Progress after a year or longer off?

Shiver,

What is the frequency of your routine (1 on/1 off, 5 on/2 off, etc)? I’m curious about how many workouts (and recover cycles) it takes before your gains stall.

My goodness Shiver that is very interesting information!
You must have measured very often to find out if your gains had stopped and you must be able to measure every accurately.

It looks like you have it down to a fine art, PE, decondition, PE, etc.

By the way I have a Penimaster that I am looking to sell which I used for 3 weeks last year but cannot use due to a Thrombosis if you are interested.

I have a Jes (nearly $600!), but have never been able to use it properly. I tend to do 14-30 on, 60-90 off, with anything between 1 and 4 days inbetween exercise. That means possibly as little as little as 15 days per cycle, or as much as 90. The average being once every 3 days. Hope that makes sense.

Shiver,

Thank you for the reply. While I think you answered what I was asking about, I’m not entirely sure. I probably could have phrased the question better.

I’m confused by the sentence, “That means possibly as little as little as 15 days per cycle, or as much as 90”.

Just to clarify, when you are actively working out (during the 14-30 on phase), do you workout every day, or do you take rest days in between workouts?

In other words, if you do a 30 day on phase, how many workouts will you actually do during that 30-day period?

I’m not really sure what I was thinking when I wrote that (probably too much beer). What I neglected to mention (as I’ve written about it several times before in other threads and assumed everyone had heard enough) is that I did a cycle that involved changing the interval and keeping everything else the same.

I started with ED workouts, and when I found that I no longer had improvements (I measure each workout day) then I changed to EOD, then every third day etc. I found that every third day worked best for me, but even then the gains would eventually stall. I put this down to the body adapting after a month or so, which is why I have frequent deconditioning of a couple of months plus. The gains I make are not spectacular, and are well behind many (if not the majority) of people here, but if looking at it from a time invested compared to the return on investment, then I believe it is *the* most efficient system I’ve ever seen. Being of a certain age I’m not too worried about instant results any more, I just want to know that my time is well invested. Others mileage will vary.

It sounds like you and I are on the same page. At this point with PE, I’m only interested in return on time. When I was hanging, I would do 6-12, 20 minute sets per day, six or seven days a week. I sacrificed a lot of evenings and weekends that I could have been off doing other things. At the end, I feeling very burnt out.

With my current routine of modified clamping and dry jelqing, I’ve tested 6:1, 1:1, and 1:2. Two days off is working better than anything else I’ve tried. Did you test more than two consecutive days rest?

Once you determined that every third day worked best for you, did you test changing the volume/amount of work per workout? For example let say your routine consisted of 20, 30-second stretches. You could then test 1on, 2 off using 15, 30-second stretches or 25, 30-second stretches.

It seems to me that in designing the optimal routine, both of these components, training frequency and amount of work per workout, both need to be considered.

What are your thoughts on this?

Whenever I stop PEing for lets say 1wk or more, I loose about little more than 1/8 in girth but nothing in length.

Microbrew,

What is longest amount of time you have taken off?

How long does it take for your girth to return?

I went as much as 9 days off, I didn’t notice any real benefit over 3-4 days though, so that became my limit, and a lack of gains became my indicator for a break.

I haven’t changed the exercise in a while, as it is only a few minutes stretching (<3mins) after the warm up. When I get back into it I will probably build a vacuum tension device like mbuc & mgus have discussed.

One article I read on tendon strength mentioned that gains in tensile strength were lost after about 100 days of inactivity. However, its difficult to keep you penis inactive. Even nocturnal erections give it a workout. Has anyone ever taken steps to eliminate ALL erections for over a month?

It’s the real-world experiences like Shiver and other have shared, combined various studies like the one Tube mentioned, that will help us build more effective models for PE. Keep ‘em coming guys. Don’t be afraid to chime in.

I spent a couple hours the other day looking at steroid cycle recovery times. For medium to long cycles, it looks like a minimum of 6 weeks is recommended.

What do you guys think about hanging vs. manual stretching and/or jelqing?
Will longer deconditioning be necessary?
If yes, how long? And what is reasoning behind your answer?

My records of my PE experience are inexact, but I believe that a 3-month total break after every 4 to 5 months of PE efforts would be ideal. To me, the break is just as important for re-motivating oneself as for deconditioning the tissues.

MX asked me to post my thoughts on this thread. I found this information to be very helpful in organizing my thoughts around deconditioning.

The article mentioned there indicates that significant strength is lost after about 2-3 months of inactivity. That period of time is consistent with the numbers I’m reading here.

One thing that keeps coming to mind is Wadzilla’s thread about his big gainer friend. The guy mentioned in that thread worked out continuously, but at a low level of intensity. Possibly, he kept his tissues from becoming excessively strong, and therefore kept the gains coming without significant breaks. He was on a 7 day per week schedule.

That thread leads me to believe there may be a strong relationship between the intensity of workouts and the time over which those workouts will yield results. THe idea is that if you work out at low intensity, you may not need deconditioning breaks at all. However, if you work out at high intensity, eventually your tissues will adapt and a break may be required.

What works best for any individual may depend on how their connective tissue responds to stress. Some people may adapt (strengthen) more quickly than others. Also, high intensity may trigger a different response mechanism than low intensity. One can imagine that the body adapts to low intensity stress by changing shape. This occurs naturally when bones grow or even when people get fat. The connective tissue grows to accommodate. However, the body is likely to “regard” high intensity stress as a threat to bodily integrity. The response may be a high priority effort to quickly shore up strength to prevent permanent damage.

Guys like Bib seemed to have gained by adding more and more intensity until the tissues gave way. Bib never required a deconditioning break. That may be how his body works, but it does not appear to be the way mine works. For me, and perhaps, many people, slow and steady forces may work better, by avoiding the body’s emergency response system and benefiting from the body’s ability to adapt to stresses over time.

MX also asked me to chime in. My thoughts are the same as ModestoMan’s. I agree with everything he wrote above. I don’t know how much time is required for the tissues to return to the same state as before we discovered PE. I’m sure it varies.

Until now the longest break I had taken (no PE at all) was 4 weeks. That was enough to boost my gains the following month. Instead of the 1/16” I had been getting, I picked up a full 1/8”. 2 week breaks didn’t have the same effect, which is what led me to suggest a month as the minimum deconditioning period.

I quit PE 6 weeks ago. Fully stopped. I haven’t done any, not even a single jelq or stretch. Maybe later this year I’ll give it another go. If I do I’ll use a very minimal, low-intensity manual routine with plenty of rest days. In essence, try to repeat what I did when I first started. Shiver’s plan sounds interesting.

Well said. High intensity techniques haven’t worked for me, and I believe this explains why. Also, as the tissues become more and more conditioned, the window of optimum intensity may either shrink or become harder to identify.

I too agree completely with what MM wrote.

I also believe that high intensity is a fast track to stalling gains and requiring excessive off time to allow for normalisation of tissue structure. If a major trauma occurs then it could take many years to fully recover (if at all), since that area would have a high electrical resistance which would slow cellular processes.

Regarding Bib; Personally I feel that if Bib did it, I then the rest of us should take contrarian routes. From everything I’ve read about Bib, his physioligy is far from common, and what works for him is probably not what the majority of people would benefit best from.