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Being natty and powerlifting requires you to program your training in such a way as to make the quickest and most efficient progress/strength BUT while also considering recovery. As you become more advanced the stress required to drive further adaptation becomes so much that recovery must be actively planned for or else you'll overtrain and regress. As a novice, your gains are so quick bc you're not adapted so any stimulus will stress adaptation and your recovery abilities are very quick so linear progress is preferred. An intermediate or advanced lifter cannot make linear progress bc the stress needed to drive adaptation cannot be recovered from in time for the next workout. This is why you'll see many programs have structured deloads every so often or in the case of some others you'll see active recovery days as part of each work week where <80% 1RM Intensity is used and volume is also dropped.
My point is that you've got to tailor your programming or pick an existing successful program to your current level of advancement. If you don't overtraining is a real possibility or the flip side would be artificially slower progress than could be made. AAS allows for increased anabolic activity, increased recovery, allows you to work harder for longer so it will change the way you can program the training.
Oh and before Joli jumps on this ....Westside is an example of a program that doesn't really need much in the way of deloads bc you're never working with high intensity on he same lift for prolonged periods of time. Your main lift may change every week or two which will allow you to prevent many of these issues But I'm not sure a novice would be best suited running a program like this.
Dang doc this is what i wanted to hear! Details! Its all in the details!
I basically started asking this question for any of those out there who do not use aas, i think it would be great, if we dont already have something, to put together a separate thread with what doc has said explaining how different a non aas user goes about his training as opposed to an aas user...
Then q and a's can be had in a separate thread for all those who might need a better understanding and who might need some assistance while not using any aas in their regimen....