AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

A few days ago while stretching/practicing with the light bar (6#) I managed to get it sitting in the proper "low back" position for squats. Today I removed the foam pad from the 35# bar, which I had been using for squats, and managed to get the proper position and do 3x5 squats.

My back is going to have to get used to the bare bar; it puts a line of discomfort where it rests across my back. I’ll get used to it, I’m sure. But I’m finally getting it in the right place, which is worth it.

I was also finally able to do the correct front rack position, which was unexpected. The decon break may be helping. *Everything* doing the rack, but I was not only able to do it, I did 3x5 lifts from hanging to racked.

Since I was able to rack it, I tried front squats. Man, that’s a whole different thing than a back squat… but I did five of those, probably with really bad form, but I can work on that.

I was on a roll. I tried some power cleans. I had been practicing the moves in pieces; this was the first time I’ve tried joining them all up. My form sucked - I kept bending my back instead of hinging properly at the hips, and my "explosive lift" was more of a fizzle, but I got the bar moved up and racked. I’ll set the old smartphone back up and make some video to see what else I’m doing wrong.

I wasn’t expecting to make any progress during a decon period; when I restart the SS newbie program next week, I’ll be able to do all the lifts instead of most of them and faking the rest.

I’ve been having some problems urinating for the last couple of months. This morning I sterilized my digital calipers and measured the length of my meatal opening. It had shrunk down to 7mm. That’s about 6.8 on the French scale, 2.25mm in diameter. An average opening is 29Fr, about 9.6mm in diameter.

I have been making rapid gains in length in the last few months, for no particular reason I can figure out. I’ve been putting off dealing with the meatus problem because I wanted to cement the gains as much as possible, but it’s starting to get hard to pee, and the occasional small stone going through is no fun at all. A kidney or bladder stone doesn’t look like a "stone", it’s covered with spurs like a sweetgum ball or a coronavirus with pointy spikes, and larger ones can make you bleed when you pee.

Pumping with a plug or the Tetherspout is possible, but a vacuum cap isn’t, and jelquing has to be adjusted a bit. I’ve been doing a lot of hanging and ADS stuff lately, and I hate to give it up, but it looks like I’ll have to, at least for a week or so.

I probably need to do the stretch-and-plug thing more often, but I’ve picked up a few UTIs since I started that a few years ago, and those sonsabitches hurt and require a trip to the doc for antibiotics. Keeping your equipment only goes so far; you’re still dealing with a plug with a hole through it, and it works in both directions.

It’s always a hard decision to make to take some time off when making gains, good luck!

On your ADS usage. How many hours per day do you use it for? What weight would you be using?

I restarted ANS a couple of weeks ago, starting at 1/2 pound. A few days ago I moved up to 1 pound. Since I’m prone to blisters I’m ramping it up very slowly this time. Now that my glans is fully healed taping isn’t a problem, but I’m working up to determine when taping becomes necessary, since it’s still a hassle.

The vacuum blister is almost always at the same place; one of the more-damaged areas that took a long time to heal. I suspect the skin - well, mucous membrane - isn’t properly attached any more, though it looks fine during decon breaks. I’m hoping that by ramping back up slowly I can toughen it up in there. Maybe. Or just learn to live with a semi-permanent blister.

I mostly sleep on my side; I use a length of paracord with the weight hanging over the side of the bed. Friction between the cord and the sheet turned out to be a non-issue so far.

Besides the vacuum blisters, I had problems with the valves in the Total Man caps, and bits of my meatus kept getting pulled into the vacuum port and left small, painful blisters.

Putting pieces of paper towel in the end of the cap helped a bit, but the real fix was to use bits of cloth instead. It doesn’t interfere with air flow that I can tell.

The valve issue turned out to be the lotion I was using as a lubricant in the cap. Lotions are water based, creams are oil based. Even though I was flushing the valve out after every use (fill sleeve with water, pinch off, squeeze to force water out the valve) enough lotion stayed behind to gum the valve up. I didn’t have any creams around, but Mrs. Andy donated some Vitamin E oil, which seems to work fine.

Measurements this morning: 7.75, 8.0, 7.75, 7.875." The fat pad was getting sore from pushing the ruler in.
Girth steady at 6.0."
BPFSL 8-7/8."

My last cryolipolysis cycle was two months ago. So it’s about the right time to see results. I have been running basically the same PE routine since the beginning of the year, pumping with occasional ADS/ANS and light (1 to 3 pounds) hanging; there’s no causative factor for sudden length increases other than a thinner fat pad.

I got the cryolipolysis information from fellrnr.com, but he has since rewritten it and removed all the references to fat loss and now it only talks about icing for muscle strain.

I went to archive.org to see of the fellrnr page had been archived, backtracked, found it, and then found it was still up on fellrnr.com, but wasn’t linked directly off the main page any more.

Anyway, here it is: https://fellrnr … i/CoolSculpting

Over the last year and a half I’ve lost at least an inch of hard fat pad. Some is likely from general weight loss, the rest I attribute to the cryo applications.

EDIT: it looks like he did the fat-reduction page first, then cloned it and edited it down into the "joint pain therapy" page.

Thanks for the ADS info and congrats on the gains. Dick stretched out or fat pad reduced, it’s all gains

Nice work, Andy!

Workout Buddy and I went back to the gym yesterday afternoon. Again, we were the only ones there. Everyone else was downstairs on the basketball court.

We decided to treat the machines as a circuit, and went clockwise around the room. It took about an hour.

The equipment is "SportsArt." I found their web site; the stuff they sell now is entirely different, obviously re-engineered by the Product Cheapening Department; it all looks spindly compared to the stuff at the civic center gym. So the stuff is probably as old as I thought.

Most of the machines use levers of some sort instead of cables, which my elbow and shoulder joints didn’t always appreciate. No Smith machine, but now I understand the comments about how some machines force you into unnatural motions. The levers on the "lateral pulldown machine" mean you have to lean way back near the bottom of a pull, which shifts the load from your lats to your back. Not bad per se, but not so much a true lateral, either.

The rowing machine is pure fun. I wish I had room for one at home.

The treadmill is a lot better than sweating to death outside. Alas, you don’t get the "true walking experience" of feral dogs, winos, weirdos, and murderous drivers that you get outside, but I can deal with that.

There’s something called a "horizontal leg press machine." The footrests are fixed and the seat slides back against resistance. When I climbed in it was adjusted all the way forward, so I was folded up like an early astronaut in a space capsule. After a couple of pushes I realized I was in a reasonably correct "squat" position, except rotated ninety degrees up.

I’ve been having trouble with my squats. Knee pain isn’t an issue any more, but I run out of "down". Maybe one time out of four I can make it down until my thighs are horizontal, but I can’t seem to get any lower.

I was crammed into the machine, and realized my thigh position was a *lot* closer to my chest than when doing a proper squat. Halfway to "ass to grass." WTF?! A small amount of discomfort, nothing to worry about, and no pain later or this morning. Yet visibly bent a lot more.

"Kiptin, Ah canna explain i’."

So I *can* get way deeper in the squat; I just haven’t figured how *how*.

I brought a sweat rag with me this time. Next time I’ll bring my knee and elbow braces and my belt.

8 hours ANS last night, with a 1-pound weight, followed by 30 minutes at 3" Hg in the pump tube. Measured 7.75" BPEL afterward, without the cock ring.

It’s not ‘real’ erect gains of course, and most of it is from fat pad shrinkage anyway, but feeling the cold aluminum slider on the ruler touching the end of my dick is one hell of a way to start the day off.

Hopefully I won’t lose too much of it during decon.

Barbell day today, still in deload cycle. I did the require squats, deadlifts, overheads, and monkey hangs, then worked on power cleans using the bare 35-pound bar up on blocks. Today I practiced the "jump" section, then connected all the pieces together for a power clean. My form is janky as hell, but I’m mostly impressed that I could do the jumps. Didn’t bother my knees at all, which was a complete surprise. I’ve spent so many years being *very* careful not to do anything that would irritate my knees, because passing that hard-to-find point could mean losing three or four days of work due to not being able to walk or stand.

My main problems with the power clean are getting my wrists bent back enough and getting my elbows up. Out of fifteen lifts, I think I managed to get it two or three times, depending on how generous your judgement is. But I’m still getting better.

I put the pad back on the bar for squats. The thickness of the pad forces the bar up higher than it should be, but while I can rack the bar across my back in the proper "low squat" position, I can only do it one side at at time. In the middle, instead of resting on both scapulae, it rests on my spine, and the sombitch hurts. A lot. That’s probably due to the spinal curvature I have. I’m doing exercises for that, but they take time to see results.

On the flip side, I have problems getting my shoulders far enough forward for a proper front rack. My neck gets in the way. That’s probably the same kyphosis, pushing my neck forward. The "shoulder mobility" progress is faster than the kyphosis correction, so I can make a reasonable job of faking a front rack.

Got a call from a urologist’s office this morning, "confirming my appointment" next Tuesday. Mrs. Andy took the call. What urology appointment?! My doc’s office is closed Fridays. I prepared to call the urology place and have one of the "alien encounters" that are my default for social interaction, until I remembered talking with him about a urology consult three or four months ago. I didn’t know he’d had someone set it up.

I’ve been getting UTIs once or twice a year, and every time he does a urine lab, it shows low but definite levels of a variety of infections. The doc said sometimes bacteria could "colonize" the bladder or kidneys and they just live in there peacefully until something sets them off, and then you’re pissing razor blades again. That’s when we talked about a urology consult.

Given I was asymptomatic at the time, I declined another course of antibiotics. The doc and I have the same opinion about how shotgunning antibiotics at minor problems just helps breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Civic Center gym again yesterday. Did almost half a mile on the treadmill and half a kilometer on the rowing machine. No problem with my knees; my ankles and feet were complaining, though.

The rowing machine is pure fun. The squat machine is pretty good, too. I can concentrate on the squat part without the barbell killing my upper back and shoulder joints.

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Started sounding again on Friday afternoon. The meatal opening had shrunk, which I knew, but the problem turned out to be a new stricture had developed where the shaft and glans meet. The tapered probe encountered painful resistance at about 1.5mm diameter. No wonder I was having trouble passing urine. Expansion has been rapid since the initial resistance; I stepped up to the 10mm plug with the retaining ring a couple of hours ago. I’ll leave it in until the urology appointment to set the stretch.

Every time I do a stretch, it’s easier and less painful. A couple of years ago, it took two weeks to open it up to 10mm. This time was less than two days.

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I haven’t done any PE work since day before yesterday. Woke up this morning with about 75% wood. 7-7/8" x 6-3/8" by the ruler and tape. Girth is normally 5-3/4 to 6". I’ve seen 6-3/8" girth before, but 5-3/4" just as often.

The BPEL and MESG numbers have been all over the place for the last few weeks. I hope some of it becomes permanent.

1.2 miles on the treadmill yesterday. Took 30 minutes. I was wearing boxer shorts, which I’ve started doing recently, and discovered the extra room to move around allows sensitive bits to chafe. Ouch.

I can max out the rowing machine’s electronic speed display. It took 3-1/2 minutes to go a mile. Or maybe a kilometer. None of the machine displays have any units, but the treadmill walking speed is obviously in miles per hour, with "fast walk" at 2.5 and "almost jogging" at 3. My back and shoulders still feel the burn even though I didn’t think the rowing effort was particularly high.

I’m up to 166# in the squat machine; about a hundred pounds more than I can do with the bar, and with less knee trouble. I’m stepping up the weight slowly. Hopefully some of the work will translate to the barbell.

They have a "hip adductor" machine, where you swing a leg out sideways against weight. It’s adjustable so you can turn sideways, position the lever almost horizontal, swing a leg up with the roller behind a knee, and work a single glute and the lower back. (not something made-up; the pictorial "how to use this machine" placard shows it) The weight stack goes to 264#; the plates are apparently stepped in one of the metric systems. I can pump the entire stack up and down with no great effort; I did 3x20 on each leg.

Have you tried uses wedges under your feet when you squat?

A lot of people have a problem with proper form on squats (they bend their lower back and let their knees spread out). Doing squats in what amounts to high heels helps get lower into the squat with reasonable form.