Collected wisdom: overcoming plateaus

Have you ever experienced a Plateau? When? What did you do to Overcome it?

I think it would be a good idea to collect every ones experience on this in one place. Maybe say how long you PE’d before you got into the plateau and gained during that time. How long you were stuck in one and what you did to overcome it, then any gains made after.

Conventional wisdom is that the first thing you should do is take a deconditioning break. Unfortunately, this has never worked for me. I’m sure they work great for most people. However, for some people such as myself they don’t. I in fact was experiencing consistent gains right up until my first (preemptive) decon break and years later have yet to see any gains at all since it. It’s as if the decon break actually made my member stronger and ever since it’s seemed to be impossible to put enough strain in it to get any results. I took the 2 month decon break on the theory that if you took breaks before hitting plateau then you could avoid ever getting “toughened up” — the idea was to try to be able to get newbie-ish results for as long as possible. Alas, the taking of the decon break either coincidentally coincided exactly with the time that my newbie gains were to hit a wall, or it actually ended them.

For me a plateau is when you have zero gains after 2 months of dedicated PE.

You can overcome plateaus by making CHANGES.

If you have a certain routine with a certain intensity, you can change the intensity at the beginning, always monitoring well your PIs.

If the maximum intensity level is reached, then you can change the routine, for example if you are after length, you can go from stretches to hanging or small-diameter tube pumping.

Making a circle with all lengthening methods and managed to hit a plateau at each an every one of them, is something that can take years. Then, managing to be constantly on a plateau, that means, to have hit a plateau at all methods and not being able to gain with a method change is something that can take a lifetime. If so, yes, a decon break could be useful, but we are talking for more than 10 years of PE, considering that a plateau is really hard to reach if you are making changes to your routines.

For example, if you start hanging, you can only hang SO or BTC. If that stops working, then you switch to OTS or v-hanging (hanging over a bar for maximum tunica expansion).

It is really hard to hit a plateau, and most people hit those because they over-train themselves, not giving the time to their body to take the full benefit of an exercise. Just because someone starts hanging, it doesn’t mean that he should hang all possible ways withing the first couple of months.

With this method, gains are slower but more steady and consistent. Since PE is something that I will be doing for a lifetime, I am not in a rush, I will take all benefits from each exercise.

My two cents.

Another thing to try is fulcrums without changing hanging weight.

Changing to an angle that you haven’t used without changing hanging weight.

Applying heat instead of changing weight.

Bumping your hanging weight for a short period (minute or two) then going back to your normal weight.

I thought I was the only one who had this experience?

It’s quite disheartening when you take a break and during it you lose a good bot of the size you’ve worked so hard to gain and then when you start back it’s not responding like it did before and is stubborn as hell!

I’m slowly getting back to my biggest but it’s taking time and a lot of work and I won’t be taking a decon break again, I don’t care if I can only fit in one or two workouts per week but I will never give up pe for long periods, willingly, ever again!

I agree with you, guys. I myself have never got the very concept of deconditioning breaks. Perhaps, for some people they work in a more or less productive way. But for quite many it’s just a waste of time. It’s much better to be persistent and adjust your routine, when it’s necessary, like Axrhstos said.

You describe the exact scenario of the classic plateau

See this is exactly the problem with time breaks between hanging sessions that get guys in trouble. If you allow enough time to pass the ligs will heal and in the last phase of the healing process the ligs are toughened and returned to normal or original length. The only way to combat this in a practical way is to use an ADS so the ligs are constantly stretched with light weight or stress. The duration of a healing cycle is unique to every individual. The younger you are the faster the healing cycle. The better health your in the faster your healing cycle. The best solution is to never allow more then 24 hours between routines and even then use an ADS in case you have to miss a session.

x2, I havent gained a single thing in a year time of consistent PE, and that is after I returned from a decon break of one month.