Methods – Doping For Climbers

Intra-Workout Performance Enhancement (testing methodology for 17α alkylated anabolic steroids)

Ok so let’s remind ourselves of the point to PED use in climbing: maximising training results and enabling maximal opportunity for progression, all while avoiding weight gain via hypertrophy of large muscle groups, or excess retention of either subcutaneous or intramuscular fluid. Training, drug use, and climbing practice itself should synergistically work together to optimise strength to weight ratio while, obviously, not impacting overall health.

Hopefully I’ve already put myself in an optimal or at least enhanced hormonal environment in the day to day sense via my weekly administration of Testosterone and Nandrolone. There’s still some tweaking to do with this and it’s not something I can point to as leading to immediate benefits; it’s more likely I’ll be able to look back in a few years and see a clear delineation between pre and post PED use when it comes to my climbing progression. The injectable esters I’m using (nandrolone decanoate and testosterone undecanoate) are perfect for this long-term outlook, but is there anything I can do to help with specific, short term training objectives and performance goals which will be noticeable over the period of days and weeks, rather than months and years?

I’ve already discussed Anavar and Winstrol in a previous post and these are both 17α alkylated steroids, which is a term that probably needs explaining. The next two paragraphs are a bit technical. Please feel free to skip them if you don’t care about the science.

If you swallow testosterone, nandrolone, or masteron nothing will happen because the liver metabolises the molecule before it can exert any performance enhancing effect. So these compounds need to be injected intramuscularly and the addition of an ester group (decanoate, enanthate, etc), at the 17th carbon allows a larger dose to be administered less frequently where it will sit in the “injection depot” and dispense itself slowly over time. The longer the attached ester (or more specifically the higher it’s molecular weight), the slower the release rate and this is something we’ve already been through in some detail in a previous post.

An alternative way to fiddle with a given steroid molecule is to add a methyl or ethyl group to the 17 position instead of attaching an ester there. This makes it harder for the liver to break the drug down and you end up with an orally active compound with a serum half life, usually, of about 9 hours. However, unlike esterified steroids, 17α alkylated compounds have different characteristics from their parent molecule. For instance Superdrol is 17α methylated version of Masteron and the two have very different effects indeed. Contrast this to testosterone undecanoate and testosterone enanthate which have essentially the same effect, just with different pharmokinetics.

Welcome back those who skipped the chemistry. Where were we?

There is a downside to using these orally active steroids. It’s not particularly healthy to feed the liver something that’s intentionally designed to be difficult to metabolise. Thus 17α alkylated steroids can cause stress approximately equivalent to getting drunk, and as most climbers have realised by the time they get to be serious about the sport, chronic alcohol abuse isn’t particularly conducive to living clean, staying light, and all the other lifestyle choices which make us better at what we do. I’m sure that many of us are happy to spend the occasional weekend on the piss, but very few of us will be seen in the pub 5 nights out of 7 downing pints and knocking back shots. It’s the same with 17α alkylated steroids. They can be used for short periods without much concern but they’re not suitable for year-round, long term use.

There are essentially two reasons why I’d pop a pill to help with a short-term performance objective. The first is probably the easier to get across: let’s call it acute activity. Say I’m going out, conditions are good, and I’m planning to finally finish a project I’ve been working on for a couple of sessions. A drug which gives me immediate gains in strength and mental drive might lend the edge necessary to stick that hard, scary crux move at the top of the boulder. And if it acutely boosts work capacity, it will allow me more attempts during the session, therefore maximising my chances of sending. It doesn’t really matter if this drug is at the higher end of the hepatotoxicity spectrum because I’m only likely to use it once or twice a month.

That hard scary crux move at the top of the boulder

The other reason why I might want to pop a pre-workout pill is to take advantage of progressive strength gains over a number of weeks: let’s call this chronic activity. In this case I may want to select a drug which builds in effect over repeated doses, rather than one which delivers an immediate and extreme boost in performance up front. This strategy would be useful if I wanted to work on a specific, defined weakness; say I want to improve my left hand half-crimp for a certain boulder I’m working on. In this scenario I might train the position every day for a few weeks before going back and trying the project again, and the drugs might increase the gain in crimp-strength I’m able to achieve in a given timeframe. I’d want these drugs to be at the lower end of the hepatotoxicity spectrum because I’m taking them daily for a few weeks.

Ok. So we’re splitting orally active anabolic steroids into two categories, those to aid with training and those for performance-day use. How do we decide which drug is suitable for which application? The first task is to list all the 17α alkylated compounds available to me and then narrow it down by applying the criteria which I discussed in a previous post. That only really leaves me with four compounds: Anavar, Winstrol, Halotestin, and Superdrol. Out of the four I’m expecting Anavar and Winstrol to be more suitable for chronic assistance over a weeks-long training block, and Halotestin and Superdrol to be more suitable for acute use on a per-session basis. The only way to know for sure though is to test them, so I’m going to standardise as many variables as possible into a protocol I can use to compare each of them directly.

Here’s a pretty brief rundown of my plan for testing these compounds. I’ll go into more specific detail in the next post, in the interest of stopping this one from becoming too unwieldy.

Each compound will be assessed for a period of two weeks. If they don’t show their utility over this period they’re not suitable for my purposes (although they still may be a perfectly efficacious drug to use in other situations). Calorie intake will be kept consistent during the tests, between days and from test to test. I’ll leave at least three weeks between each test to allow time for the drugs to clear and for my body to recover.

Dosage will remain the same between compounds for sake of comparison although some are slightly more potent than others. 15mg per day seems like an effective compromise dose between all four compounds while hopefully avoiding muscle hypertrophy associated with taking the doses higher. In addition to keeping the dose relatively low, I’m hoping that the short two week cycles might be another factor helping to mitigate unwanted mass-gain.

The dose of 15mg isn’t exactly pulled out of my arse my the way. The study “A quantitative expression for nitrogen retention with anabolic steroids” compares intravenous doses of Anavar and concludes that the mimimum effective dose is 2.5mg whereas no further nitrogen retention (their proxy for measuring anabolic effect), occurs after 30mg. Obviously I’m not planning on taking any of these compounds intravenously so let’s say that an oral dose, with it’s different pharmokinetics and bioavailability is half as active; this means that the dose range we’re looking at is 5-60mg with 5mg being minimally effective and 60mg blowing me up like a balloon. Say, (and this is the point I *am* pulling a figure out of my arse), I want to be a quarter of the way up that scale. That lands me at around 15mg. I’m sure a bodybuilder would scoff at that dose, but I’m specifically trying to avoid the gain in muscle mass which they seek.

So this is the protocol I’m going to use. I’m going to take the dose on an empty stomach two hours before I begin the workout. Then one hour before the workout I’m going to take a standardised portion of carbs (porridge, flapjack, something like that). I’m going to start with a standardised warmup/strength and conditioning session lasting one hour, followed by the the testing protocol which will also an hour in length. The purpose of the testing protocol is to assess the maximum one-arm half crimp for each side followed by how many pull-ups in total I can do over 5 sets.

I’ll graph total number of pull-ups achieved each day and the maximum half crimp weight for each hand as a percentage of a baseline measurement taken on the day before the test begins. I’ll also record my daily weight in kg and water content (as a percentage of body weight, measured by the hand-to-foot bioelectrical impedance machine in my gym).

This is where I’m going to leave this post for now; on a bit of a cliff hanger (excuse the pun). My laptop is broken and I’m tired of typing on my phone. I’ll continue after I’ve tested the first compound which will probably be Anavar, and go into specific detail on methodology at that point. Now I’m heading out to climb.

EDIT 1/4/2022: a quick addendum… I started programming the test protocol and realised that I could seriously irritate a nagging elbow injury I’ve had for a few months by doing pull-ups every day. Because of this I’m changing the plan a bit. I’ll be testing my left hand half crimp strength only. While I do this I’ll use the opportunity to rehab my right arm on a larger edge; I won’t be recording this as it will be about recovery rather than strength and there’s not a useful metric I can think of to codify the improvement.

EDIT 21/4/2022: this project is now on hold until summer. The exact timing when spring and autumn bouldering seasons start in the UK is always a bit difficult to predict. When it dries out and gets warmer (but not too warm) I spend as much time as I can on rock, and training takes a back seat to actual climbing. This has been the case for a few weeks now. Obviously with a potentially short window when rock is in ideal condition and climbing is good, this isn’t a time when I’m willing to devote two weeks at a time to daily training in the gym. No doubt when it starts getting too hot to climb hard I’ll be raring to go again with this research (I’m particularly curious to try Halotestin). Until then if I dabble, I’ll report back with my thoughts and findings.

Shortlist Selection (which drugs should I try)

I thought I’d briefly outline a strategy I’ve been using to come up with a shortlist of potentially useful compounds. The issue is that there’s an extensive catalogue of performance enhancers and I can’t try everything; if I attempted to it would be forever before I’d likely have much of use to report. So I needed to implement some ways of thinning down the list.

Here are a number of reasons why potential drugs aren’t on my list to assess at this point, along with examples:

Because I’m looking at this from a bouldering perspective where explosive power and short bursts of strength are the name of the game, I’ve excluded a number of compounds from consideration which would be more appropriate for endurance athletes. A sport climber may benefit more from compounds such as Turinabol or Boldenone. A “trad” climber might benefit more from a fag and a pint of ale. For me though, there are drugs better suited to my objectives so they’re the ones which have made it into the shortlist.

Oxymetholone is a widely used and extremely effective pre-workout performance enhancer. It’s know to impart instant strength gains and obviously this could be very beneficial for bouldering sessions. However it is also associated with rapid weight gain and is totally counterproductive for a bodyweight-dependent sport such as climbing. There are many, many other compounds which fail to make the shortlist for similar reasons (Trenbolone is another example).

I’m obviously also limited by my ability to source the compounds in question. Stenbolone acetate for example seems, on paper, to be a potentially ideal compound for climbing performance. It might give me the strength enhancement I experienced with Masteron but without the muscle cramps and rapid fatigue. However I cant find it from a reputable, trustworthy source so there’s no point in considering it until that situation changes. Similarly Increlex is prohibitively expensive, even if I could find a trustworthy source for it.

Lack of proven efficacy is another concern and this is the case with many of the peptides and “sports supplements”. This is more of a grey area than an absolute criteria for me. For instance BPC-157 has pretty scant evidence in the form of clinical trials but there’s a large number of of positive anecdotal reports regarding it’s use. This could obviously be a placebo thing and I’ll attempt to control for that if I ever experiment with it. The price and other factors play a role here too; if it’s cheap and there’s no reason to worry about safety or side effects (as happens to be the case with BPC-157), I there’s a better case for considering it. A great rule of thumb turns out to be “is it banned by WADA?”. Strange as it seems, anti-doping institutions are the only funding bodies who have enough interest in performance enhancement to commission studies. If it’s not on the banned list then it either doesn’t work or hasn’t been fully assessed yet, in which case it probably will be on the watch list.

Based on the above criteria, an overall framework is starting to fall into place and this is something I’ll definitely go into in more detail in a future post. There are whole classes of compounds though, which just don’t fit into the emerging framework. This isn’t to say that I won’t look into them in the future, just that they aren’t currently my area of focus. SARMS (Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators) are the obvious exclusion from my current shortlist and in fact I have experimented with Ostarine already. There’s definitely space for consideration down the line but for now I have to limit myself to a manageable list of candidates so compounds which potentially show promise (LGD-4033, YK-11, S4, RAD-140, etc) will have to wait for now. This is no bad thing as they’re fairly new and could do with a few more years of clinical research and anecdotal reports.

Finally, for me to want to experiment with a compound, I don’t want it to be potentially dangerous. Most compounds have side effects which need to be managed and all can be assigned some level of risk. However if it was dropped from clinical trials, as happened to Cardarine because “animal testing showed that the drug caused cancer to develop rapidly in several organs”, I’m just not interested. Similarly DNP has caused multiple deaths, so count me out.

Now, onwards with experimentation…

Recovery (rather than hypertrophy)

Before I decided to start taking performance enhancing drugs in an attempt to aid in my training, I did a LOT of research. I read articles. I joined forums. I watched so, so so many YouTube videos. Unfortunately the only athletes who are willing to talk openly about PED use are bodybuilders and as a result, most of the information out there is specifically aimed at people who are looking to put on large amounts of muscle mass.

Heavy climbers have to work harder against gravity, therefore I’m really (REALLY) not looking to put on any more muscle muscle weight. Climbing is all about maximising the ratio of strength to weight. I want to be lean and strong, to climb hard while weighing as little as I can. I don’t want bulging muscles as they are heavy and heavy is bad. I’m already muscular enough thanks.

So if all the anecdotal information out there isn’t relevant because it originates from people who are primarily interested in hypertrophy, and if published clinical trials rarely focus on athletic performance issues (and if they do it’s in a “don’t do drugs kids” kind of way), I’m going to have to try various compounds on myself and see how they work in a climbing-specific context.

My primary goal in taking PEDs is to increase work capacity. Boulderers spend a lot of time falling off stuff and making repeated attempts at the same thing. However over the eight or so years I’ve been climbing, my ability to recover from exercise has diminished. I need to take longer breaks between climb attempts, I can accomplish fewer attempts in a session, and I need to take rest days more often than previously. It also takes me WAY longer to warm up than it used to.

In addition to enhancing recovery, there are a number of secondary goals I’d like to achieve. It seems to me If I’m going to do this, I might as well make it count. These goals are as follows:

Lose weight (we’ve already discussed why this matters)
Become stronger (this obviously helps, right?)
Increase collagen synthesis rate (the most common injuries for climbers relate to finger tendons. If I can avoid something going “snap”, that’d be nice)
Do something about the achy finger joints I get as a result of hanging my body weight from little edges on a regular basis.

And while we’re at it, this is what I want to avoid:

Accruing more muscle (and therefore weight)
Water retention caused by estradiol (again, weight)
Any other kind of weight gain (er… you can see a pattern here, right?)
Mood related side effects (I like being happy and mellow; I’m not interested in taking anything that makes me aggressive, paranoid, or overly wired)
Other annoying side effects (I don’t want to grow moobs or lose my hair thanks)

Many of the negative effects caused by anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are dose-dependent. Although there is virtually no available information on how strength and bodyweight athletes use these compounds, my feeling is that it’s probably at doses way lower than those used by bodybuilders and this is going to be my primary harm-reduction strategy. IE I’m not going to take enough to turn into a heavy, bloated, angry baldy.

So that’s what’s informing my selection of compounds to try and administration protocols to follow. If you’re looking for a little help yourself – maybe you want to climb your project, you appreciate the slow-and-gentle approach, and the only info you can find online comes via troglodyte bodybuilders measuring progress in kilograms of muscle gain, then watch this space…