Pred and muscle mass

Hi all, just a quick question here. Ive been on pred for about 2 years now and am currently on 11mg. I have gained about 20 pounds from the pred evil and I'm looking to lose weight and/or gain muscle. Is it possible to gain muscle while on pred because I heard its harder, or should I just focus on cardio until I'm off PRED? I have been watching my diet and not overeating but not really seeing results. Also the day after I do strength train it's like my body is half dead and takes even longer to recuperate even when I up my protein.
Thanks guys!

Yep, it's definitely possible. I know I shouldn't have done this in the past because I could've ripped my tendons or something but even when I was on 40mg of Prednisone a day, I started strength training once my symptoms were in control.

I definitely felt that being on prednisone(since it's catabolic steroids), it made it harder to hit the weights that I used to. All my compound lifts have gone down. I usually do deadlift, squats, bench, rows, and standing shoulder press as my main exercises and being on Prednisone definitely made it harder to go back to what I used to lift.

But since you are lower daily dosage, I don't think it will affect you as much as you think it will. Just remember to eat well, try to get all the aminos with every meal(preferably from food, not supplements) and keep going while giving your body enough rest.

I see that you have celiac disease and if you can tolerate Glutamine(amino acid), it will definitely help you with muscle recovery and healing villi in your small intestine.

Maybe give DHEA a try once you get down to 2-5mg of Prednisone a day. It will help you out with adrenal fatigue from Prednisone.

Troptitute said...
I usually do deadlift, squats, bench, rows, and standing shoulder press as my main exercises and being on Prednisone definitely made it harder to go back to what I used to lift.

Are you doing stronglifts 5X5? I am 10 weeks in on that program, but, unfortunately, beginning a UC flare as of last week. Mild symptoms but definitely UC, not a stomach bug. I am wondering if its all the heavy compound lifting making me too run down? I'm exhausted all the time from the heavy workouts. I was thinking about lowering the weight on my lifts and letting myself recover a bit in hopes I can get in front of this flare up. Any further advice you can give based on your experience and or knowledge about pred/working out would be appreciated. If I end up on pred I still plan on working out with lighter weight.

You'd probably know Glutamine helps muscle wasting try at high dose 15mg maybe more..

I have been on Pred for the first time over the past month and i started weight training during this period. I did it to counter the side affects of Pred i.e muscle wastage etc.

I also felt it would help reduce any of the potential depression side affects people have gotten. I have always heard people saying exercise release 'good hormones' so reasonable to assume exercising can help keep the mind healthy while on pred. My experience over the past few weeks has actually been a good one and recently i have had a lot of comment to say i am looking a lot more muscular then i was before so something is working.

I think it all comes down to what is best as an individual, i have always noticed my symptoms are a lot calmer when i exercise regularly and when i get lazy my symptoms get worse. Obviously i have not been on Pred as long as you so the tendon issues may affect you if you go heavy but some body weight HIIT should be fine and just stay within your limits and stretch before and after.

Hi, I don't know what kind of program you're using but I'm on the same dose and I'm getting slow and steady strength increases every week. Your program might not be optimized for your current situation. My previous program wasn't giving me any good results and it was a two day split. It was two days of workout and two days of rest, but my muscles took to long to heal, I told my trainer and asked him to change my program. My current workout program is split into three days;
Day 1: Chest, Biceps, Abs
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Shoulders, Triceps, Abs
Day 4: Rest
Day 5: Back 6 Legs + Cardio
Day 6: Rest

I'm not taking any supplements at all, other than Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard protein powder(I chose that one because most UC people on the internet say it doesn't disturb their stomach) and I wait for all soreness to go away completely before training the same muscle again. I skipped a leg day or two because of that for instance, because doing Dumbbell Lunge for the first time destroyed my upper legs. They didn't heal for a long time.

I plan to take Glutamine again when I have some spare money to spend. As you can see, people usually train much more frequently but my program is "lighter." I can tell you it's quite possible to lose fat and gain muscle beause that's exactly what I did on the first month I started working out. I was really skinny and had weak muscles. If that machine on my gym is accurate, I lost 2.5 kgs of fat and gained around 3.2 kgs of muscle on my first month. I was on 10 mgs pred that month. It was my first time ever in a gym so that might be the reason I got quick results. I was taking Glutamine at the time and was also doing a bit intermittent fasting, so you can try those too. I walked 20 minutes everyday to go to work and some of that involved going uphill.

Far as I know, doing heavy training on pred makes things worse. You need to let your muscles heal before working out again and since pred slows down the healing process, working out as frequently as a normal person who isn't on pred like might do more harm than good. As others mentioned, there is risk of tearing your tendons, so rather than going high weight & low repcount, go low weight & high repcount. That's lower risk route you can take until you completely taper off. I do 10 to 12 reps.

Complete your reps slowly and control the movement especially during the negative portion of the rep. So you'll know you're not breaking form. This will also make sure you're not lifting too heavy and you'll know you're in the safe zone.

Also, I don't know if it happens to you too but I get tired very quickly. Because of that, I don't keep my weights the same during my workouts, I start a bit high and then I drop them bit by bit over time, once or even twice during the same excercise if I get too tired. Sometimes I even take 1-2 second break midset. I do as many reps as I can on my last exercise for a workout to tire myself as much as possible. I would say you need to progressively overload your muscles to get stronger but I'm sure you know that already.

I don't know for sure, I'd be happy if someone can confirm but I'm remember reading that Iron is related to muscles building process. Since we lose blood during flares, UC itself also hinders our ability to gain muscle. So you might want to use Iron Supplements but again, I need a confirmation of that.