Can Older People Use Steroids? Your Age Has NOTHING To Do With That (And Here's The Proof)

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
In this episode, we explore the misconception that age alone should dictate health and fitness protocols. Discover why self-awareness and personalized responses are what truly matter, regardless of whether you're 20 or 50.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Why age doesn't determine your goals or ambition

0:13 - How biology responds based on current physical condition

0:40 - Self-awareness as the key to proper compound use regardless of age

1:15 - The danger of following age-based protocols without personalization

2:00 - The importance of building protocols around individual responses

2:30 - Misuse of compounds isn't age-dependent; it's awareness-dependent

3:00 - Tailoring health strategies to your biology, not your birth date

4:00 - The role of mindset in effective self-monitoring and adjustments

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So uh in our last episode, I told you the hard part why, which is what these compounds cannot do, the stuff that people hope that the gear will fix, but there's no chemistry that will ever touch that. And if you if you if you set with that good, because it's gonna clear the deck for this one. Because I want to talk about what steroids can actually do and how that actually changes across your life. And I I want to start by killing the idea that I hear constantly, which is uh from from from guys who they should know better. Honestly, a lot of the coaches who should really, really know better. Yeah, the idea is this your age basically tells you your protocol. There's a young man's way to do this, and there's an old man's way to do this. And if you find the number on the calendar, you boom, like you're that is gonna hand you the answer, like some fucking big lookup table. That is complete and utter bullshit. It's just not how this thing works. Your age actually doesn't dictate your protocol, man. Your goals dictate your protocol, your tolerance for risk dictates that. Your age just shapes the ground that you're standing on while you chase those goals. So that's the whole episode in one single breath. But stay with me because the way that people get this wrong, it costs them a lot. So let me make it very concrete because this is where it's gonna click for you. So take two guys, both are 40, same birthday, basically, right? One of them wants to look good, feel solid, keep his energy up, hold his physique that he's proud of without turning his whole life into a war. It's very conservative, it's very aesthetic, it's dialed in, but it's very light. The other 40-year-old is basically chasing a national title. He wants to step on the stage and he wants to beat people that he's dedicated his entire life to this, man. Those two guys, they're they require completely different approaches, completely. And they're the exact same age. Now flip it the other way. You've got a 25-year-old with modest goals, right? He just wants to fill out a little bit, feel strong, nothing crazy. He might need like barely anything. And then you've got this 50-year-old who wants deep vitality, he wants real hormonal balance, a TRT style baseline that's gonna make him feel like himself again. That 50-year-old, he might be running a more involved approach than the 20-year-old kid. So, like, which one is the aggressive protocol? Is it the old guy or is it the young guy? You see, like, you can't answer that from their age. You literally fucking cannot. The the a that aim is gonna shape the entire strategy. So, age, it just shapes the context around that strategy. That's the thing that nobody seems to separate. No, so if age doesn't actually dictate your protocol, why am I even doing a whole episode in aging? Fair question. Here's the thing, dog. Because the body absolutely does interact with these compounds differently as the years go by, that is very, very much true. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old are running the same machine. They're not. Responsivity, uh, responsiveness changes, recoverability shifts, the tissue tolerance moves, the whole hormonal environment is gonna drift over time, and the body at like 20 literally doesn't feel like the body at 30, and 30 doesn't feel like at 40, and 40, sure in this hell doesn't feel like 50. So that's just true. But here's the part that people absolutely botch when they're thinking about those differences. They don't hand you a universal protocol. They don't say do this at 40, do this at 50. They just demand more self-awareness. That's it. The body changing, it just literally means you need to pay more close attention, not that you need to read the instructions off of a chart. So think about it like this: a 20-year-old who's running a compound, it feels nothing but upside, the same compound, just 30 years old. Dude, he's he's now getting stronger, like aromatization, like, or at least his sleep is getting a little bit weird. But the 40-year-old, like on the same exact like uh uh thing, he's gonna be metabolizing it differently, or the dose that he used to feel like perfectly fine now feels a little bit too stimulating, too taxing, like it's revving up an engine that just doesn't want to rev that up anymore. And uh, a lot of guys, like when that happens, they start fucking panicking. Like they go, oh shit, my body's turning on me, like I'm falling apart. No, like your body is literally not betraying you, dude. It's just changing. So that is what bodies do. The the protocol, it just changes like right alongside the actual body. So uh that that is just like not a decline, right? That's not you falling apart, that's just maturity showing up. And maturity here, it doesn't mean accepting limits, uh, and also like getting small and fucking sad about them. It just means adapting like someone who's actually paying attention. So here's where this gets interesting. Uh, here's the part that you probably really want to hear, right? It doesn't, age doesn't determine your goals, but age absolutely often involves the purpose that these compounds end up serving. And that's a different thing. So let me separate these two. Most people, when they hear steroids, their brain goes straight to one thing: getting big, hypertrophy, slabs of muscle. And yet, like those compounds do that, obviously. But that is one application. One, it's like thinking that a car exists only to go fast. Sure, it can go fast, it can also get you to work and haul your groceries, it can take your kids to school, right? The purpose depends on what chapter of your life you're in and what you actually need out of it. So let me actually walk you across the decades and I want you to actually hear the whole time what are these, uh what are the contexts, because they're not commandments for you. So let's start with the decade that already ended for me, your 20s, right? In your 20s, the body's very forgiving. Like the liver and the connective tissues, the recovery systems, they all bounce really, really fast. So in that chapter, the compounds might be used to like accelerate growth, push performance, just find out what the physical ceiling even is. So the cycles can be a little bit shorter, a little bit lighter, just aiming at like learning your own biology first while you're like got the margin to actually learn with. So some guys in that decade, they chase aesthetics, they chase confidence, they chase an athletic edge, and these tools they're gonna heighten all of that. But listen, even here, the smart young guy, he's gonna match the dose to the goal. He's not gonna just assume that being young is a license to be reckless. So that's the trap of the 20s, right? It's the fear of the feeling of like being bulletproof. Youth is very forgiving, it is not a free pass, though. Being 20 doesn't entitle you to do rude, stupid shit. It just means that the terrain is a little bit softer while you're learning. So learn on it, but don't torch the terrain. Now let's start with your 30s. Now the motivation starts to shift a little bit. And I can see this constantly with the people that I that I do consults with. So the career is heavier, sleep is a little bit more fragile, stress is loading up, right? You've got responsibilities pulling you from six different directions, and all of that's gonna hit your performance and your recovery. So in your 30s, the purpose is gonna expand a little bit. Now it's way past just growth. Now these compounds may be used to restore vitality, to regulate your mood, to hold libido steady, to improve sleep quality, to keep a higher baseline of energy in a life that's genuinely demanding more from you than your 20s ever did. And here's the thing that surprises people, right? Like some athletes, they push harder in their 30s than they ever did at 22. Why? Because their goals got sharper. They know what they want now, they're not fucking around anymore. Now, others go the opposite way, they just use enhancement conservatively just to maintain the physique that they enjoy without grinding anymore, that they already built in their 20s. So it's the same age, but the opposite direction. The age didn't decide each one either. This evolving of a life just decided that. Now, when you're 40s and beyond, now the whole thing tends to get way more refined. It needs to be way more dialed in. I work with a lot of guys, even in their 60s who are enhanced. Um, like it's gonna be less about throwing shit at the wall. Like a lot of the guys, they move towards like mild enhancement or TRT style protocols just to hold on to like hormonal harmony, just to keep their head sharp, keep their joints comfortable, just keep the whole system feeling fucking good and ready. And something important shifts in this age. Muscle retention it stops being a vanity metric and actually becomes a health variable in this age. So that's uh like holding muscle at 50 is not just about looking jacked in the mirror, it's about mobility, it's about not falling apart, it's about picking up your kids, you know, off the floor. It's about actually staying capable. So the compounds they may support recovery, cardiovascular capacity, joint health, longevity in your training, like the ability to keep showing up hard for years without breaking down. And look, some guys in their 40s and 50s, they're still competing. I got guys in the 60s that are competing. Like they're still stepping on stage. Those guys they need much more aggressive strategies because that's what the goal demands. So the guy next to him, like with the same age, he just wants energy. He just wants clarity, he wants sexual health or vitality. The goals are gonna shift, but the age doesn't dictate them, right? The individual did, and every single time it's always the individual, which is why I work with individualized approaches and I don't believe in using templates for absolutely fucking anyone. If you ever got a template from a coach, I'm fucking sorry. Now, let me out the let me lay out the whole range here because I think uh uh like uh people don't genuinely like know how wide it is. So across a lifespan, these compounds they serve wildly different jobs, and I mean wildly. They can build muscle, fucking obviously, but they can also preserve muscle, which matters more the older you get. They can also enhance performance, they can support recovery, which for a busy guy, like sometimes that's gonna be the entire point. They can also improve the depth of your sleep, yes. And even if you've got like shit sleep, like you you know that's not a small thing, right? That's everything. They they can also elevate your mood and they steady you out emotionally. That's what happened to me. Uh, they can sharpen your cognition and work your and and uh basically your work output as well. They can restore your libido, your sexual function, which for a lot of men is just quietly like the thing that pushed them to look for any of this in the first place. They can carry your quality of life through a brutal, stressful stretch, they can keep you training consistently when life is trying to knock you off of it, and they can basically refine how you look, even when you're getting maximally huge, and that isn't the goal at all, right? So that is a long list, and and most people they walk around thinking that these compounds are only for dudes who want to become enormous. That is such a narrow and dumb view of it, honestly. Like in reality, they can support health, energy, focus, emotional regulation, long-term physical capability. The the purpose is flexible as fuck. The the body's response, though, that part is specific. It's specific to you. So the tool is gonna bend to a hundred different jobs, but how your particular body answers, it's gonna be its own fingerprint. And that's why you can't run this off of a template. You also have to understand that there's a way to do this the healthy way and a way to do it this the terrible way. The blood work for all of my guys looks absolutely fucking perfect. I don't care what age they're in or how heavy they are, which is why I work with so many people who already have coaches, basically to organize and architect the whole situation to basically enhance longevity and health outcomes while the other coach is basically doing the pushing for the bodybuilding side of things. That's something that I do a lot and absolutely love doing that. But this brings me the to the truth that I want to sit under this whole thing. Age does matter, but it matters as one variable, as one input amongst several. It doesn't dictate your goals, it doesn't dictate your identity, it doesn't dictate your ambition, it doesn't dictate how hard you're allowed to go. I agree with that. All it does, the only thing that age actually does is it shapes the way your biology responds. And that response, that's what demands your awareness. So nobody should pick a protocol because they're 30 or because they're 40 or because they hit 50 and somebody told them 50-year-olds should do it this way. You pick a protocol that you built based off what you want and because of how your current body actually responds to what you're doing in it. Those are two things, but it's not the number. And all like all I'll say it as plainly as I fucking can is a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old, they can both use these compounds well. A 20 year old and a 50-year-old can both misuse the shit out of them. The line between doing it well and doing it badly, that line has nothing to do with age, it's self-awareness. That is the divider. It's always has been. Now, to the objection here. Somebody's gonna say, come on, dude, this is convenient. Like, of course, the coach says age doesn't matter because coaches want to sell aggressive protocols to older guys, which should be slowing down. There are some hard biological realities to aging, recovery gets worse, cardiovascular risk climbs up, connective tissue gets more fragile, tendons don't heal like they used to. And by waiving all of it like as like, quote, just context, you're basically just giving like a 55-year-old permission to train and dose like he's 25, and that's gonna get this guy hurt. So age is not just the context, that's how the objection goes. So age is a real constraint, and pretending it's soft is how older guys end up injured or worse. And honestly, I think that this right here is a very fair fucking shot at what I'm saying. And I want to sit with that because it's not wrong that recovery declines. It's not wrong that cardiovascular risk goes up. It's not wrong that, you know, a 55, you know, a 55-year-old who's gonna dose like a fucking college kid, he's asking for trouble. Like all of that is true. I'm not gonna, you know, tell you that it's not, it really is. But the whole objection it misses, and it misses the same fucking point that the episode has been circling on, which is like nothing I said here tells you that the other guy should ignore his biology. I said the exact fucking opposite. I say that changing the body demands more self-awareness, not less. So the point was never that age is weightless. The point is that age is context, but it's not a command. The 55-year-old absolutely factors his recovery, his heart, his tendons, all of it into how he approaches this. But he factors it in as a terrain that he's working around, not as a verdict that hands him a preset protocol off a chart. He's still got leads. Like, and those leads should go, should derive his goals from, right? His biology is still shaping how he chases it. And that's true for the 25-year-old, too, like whose uh body is just like forgiving body just doesn't excuse him from thinking. So the objection is right that age is a real constraint. It's also wrong that treating it as context makes it soft somehow. Context is exactly what a real constraint belongs in, because context is what you actually reason with. A number on a chart you just obey. Context you can think through, and thinking through is the entire job. So, to recap, steroids don't act on some fixed, unchanged machine. They act on a body that evolves the whole way through your life. And the mistake, the one that I open with, is thinking that age alone tells you what to do. It doesn't. It sounds more reasonable, but it's wrong. Your goals and your risk tolerance are gonna stay the central drivers from start to finish. Age is just gonna modify the ground. So two people the same age, they can need completely different approaches because the goal is gonna shape the strategy and the age only gonna shape the setting. The 20s are very forgiving, so you're gonna learn on the softer ground, but forgiving is not a free pass to do stupid shit. The 30s, they're gonna sharpen your goals and they're gonna expand the purpose way past growth. In the 40s and beyond, they're gonna refine the whole thing and turn muscle from vanity into the heart variable. But none of those decades is a rule book. Every single one of them is just more context for you. And the purpose these tools serve is stretches so much wider than people think about getting big. They can build, they can preserve, they can perform, they can recover, it can help you with sleep, with mood, with cognition, with libido, like the plain quality of your day when life is grinding on you, the tool is gonna bend. Your body is gonna be able to answer specifically to you. So the compass for you is never the calendar. The question doesn't change how old you get, okay? It's always the same two things. How is my body responding? And what do I want from it right now? You answer those two questions honestly at any age, and you're doing this correctly. You skip them and you read your protocol off a birth year and you just copy someone else. It doesn't matter how young or how old you are, you are doing it wrong, flat out fucking wrong. So that is the compass, not the calendar. Next episode, we're gonna go somewhere that I've been building towards for a while, which is the identity of the enhanced user, because there isn't one kind of person who uses these compounds. There are many different people, different reasons, different wiring. And I want to like really is get to show you like how enhancement doesn't turn you into somebody else. It makes you more of whatever you are, which is the disciplined guy. He gets more disciplined, the reckless guy gets more reckless. So we're gonna walk through different kinds of people who use and how each one of them becomes more of itself under it all. I'll I'll see you there.