Understanding how different steroids work - Your first cycle [A 2025 Guide]

Hey guys, in this post I want to go through how various steroids work. I see quite a bit online on forums, Reddit, videos, TikTok, Instagram etc. about cycles and see young 18 year old guys doing the dumbest cycles with multiple injectables, orals, HGH and even peptides or ancillaries. Meanwhile they are wondering why they are having massive acne issues, mood swings, feeling gross, or, even worse, start to develop enlarged hearts, terrible liver or kidney bloodwork, high blood pressure and the list goes on.

So, in this post I’m going to go over a concept that might change how you look at steroids: it’s called ‘myotropic - androgenic’ dissociation.

What is Myotropic - Androgenic Dissociation?

Well steroids grow both muscle tissue and androgenic tissues. Myotropic means growth at the muscle androgen receptor (muscle hypertrophy), and androgenic is more talking about how it can grow or affect androgenic tissues like the prostate, kidney, liver, skin.

Androgenic effects for example are enlarging of the prostate as well as acne, excess hair growth, masculinising features (like for example if a woman takes heavy androgenic compounds they can experience clitoral growth and enlargement). Reminds me of the time I dated a chick who had just come off a T cycle and there was a lot going on down there. Certainly no issue finding anything.

But anyway, what is myotropic-androgenic dissociation? Well, it is basically:

The extent to which a steroid can build muscle vs. how much it affects androgenic tissues.

Testosterone is basically 1:1, it has the same strength in muscle anabolism vs. androgenicity.

However, in understanding a design of a cycle, understanding how far apart these ratios are is very important. For example, a compound like Superdrol has an androgenic rating of 400 and an anabolic rating of 20 - which means it’s going to be incredibly androgenic and affect androgenic tissues a lot more compared to how much it will build muscle.

Not only this, but it’s also important to understand whether compounds are substrates for 5-alpha reductase or aromatase. We know that testosterone can be metabolised and converted into DHT by 5-alpha reductase, which greatly increases its androgenicity by up to 5 times, but some compounds are not able to go down either of these pathways. And something I see missed by a lot of online coaches in the BB world or fitness world is the following idea utilising this information:

A possible basis for increasing the myotropic-to-androgenic ratio may be by exploiting the fundamental difference between the 5-alpha reductase concentrations in skeletal muscle vs. androgenic tissues. Muscle basically has no 5AR enzyme, so, for example, one way of increasing the anabolic-androgenic disocciation is to admister a steroid that has a greater binding affinity for the androgen receptor in its primary form, but, upon reduction, down the 5-alpha reductase pathway to a 5α-metabolite, has a lesser affinity. For example, 19-nortestosterone (Nandrolone, NPP, Deca) is able to go down the 5-alpha reductase pathway and be reduced to something called DHN, which has a much lower binding affinity to the AR than its parent steroid nandrolone. And this is precisely why Nandrolone has an anabolic-androgenic ratio of 37:125 (it’s 3x as anabolic as it is androgenic), precisely because its 5AR reduction reduces its potency, whereas with something like T, it going down the 5AR pathway increases its androgenic potential - T converts to DHT which significantly increases its androgenicity by 5x in some studies.

And in looking at the list above and understanding the anabolic ratio and understanding that steroids can either be DHT derivatives, Testosterone derivatives or 19-nortestosterone (Nandrolone) derivatives, this information can really help you design a cycle that’s going to be more safe and more smart grounded fundamentally in the science and not some guy on Reddit being like “Yeah just take this and this and this, oh, and like 300mg of Tren Acetate per week”.

And obviously I don’t recommend doing a cycle at all, but if you’re going to do it, at least do it with some science and planning.

Basically, if you’re already hammering an anabolic pathway with something like Nandrolone - do you really need more anabolism? Now this will obviously depend on your goals too: are you a powerlifter going for just strength (where the neuromuscular effects of certain compounds come into play), a bodybuilder for muscle mass, are you in a growth phase or prep for comp?

For example, pairing Anavar and Nandrolone which both have very high anabolic ratings compared to their androgenic potentials with a large dissociation between their myotropic and androgenic effects may actually be pretty stupid - you’re already smashing the anabolic pathway with just 1 of these compounds. On top of that, understanding whether the compound is a substrate for either aromatisation or reduction by 5AR and how this new compound produced changes the anabolic/androgenic profile is really important, because, some steroids like DHT derivatives are not able to be aromatised. So managing low E2 sides is also something to think about here - if you’re on DHT derivates like Anavar you’re going to have an issue with E2 so it’s just something extra to manage.

So, TL;DR:

• It’s important to understand the anabolic-androgenic dissociation/ratio
• It’s important to understand the compounds’ interaction with 5AR (if any) and if it’s aromatisable or non-aromatasible to E2.
• Understanding where the compound comes from is important: is the parent steroid DHT, Testosterone or Nandrolone (or, to a lesser extent, is it a Boldenone derivative, which is kind of its own unique class but I won’t go into that now)
• Understand your goals - strength vs. muscle mass vs. prep vs. growth etc.

All of these will help you design a cycle that is smarter and more sensible - i.e. not some random junk advice, but actually sitting down and being like:

“Okay, I’m targeting the anabolic vector this much (actually quantifying this), and I’m targeting the androgenic vector this much”, and, again, actually quantifying it. As in, I’m pushing the anabolic vector more than the androgenic one by designing a plan that comes out to a ratio of 300:80, for example.

My goal is to keep you safe and healthy no matter what decision you make - I recommend against any form of cycle, but let’s be honest: people are going to do it anyway. My philosophy has always been, if you are going to do it anyway, please at least understand the science and don’t be stupid. These are serious drugs and just because the guy on Instagram does it, doesn’t mean you should.

Protect yourself and keep your heart, other organs and brain safe.

Thanks so much for reading as always.