Quote[/b] ]All androgens cause muscle growth by a similar mechanism(s).
· Enhanced growth factor activity (e.g. GH, IGF-1, etc.)
· Enhanced activation of myogenic stem cells (i.e. satellite cells)
· Enhanced myonuclear number (to maintain nuclear to sarcoplasmic ratio)
· Enhanced protein synthesis
· Enhanced amino acid recycling within muscle cells
· New myofiber formation
All of these things lead to bigger muscles, whether you train or not. Add to these effects, Hypertrophy-Specific Training and Hypertrophy-Specific Nutrition and you see dramatic increases in muscle mass.
Now when a person quits using prohormones/steroids, they have a greater number of myonuclei than they did before and additional new muscle fibers. This allows them to maintain a greater amount of muscle mass than they could have naturally. This “recently-natural” look is what you see in a lot of magazines today.
As long as you can maintain the new myonuclei, and new muscle fibers, you will store up muscle memory and a greater potential for later drug-free regrowth.