Another coach posted a clip arguing that steroid gains are temporary, using actors who got huge for a role and then shrank as his proof. Tony Huge agrees with part of it and takes apart the rest. Yes, you do not keep everything from a cycle. No, that does not mean you cannot keep most of it. The difference, he argues, comes down to how the muscle was built, whether the gains were given time to solidify, and whether the person ever learned that steroids do not produce abs. Along the way he explains why he thinks a famous 60-pound weight loss looks like every bodybuilder who ever came off gear, and why he can hold his own physique on two training days a week.
Video: What Really Happens When You Stop the Gear. Published November 19, 2025. Watch on YouTube.
What the video covers
This video has no chapter markers; timestamps marked ~ are estimated from the transcript.
- ~00:00 The setup: A coach’s clip on permanent versus temporary gains, and Tony’s promise to explain how some people keep mass after dropping the gear.
- ~00:55 Where Tony agrees: You do not keep all of it. Where he disagrees: you can keep a lot with the right post-cycle steps.
- ~01:35 The 60-pound weight loss: Why it looks to Tony like a bodybuilder coming off, and the health reasons that usually drive it.
- ~03:10 “Abusing”: Tony’s objection to the word, and his claim that a moderate user is healthier than the average sedentary person.
- ~04:15 Steroids do not give you abs: Reading a bulking physique correctly.
- ~05:30 Short cycles beat long ones: Three weeks up, one week down, and why six months of bulking wastes time.
- ~07:25 Why an actor gets big: Size as permission, and the cardiologist who said stop.
- ~08:20 What solidifies: 22 pounds in 12 days, and what fraction becomes permanent depending on what happens next.
- ~09:20 Hyperplasia: New cells versus bigger cells, and why Tony’s muscle comes back fast.
Where he agrees
The coach’s example is a bodybuilder who went from 220 pounds to 165 after stopping, and his lesson is that if you take steroids you do not simply keep the gains. Tony agrees with the narrow claim. You do not keep all of the gains from a cycle. Where he parts ways is the implied conclusion. Not keeping everything is not the same as keeping nothing, and the gap between the two is filled by proper post-cycle therapy and a couple of other steps that he spends the rest of the video on.
The famous actor who lost around 60 pounds for a role gets the same treatment. Tony says it looks to him exactly like every heavily enhanced bodybuilder who comes off gear and drops weight, and he lists the reasons that usually drive it. A cardiovascular condition, a cancer scare, anything where a doctor says lower body weight improves survival. Many medical conditions kill appetite or make holding weight hard. Sometimes growth hormone or androgen levels have to come down because they aggravate whatever is wrong. In his view that is the typical picture, and the weight loss drug explanation does not change it.
The word “abusing”
The coach describes stopping steroid abuse. Tony objects to the word. A healthy protocol of performance-enhancing compounds can build a lot of muscle with minimal side effects, and he would not call that abuse. His larger claim is comparative: most men on even moderate doses are healthier than the average sedentary person who ignores diet, training and health entirely, because the other habits of a fitness lifestyle matter more to health than the negative impact of moderate enhancement. That is a claim, not a citation, and he presents it as his view.
“Steroids don’t give you abs. This comes from a calorie deficit. So just because you take steroids, you’re not going to be lean.”
Tony Huge, ~04:15
Reading a bulking physique
The coach’s before-and-after shows a man over 25% body fat, maybe 30%, hitting a front double bicep with little definition. Tony’s read is that this is not 40 to 60 pounds of muscle. It might be ten pounds of muscle and 50 of fat. He wants people to stop using a six-pack as the test for whether someone is enhanced. Leanness comes from a calorie deficit. A man who trains, does no cardio and ignores his diet will make exactly this kind of transformation whether or not he is on anything, and if he goes back on, he will look like this again. It is a typical bulking physique, and it says almost nothing about the drugs.
Why long bulks waste time
Bulking makes sense, Tony says, because a surplus lets you lift heavier, and more body weight, including fat, adds strength. The mistake is gaining so much fat that months are spent losing it, time that could have gone into building. The traditional pattern is three or six months of bulking followed by three months of cutting. His alternative is far shorter: bulk for three weeks, cut for one, keep the surplus moderate, and keep alternating. Each swing resensitizes the other system, and the pendulum can be pushed further in each direction without the long recovery. That, he says, is how the fastest transformations he has run are structured, and it is also why the actor’s pattern, months of bulking to a bloated peak and then a crash, is the slow way.
What solidifies and what does not
This is the mechanism that answers the title. Tony agrees that brief use does not lock in gains, because gains take time to solidify. In a mass blast that adds 22 pounds of lean mass in 12 days, some of that is water, some is glycogen swelling the muscle cells, some is new tissue and activated stem cells that have not yet consolidated. The muscle feels softer at that point. Stop training and stop the chemistry immediately and you might retain five pounds of permanent muscle from those 12 days, which he notes is still months of natural progress. Drop the chemistry to something minimal, keep training hard, eat enough protein and avoid going catabolic, and those 22 pounds become perhaps 12 pounds of permanent tissue.
The deeper variable is how the muscle was built. If it came from hyperplasia, new muscle cells and activated stem cells, rather than only from expanding existing cells, it is far easier to retain and returns faster through muscle memory. Tony says that is his own situation. He built permanent new muscle tissue, and that is why he can maintain his physique training a couple of days a week. No muscle is permanent, he adds, because nothing is. But muscle built that way behaves differently when the gear stops.
Cheat Sheet Pivot
What Tony argued and what he reported from his own protocols, not instructions.
- You do not keep all of a cycle’s gains; with post-cycle therapy, continued training and adequate protein, he says you can keep a large fraction.
- Leanness is a function of calorie deficit, not enhancement, so a fat before-and-after tells you nothing about drugs.
- His bulking structure is roughly three weeks up and one week down with a moderate surplus, rather than months in each direction.
- His mass blast example: 22 pounds of lean mass in 12 days, of which perhaps five pounds survives with no follow-through and perhaps 12 with training and diet.
- Muscle built through hyperplasia, in his account, is retained more easily and returns faster than muscle built by expanding existing cells.
The compounds behind the pulse structure he describes are in the Miracle Molecules Cheat Sheet. For the protocol side, read The Mass Blast Protocol: Why I Front-Load Anabolics in 4-Week Pulses, and for the recovery half that decides what you keep, see Protection Starts on Day One.
Where the evidence stops
Tony’s reading of the actor’s weight loss is speculation, and he presents it as his impression rather than knowledge; the video has no information about anyone’s medical history. The claim that moderate enhanced users are healthier than average sedentary adults is unsourced. The 22 pounds in 12 days, the five-pound and 12-pound retention figures, and the three-weeks-up, one-week-down structure are from his own coaching, not trials. The hyperplasia mechanism, that new cells and added nuclei persist and enable faster regrowth, has support in the muscle memory literature, and Tony’s companion video on that subject lays it out; here it is asserted from experience.
Keep going
For the cellular reason gains can outlast the compounds, read The Hidden PED That Stays in Your Muscles for Life, and for what the montage of ruined bodybuilders leaves out, see Steroids Ruined These Bodybuilders? What the Montage Left Out. Companion articles reach the tonyhuge.is email list first, and the archive is on tonyhuge.is.