Building The Ultimate Length Routine: A Brainstorming Approach

This is a very cool thread - an effort to build a consensus within the community. I like it.

I don’t know if I qualify as an “experienced” PE guy or not. I’ve been doing it for about 7 months and have gained a bit more than 1 1/4” inches, mostly by hanging & manuals. But I’d say what I’ve learned is to listen to my PIs and be consistent. I like to reach fatigue after every hanging set, be a bit sore at the end of the day, but have the soreness disappear by morning so I can have another go at it.

Nope. I wouldn’t ask such a thing, since I tried about everything. The thask here is opposite and is described in the very first post. :)

Actually, I can’t name many hangers among the unquestionated ‘big gainers’. This idea that hanging is the ultimate length technique is spread…well, among hangers. It is an interesting case of strong bias, IMO, which makes not much worth a lot of the ‘anecdotical evidence’ you are basing your thoughts on; have you ever seen this?
For those who tried both: what gave you best gains, hanging or stretching?

It is interesting because, the majority of people who tried both hanging and stretching, had more gains with manual stretching. 13% of difference at today. With over 108 votes, this offers some food for thought.

So I want to do the inverse road: establishing what is the best length routine, and then seeing which devices or manual techniques are the means.

What you need to know, is that you are pulling with no less than pounds. It isn’t that hard, measure with a fishscale for manual stretching, with a pump some eggs head could do some calculations or you just can pump say to 5 hg then attach pounds to the cylinder and see when the pump starts sliding down. Knowing how much force you are applying when clamping will require some calculations and will remain anyway highly speculative. Anyway if we agree that girth exercises wouldn’t be the best way to achieve pure length gains, we are left with just hanging and manual stretching.

Not ‘a routine’, the best routine from a theoretical point of view. Look, if you read any manual or hanging routine ever written down, how do you know it is really the best way to go? Basing on which principles? With any routine I have ever seen, the report have been mixed. What happens, is that, at first, a lot of people reports great gains, but after a while all the fluff goes down, and it is just another arbitrary routine.

So what?

It is just an educated guess. We do know that a low force applied for enough time will lengthen connective tissue, but we are speaking of something that can be applied practically, I hope very few members want to do 6 hours daily of manual stretching or 12 hours of hanging, 7/7. I think nobody ever did, actually.

You said that strethers gained more then hangers, but stretchers are guys that begin PE with stretching and all those gains are newbie gains, when people resort to hanging thay are already conditioned.

For a conditioned guy that gained from manuals, jelq + stretch, but no longer gaining from that, what do you suggest next?

Those are nothing but suppositions though, tomray. We could as well make the supposition that most of hangers never gave manual stretches a serious try.

I never said that manual stretchers gain more than hangers, I am just pointing out that the data we have at our disposal, once read withotu bias, put under question what is commonly believed.

I think the problem you are going to run into with this sort of idea is that people respond differently to PE exercises. What works great for one guy may not make any difference at all for you or me.

My approach to PE has and will always be one of, do the routine for X period of time (usually a month) then measure your progress. If no progress then change something. Rinse and repeat. Has worked well for me so far.

It is this kind of Dynamic Approach, that I think you really should be considering. Perhaps a rotating set of different routines consisting of the exercises that we feel pretty confident work well. This would keep your body from building up a resistance to the exercise and keep things going. This might be a better approach than the deconditioning cycle that some people feel they have to resort to.

Say create 4 routines. Each to be done for 3 months at a time then rotate to the next one. You could then have 90 days of time tested on a routine and people can report their gains and then they could be tweaked or completely changed depending on how the majority respond to each?

Just some ideas to help keep this thread moving along.

Anyone has red the first post? Just asking.

Is this directed at me? I read it and gave you my input. Others have also given their input. I don’t think you actually want anyone’s contribution, you have picked apart pretty much everything that has been said here (except maybe heat and jelqing).

So good luck, I will do what works for me. Maybe one day you will find what works for you, I guess.

Priceless.

I have allready shut the fuck up but…. come on now.

Not that hard, all it takes is a bit of effort : just forget repeating what you guys have heard from somebody else and swallowed because it made sense at a first glance and/or because you trusted the said somebody.
Ok, so the points about which there is an agreement are:
a) use heat;
b) add some jelqs to any routine;
c) stretch SO, SD and to the sides;
d) apply a force of at least 8 pounds.

Now, I will just notice that the point c) makes problematic using a hanger, since I don’t see stretching to the sides done easily when hanging.

Another point that there seems to be an agreement on, is that, once you are using an effective force, the more time under tension, the better. Now, we should find the least amount of time that can give most of the gains. To find that, we have to make a distinction between continous stretching and cyclic stretching. The second one could be more or less effective, being equal the total time.

I will refer to my personal experience here, and would like to hear what anyobdy’ else experience has been. About on continous tension: I found that, with an extender, it would take about 60 minutes of time of wearing the extender with no rest pauses, to reach the maximum length inside the extender. Using a pump, it would take pretty much the same time to reach the maximum length inside the cylinder. I have practiced hanging, but it would be hard to yell how much time it would require to reach the maximum stretched length with them.

I think with any length routine exceeding BPEL is crucial. This requires a minimum of 45-60 minutes in my experience. The problem is this isn’t something someone starting out should try to achieve.

On c) I really can’t understand how one can achieve 2-3” long term goals and not reach a plateau and not resort to hanging somewhere along the way.

I’ve gained two inches and never used a hanger. Everyone responds differently.