PE flowchart

It will be. UpTo and I were just chatting about that. :)

I’m glad I can help in some way. :)

Great idea.

Omnigraffle?

SmartDraw 2010. :)

UpTo7,

Your flow chart is very informative and easy to follow. Good job!

However I think there is one key point missing “Deconditioning breaks”. I think it is important to incorporate it in the chart to give direction to newbies that if you not gaining after a few months after intensifying the routine to take a break.

Because, if the newbie has limited knowledge about P.E, as most of us at the start of our PE career we are at the height of our PE ignorance. The flowchart will encourage a newbie to keep increasing time intensity or frequency month after month in order to make gains. Gains might not be made in the process due to multiple reasons.

So, it will reach a point where the routine will be too intense and taking too long that it will be a burden or the newbie will eventually force to stop due to injury. By then the newbie will be scratching his head wondering “where have I gone wrong?” and getting a full time job with the search button :)

Like I said in post #4, this chart is to help newbies start things off in first few months which is way too early for deconditioning breaks. It’s not supposed to guide a newbie through his whole PE journey from start to ultimate goal. People need to learn to get by themselves, that chart was made to help them begin and while they’re at it they’re supposed to do some research on their own. Start of PE research is video section and learning the proper technique. I hope you agree with me. :)

I disagree, if after 3-4 months a newbie has not experienced any gains, taking a short break is not too early. I think you are seriously underestimating the value of a “decon break”.

I agree with upto7 on this completely.

It’s meant as a guideline for people who are new. Even if you’re not new to this it’s a great guideline to get your bearings again. If you added every single loop and cause/action you’d end up with a chart that would be useful to nobody.

I agree with Jawbone:

This is meant for newbies, there’s no need to complicate things and confuse them. By the time they hit 4 months mark they should already find about deconditioning breaks themselves, without the help of this chart.

Look at it this way… Someone who is completely new to PE and sceptic about it (like most people are at the beginning) comes here and sees “deconditioning break” in that chart. He searches to find out what it is and finds out that it’s there in case you don’t gain after 4 months of working out. What’s the result? Discouragement. Do we want that? No. :) Without mentioning deconditioning breaks I think more people will remain motivated and consistent.

First, I will say it again you are seriously underestimating the value of taking a “decon break”. A decon break is not just for when you not gaining. It helps for various purposes like allowing one to go back to a reduced intensity/time when starting up again.

Second, we need to be as realistic as possible. So some newbies will gain in the first 4 months and some won’t. So if you think a decon break is like a warning sign that you might not gain, so be it. We are not exactly advertising a business here that if we say you might not gain in 4 months, it will hurt our revenue :)

Thirdly, we are not complicating things here. The way I see this chart practically is after each month, if you haven’t gained the only solution is increase, time or frequency by which is not true. We need to remember newbies are at the height of their PE ignorance. So things like judging PI’s will be a bit screwed as well as there will be a tendency to jump the gun when it comes to increasing intensity/time/frequency of the routine. All this points to injury, overtraining, tissue toughening etc… I mean at least have the decency to advise the newbies to take a break (maybe you don’t like the word decon) and re-assess things if they have not experience positive results after 3-4 months.

Fourthly, I think like with any figure (flowchart) when presented, you need a short summary above or beneath it that will describe exactly what this flowchart is about. Like point out this is for the first 3-4 months, do your research etc, not intended for your whole PE career etc… So it will be clear for everyone.

Lastly, it is clear to me that you are not willing to make any adjustments to the flowchart, so no point in furthering more arguments hereafter :)

I’m willing to make adjustments, that’s not the final version and I’m looking for constructive criticism. I’d like to hear more opinions about adding in the deconditioning break, if more people agree, adding it in is not a problem at all. I agree with you about adding summary like “do your research”, “not intended for whole PE career” and such, though.

By the way, we’re not supposed to take newbies by their hands and guide them all the way. Give a man some fish and he will be fed for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he will be fed for life. Or something like that. :P Anyway, when increasing intensity, one should have common sense and not double it straight away, but increase in smaller increments. Some research is needed for that and that’s what we encourage.

Also, I do believe in first 3-4 months increasing intensity is only way to start gaining (again), like I said, that’s too early for any breaks if the PIs are positive. Speaking of PIs, learning how to recognize them is one of the very first things a newbie should do.

I think the chart is very good and easy to understand for anyone. My suggestion would be to add something about “spend one hour reading major threads and doing research on Thunders.” It’s amazing to me how many newbies jump in without hardly reading anything and start posting crazy questions right off the bat. Or even worse, post an injury thread because they didn’t spend any time researching what they are doing to their penis.

So maybe at the beginning next to ‘watch videos’ or maybe when returning to the PI’s due to no gains?

As for the decon break - maybe this could be a dotted line “optional” route?

Those are some good ideas right there. :)