Physiologic Indicators (PIs) to help growth!

Is it a negative PI “situation” if I’m having decreased morning wood, but my manual erections are fine?

(posted from another thread by bobs3304)

You guys are making this too complex! Morning wood is certainly a good sign, but lack of it isn’t necessarily a negative indicator.

INCREASING morning wood is a positive indicator, and DECREASING morning wood is a negative indicator. That is to say that if your normal base line is hardly any morning wood, and now you have more…thats GOOD! On the other side, if you usually have morning wood, but now its gone…thats a POSSIBLE indicator of overdoing it. Ideally you will have several positive or negative indicators that taken TOGETHER will indicate whether you are going in the right direction or not.

All of us have a normal baseline for US…what may be excellent for you, may be piss poor for another. Its important to observe the changes from YOUR baseline…that is a more accurate indicator of how your body is responding to what you are doing to it.

Now lets take a mixed scenario, like yours, where you are getting some negative indicators AND some positive indicators…that can be due to many factors…but it usually means that if you are overtraining…it is only SLIGHT…so you aren’t in any real trouble.

It would be totally different if you had great overall EQ (Erectile Quality…great nite and morning wood, super hard erections during the day, very easily achieve erections) and now its all going to hell in a handbasket, no morning or nite wood, poor erectile hardness, very difficult to get hard, etc. This picture taken together is a very strong indicator of WAY overtraining.

I think that in general, when in doubt, go ahead and take a few days off. If after the extra rest the possible negative indicators go away, you have your answer…you were slightly over the line into overtraining. If there is no change, then quite possibly that other factors are involved (stress, psychological) that are not PE related.

Remember the king of all indicators…that trumps ALL other indicators is GROWTH or LOSS OF SIZE! All other indicators MUST be interpreted in light of gain or loss. If you are gaining, I really don’t care what any other indicators are…you are on the right track. Conversely, if all other indicators are positive, yet you aren’t making gains…a change is called for.

Bottom line is you have to look at the big picture and access your observed PIs in the light of the totality, and not get too caught up in one or two isolated indicators.

I hope this helps you to use the PI system more effectively.

I’m gonna mark my 2000th post right here…thank you everyone at Thunders for giving me such a great place and great bunch of guys to put up with all those posts!

This is a repost of a PM to me. I removed the name, but I thought that this is a fairly common question and others could benefit from it.

Have you read this thread on the subject?
Physiologic Indicators (PIs) to help growth!

If you haven’t…read it. If you have, REREAD IT.

In general if you are getting negative PIs or decreased EQ (erectile quality) you must cut back. I think its good to go ahead and take a week or two off. If during that time off, your EQ returns to normal, or better yet, BETTER than normal…it is a sure indicator that you were doing too much.

I have written before that I think its best to shoot for SUPER EQ first, that is to say, super hard erections, increased frequency and easy to get them. From that point, THEN restart the PE and make sure you are never more than a day or two of rest (no PE)away from that level of EQ.

So, lets say you take 2 weeks off, and your EQ returns to normal, then actually gets better than normal. This means you were doing too much. So you restart with a newbie routine on a daily basis. If you find that after a few days you are starting to lose some of your EQ…it means you are doing too much…get it?

So, at that point you can either shorten the routine or go to every other day. So lets say you shorten you routine. If after a few days the EQ goes back to the excellent level it was after the 2 weeks off…that means you are close to the ideal level of PE to rest.

If after a few weeks of excellent EQ, yet no growth, THEN AND ONLY THEN can you begin to slowly increase the amount or frequency of the PE.

So the bottom line is a beaten up dick rarely grows. Excellent EQ should be what you try to maintain, and from that baseline, gradually adjust the amount of PE you do while MAINTAINING that baseline.

This is another repost of a PM to me.

1) Yes.

2) Yes. I not only think that nite and morning wood are great indicators of “being in the Zone” of growth, or close to it, I now believe it MAY be critical to cementing gains.

I think its best to shoot for excellent EQ first (erectile quality…improved nite and morning wood, frequent and easy wood, improved hardness). Once you have great EQ, then I think growth is near or a small modification away. I have almost never seen someone grow that wasn’t also showing greatly improved EQ! A beat up dick DOESN’T GROW!!!!

I think if you are having trouble finding your “growth zone” or the amount of force/time to rest ratio…its best to take a couple weeks off and make sure you are totally recovered.

If after taking time off, you find EQ is improving on its own, sure sign you were over doing it. Some guys are very sensitive to overtraining and even a modest program shoots them way over the over training line.

I suggest take 2 weeks off to make sure you aren’t over trained. Then start with a very modest program like this;

NEW newbie + advanced routine

The great thing about this program is it starts you off gently and slowly ramps up. You will find that at some point your EQ will improve greatly from where you are normally. Once you achieve great EQ…let that be your baseline. That means if you start to lose it, you know you are either under training or over training. If you had great EQ and you kept the routine the same and it starts to diminish, chances are you need to up it slightly.

If you have great EQ and you increase your force/time and you start to lose your EQ, good chance that you are slightly over doing it, and you need to back off.

Good looking out! That was helpful!

Very elucidating, sparkyx. ^^

It’ll help me a lot in the PE road.. :)

Thank you for putting this in writing.

This is a recent correspondance through PMs, I changed the name to respect the poster’s privacy. I put it here, because these are good questions, and the answers may help many that are in the same situation.

This is a kind of summery of the concept of achieving excellent EQ first, then maintaining it as you search for the ideal combination of force/time/rest ratio that will give you growth. Shoot for excellent EQ first, and it will greatly improve your chances of success!

Sparkyx

Quote:
Originally Posted by sparkyx
My latest PERSONAL experiment is take a short increment of time for PE.for example, 10 minutes. Start with that every other day or one day out of three. When you start to get much improved EQ, you can begin to do it more frequently WHILE MAINTAINING GREAT EQ!!

So, you may go from one day on, two days off.to one day on, one day off. The trick is you MUST MAINTAIN great EQ, or not be more than one day of rest away from it.

When you can go one on one off with great EQ, go to daily. When daily is showing great EQ, you can go to 2 times a day.and so on. The point is never do more than you can do and still maintain great EQ.

You may end up doing PE 4X a day with great EQ. At some point it when growth slows or stops, take a couple weeks off and start again. It is also possible to begin to increase intensity (but not time) when you are up to daily.again paying attention to EQ.

This is merely a way to progressive increase, instead of making the PE sessions longer. Really there are thousands of ways to slowly ramp up time/force, but the bottom line is you MUST be trying to keep great EQ, which is really the trick.

Its not a theory, its an approach. A theory is a possible explaination of WHY its happening. An approach is a way to try and make it happen.

I have only recently started it, and I am making slow steady increases in my max size while in the tube after 10 minutes.

I too had been letting my EQ slowly diminish to the point of almost no nite wood. Slowly it can happen and you either don’t notice or justify it…and its a big mistake!

I truly believe that great nite wood helps CEMENT the gains you make, and without it, you won’t gain as well. PLUS I believe reduced nite wood indicates you are over training.

What is great EQ? Its erections harder and more frequently than you have NOW. What makes you get great EQ???? PROPER PE!!!!

If you are doing virtually ANY PE properly (PE to recovery ratio) you will get harder and more frequent erections, as well as increased nite and morning wood. If you haven’t experienced that, then you have been overtraining from day one.

If you haven’t had increased EQ and you are currently doing a PE routine, then I recommend a layoff of several weeks. At some point you will start getting improved EQ again (did you read my last several posts like I suggested?).

Once your improved EQ starts to drop again (remember, NO PE during this time) you can begin again.

I would suggest a very simple routine like 5 minutes of jelquing and 5 minutes of kagals. Do this every other day. Make sure the jelques are no more than moderate force, they should be pleasant, and afterwards you should be able to achieve a very hard erection. If you can’t, you are going too hard. By the way, that ALWAYS applies!

Within about a week you should start noticing harder and more frequent erections, if you don’t, then go to one day out of three.

Once you start getting improved EQ, now you have a base line to monitor yourself for overtraining. You should not let your EQ drop below that base line. At that point I would move it up to 10 minutes jelq and keep the 5 minutes of kagals (kagals are very important).

If your EQ drops, then cut down the time to about 7 minutes and see how that goes. Hopefully you will be seeing EQ continue to improve until you are getting rock hard erections without much effort, and much improved nite and morning wood.

Whatever is the highest level of EQ you get, that becomes your new baseline, and don’t let it drop below that for more than a 24 hour recovery period.

The trick is to then slowly increase the time/force of your PE while MAINTAINING that great EQ. This is a surefire way to gain, its just a matter of time until you hit that magic threshold where growth starts for you.

I think for most guys, its a very narrow range of force/time/rest where they gain. For some its a broader range and they gain more quickly. Some are just lucky and stumble into the right combination.

By monitoring your PIs and going for excellent EQ while you slowly ramp up your time/force, you will eventually find your growth zone, or at least greatly increase your chances of finding it.

If you constantly change your PE routine, because its not working, you are really leaving too many variables in the equation and are just blinding casting about hoping something will work.

If you learn to read your PIs and get and MAINTAIN excellent EQ, you remove a huge varible that stands in the way of growth…then you can do any form of PE that you wish and will be able to get positive results from it.

Sparkyx, this is a great thread;

I wish to know what do you think of my problem : as I explained in more details here Help! Explain This, Please!
I lost about 3 cm in EL after adding 5 min. of stretching to my routine, that was giving me wonderful (for me) results; could it be simply consequence of overwork?

Thank in advance.

ABSOLUTELY!

As I gave in a couple of examples in the 1st page of this thread…when you see a significant loss of size, take time off until it either returns or at least you have gotten back good your best EQ.

I think when you get shrinkage like that, it is primarily the smooth muscle responding to excessive trauma, and it contracts until it is repaired. I think repeated excessive trauma can result in ligaments also shrinking, and this WOULDN’T return after rest.

Shrinkage is one of the main negative PIs and sure indicator of too much! Re-read this thread (especially the beginning) and then read my thread on EQ (second link on my signature at the bottom of my post). This should be a great help to you. If you have any other questions, feel free to post them here or PM me.

sparkyx, saying to you 1.000.000 thanks is euphemistic, but with my horrible English is all I can do; knowing that my experience is not so uncommon as I believed is a relief for my anxiety - I was suspecting some kind of irreversible damage of my corpora cavernosa or similar injury; at the same time, safe part of my brain was saying me that probably a ligaments rigidity in response to a trauma was more likely involved.

On the other side, if I have well understood your post, you think that after rest my gains will not come back, even with a wiser training - and this is such an irreversible damage, too.

You are welcome. Your English is far better than my Italian, so no apologies needed. This is really a brotherhood here, and helping each other is really the way we like to run this place.

As far as irreversible damage, I wouldn’t worry about it. What I meant was you get two main reasons for shrinkage, 1) stress to smooth muscle, which reverses usually within days 2) Actual ligamentous contraction, which is usually also easily reversed, but may take more time.

So, worse case, you MAY have gotten some ligamentous contraction. If that is the case, you can easily get back all you lost within a few weeks, provided you don’t over do it again.

I would suggest give yourself a week or two of rest and watch what happens to your size and your EQ. If EQ returns fully, but size hasn’t… it probably indicates some ligamentous shrinkage.

At that point you could probably start back in with your hanging. Start light and slowly work up to the wt and time you were using and getting good gains. I would suggest taking a couple weeks to work up to that point.

During this process, keep an eye on your EQ and make sure it stays good to excellent ( for you). If at any point it begins to drop, either take some time off or decrease your force/time until it returns to your nearest to best level of EQ.

In the future, if you are making nice gains at a certain force/time….stick with it until gains stop. At that point you can either take a decon break or slightly increase time and or force.

I tend to feel that its best to first try a decon break. I think the IPR thread can give you some really good ideas if you like to hang as your PE. Specifically it talks about after around 2 weeks, gains dramatically drop, and you need to take a break then start again….but study it yourself.

Bottom line is you will be fine.

sparkyx, now I can sleep - and I’m speaking seriously.

I knew a lot about cyclization in body-training, and always had the believing that, “mutatis mutandis”, it should have an application in PE; but, naturally, knowing something and doing it are two different things…

I also easily overtrain when lift weights ….”What the history teach us is that history can’t teach us” (Hegel).

I think that many of the principles of strength training and body building apply to PE.

The underlying principle is the same… stimulate, recover, grow…begin cycle again.

The trick is to tune the cycle to the optimum time frame possible. The smaller the stimulus, the quicker the recovery, but requires more frequent application.

The higher the forces, the longer recovery time is needed. I think there is a point where if the recovery time is too long, any growth attained is lost by the time you are recovered enough to restimulate…therefore net zero gains.

Not to mention that the greater the forces the more tissue toughening occurs, which greatly reduces the time where growth will occur before the tissue toughening will push the forces needed up so high, it shoots right out of the time frame of recover to restimulation.

For tissue like the penis, I believe constant small stimulation is ideal…like your skin growing as you get fat. Never very much tension on the skin, but it is constant…and it grows steadily.

I tend to believe when all the research is finally in, something like the Static Stretcher will end up being the best approach. But I think it will have to be something that is kept on almost 24 hours a day….but thats just my opinion.