First cycle, need help with assessment
Hey all, first post, been reading the articles section for the past month or more though. I will start with the short version first for people that don't feel like reading my long winded post:
tl;dr - I'm an athlete. I have never taken steroids or prohormones. Due to excessive workouts and my own OCD I get sick and injured ALL the time. I am not so concerned with enhancing my performance as far as strength and size are concerned, but instead really would like something to keep me healthy... and a positive state of mind wouldn't be unwelcome either. The longer the cycle the better in hopes to raise my immune system.
Long version - I currently train to fight MMA(one day), and compete in grappling tournaments. I have never taken steroids or prohormones before, and I never particularly cared to until recently. My workout schedule looks like the following, and I've been doing this for the past 4+ years:
6 days/week = grappling
3 days/week = muay thai
2 days/week = lifting (usually mix it up between powerlifting and olympic lifts, sometimes I do some good ol' body building workouts out of nostalgia and for general mobility support etc.)
1-2 days/week = conditioning... really really hard conditioning workouts when I'm preparing for a tournament, the kind that sap your will to live and make you question life, lol.
Because of this immense work load, I get sick or injured ALL the time. I have been to Dr.s, gotten bloodwork taken, been to specialists, and basically they all just say I'm overtraining. I basically eat sleep and breathe my sport. I work a full time job, so that's pretty much my life. Over the past year I've been trying to be really smart about it because I'm tired of being sick or injured all the time(had a cold or flu 8 times in 2009, pulled my lower back 2x and upper back 2x in 2010 due to previously undiagnosed minor scoliosis and overtraining), but I think I did so much damage in my early stages, that now I have a darned near permanently suppressed immune system. I currently have the flu, and I have been sick 3 times in the past 3 months despite drastically toning down my workload, and at 2 weeks sick each time, that means I've been sick for 1.5 out of 3 months.
I don't care about gaining a competitive edge(though I know nearly all the top players in my sport are on steroids), but I am starting to really really worry about my overall health, so much so to the point that I'm thinking about giving up the thing I love most, my sport. Instead of doing that, I figured it might be worth it to look into an alternative that would not only allow me to not be sick all the time, but might allow me to increase my workload to at least start to get back to where I was before.
My questions for you fine people of this board are:
1. Will AASs be the answer to my prayers?
2. If so, which ones would be recommended(I'm assuming ones that allow for longer cycles, and something that might give me a sense of well being would be awesome, as the mental stress can be brutal in my sport sometimes)
3. I really would like to avoid premature balding (though I don't THINK it runs in my family, but I don't really know a lot of my family, so I wouldn't want to make it a crap shoot), or developing gynecomastia
4. Please don't flame me for being an athlete and thinking about taking AAS. If AASs were something that could help me train at the level I wanted to, even if that meant giving up on competing, I would still do that just in order to be healthy and train as much as I want, it's really not at all for any kind of advantage, and I would probably make sure I am on cycle for the training, and off cycle for the actual tournament if I were to compete as to not have an exaggerated strength advantage despite the lack of drug testing in grappling, and I definitely grappled against people who were clearly either freaks of nature, or on AASs.
Thanks in advance for the help and advice.