Recommended Recovery Time Between Anabolic Steroid Cycles

The first factor is that recovery of the HPTA (hypothalamus, pituitary, and testicular axis) from one cycle should always occur fully before starting the next.

Where an anabolic steroid cycle is very short, such as only 2 weeks, steroid cycle recovery can be almost immediate. Well-planned, moderate length steroid cycles, such as only 8 weeks, often allow recovery in a time frame such as only 2 weeks. Long steroid cycles, such as 12 weeks or longer and especially 14 weeks or longer, or poorly planned cycles often have very protracted recoveries.

So first, regardless of what is written below with regard to timing, you should wait until natural testosterone production, without aid of any drug, is back to midnormal levels or better.

Other than this, the time between steroid cycles should be related to duration of anabolic steroid use, including time of clearance after the last injection. Another way of looking at that is the balance between the number of weeks that anabolic steroids are used versus the number of weeks that no steroid is being used.

There really are no black/white cutoff values that anyone can give. Time off versus time on is a gradually sliding scale.

Broadly speaking, I put it this way though: Being “off” twice as many weeks as being “on” is entirely conservative for most who are seeking to build muscle, and absolutely can give great results. Really the only reason to be more conservative than this is if wishing only to maintain. Being “off” about as many weeks as being “on” is moderately aggressive. When the cycles are well-planned, there’s generally no problem with this and, of course, this can give somewhat faster results than the above. And being “off” only half as many weeks as being “on” is about as aggressive as I recommend for the health conscious person. Proper recovery should of course be verified, and blood tests become more important at this frequency of use.

So there’s no one answer, but the above general description has over time proven helpful for many to decide where they wanted to be.