AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

:) when you can do 3.8 miles to start off your day with more energy it will be fun to look back at that post.

Back in October I could only make it 0.2 miles, and had leg cramps for days.

The last few weeks, my hips and lower back have suffered more than my legs. I don’t think it’s any particular strain, just a long time at a repetitive motion they’re not used to.

And it has been over a year since I last used the cane.

Progress has been slow but steady.

That’s exactly what you want.

Ed Gruberman: Yeah, uh, no disrespect or nothin’, but, like, uh, how long is this gonna take?

Teacher: Ti Kwan Leep is not a path to a door, but a road leading forever towards the horizon.

Ed Gruberman: So like, what, an hour or so?

Teacher: No, no, we have not even begun upon the path. Edgruberman, you must learn patience.

Ed Gruberman: Yeah yeah yeah, patience. How long will that take?

Teacher: Time has no meaning. To a true student, a year is as a day.

Ed Gruberman: A YEAR??? I wanna beat people up right now! I got the pajamas! Hah woo yah ooomm!

Tae Kwan Leep

7.5" in the tube

7.75" BPEL

6.5" girth

I forgot to measure BPFSL.

[sigh] I didn’t want any more girth. I’ve regained two thirds of the length I lost during the last decon, though.

I had been trying to use the vacuum ADS or extender at low tension for long durations, but I kept getting blisters. For the last few weeks I’ve been hanging, starting at two pounds, now three, for 60 minutes a day. So far, no blisters. In a week or two I’ll add another half-pound, still limiting time to 60 minutes.

I cut back on pumping for a while, only one or two sessions per day. EQ has improved noticeably, even without Taladafil. I need to bump "buy a smaller tube" up on the priority list, though. The ID of the 2-1/8" tube is 6.65", and probably where the unwanted girth is coming from. I’m wavering between a 2" and a 1-7/8" as a replacement.

The last few weeks have also seen a "step improvement" in my balls, which not only remain firm, but haven’t pulled through the gap in the fork in a few weeks. I’ve been able to wear the fork for more than 24 hours at a time with no problem. I discovered that the occasional "ball burn" after it had been on for a while was related to lubrication, even though the fork didn’t move. Working some lube around the top and bottom almost always quells the burn. I have no idea why, but it’s easy enough to do. Scrotum size and hang are approaching my goal; that is, like they were when I was in my 20s.

The weather was beautiful, and I had a list of things to do yesterday. But I got side-tracked by working on the fence line, where the neighbor’s hedges had grown through the chain link again. I spent three hours with the nippers and hedge clippers until my knees decided they weren’t going to cooperate any more. Plus my whole upper body hurt.

It’s funny; I can go an hour and a half on the treadmill, and I’ve used the dumbbells and cable machine enough to have visible muscle definition through the fat layer, but I just got my ass kicked by a few hours with simple lawn tools.

[sigh]

Did 3.9 miles yesterday morning. 2.5mph, 94 minutes. My step counter said 10,200 steps.

The machine reads out in miles, that’s 6.3 kilometers. My goal was 10k, which is 6.2 miles, but that’s going to take somewhere between 2.5 and 3 hours. Even once a week, that will start sucking up chunks of time I might find better use for.

Oddly, I was tired, but not wrecked like I was last week.

Gym Buddy wanted to go to the gym later, so I did 5 miles on the recumbent bicycle. It took about half an hour; I forgot to write down the time. It’s surprising how much faster the "bicycle" is than walking.

He should get his bike bailed out of the shop this coming weekend. He has a fancy hitch-mount bike carrier for his SUV, but my recumbent doesn’t fit it. I need to look at the tires on my utility trailer.

I saw the endocrinologist again today. She had forgotten she had cut my dose, then refilled it at the original dose. Despite being freaked out about the Red Blood Cell count last time, she said she was only going to check testosterone level on this lab. So, maybe the blood donations and packing water before this visit weren’t necessary. [sigh]

Since I resumed hanging my EQ and PIs have gone up noticeably.

I’ve been doing three pounds for a 60 minutes at a time for the last two weeks. No blisters, no lymph in the bell. Yesterday I bumped it up to 75 minutes. This morning I tried four pounds for 60 minutes. Still no problem. I’m going to play it safe and use my half-pound weight for 3.5 pounds for 60 or 75 minutes.

Two differences from my last stretch of hanging:

First, the use of mineral oil instead of water-based lotion for lubrication in the cup. Total Man recommends an oil-based lube, but didn’t mention that lotions would dry out and hose the valve after a while. The main secret to not get blisters is to fill the bell completely, so blisters have no place to form. When the valve leaks, air is admitted to the bell, and shortly after, a blister.

Second, I’m now using the largest TM bell. Though my glans is small, shaft girth is out of control, 6.3" at last measurement. I have to work the bell down over the shaft carefully, with a lot of oil to prevent pinching. When I suck the air out of the bell, the tip of the glans covers the air port, but there’s plenty of air left inside, usually behind the corona. By rocking the bell back and forth I can work the air bubbles to the end and suck them out. It takes about fifteen minutes before it’s all out, and then I don’t have to fiddle with it any more.

I used to get blisters even when just using the bell for light ADS; there was always air in the bell when I took it off, probably from valve leakage. A few weeks ago I was still burping the bell regularly at 60 minutes; now it only takes 15. If I take the time to burp it I can probably use it as an ADS now without any problems.

Yesterday: deadlifts, bench press, curls, butterflies (60x at 22#). The butterflies have almost worked the glitch out of my right rotator cuff. Based on previous experience, two or three more weeks might do it.

Bodyweight squats again. Range of motion has definitely improved. Still not enough shoulder mobility for the barbell, though.

I’ve mostly figured out how to set the barbell down when doing a deadlift. I’m working out on a wooden floor over a crawlspace, just letting the bar drop is not an option. "Unlift the bar in reverse order" isn’t the same thing as "put the bar down". Once I determined that the lower back pain after deadlifts was due to the putting-down part things were a lot less uncomfortable.

This morning’s treadmill: 4.0 miles, 6.4km. 2.5mph, 97 minutes, 11,553 steps.

No knee or hip problems today. Took a break at 3.1 miles, walked over to the water fountain for a drink, then got back on the machine.

Finished up Charles Stross’ "The Jennifer Morgue" on the mp3 player.

Went to the gym at 0600 to walk 4.1 miles on the treadmill. Bailed out at 2.6, primarily from lower back pain. Shuffled painfully through the grocery store on the way home, then went back to bed, to be awakened by cramps in my quads. First time that ever happened.

I rode the recumbent bicycle a few miles yesterday, until my back started to twinge. On the recumbent, you push back against the seat instead of using your weight to pedal, so the lower back (spinal erectors?) takes some of the load. I’m pretty sure the muscles being a problem are the same ones that bear a lot of the load in a deadlift, but there’s a lot of difference between three sets of five and half an hour of pushing.

As I’ve notched up with mileage on walking I’ve had lower back soreness; same muscles, best as I can tell.

I figure I didn’t recover enough from the ride yesterday, and the lower back muscles ran out of gas. The bike is also hard on the quadriceps, which I figure is why I was getting cramps. They’re the largest muscles in the human body, so that was quite an adventure.

I’m going to have to juggle the bike vs. the treadmill somehow. I’ll probably do more bike work for now, then go back to the treadmill when it gets hot - it can hit well over 100F here, but the treadmill is indoors in the air conditioning. So bike now before it gets miserable outside.

The 2" LeLuv tube came in a few days ago. I’ve been using it for a couple of days.

It looks a *lot* smaller than the 2-1/8" tube. I touch the sides all the way past the circumcision scar when going in half-hard. Pumping in it feels like… nothing. Come to think of it, the occasional discomfort I got with the 2-1/8" tube was probably girth expansion on the end of the shaft.

The lack of sensation with the new tube is strange, though. I’ll give it a few more days, then bump the vacuum from 5" to 6", just for kicks.

I haven’t had any glans problems after the last decon, either with the tube or the vacuum hanger. I’m still averaging over an hour an day with the hanger. Going to the largest bell seems to have done the trick, even if it can take ten or twenty minutes to "burp" all the trapped air as my glans expands to fit. I start with three pounds until I get the bell filled, then move add another pound or two and start the timed hanging session.

An unwanted side effect of the larger bell is that after an hour, I get a donut from the bell. No big deal; an hour at a time is probably plenty.

The 2" tube measures 1.93" inside diameter. That’s a lot closer to 50mm than two inches.

I saw the endocrinologist on 04/08. Normally she calls a few days later to tell me the test results, usually around six in the morning. No call this time. I finally had to call her office and ask for them to mail me the test results.

This last time, she only tested three things, instead of the several pages that she did previously. I noted that the labs were done by the local hospital she works for; previous labs were done out-of-state. I guess they have their own lab now.

testosterone, total: 1295.4 (range, 199.0 - 1586.0 ng/dl)
testosterone, free: 24.73 (range 2.78 - 17.80) [high]
SHBG: 58.43 (range, 18.00 - 99.00)

history: (Baud knows what the formatting will look like)
date —— total —— free —— SHBG —- FSH —— LH — Prolactin —- estradiol — estrones
04/08/24: 1,295 — 24.73 —— 58.43
06/23/23: 815.3 — 13.39 —— 58.41
12/13/22: 634.3 — 12.04 —— 47.05
06/09/22: 749
11/04/21: 185.7 — 4.2 ——- 60.71 —— 3.7 ——— 3.3 — 13.1 (TRT started a week later)
07/20/21: 147 ————————————————————————- 45.2 ——— 72.9

The previous "correct range" for free testosterone, from the old lab, was 264-916 ng/Dl. The new lab says 199-1586. Free testosterone and SHBG is the same for both labs. The total and free ranges are pro-rated by age, so they might have fumble-fingered my age when entering the data. 1,295 is still good, though.

What’s interesting is, I switched from every-other-day dosing to the once-every-two-weeks dose she was insistent upon, a few weeks before the visit. So, three 100mg doses two weeks apart, then had the blood draw a week after the last dose. Which I shorted at 75mg. I stopped taking all supplements two weeks beforehand, masturbated the day before (testosterone is supposed to drop for a few days after that), and had been getting up around 0400. Daily testosterone levels are highest in the morning and drop steadily during the day. So I’d been getting up early, and for some reason the blood draw wasn’t until nearly 11 AM instead of the usual 8:30 to 9. Which should have put my testosterone level at the minimum.

Instead, I clocked 1,586.

Three years ago my balls were the size of grapes and squishy. TRT also often, but not always, causes testicles to shrink. I started pumping them about the time I went on TRT. Pumping helped a little bit, but I wasn’t making much progress.

Late last year I cranked it up, working up to 5"Hg and much longer sessions, at least one per day instead of a few times per week. For the last several months my balls have been "average" size or a bit larger, and firm or hard.

Maybe the pumping has kick-started my balls back into operation again. Generally, once your testicles retire due to aging, they don’t go back to work again.

I just dod an at home test.test. everlywell was the company. Cost.$79

I should know results in 3 days. Im 47, so I was curious. Fwiw