Trial and error is necessary in some cases and with something as ‘unknown’ as PE it will take many moons before this is not the case and in a lot of areas will always remain so until you’ve experienced all facets and determined what works for you and what doesn’t.
Yes, trial and error is our way to go until the accumulated PE knowledge will be able to replace it. Each experimental science began with trial and error. Then the governing laws were found and things got more predictable.
We have much to do in order to apply a more scientific approach versus the empirical trials, but first we should want to do it! A next step could be to speak the same language - and I’m not talking about English, but about the PE language. Different terms should be more precisely defined. Let’s take the example from your previous post:
“Let’s take PE as an example, how many people find 3 days on 2 off an effective routine and how many find 5 on 2 off effective?”
We read each day about such comparisons. It makes me smile as it really compares 3+2 apples to 5+2 peaches. Each and everybody has a different routine, even if it seems the same written down: 10 minutes stretching and 200 jelqs… Do you think there are two random people doing the stretches exactly the same way? If they are following the “official” instructions, no way for that to happen. Exercises are not described accurately enough to be reproducible. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to be impolite to the wonderful guys who wrote them down on the site and kindly shared them with us. Just aren’t scientifically accurately described. When a stretch intensity is given in terms of how it feels (ex: stretch until it feels still comfortable and a bit more - kind like this), some will stretch with a force of 2 pounds and others with 10 pounds because comfortable may be over a long range… The former may do some light massaging with no growing effect, while the latter may be overtraining his shaft and gets bad EQ - just because they have different perceptions of what feels comfortable.
Back to the example, it looks now less relevant the frequency of work/rest days when the basic routine is not exactly known how to be done.
I hope the example above shed some light on what I mean by defining more accurately the PE terms and routines.
Starting BPEL: 6.9" (Dec.1st, 2008)
Current BPEL: 8.11" NBPEL: 7.63" BPFSL: 9.09"
Current MEG : 5.6"