Time of sets for clamping

Ha, I never even got my newbie gains.

What guidelines should I use to determine my rest schedule? As I said, I do not need any rest days on my current routine, but once I start adding weights I’ll surely get to an intensity range where I can make them necessary.

I’ve heard of men using 5 on 2 off, 2 on 1 off, 1 on 1 off so I’m not sure what the reasoning for any of those are.

Guidelines would be to err on the side of rest and caution when testing this stuff. You say you don’t need rest days. That may be true, some don’t. But to test it, try 5 on 2 off for a while. Then 6 on 1 off if all’s well. Then finally no rest. Then after a while you might find you actually do like having some rest days. Then test out what a decon break does.

I just go by feel, go for fatigue, rest when I need it - or when I don’t feel like PE’ing. And a few times per year I take a 1-2 month decon break.

So experiment, go by feel. Try out all the various rest schedules to find out what works for you. You’ll eventually know the feeling of doing 10 days of PE in a row vs. a 10 day break and when to use or not use each.

Similarly, weighted clamping, or clamped hanging would be an advanced combination of methods. Something I’d recommend trying out after having done normal clamping, multi-clamping, clamped squeezes, and even normal flaccid hanging. Try all these things for a few weeks or months to really see how they affect the target tissues over time.

But as I said, it does all work, and to each his own. So if you got your heart set on weighted clamping, go for it. I’ve tried it before but prefer pressurizing the trapped blood in other ways, like multi-clamping and squeezing.

I do find it interesting that you say you go for fatigue. This does seem to be a necessary component, and I find it odd and frustrating that I haven’t been able to reach it. I’m sure I could benefit from rest days if my sessions were intense enough to reach fatigue, but they’re not.

My inclination toward weighted clamping, as you may have guessed, is quantifiable pressure. If I can make clamping as exact a process as hanging and pumping, I really do believe that’s safer than adding other forces where the amount of pressure is unknown. Plus I did get excellent expansion when I did it for one set.

BD what do you think about Bigger’s claim that rest days allow the tissues to heal back stronger, thus requiring more force more quickly?

Im a huge advocate for rest days. Thats when your body grows,heals. Im a 2on1off or sometimes 2on and 2 off.

I’m still a little skeptical of rest days for any purpose other than injury prevention. We’re not bodybuilding, we’re stretching.

Just like with muscles though, the purpose of PE is to grow. There is tissue damage that needs to heal. Taking adequate time to heal those tissues can be crucial. If it was just doing stretches then you wouldn’t need rest days. That’s why body builders don’t work on arms every day, or legs every day. Same with PE. If you work on the same body part every day then it doesn’t get adequate time to heal.

Don’t get hung up on the concept of fatigue, you’ve probably already reached it and didn’t realize it.

Bib used fatigue with a few different meanings, one of which is just the feeling of target tissue damage. Anyone who has gained has done target tissue damage whether they consciously felt it or not. So they reached fatigue. Which is the next use of the word. Reaching fatigue means doing PE beyond the elastic range. And Bib often used it to mean the ultimate stress or even the fracture point on a stress-strain curve. So it refers to a range of points on the stress-strain curve, leading to confusion. Then he also uses it to mean an accumulation of damage, because we’re dealing with multiple levels of collagen structures. A single high intensity workout can cause collagen fracture and failure in a short time frame. A series of frequent low intensity workouts over days or weeks (or months in Bigger’s case) that barely cross into the elastic range, can stretch fibers and structures out so far that it takes hardly any additional marginal stress for fibers to fail. This state of fibers failing at relatively low stress levels due to time, frequency, and temperature is also fatigue.

Rest days allow target tissues to contract back to their normal size - since they are living viscoelastic structures, this takes some time. Just like it takes time and frequency to get to the state of fatigue, it also takes time for the tissues to revert. When Bib talks about tissues healing back stronger because of a rest day, he is mostly referring to this contraction. However there is also an actual healing effect going on too. Somewhere around 36-48 hours since the last workout, proliferation overtakes inflammation as the dominant process.

Bib’s idea and theories for methodically doing controlled damage to the target tissues are brilliant. But his advice to take literally zero rest days has to be viewed within that context of causing damage. Of course a rest day is going to interfere with causing damage - it drastically lowers the frequency of the stretch. And from that state of fatigue accumulated over days or weeks or even months in his case, of course a rest day is going to give the tissues a break, and after that rest they may appear to be “stronger” in the sense that more weight/force is necessary. But it’s only stronger relative to that extreme state of fatigue that Bib is referring to.

Rest is necessary for the vast majority of PE’ers. Tissue growth happens during rest. Check out the IPR model of wound healing. Rest and deconditioning actually lowers the force levels necessary for gains, as opposed to making the tissues stronger. I’ve seen a lot of success using Bib’s damage methods for several weeks at a time. But then I take a decon break. With my hanging, every cycle like this I’ve done has been between about 2 lbs and 8 lbs. I start at 2, about a month later I’m up to 8. I get some gains, take the rest of the year off from hanging. The next year I start again at 2 pounds, and gain again on the way back up to 8. Healing back stronger from rest days is an illusion.

Continually damaging the target tissues for months on end only works for some guys - and they’ve gotten good at keeping the rate of damage very low. For most guys, it is actually one of the only ways they can truly injure themselves, because over that time frame and frequency, it becomes possible to damage macro collagen structures. They keep a high rate of damage for a long time. Chronic inflammation, or non-healing wounds, is no good for any part of the body. It’s why I take regular decon breaks.

The allure of Bib’s methods is strong - gaining 5x faster than most guys would be nice. Maybe it’s possible, I never found it, still looking sometimes, but I hope you do. Just remember that your body needs to be able to heal and repair that damage you do each day. And if you do too much damage that the repair systems can’t keep up, then it’s time to take a decon break. Balancing the damage and healing is how I think those big gainers who took zero rest days did it.

If I’ve reached fatigue and just haven’t known it, how can I know? My penis doesn’t feel any different.

Fatigue can be reached with girth work too. IMO to gain you need to reach it.
Both time and load can get one there.
With girth there is more tissue involved. Veins, smooth muscle, pelvic floor and tunica. They all can get “fatigued”.

I say I’m fatigued when I notice some ache,soreness or problems to get hard the next day especially when I do exercise again.

I reach that stage rarely. Hence not much girth gains for me. I need more frequency or/and intensity.

Obviously too much gets one beyond fatigue into serious injury zone or a chronic inflammation. The first mostly due to high load too fast and the later if you have no pause.

If you don’t do enough it’s then just fancy masturbation…

I would say keep intensity, duration and frequency tweaked until you notice a difference. I mean there sure is the point where you will feel it. 20 sets a 5 minutes clamping daily for a week or 1 set 15 minutes for 30 days… Somehow somewhere.. you will clamp the next day and you will notice you are sore or fatigued..
What then? Imo keep riding the fatigue for some more. Cut it slowly back hovering around that.. for some days probably not many weeks as you want to avoid chronic inflammation (faulty tissue)
As said the problem with girth can be that much more tissues can be involved that have not directly impact on gaining.

Then at some point rest is needed. Some days, weeks or months… depends on what kind of impact you had on the tissue.

Agree with all that. The more experience I’ve got, the better I can feel fatigue. Especially the more subtle feelings of early stage fatigue during a workout that don’t necessarily persist afterward.

Bib has written extensively on identifying the feeling and riding the fatigue both in posts here and on his website.

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http://forum.bi bhanger.com/for … anaging-fatigue

Yeah, I’ve never experienced any of that. I guess I do need to work on gradually increasing intensity and volume.