Early stall - ramp up, take break, or persevere?
I’ve been on the newbie routine for nearly three months now, and while I’ve seen some small gains in the first half of that time, in the latter half my progress seems to have kind of stalled.
What I’ve been doing (on a 2 on 1 off schedule):
10 minutes of warming up, 2 sets of 30 second stretches (down, up, left, right, straight out), 5 minutes jelqing, 5 minutes warming down (all in the shower). After a week I increased both stretching and jelqing times, but noticed some red spots / broken capillaries after doing so, so I scaled it back down.
A few weeks later I increased both stretching and jelqing times again (3 sets and 10 minutes respectively, also switched from dry to wet jelqs going by recommendations here), this time without getting the red spots. That’s also when I noticed the girth gain. I’ve stuck to that volume since then.
The only thing I’ve added during the last month are some light stretches throughout the day.
What I’ve been seeing:
- Month 1: 1/8” increase in girth, no length gains
- Month 2: 1/16” in both length and girth, although I’m not discounting these merely being measurement discrepancies due to slightly improved EQ
- Month 3: no gains
Would you suggest to 1) keep at it using the above described volume, 2) ramp it up a bit, or 3) take a break?
I realise the newbie routine recommends increasing jelq time to 30 minutes after 6 weeks, I guess I was just a bit hesitant because of the red spots I got after my first attempt at increasing it.