t do something to stop it.
Your Lifestyle Is A Struggle
Finally, the last reason you might find yourself turning to a prohormone supplement is if your lifestyle for the time being is hard to control. Obviously the best care scenario is to just improve your lifestyle so it’s conducive to building lean muscle mass, but in some situations, doing so is just impossible.
For example, if you are working night shifts and are only getting four hours of sleep each night, this will without a doubt have an impact on testosterone levels. For instance, in one study1 researchers examined the effects of one week of sleep deprivation on test subjects and found that after just one week, daytime testosterone levels were suppressed 10-15%. The normal decline of testosterone with aging is set to around 1% per year, which puts those with sleep deprivation at a level that of a man a decade older.
Likewise, if you’re going through a job loss and are having some seriously tight financial times, your stress level will be at an all time high and you likely won’t get that under control until you are able to find a stable work situation again.
In both instances, a little extra help can be appreciated. By using a prohormone supplement, you can help normalize your hormones so you aren’t as impacted by these things taking place.
Then once the situation has been removed and you are better able to tend to your lifestyle, you can decide whether to continue on with the prohormone supplement. The great thing about these supplements is that you can stop using them without any ill effects. The same cannot be said for all testosterone-enhancing methods.
So if you find yourself in any of these situations noted above, strongly consider what a prohormone supplement can do for you. It is one of the best ways to maximize the results you see from all the hard work you’ve been putting in at the gym.
Note: We only recommend a prohormone supplement if you are 21 years old or older. It is also very important to take a post cycle therapy of your prohormone to complete your cycle.
*Offer shown in image is for HTP prohormones only and is a limited time offer.
Reference:
1. Leproult, Rachel, and Eve Van Cauter. “Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men.” Jama 305.21 (2011): 2173-2174.
