Hey Sparky, Thanks for the PM. I haven’t been very active here on the forum because My wife and I have opened a retail store in a local town and Its takes a lot of my time but I do manage to keep up on orders.
Your questions are good ones and ones that a lot of people don’t understand fully.
When you have toughened up from missing routines or just being inconsistent, the problem lies in the ligs becoming fortified by adding new collagen to the ligament lattice structure. Depending on how long ago the condition was created will determine how you should approach the correction so gains can be had again. If it has been a week or longer the best approach is one we have the toughest time accomplishing and that is a deconditioning period to allow the ligs to stabilize and return to their normal condition. This period, sadly needs to be at least a month and preferably two months. That does mean that the ligs will eventually shed the added collagen and in so doing you can start hanging again whereupon gains should be restored. Once you establish that gains can be accomplished again it is imperative to keep them going, as a break in routine will cause the problem to recreate itself and you’ll be back where you started i.e. No Gains.
You ask how I bust up the ligs if they become immovable. It really doesn’t take that much to keep them busted up and lengthening if your consistent. What I would do is typically and I’ll use just a normal time period where I was hanging 15 to 17 lbs for all my sets, I would jump the stress level up to 20 or 25 lbs for no more then a minute. That is all that is necessary is to open the micro tears and disrupt the healing or laying on of new collagen. Then I would immediately drop back to the 15 to 17 pound level and finish my set at whatever angle I was using at the time.
Really that is all there is to it but it needs to be used judiciously as it is very easy to over do it and the result will be ligament rebellion which will cause excess trauma and regression.
All this really needs to be done within the context of using an ADS between your routines so you don’t have to worry about missed days and plateau’s setting in. A good ADS will be an insurance policy against plateaus.
Unfortunately I can’t recommend any exercises outside the hanging realm because the stresses necessary to accomplish lig busting are high. Now I’m not advocating using 25 lbs when your just starting out. The percentage of increase would or should be somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20% from the weight you normally use. I should say here that in the three years of hanging I did I never needed to exceed the 15 to 17 lb hanging weight because I used multiple angles and fulcrums to keep my gains going WITHOUT needing to increase weight. You can gain an awful lot of length on 10 to 12 lbs for many months if you use various angles and other techniques instead of adding weight upon weight.
Hope this give some perspective to the picture. It worked for me. Today I just do some maintenance to keep things where I like them. Doesn’t take much but it does feel good to be long.
Thanks again Sparky.
09-2003 BPEL:6.0x5.5
11-2004 BPEL:8.25x6.25 . . 9+ by Spring is the goal AIR CLAMP
Now BPEL:8 5/8 x 6 5/8 PE Weights