2 Months Completed: Dilemma on +Time OR +Weight?

Hey everybody, I’d like to first point out my main search results (good results I thought.. though still left me with questions):

Hang time vs Weight (probably my best search result)
minimum weight for gains?

As I thought would happen, I went into my search with questions - and left the searching with the same questions… only now I’ve read 3,000 more times people saying one way is better, and another 3,000 times saying the other is better. Heh, but what can you do? There’s always controversy. Enjoyed the read nonetheless :) .

My summaries:
Reading my search results, I read multiple times people mentioning hanging higher weights for longer times, as opposed to lower weights for long amounts of time. Nobody [that I recall] debated that (high weight/long time). What was debated was high weight (short duration) and low weight (long duration). What wasn’t debated, as I said, was high weight (high duration). In fact, high weight/long time seemed to receive props from anybody who’d tried it.

My situation:
Let me first say this: I'm only and solely focusing on EL right now. Any FL gains are welcome too of course :D .
I started hanging 2 months ago. I started with 3x 15 minute sets @ 2.5 lbs (Standing/Straight Down) because I had read a thread where somebody said to start at 2.5 lbs instead of 5 because it was better. I figured "what the heck I only get one chance to try 2.5 with a chance at gains" so I tried it. I got jack sh*t gains. I think I got my skin stretch out of the way though because I still recall the feeling I’d be getting that I associated with skin stretch (it felt like a kind of burning, but it was mainly or solely located wherever the wrap was.. whenever I’d touch that area [where the wrap was] after removing the wrap I’d feel a little burn.. this is skin soreness correct? When you touch the shaft skin [not the base] and feel at least a little burn?).
So my 2nd month that just finished, I started hanging 3x 15 minute sets @ 5 lbs (BTC).. just like is stated in the newbie hanging routine (only I’m 1 month late due to my ‘testing’ of the 2.5 lb approach). My 2nd month I believe yielded a gain of 1/16", but I’m not really sure if it was really 1/16" or no gain because in my measuring it flipped back and forth. I was hoping for a 1/8" gain, but hey, what can you do? Now I’ve been told my unit is definitely conditioned; in fact that it may be more conditioned than most hangers. This apparently is due to because when I first started, my ‘newbie routine’ sessions lasted ~2 hours on average.. and that was normal. I did this for 5 months, then took about 5 months off (only PE during this time off consisted of 2-4x 30 second stretches any time I took a leak… at end of time off I gained 1/8"). I took the time off only because I really couldn’t PE (not due to injury, but rather zero privacy/etc.) When I resumed I continued where I left off with the newbie routine, only I was strict with the time and made sure I didn’t spend so many damn minutes on it as I knew it couldn’t have been good. I would stretch for 10 minutes and jelq for 45 minutes (I decided to time it rather than count the reps). I did this for 2 months, gaining 1/8" before my gains stopped and privacy came into play again. Since then and up until I started hanging 2 months ago, my only PE consisted of 2-4x 30 second stretches whenever I took a leak. If you’re still reading, I’d like to take this time to thank you before continuing :cool: .

Where I'm at!
SO, here I am. 2 months into hanging and trying to figure out what to do this month. While hanging @ 5 lbs I’ve noticed that after hanging and throughout the time between sessions that whenever I touch/poke the area at the base of my unit I feel like a dull burn or something (I don’t really know how to describe it.. it’s not really like a fire burn but it seems like "[dull] burn" is the closest way I can describe it). Almost like a hopeless dull ache.. "dull", I think it’s the key word in describing the degree to which I’m feeling what I feel when poking the area at the base of my unit. Am I correct in assuming/thinking that this feeling is indeed lig soreness? Is it lig fatigue? If so, "f*ck yeah!". Sorry, I’d have to say that out loud because for so damn long I’ve been wondering what "lig soreness" and "lig fatigue" is and what it feels like. I have a really high pain tolerance so any time somebody describes a feeling I always seem to have a hard time relating. But if I can know that this feeling I’m feeling is indeed lig fatigue, then like I said, cool! If not, it’s still cool because I’d rather know that it’s not than for it to only be me thinking it is. Sorry this is dragging out, but I’ve been thinking about this post for about the last month.. I’m trying to keep it simple but there’s so many things I feel need to be said, not only for others to be able to help with this situation I’m in, but for other members that may come across this thread and may find themselves in the same situation. So like I said, is what I’m feeling lig fatigue?

My Question(s) and Reason for this Thread!
- What do you think I should do this month? Currently I have no restrictions as far as time/privacy goes.
- Do you think I should move up to 7.5 lbs this month?
- Do you think I should just stay at 5 lbs, only increase my amount of sets to say 6 sets @ 20 minutes (as opposed to my current 3x 15 minute sets)?
- Do you think I should continue to increase the weight 2.5 lbs each month, or do you think I should do it in pairs of months? (example explanation following):
1st month = increase of 2.5 lbs… 3 sets.
2nd month = same weight as previous month… only double the amount of sets (6 sets)?
- I’m so damn set at achieving my short-term goal of 7.5" EL it’s not even funny. I’m very patient, and I don’t want to risk future (overall) gains for a quick short term gain. Like when [I think] I recorded a 1/16" gain this month: "Sh*t it’s not 1/8" but at least it isn’t a 0.00" gain". I think it was a 1/16" gain, and I’m going with it because last month I didn’t get any flipping back forth between anything longer than 7" even.
- I realize I have no f*cking reason to even be getting a little annoyed by my plateau I’ve been on forever (almost a year now.. though, I know prior to my hanging I wasn’t able to stay anywhere near as consistent as I would’ve liked). I’m at 7" NBP and know I should be damn f*cking glad as I’m bigger than most guys out there (95%), but it’s just the competitor in me to always want to be better [than my current self] that’s nagging at me. I think back to when I started @ 6" and I just slap myself and get kind of disgusted when I find something inside of me nagging me for being stuck at 7". For anybody out there looking to gain, I seriously cannot stress enough to just stick with it. For the newbies, I cannot stress enough to take advantage of your newbie ligs/gains!. Oh my, I cannot stress that enough to the newbies. I kept hearing it when I was starting but for some damn reason I kept thinking my newbie gains weren’t going to stop (I think this was due to my not understanding of why they work the way they do… basically your body being completely blindsided. I knew of this for weight lifting, but for whatever reason didn’t correlate it with PE).
- I read about people saying that eventually the gains just start coming, and that usually that time happens after about 3-4 months of hanging. Then I seem to keep reading countless times where after this 3-4 month period people will be reporting a 1mm gain each week! OR, 1mm every 2 weeks. Heck, even 1mm/2 weeks is good in my opinion! That would accumulate to a 1/8" gain each month; every 4 months = 1/2"; every 8 months = 1". For damn sure not bad at all, especially if it’s much more steady and ‘guaranteed’. Of course, any quicker gains are even better, but like I said, I’d be happy even with a 1/8" gain each month. If I could score a 1/4" out of nowhere.. awesome, but whether or not that happens I’ll be glad so long as I’m gaining. I just don’t want to be gaining slower than my potential. That’s what I guess I’m "afraid" of (for lack of a better word): gaining slower than I could potentially be gaining. I really really don’t want that.

I think those are all my questions for now. Seriously, if anybody could help with this it would be so damn appreciated.
Big thanks for your time and even more if you read this whole post (book?) - really! :up: :cool:
So what do you think? :-k

Endow— hi…

The best answer I have are the following quotes. I hope they help.

(I’m not sure how helpful my advice is on this topic, since I’m physically unable to hang more than 5kg/11lbs for more than one or two sets, which might mean I’m not really average.)

Thanks Mr. Fantastic for that reply, really appreciate you taking the time to reply :cool: .

There’s this other question that always nags me, and I think it’s really one of my more important questions (one that I think about a lot more than the others).
That question is:
Is there a correlation between the way our bodies respond when subjected to heavy weights/short duration and light weights/long duration? That question bugs me, a lot. It particularly bugs me more I think because I know I basically have unlimited time and privacy to hang as of now, so if I wanted to hang 5 hours right now then I could. The only thing keeping me back from it is I keep wondering that if I hang for 8 Sets @ 5 lbs for a month, then all of a sudden the next month I’m hanging 3 Sets @ 5 lbs for the month, will I only have yielded results from the first month? In other words, if I decide to hang for 5 hours every day for this month, will I from-now-on have to hang at least 5 hours if I want to stay at the same #weight (in other words essentially “digging myself into a hole”)? I keep thinking the latter: that if I hang for say 6 sets of 20 minutes (@ 5 lbs) this month then next month - unless I want to move up in weight - I’d have to hang even longer (more than 6 sets… if I want to have a [much] better chance at “ensuring” gains).
On the other end though I think common sense says that if I hang for 6x Sets @ 5 lbs this month, then next month if I wish to amplify the likelihood of me getting more gains then I’d have the option of either
a.) hanging at the same weight, only for more sets
OR
b.) hang for a shorter amount of time (less sets), only with more weight

I think since Mr. Fantastic is already hanging with lower weight for long amounts of time, he (Mr. Fantastic) might have an insight to this since he’s already at the “low weight/long time” junction and I’m sure he’s researched his plan before he decided to go this route.

There’s of course the possibility for countless other members here to have just as good (or better) an insight to this as Mr. Fantastic, so like I said earlier, feel free to voice your thoughts on this! It all helps! :up: :cool:

Here is my take on the whole time vs. weight issue. I do whatever it take to reach fatigue for that group of sets. If it take going up to 20 pounds, I do it. If it only take 10 or 12 pounds then that’s what I use. I make it a goal though that no matter what weight I am using that I reach fatigue by 30 minutes into my sets. Then continue for a minimum of another 30 minutes. Then ADS for the rest of the day.

I did research my hanging routine and at first I did try to work my way up to heavy weights (I wanted to hang heavy). I read somewhere that 25lbs is the magic number when it comes to length gains, but I’m not really too sure if that’s true anymore.

What’s more (and in answer to your question), I’ve never been able to hang more than 3.5kg for more than one or two sets— the entire time I’ve been hanging I’ve hung from 2kg working my way up to 3kg and I’ve made consistent gains the entire time (almost two inches), but as I say I might not be average.

I did try the rice-sock fulcrum technique for a time, but it made me too sore too quickly and stopped me from hanging all the sets I wanted to hang (I like to hang for as long a time as I can as a kind of ADS, so as to ‘hedge my bets’ re. length gains). I also took one three-month deconditioning break.

Personally I’m more inclined to believe that hanging very heavy is more likely to cause plateaus or slowed gains because of the way it might effect the collagen (run a search on xenolith’s threads for more info on collagen and hanging).

I’m including this info as a quote and just linking to the thread, so as to not scatter focus too much (hoping everyone’s okay with that).