More Thoughts On Training Frequency...

It is interesting to note that when I was training splits for performing high kicks (stretching /lengthening ligaments), I was told that the optimum frequency is everyday, seven days a week. I was told you lose 3 days of progress for every day you miss. It seemed to be true in my experience also.

Similarly, when tissue expansion is done for skin growth, a small pressure is applied, usually through a saline balloon. The balloon is gradually inflated to maintain low tension over time. There is no relaxed period through out the process. The constant stress causes new skin cells to grow in the area. Microscopic tissue rupture that results in scarring is carefully avoided.

Again I think we are talking about the body’s adaptation to a stress, and when we use bodybuilding as an example, things become confusing.

Bodybuilding usually means high stress for a short period with rest periods in between (days), to cause a hyper-trophic adaptation in contractile tissue.

Tissue expansion and ligament stretching usually means low stress over a longer or even continuous period of time with shorter or no rest periods in non-contractile tissue.

Since we are not talking about muscle tissue, and we are talking about ligaments, skin and vascular tissue, I would submit the latter method the best all around approach. Example: hanging around the clock with just enough weight to create effect, would IMO, be optimum for length training.

If you use to much tension/stress, you can cause tissue injury, which, I believe, causes an adaptation that makes the tissue more resistant to the stress instead of new tissue growth, not what we want. However too little stress, and no effect is generated.

Thus to emulate the tissue expansion model as closely as possible would entail everyday training at just enough tension/time to cause adaptation and not injury (over-training, or micro tissue rupture). I imagine the time/tension needed will very between individuals, technique and experience level, so experimentation is obviously necessary.

Interesting post Bob,

Are you following such a routine now? You could well have a point, but so far I don’t think any such routines have worked because keeping slight tension for extended periods of time is very hard. I’m yet to hear about an ADS that won’t cut of circulation at least a little bit, and also look obvious in anything but loose trousers.

Good point on the healing and strengthening, this is likely what is happening, but what you might try and do as a hanger is get to the fatigue stage and drop the weight slightly to ‘“ride it out”, basically encouraging healing in the extended state.

You could check out RB’s early posts on his all day routine, it worked well for him and was based on some of the concepts you speak of.

Thanks ICM,

I am currently undergoing some experimentation with time variation using only jelqing. I am trying to find the minimum time needed to effect a result. After a long break, I am currently jelqing at 10 minutes every day. The last two weeks of five minutes every day yeilded no measurable results. After two weeks of this routine, I will move up to 15 minutes every, and so on untill I start to see change. I track BPEL, EG and BPFSL in an excell spreadsheet.

I have a series of experiments I would like to try, however it takes at least two weeks to confirm results or lack thereof. So I am trying the most likely ideas first. One idea I want to try is jelqing for 5 or 10 minutes every 2 hours, every day. (This routine is closer to the tissue expansion model).

I am conviced that if you don’t “injure” yourself, rest days are not required. In researching different types of therapy and tissue modeling I find this to be generally true also. However different tissues do seem to have different protocols. For instance, 15 minutes two to three times daily is the general reccomendation for traction therapy, which generaly targets ligaments. Where as constant tension is generally used for skin, (pregnant womans belly skin example).

RB had an all day routine? Thanks for the heads up, sounds interesting!

I posted this elsewhere, but it should have been posted in this thread:

(1) In tissue expansion, a saline balloon is put under the skin and inflated slowly over several weeks. This
causes the skin tissue to undergo mitosis (new skin cells are created). The interesting thing here is that the mitosis is in response to the stretch, and happens while the skin is under the tension of the stretch.
There is no rest needed! I believe this is because unlike hypertrophy, there is no metabolic or
cellular damage being done.

(2) The documented cases of extended priapism (mentioned elsewhere in this forum), that caused a
permanent enlargement of the penile tissues in those individuals, is very much like the tissue expansion
model only with blood instead of saline.

It would seem if too much stretch is applied, then damage occurs. The body seems to “toughen” and
contract tissues in reaction, to prevent future damage if the stress reoccurs. If this damage threshold is
crossed, then several rest days for healing might be required, or the injury perpetuates and no progress is
seen.

So I feel the tissue expansion model is the one to follow in our line of endeavour. If we create just enough
stress to bring on mitosis without crossing the damage threshold, no rest days are needed, and we should
see continued progress.

For instance, one might jelq for 5 minutes every day for two or three weeks, check progress. If none, add
five minutes and continue in this fashion of increment. When progress is seen, stop at that level, do no
more! I believe there is a fine line between the stress needed to bring on mitosis and the damage threshold.

OK, now I am on a posting spree :)

Now for a opposite view, is it possible jelqing isn’t increasing penile size via inflation as is commonly held? Could resultant increase in length and girth be a genetically determined ratio?

* When a person jelqs, he grasps at the base with each stroke, there is no blood inflation stress at this area, yet people gain girth in this area (base). During the stroke, the pressure is greatest at the glans and end of the penis, however the “baseball bat” syndrome is rare and never as pronounced as it should be if it was inflation causing the growth.

*When you clamp, it seems you see the same phenomenon, girth gains where the clamp is placed, instead of a small girth ring at the base.

*Hangers usually report gains in length and some girth, although the stress isn’t there to create girth (stress on the lateral layer of the tunica).

I am beginning to think that penile shape may be genetically determined to some extent, and that girth gains without length gains tend to be only temporary, and vise versa. If true, then you can only create a larger version of the penis you started with (length girth ratio). Also, this might indicate that the exercise that causes the best growth in any dimension, is the best exercise for that practitioner. In any case, if true, it would explain why we see the results from the examples stated above.

So that would mean that something like clamping for long periods of time (45 min or so perhaps?) would be the best approach for girth work then?

SmilingBob,

THis is a great subject. I wish we had more threads like this. Two things come to mind.

First, certain tissues, like skin, nerves, and blood vessels, will easily stretch and actually generate new tissue in response to applied force. Do a search for “distraction histogenesis.” I posted some things about this earlier. Examples of DH occur during leg lengthening and certain types of cranio-facial surgery. DH is also probably the basis for the “Brava” breast enlargement technique, which uses light vacuum pressure over long periods of time (8-10 hours a day for months to grow one cup size).

Second, certain tissues do not respond as well to applied stress as others. To take an extreme example, bone does not lengthen when stretched. It has to be broken first and allowed to begin healing. One of the first stages of bone healing is the creation of a “soft callus,” essentially a collagen bridge between the broken bone segments. This bridge can then be stretched over time. When stretching (distraction) is stopped, the bridge eventually calcifies to form new bone, at which point it can no longer be stretched simply by applying force.

Ligaments and tunicae are another class of tissues. They fall somewhere between soft tissues, like skin, and solid tissues like bone. These are the tissues that form the limiting factors in PE. As with bone, light forces applied to ligaments and tunicae, even over very long periods of time, may not be sufficient to effect new tissue generation. Something more may be required. This “something” may be greater force, or, as with bone, an actual cutting of tissue and rehealing under stress.

With all this as background, I believe your “splits” training is probably closer to what we’re trying to achieve with PE than skin growing. The tissues involved in skin growing are simply too soft. As an aside, skin may be closer in hardness to the erectile tissues within the corpora cavernosa and corpora spongiosa, but I’m pretty sure that those tissues grow fairly easily and essentially “go along for the ride” as the ligs and tunica expand.

If you could, tell us more about your “splits” training. In particular, how much flexibility did you actually gain? Do you know anyone who went from being very stiff to very flexible? What was his or her routine? Essentially, what are the tricks of the trade for stretching?

Ebon00, If you mean to induce pseudo priapism by clamping, I would be careful. I would be afraid to clamp for longer than 10 minutes at a time due to possible tissue death (yikes)! Here is the complete transcript I found on PubMed;

Kassim AA, Umans H, Nagel RL, Fabry ME.

Department of Medicine (Division of Hematology), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York 10461, USA.

Priapism is a common complication of sickle cell anemia. We report a little known sequela of priapism: painless megalophallus, with significant penile enlargement. The patient had had an intense episode of priapism 9 years previously and his penis remained enlarged. Blood oxygen level-dependent magnetic resonance imaging revealed enlarged, hypoxic corpora cavernosa. Megalophallus probably resulted from permanent loss of elasticity of the tunica albuginea due to severe engorgement during the episode of priapism. This sequela needs to be recognized by physicians because no intervention is necessary and sexual function seems to remain intact.

Publication Types:
Case Reports

PMID: 10962334 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

ModestoMan Very informative post, thanks!

The stretching protocol was based on PNF type stretches to be performed daily. Reflecting on this, it actually involved lessening the muscles resistance to stretch and not lengthening connective tissues. So I was mistaken. That analogy doesn’t really fit in this case since the consensus seems to be that the tunica albuginea is comprised of a fibrous type of “connective tissue” similar to the tissue that makes up tendons and ligaments.

Probably a better analogy would be looking at recommendations for traction therapy. It would seem daily traction is most desirable and in fact several times daily is optimum.

Recently I had a herniated disk in my neck. The initial treatment partially consisted of traction done at a clinic. This was done only three times a week due to the fact that multiple treatments daily would be cost-prohibitive. The goal as I understand it, was to stretch and lengthen the ligaments that hold the surrounding vertebrae together. During traction, a vacuum is created between vertebrae and the disk is “sucked” in somewhat. The lengthening of the ligaments reduces compression of the disk between the vertebrae.

They have a machine that slowly stretches your cervical spine, then holds it at maximum tension for ~ 10 minutes (if I remember correctly).

After several weeks of physical therapy, I was sent home with a recommendation from the therapist to perform home traction, “10 to 15 minutes, 2 to 3 times each day”. However the instructions with the traction device stated “The goal should be to increase your time to up to 20 minutes per day, before you increase the tension of the harness, time is more important than intensity in this case”. (Unfortunately I eventually required fusion of the vertebrae at c5-6).

This would seem to indicate that hanging several times a day, everyday might be the best prescription for stretching the tunica. I believe the same recommendations would extend to jelqing because jelqing is actually “hand hanging” in that I feel it is the pulling outward of the penis that is contributing the most towards any gains realized.

I am totally in agreement that smaller more frequently applied forces are best.

You just have to observe your penis’s response to the forces applied.

A good general rule of thumb is when most guys are growing, they get a longer, heavier flaccid hang during the day.

When you have caused damage, you get contraction or turtling. The degree and length of time of the contraction is directly proportional to the damage.

This will be confirmed by the quality and quantity of your erections. If you find you are getting LESS nite and morning wood, you are doing too much.

For me personally, I find when I am in the “zone”…contraction is either non-existent or for a short time (15-20 minutes).

I find that I hang longer AND fuller. I further find that I have INCREASED nite and morning wood.

If I stay in that zone, growth will be measured on a weekly basis.

What has been eye opening is how narrow of a range that right amount of stimulation is.

I have found that a full 5 minutes of real engorged clamping pushes me right out of the zone.

As a matter of fact, any PE that is really impressive while doing (much larger than normal size) it is usually causing enough trauma to take a few days to really recover.

For example, in pumping, 3 in hg doesn’t really cause you to get huge, but many of the vets find that by keeping it down to about that, and 3 X 5 minutes sessions they get their best growth.

Once again, this seems to indicate STIMULATING GROWTH vs over stretching and damaging the tissues which lead to in inflammatory response and a contraction reaction.

Sparkyx

Very very interesting thread. You guys speak like truly scientists experts in this area. Maybe someday you will have a job as teachers in the “American PE University”, (ThunderSS will be the principal, Lol!).

So, is it better to stretch/jelq more often, but for shorter periods of time?

In my case, I´m training 2on 1off and 1on1off, and have gained almost a full inch in my first month. But now I´m thinking that perhaps it would be better to stretch more often (but with less force applied), what do you think?

Do you think that, with this training schedule: 2on 1off and 1on1off, I´m giving too much rest to my tissues?

Thanks!

Thunder will be in charge of the female cheerleaders, you guys can divvy up all the other hard work.

What the fuck navarro,

Stop thinking and just keep doing what you have been doing, until it stops working for you. Don’t fix it before it breaks.

Hehehe, yeah thunder, I think you are right. But I cannot live without thinking about the future. The future, when my newbie gains stop, therefore I wanna be ready to change my strategy, learning all that I can from these PE gurus. ;)

OK, OK, if it´s working I´ll keep in it!

Yes, overthinking can be a problem.