SS4 wrote:
>By ”on” time do you mean plateau time? I don’t think these extended breaks should be planned, but rather used as an extreme plateau busting technique. The magic bullet types will be taking months off after a few months plateau, when maybe all it would take is another few weeks of solid work to gain. It’s hard to give general advice, especially since are people who bust plateaus through perseverence. What is your opinion?<
PEing until a long plateau is reached and increased time/intensity/weight fails to break it is one way to decide it’s time to decondition.
However, a long period spent not making any progress may be counterproductive if the tissues continue to toughen without growing. Maybe it’s better to decondition when the rate of progress slows to a certain point, not necessarily wait until you’ve been stalled for many months.
I suppose it depends on a guy’s history of progress. We all have different patterns of growth. When I put in the work, I generally gain a little over a few months, then reach a plateau that persists despite my best efforts to break through it. So I should probably PE until gains stall, give it an extra month for cementing the progress, then take a break.
Someone else may need several months of hanging or stretching before gaining anything. Maybe from that point he then builds up some momentum, even progressing at a faster rate as time goes on. A person like this would need a different deconditioning timetable and strategy than mine.
If a guy has all day to hang, breaks probably aren’t needed very often or at all because he can continue increasing the time and intensity to levels way beyond those possible for most of us. IIRC, Bib was hanging something like 45 or 50 pounds at the end of his hanging career.
Even if time isn’t an issue, discomfort or other issues with hanging heavy (in a relative sense) weight may prevent some guys from either putting in enough time or increasing the load enough to break through their current limiting factor. Spending many months using the same poundage, time and angles is probably counterproductive. (Switching angles may do the trick.)
Guys who don’t hang are limited to a narrower window of usable time and intensity. They may need more frequent breaks because of this.
I wonder how much more useful total rest is vs. changing focus of a routine. Does hanging or stretching only straight up for a few months allow the ligs to decondition effectively? Or how about switching from a length to girth-only routine or vice versa?