Curious J's Progress Thread

The main one for practical purposes is 5.5squared’s "Hanging with FIRe" thread, where you can read about how he structures his routine: Hanging with FIRe

He also links to the longerstretch and kyrpa for the more detailed, "theoretical" basis.

—-
Quick progress update for me: this week started out great, but then my BPFSL measurements started to go in the wrong direction, and strain values were very small. I peaked at 226mm post hanging on Monday, but by end of week wasn’t breaking around 216-218mm for either pre or post. Seems like it’s time to decon for a few weeks. I just hope I didn’t take it too far and cause too much tissue toughening.

I should mention that I added in 20-25 min of clamping to my routine some weeks ago (at the beginning week 3 of 5). This didn’t look like it was interfering with length gains in weeks 3 or 4, so it seemed fine to continue with it. But I’m now asking myself whether that was simply too much to put on the poor little guy and might have contributed to this week’s poor results.

Could be. If your EQ has also gone down, it’s probably due to overwork.

For any newer folks who happen across my progress thread.

Longerstretch:
The Long Game: Learning with Longerstretch, Key Principles to Make Sustained Growth

5.5squared
Hanging with FIRe

Kyrpa’s load calculator:
Kyrpa - The characteristics of the tunica albuginea revisited

Scienceguy:
let’s see what happens

This was for sure correct. Took two weeks off. I also stopped taking pygeum. I was interested in it for prostate health and load size, but it absolutely *nuked* my libido and tanked my EQ, too. Apparently it’s a DHT blocker. I certainly don’t need any of those.

—-
Now on cycle 2. Have been getting back into the 224-6mm range post-session, with modest strain rates of 1-1.5%.

Routine (M-F):

Phase 1: 15 min building up to 56 oz
1b Heating: 10min heating up to ~40C
Phase 2: 30 min heated, building up to 117.5 oz
Phase 3: 15 min cooldown, 132 oz

I’m also clamping MWF for 30 min.

Weekends off.

—-

Some personal realizations that might help others going through similar things:

I’m realizing that my main obstacle is myself and my own psychology. Especially my habit of reacting to disappointment in measurements by wanting to push just a *little* bit farther, to nudge them up. "Maybe if I stretch just a few more minutes, or add just a few more oz — or pull just a little harder — that will get me some real gains."

The disappointments can be either acute or chronic, but the chronic one influences me more: it’s that my NBP measurements have basically not changed since I started PE. (Always been at 6.7 inches.) This made it actually puzzling to me when this year I started to get comments in the bedroom about how big I was. In my head I thought: "but I’m *not* big, no bigger than I ever was." The answer came when I looked at some pictures yesterday that I took when I started last August, which helped me realize something:

I got fat.

I have been assuming that BP to NBP was always a difference of 1 inch for me. Last August, it was actually a difference of *half* an inch. Taking the difference of those, I have gained 1/2 an inch of length since August. I know others have gained faster, but in my book that’s nothing to be too disappointed about. Of course, this means I have also gained a half inch layer of fat! Yeesh.

I know this sort of thing is exactly why we measure BP. But, psychologically, it’s hard not to be influenced by the NBP measurements, because ultimately that’s the length you’re working with and what *looks* like the length of your penis. My recommendation to others: Take Pictures!

P.S. I’m kinda joking, I didn’t just "get fat". I’ve been intentionally bulking to build muscle, which has been pretty successful. Time to finally cut a bit of this extra mass off though, I think.