Originally Posted by Monty530
Firegoat I’ve read your thread and agree with it except where you said, “once the new elastin has reached a proportion where the tissue is too elastic, the collagen may convert to a more stable form, creating a plateau when no new growth is experienced. If at this point intensity is increased to try to overcome the plateau, the collagen will toughen up and new gains will become much harder to stimulate.”
I haven’t found that. What I’ve experienced is the ability to break the plateau with either technique, i.e. fulcrums, or greater weight for a very short duration and then return to my normal weight. The results are that I haven’t had to increase my weights and yet my gains continue. So what I’ve concluded is that I”m actually breaking those tentative collagen bonds and they start over at trying to keep up with me. Consistency, like you said, is really the key here
Back when I was hanging (2003/4), I used the linear approach to weight increases, and reached the point where I didn’t want to hang any heavier, but gains had stopped. I did try brief periods of heavier weights the same way as you suggest, but because I was already hanging quite heavy, I just felt it was taking me too close to potential injury. My only option was a decon break. After that, I again found I could gain with much lighter weight, but the tissue toughened up quickly again, forcing me to take quite regular decon breaks.
I took about 8 months off PE before I joined here, which allowed the tissues to completely de-condition, and when I started again I concentrated on a primarily manual routine. When gains slowed, I kept the intensity the same for a few weeks to consolidate the gains, then took a decon break for about 3 weeks, then began again with a light routine. It worked very well.
If I had not had the experience of getting ‘too’ conditioned, I would not have used this method. When giving advice to others here, I try to steer them in the direction of avoiding becoming too conditioned for that reason.
If, when I was hanging, I had not constantly increased the weight, but had kept it fairly low and just used brief periods of higher weight as you suggest, I imagine I would have been able to considerably extend the time between decon breaks. I think it is a sound and sensible way to proceed if you don’t want to take breaks. I use a similar method now with my manual routine; keeping a ‘base’ routine (basically the Newbie Routine) and adding brief periods of higher intensity work. Eventually, a decon break is still going to be a good idea; as you have found yourself, after a break you can get good results with less intensity again. I like your method Monty; it should allow gains to continue without conditioning too fast, and it should consolidate gains ‘as you go’.
As I’ve said before, there are many approaches to PE, and many of them seem to work, as long as people are consistent. I do think rest is needed between PE sessions; when I was at my most active in PE, we didn’t have ADS’s, so we traction wrapped, did piss pulls etc. All these methods allowed recovery between sessions, but stopped the tissues contracting. These days a very low tension ADS will do the same. I would always suggest at least one complete day off a week, even if one is only stretching/hanging. It’s not enough time for the tissues to begin converting elastic tissue to stronger collagen, but it is enough to help prevent any creeping injuries we may not be aware of, and it actually seems to allow the elastic tissues to relax out a bit; I get far better flaccid hang after a couple of days off.
Dancers, gymnasts, yoga practitioners etc. greatly increase the resting length of their muscles, tendons and ligaments through daily or at least very regular stretching. They do not need to remain in a stretched position between sessions in order to increase their flexibility, they just need to be consistent enough to not allow the tissues to contract too much between stretching sessions.
We know that their tissues are actually lengthened, rather than just becoming more elastic, because if you take a gymnasts limbs through their ROM (range of motion), they have great range before any significant degree of elastic resistance is encountered. We too only need be consistent, we don’t actually have to actively be stretching the tissues between PE sessions in order to lengthen the tissues.