Glad I caught you in time! You’ll find that with any form of PE (yes, any), you will need to do some light maintenance work about two times per week or so in order to keep (cement) your gains. If you don’t do this, you will more than likely lose your gains. There are so many cases of great gains being lost due to complete inactivity (completely stopping all PE)…Wadzilla for one, and Bennett8, who gained like 2 inches in length and has the best photographic proof of penis enlargement of anyone I’ve ever seen: 2-inch Growth Comparative Pictures
You’ll note that after two solid years of PE (manual stretching only), he had completely transformed his anatomy for the better. Just two months of absolutely zero PE, however, and he lost half an inch! He gained it back in the end with more work. You can see all of this in that thread I listed above…it’s a progress log which spans about 4-5 years of time.
Don’t lament about it though - just be glad that others have found this out for you already! Maintenance doesn’t require the same amount of work that it took to get your gains, so that’s a good thing.
Also, the fact that you don’t know that pumping gives permanent gains tells me you need to do three things: read, read, and READ!!! Get on these forums whenever you can and immerse yourself. Over time you’ll find better and better ways to utilize and search out the information on these forums, and you’ll become better at researching things. There are so many useful tools on this site, many of them that I’m just now discovering after a year frequently spent here.
One thing that might have confused you is that in the old days (2001, 2002, etc), the general consensus was that pumping did not produce permanent gains. This was because people back then were advocating higher pressure (sometimes insanely high pressures - always dangerous) and longer times. You were right - they WERE using pumping as a novelty! Guys used it to get massive expansion in the tube (unsafe), but would then suffer w/ EQ problems, no gains and small flaccids afterwards.
Now, we know better, and know that pumping PROPERLY (low pressures, reasonable times such as starting out at less than ten minutes) will lead to permanent results over time, as well as thicker flaccid hangs for many. If you read anything over the next few days, I highly recommend you check out this progress report by Sta-Kool: sta-kool’s Icicle Diary
He starts out at 4.5" mseg and gains .5" of girth in less than 5 months with proper pumping. Note that he eventually took the jelqs between pump sessions out of his routine, and found that he gained more this way! He gained more by doing LESS.
Another member to check out is a guy called peforeal. If you look at his post history, he’s one of the guys that started out back in 2001 (but was pumping even before then), and had the opinion that pumping couldn’t bring permanent results. He was also using those crazy high pressures I was talking about.
If you look at his more recent posts, you’ll see that over time he has completely changed his views, now pumps at lower pressures and is one of the biggest girth gainers on these forums due to pumping. I think he gained almost 2" in girth, but it’s important to note that this was done over a period of years and years.
Bottom line - pumping works and is permanent. Once again, I must highly recommend you try it before clamping! Take a few days and do some research and I’ll bet you’ll like the idea more and more.
Good luck with everything, happy reading!
-Smallja
PS: you wrote: 'I thought people pump just for the fun of it or as a hobby to see a “temporary” increase ?' This is indeed what pumping was used for in the early days, as people could get crazy expansion of an inch or more, which definitely isn’t safe. However, with low pressure pumping (the correct way), there is still this expansion effect after a certain number of times pumping. The average expansion at low pressures and reasonable times is about .25" , which is still a considerable amount of girth to play with and enjoy after your session. Over time, these ‘temporary’ increases become permanent. It’s also important to know that this is real, useable girth. Not some squishy edema floating around, but real expansion of the CS and CC’s. You’ll read this in Sta-Kool’s diary, where he says that his new, fatter penis is harder than ever.