Damn, I used to write a lot on here back in the days. Guess I have some catching up to do. I will write this post kind of as an journal page of the time since I was last active up until present day’s plans.
Early last year when I stopped reporting here I stopped PE pretty much right after. Had some forced time off and then lost motivation. I think it was a combination of drastically slower gains and me just being more at ease about it all, and not having problems with anxiety anymore. Measuring and expecting progress all the time also became kind of a burden, which isn’t much of a surprise when going to seeing no notable gains from seeing more gains than I expected every other week. So when I said earlier that I had no problems with
frequently tracking progress, that was probably just because I was so satisfied with the results, who woulda’ thought? ;)
My only problem with my PE endeavor is just that, the fear of making an effort and not seeing any progress whatsoever. I realize there’ll be plateaus and slower progress, but if I could just find a way that works for me and earns me at least 0.5cm (0.2”) a year that would be absolutely fine. That’s not how it works though and all you can do is give yourself as good of a chance for progress as possible through research, planning and consistency and then hope for the best. Which is the plan for my next step.
I started experimenting with PE again a little over half a year later, maybe in november last year. Initially I just wanted to do manual stretches, and had the idea that I would do them in small bursts of 1-2 min spread out over the day, but do it intensely. I had some trouble figuring out a good technique for gripping and the first few months were very on-and-off with blood coming from the urethra every now and then, it was not a good period. I think a turning point was when I tried to use my old unused vac hanger grip for stretching, and it wouldn’t stop slipping and at just a fraction of my usual pulling force I felt it slip real bad and had a piercing pain in my glans (not super bad but very unpleasant) and it too caused bleeding from my urethra. I decided to back off and try a different approach.
From my failed stretching experiment of last fall I learned how I could definitely NOT be gripping if I was to use the level of force I desired for stretching. I also figured that the high frequency idea was to be scrapped. Since then I’ve gone back to something closer to my old stretching routine, where I stretch for about 12-14 minutes 4 days a week. Only this time I’m not doing a lot of different directions, but only kept the ones I like the most for now. These being straight out and to either side over the thigh. Straight out gives an unparalleled sense of stretch tension throughout the shaft, while the ones to the sides serve as a good resting period for my hands and offers a slightly different feeling of tension when the shaft is pressed onto the legs.
I also pretty recently picked up jelqing again. The feeling after a session of stretching and jelqing together is miles different than after just stretching. I also find it much more enjoyable to perform this time around, maybe because I limit it to around 8 minutes, which seems to be plenty. I hope I can get some extra girth from it, but I won’t expect anything measurable until maybe the end of this year if I can stick to the plan for that long.
I’m also stretching at what I think is a quite a bit higher intensity than I used to. This has been possible only since I took some time off to heal at the beginning of this year and then switched to a regular o-grip instead of overhand o-grip (… I think I got that right). It is also crucial to get good friction for the grip, as I pretty much pull on my glans and if I slip I will wear the skin out. The problem is usually not the glans itself but right where the foreskin attaches to the glans, this area often get small shallow tears in the skin that makes it tender for a few days, and I will have to continue to improve my technique to minimize this as well as take some extra rest days now and then to let the skin adapt to the increased tension. I have mostly used toilet paper for grip aid, but I’ve found for straight out stretch that cotton fabric works even better, which means I can use my boxers for it. I also imported some headbands from the US on ebay after suggestions here on TP but they were utterly useless for me and would slide at even low levels of force.
I also read up a bunch on this newest scam fad here on TP from the two-face guy with the youtube channel. I don’t put much trust in any of the theories spun around it, seeing as everything that being said about stuff I have some previous knowledge about like nutrition and exercise is totally ludicrous. But I tried the routine suggested to see if I could get some cheap EQ gains, and the vein-massaging edging technique felt horrible for me. The routine was much longer than the ones I ever used (not counting all the edging I used to do lol) and the exercised were super hard to perform both for keeping a desired erection and for my hands. The oscillator exercise though might be the easiest technique to perform that I’ve ever tried, especially after jelqing when my EQ is right about 50% for quite some time without going down. It also feels kind of good with a gentle massage after the much heavier jelqs and stretches. So for the time being I’m finishing off my routine with a cold shower and “the oscillator” for a few minutes. And if there actually is some benefit from having blood rushed through the blood vessels this exercise seems like a cheap addition.
So for the time being my plan is:
- 2 days on, 1 off, 2 on, 2 off as I used to. With extra rest days if my skin is too sore, and maybe less if I really feel rested but that hasn’t been the case yet.
- about 13 minutes of higher intensity stretching. Lower intensity if tender.
- about 8 minutes of almost fully erect jelqs with semi high to high intensity.
- cold shower and oscillator for 4 minutes, at least for now.
- keeping PI’s positive. This hasn’t been a problem yet but I realize that going “hard” with exercises that you cannot carefully monitor like with a pressure gauge on a pump there’s a risk of over-doing it.
I have read a little bit about hanging and pumping, but everything seems to require some insane amount of time. If I thought it was the absolutely only way to make gains I might have tried to make it work, but as I’ve already made progress with manual exercises totaling only a few hours a week I’m going to stick to that for now. I also believe that the reason for manuals maybe working with less time investment is that you can fine-tune the intensity to be very high and dynamic. Maybe I can’t manually stretch as hard as someone hanging 25 lbs, but the peak force of the pulls I can do I’m pretty sure can go above 12-15 lb (I tried measuring with a luggage scale but it was really hard to replicate the force and get a good reading). And any pressure higher than that from jelqing with high erection I don’t think I could take anyway. I might be wrong, but this is what I’m sticking with for the time being. I mean I already have small to medium sized bruises after jelqing depending on how hard I go.
I will also measure WAY less frequently than back then. With how measurements fluctuate a bit and how slow gains seem to have become, I’d be happy to really see changes a few times a year, not a few times a month. I am a bit anxious that waiting several months and then measuring to see no gains whatsoever will be very disheartening. So I will aim to measure both very infrequently but also not on a schedule, but rather if I have a day where I feel like I can get a high measurement, which I think I can usually tell. I have also mostly been measuring BPFSL lately, as BPEL doesn’t seem to change at quite the same rate. I’m figuring that if I stick to it and gain sufficiently of BPFSL it’s just not possible that BPEL won’t go up eventually as well.. right?
I see that I reported BPFSL as being as high as 20.8cm (8.2”) post session in an earlier post here when I was about the same EL as I still am now (I think). Right now I can reach just a tad bit over that pre session, and up towards 22 cm (8.66”) post session. After my break last year I think I lost a little bit on both EL and EG, but I’m pretty sure I have regained most of it, maybe not EG yet as I just recently started jelqing. Whether the extra BPFSL is gains or just me tugging harder I’m not absolutely sure, I always tend to doubt these things, but I think if I keep consistently performing a routine where it’s greater after the session than before it, there’s a decent chance I’ll see some changes over time.
Looking forward to approaching this in more of the manner of a marathon than a sprint this time.