Gathering Info on how to work up a productive routine for Hard Gainers

I don’t think there is an “optimum” that will work for everyone. I myself am trying to determine is a lesser amount of time daily, or slightly more for a 5 on 2 off, or one on and one off is best. I think that you really have to experiment and see what you respond best to.

You could start with daily, but at a level low enough that EQ doesn’t drop much. If you don’t start seeing gains after a couple weeks you could try mini cycles of 2-3 on and one off, or as Peforeal recently recommended, every other day.

I think especially for “less is more” guys you want enough stress to stimulate gains, but not so much that you crash in one day. I think if it takes more than 1-2 for EQ to return to high levels, its too much.

I think because we are discussing it here, we can get more feed back on what starts to work for guys when nothing was working before. It would be great if we can decern a pattern and generate a few guidelines.

I think a HUGE amount of confusion has persisted in the PE community, because it was never acknowleged that there are “less is more” guys and “more is more” guys. Hell, it may turn out that some “less is more” guys can convert gradually to “more is more” guys.

Until this is understood, each camp finds what finally worked for them and then declares that this is what will work for everyone! This just isn’t the case. Tons of “less is more” guys have tried and tried and tried to do the extensive routines, only to end up with total failure and functional impotence!

On the other hand, “more is more” guys get absolutely nowhere doing modest routines and don’t get gains until they start to really beat the hell out of their dicks!

So, lets toss these concepts around, get feedback on what “finally worked” for guys and try to generate some guidelines that will be helpful!

You know I reckon you could turn this concept into a simple set of rules and a flow chart !

Sparkyx,

>If you could, give a bit more details on how low your Eq drops on a 1-10 scale, with zero being complete impotence, and 10 raging erections easily and frequently.<

I’m hanger and trying to reach “fatigue/soreness” every set. I have found that for me, fatigue and EQ goes pretty much hand to hand. More fatigue, lower EQ. I can always get myself hard, but sometimes when my unit is REALLY sore and tired, erection fades very fast if I don’t work it. So I would say my EQ is 4-8. Depends on a day. Most days I would say its like 7.

>Do you find that gains occur WHILE it is low, or when it rebounds? Or right after returning from a break?<

I found that gains happen while EQ is low. I have not took a break now but sometimes I’m travelling and only get 1-3 sets in and then my EQ gets really good in 2-3 days. I’m sure I would measure more then but I don’t have my ruler with me. I’m planning to take my ruler when this happens next time.

So for me it seems like gains are made in low EQ stage and if continued long enough, I can measure gain in low EQ stage too. If I take break or lower the intensity, my EQ gets better and longer so I can measure gain BUT I don’t think the break is the reason why I’m measuring this. It’s just because EQ gets better.

The reason why I think that EQ is not important while hanging is because you can lower your EQ for many reasons. Example, sometimes you can get “bad” sets: Hanger too close to head, too much blood in the head etc.

Mister007,

Besides EQ being relatively low during hanging stage (and in gaining phase), how is your flaccid response? Do you find your flaccid would turtle after hanging? throughout the day??

I have only tried light hanging for 2 weeks and ended up with some injury in my upper shaft. I was using Vac-hanging and it is the best for my uncut penis. I can’t wrap with so much foreskin getting in the way. I stopped hanging and tried Vac-ADS. I didn’t gain anything after 6 months of wearing it.

Would you say that hanging targets more on the ligs elongation/deformation? It seems logical as the ligs are what hold the weight during hanging. Do you notice that the ligs are coming out more when you get erection?

I would agree that EQ is more important for girth routines.

But in any event, don’t take my comment seriously as I am not a gainer at all. Still struggling.

I gained while having low EQ with an extender; when hanging, most of gains came ‘in a spurt’ in the off days, in weeks where I was having low EQ as well.

Why I think there are theorical reasons for that as well? As said I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I’ll give a quinck hint: when TA fibers are damaged, their elasticiy goes down; this temporarily impairs the veno-occlusive function of TA - see this for example:
On the pathogenesis of penile venous leakage: role of the tunica albuginea | BMC Urology | Full Text

This should stand for circular tunica as well, so for girth; but the problem here is that you can’t do most - if not all - girth exercises when your EQ is low; for this reason makes sense to adopt a lower frequency for girth exercises.

kubchaser,

>Besides EQ being relatively low during hanging stage (and in gaining phase), how is your flaccid response? Do you find your flaccid would turtle after hanging? throughout the day??<

Hmm, hard to say because my flaccid changes a lot. It turtles a little right after hanging and is slightly turled trough the day but not completely turtled.

>I have only tried light hanging for 2 weeks and ended up with some injury in my upper shaft. I was using Vac-hanging and it is the best for my uncut penis. I can’t wrap with so much foreskin getting in the way. I stopped hanging and tried Vac-ADS. I didn’t gain anything after 6 months of wearing it.<

What kind of injury? Being uncut can be pain in the ass but trust me, you can make things work even when you have foreskin. I’m uncut too. I didn’t gain anything from ADS either. I can’t remember how much and how long I was using it but I need to check my old logs.

>Would you say that hanging targets more on the ligs elongation/deformation? It seems logical as the ligs are what hold the weight during hanging. Do you notice that the ligs are coming out more when you get erection?<

It depends on what angle you hang. I think BTC is best to start. Upper angles and fulcrums target tunica more. Yes, I can feel the ligs coming out some.

So would you say in your case that “force” was the cause of growth? Extender is so mild in comparison to hanging. And you weren’t getting any gains from the mild extender wearing.

I am uncut, but my problem is I am super sensitive. If I try to wrap, I get immediate semi erection that prevents me from wrapping properly. This is why I use Vac system where I can wait until the erection subsides and the silicon sleeve is still on. When I was using the Vac-hanging, I find my upper shaft was very sore from hanging. It was so sore that I had to take a couple of days off until I could hang again. I suspect the heavy weight restricted the blood flow too much and was causing irritation (I did 20 min set only). But I didn’t have heat.. which I think would have helped with circulation.

So your flaccid is generally on the weak side for most of the time, and yet, you managed to gain.

Useful info man, thanks.

Its the weekend and I haven’t had the time to tend to this Thread like I’ve needed to. The first thing I did this morning is move it out of the Articles forum and change the title. Obviously, this is a premature rollout. I am grateful for all this great additional info coming in, and so I changed the title to Gathering Info….

Please lets keep this discussion open and info coming in. I will at some point try and roll it back out, but it may well turn out I will have to narrow it down to “less is more” hard gainers specifically.

Anyway, its 6:00 AM for me, and now I am going to read the new developments in the thread and join back into the discussion.

Good info!

Plus, what I have found is low EQ also usually equates with contraction or turtling. If your unit is in a contracted state during most of the recovery phase, it tends to be counter productive. With hanging, you can counter this effect with either a stretcher or and ADS weight. For girth, if you are contracting its very hard to prevent that. Some guys can use a cock ring type device, but I and many others found that won’t work if you have over trained and dropped EQ. A constrictor works best for that when you have a normal to big flaccid anyway, and that only comes when you AREN’T over trained, (high EQ).

When you say that gains "came ‘in a spurt’ in the off days," what to you mean by "off days"?

ps, forget about hijacking the thread, its now open game! :)

Firegoat, do you consider yourself a Hard gainer? Marinara, I see you consider yourself a normal gainer. Mr007, I see you do consider yourself a hard gainer.

Yes I would say I’m hard gainer. I really feel like I need to “force” it to grow. Before I started hanging again, my BPFSL and BPEL was almost the same. Now BPFSL is 0.4” longer and I think that if I would cement these gains and stop hanging + work on EQ, my BPEL would almost catch the BPFSL.

This is how it has always been, BPFSL close to BPEL so I don’t think any of my gains are EQ gains. If I do routine that gives me good EQ, I reach almost my BPFSL with BPEL but it’s not growing more than that.

Let’s say someone has 7 BPFSL and 6 BPEL. He does routine that gives him better EQ over time and measures 6.5 BPEL. I don’t think that’s a real gain, only better EQ.

I’m doing 2 hanging sessions in a day + I stretch my unit little before sleep. So I don’t think ADS is really needed. I can feel everything gets pulled again next hanging session.

Yep. When I first started PE I went at it far too hard and the tissues adapted to high force quickly. That’s why I so often warn guys not to jump into advanced stuff before they have exhausted every gain they can get by doing less. It’s also why I promote the use of heat. :D

When hanging, I did a 5 on/2 off routine; of course, sometimes for various reasons (job etc.) I was forced to take 1 or 2 additional days off. That’s when I noticed I could stretch my penis a bit further.

Sometimes that happened with the extender also - you can’t stretch anymore, take 1 or days off and you can stretch further - but, as a general rule, this kind of very mild and prolonged tension did give gains more steadily. Using a bit of formal language, gians with hanging come in a discrete space, gains with the extender in a continuous space.

If I am allowed to add a copuple of side notes:
a) short boats of intense manual stretches tend to raise EQ - make the experiment by yourself, expecially with fulcrum stretches; this seems an indirect convalidation of the link [tunica elasticity-> EQ]; as we know, connective tissue has a specific behavior: when high force are abruptely applied on it, it reacts snapping back; when progressive tension is applied for prolonged time, it tends to remain at the stretched length (viscoelasticity). Hope it is clear what I’m trying to say.

b) what complicate things, is the role of smooth muscle. The higher EQ is probably influenced, other than TA reactions to stressor, by smooth muscle reaction to the same stressor; higher EQ likely means that more blood is flowing inside the penis and it is my understanding that TA is a scarcely supplied by blood (anyone correct me if I’m wrong), where CC are obviously just balloons filled with blood, so it should make sense that a damage to CC would solicit a higher blood flow there. On the other hand, it is a logical reaction to prolonged stretch that CC are ‘voided’, so less resistance is fighting the stretching force and chances of damages to TA are lowered - I mean, it makes sense that the body reacts that way. Maybe I’m being a bit too speculative on this, tough.

Just wanted to remark that this is a good idea that is often not considered by PEers: take trace of your BPFSL, otherwise you could be fooled by the lack of gains in BPEL : if your BPFSL is increased, before or after an increase in BPEL should follow.