Radical Measures

Guys,

I hang 8-10 sets per day, 15-20 minutes per set, with an average weight of 17.5# and a max of about 21.25#. I’ve built up to this over several months (started mid-September 04) and have not gained 1mm.

I’ve worked through blisters, bruises, donuts, and, most recently, calluses. Whenever I increase the weight, I feel a bit of soreness for a couple of days. Then nothing. It seems that I am healing, rather than stretching.

My LOT is 8 and I hang SD/BTC. I wonder whether something more radical needs to be done. I’ve seen LostGuitar’s thread and I’ve read SS4Jelq’s routine. Both of those guys had low LOTs. I don’t.

I’m looking for suggestions. I was in an accident several years ago and stretched a ligament in my knee. I probably stretched it 1/4” in about 1 millisecond. It took several weeks to heal, and years before it was completely back to normal.

Now I hang for hours, and nothing stretches. Somebody please give me some suggestions, before I tie a rope around my dick and start slamming the car door.

You might want to put a disclaimer after that statement or you’ll have newbie postings like “Used ModestoMan’s door slamming routine and now my dick is gone!”

You might want to ban Ramrod from even reading this post.

Try changing angles. I recently spent a little over a month hanging between SD and BTC and didn’t gain a thing - a first for me. I gave up on that and switched to mostly hanging to the sides. I tied a pulley to a C-clamp, which then attaches to the corners of my desk. When seated, if the pubic bone is 12 on a clock face, this puts my dick angled at about 4:00 hanging to the left and 8:00 to the right, and slightly elevated. It’s basically a more comfortable version of OTL.

After about a week of this I saw the first signs of progress. BPFSL was consistently up 1/16”. Then a persistently troublesome vein clotted yet again and put me back on the sidelines. Very frustrating.

Hanging sideways has potential. By focusing the load on a smaller area at a time you can apply more stress without actually increasing the weight. Divide and conquer.

Adding to this, I was switching sides each set, but planned to later try alternating days. Hang all sets left one day, right the next, etc.

MM-
Only because of the title of this thread do I mention this, but there occasionally comes a member who will consider the idea of using vibration in conjunction with heat to relax and break down the ligs.

I have never seen a follow up nor have I ever tried it, so I can’t say as to how much validity the concept holds - but it never struck me as that crazy of an idea; maybe a tad unconventional - but that’s par for the course when you consider what we’re doing here.

RTG:

Of course I was only joking, I think. :-k On the other hand, it would make a cool exercise—the Modesto Man-gler.

Hobby:

Sorry to hear your vein is giving you trouble. On the other hand, congratulations on the gain. Any gain is a good gain.

I’m with you on the divide and conquer. One thing I started doing yesterday is swinging the weight side-to-side (it hangs down through a hole in my chair). I also started to bounce up and down a little (gently) and swing front to back. I felt much more sore after yesterday’s workout than previously. I’m thinking of going very heavy in the AM and lighter in the PM. The theory behind this is do damage early in the day, and apply traction to elongate the tissues later. It will also give my dick a break from the heavy weights. I’m even afraid to get a BJ these days because my dick is purple and is beginning feel like leather.

Your pulley method sounds great. I may try that soon. I just hesitate to raise my hanging angle given the value of my LOT. What is your LOT?

Of course, I may be putting too much stock in this LOT business. For example, I feel more stretch in my suspensory lig when I lean forward a bit. When I lean back, I feel it more in my lower abs—perhaps I’m stretching my fundiform lig (which is very elastic) and the suspensory lig isn’t getting much action.

Capt’n: Vibration sounds like it has promise (as long as it doesn’t make me hard :eek: ). Somehow, I need to apply some differential stress between fibers, to break the cross links. At this point, I’m looking for any reasonable idea short of raising the weight. I’m just a little scared of going much above 20#. Also, given my history, there’s no guarantee it will have positive results.

Has anybody tried Relaxin? I know there have been some threads about this, but I’ve never heard of anyone actually using it. I would not be averse to chemo-assistance, if a reasonably safe chemical were to come along.

Maybe I’m just losing my mind. Newbies, please ignore this thread.

I’ve used a bottle of porcine relaxin (60x 2mcg) in about a week. It didn’t do anything. If it does have any effect I think you’d need at least 500mcg possibly much more if systemic, and for a long time (months) which would be *extremely* cost prohibitive. That’s assuming that the tissues in question are even responsive to it. In humans, pregnant females do not respond to human relaxin (in terms of cervical ripening), but do to porcine relaxin. Nobody has gotten to the bottom of what’s actually happening yet. There’s some evidence that prostaglandins may help (imho the reason megalophallus condition sometimes produces extreme growth), but it’s a tough one to administer, and even tougher to regulate.

With the stage you’re at and the weight you’re at the stakes are very high. To me the only sensible thing would be to back right off for a few months and compete with your dick in poundages that you can both afford. 5lb to an unconditioned tissue would be like 50lb to an adapted one. That way you’ve got room to up the stakes.

Thanks Shiver,

So, relaxin sounds like a dead end. Inevitably, I’ll have to take a break if this trend continues. There are a few more things I want to try, however, before I do that. I have about 2 months before my schedule changes for the worse and I have less time for hanging. I’ll feel a lot better about taking a break in 2 months knowing I’ve tried all reasonable measures, than to give up earlier with nothing to show for it.

MM,

Try Fulcrum hanging.

My gains went from less than 0.05” per month to more than 0.2” per month (albeit for 1 month)

Have you considered a deconditioning break? While I have not gained much, or even cemented the 0.25 inch I think I gained, I can say my new routine over the last 1 1/2 months of varying angles and stretches feels far more effective than any previous routine. Maybe you just need to do something different.

My 2 cents. Don’t lose hope.

Eight sets a day is a lot, but splitting them between two positions lessens the effectiveness.

Hobby has given you good advice about hanging to the side. Like you, my first six months of hanging were practically unproductive. I was discouraged because I was hanging totally in the BTC position with little results. Then I tried something different. I hung Under the Leg.

UTL gave me an intense stretch. A couple of sets of UTLs followed by BTC would make the BTC sets feel totally different. Fatigue was almost instantaneous. Bib explains why this happens:

The ligs vary in toughness. You may have several short, but thin fibers, which are easily broken and/or stretched. This will give fast gains. Or you may have short thick fibers, which are hard to break or stretch immediately (tough gainers). Once these short thick fibers are broken, gains may be easy. Then later, the longer fibers come into play. Or I should say, as the shorter ones are broken or stretched, the longer ones increasingly come into play. As time goes on, more and more fibers are involved at the same time during the stretch. Short ones break or stretch, and the next shortest take more of the load. This is why gains eventually slow down for everyone.

This is also one reason why it takes increasingly higher weights to achieve gains. It is also why some people talk about the ligs becoming tougher. They are somewhat tougher, because they become thicker as they heal. But more than that, each fiber becomes more equal with the other fibers as time goes on, they increasingly resist the stretch in harmony. Then, one must become more refined in his attack. Vary the angles even more. For example: After hanging for several months, a good stress is to hang under each leg, over the side edge of the chair, while seated in an almost BTC position. This greatly stresses each SIDE of the ligament bundle, dividing and conquering. Then, a normal BTC hang will stress the middle of the bundle. The sides are already longer from the side stretch. So the middle then has to take the load. This is just one example.

Recently, I have switched my hanging angle to SD. At this angle, I was getting an excellent stretch and obvious increases in my flaccid stretch. After a couple of weeks, the feeling of effectiveness wore off and I found myself increasing the weight dramatically — to 27lbs! Then I remembered hanging to one side. Hanging to the side is very similar to the swinging of weight you had mentioned, ModMan. The swing focuses extra stress on one side, or area, of lig bundles.

I tried leaning to one side as I hung SD. It’s not a very comfortable position; I’m already sitting at the edge of a chair and I lean over at about a 45-degree angle. To support myself, I use another chair beside me to lean on. The stretch is intense. Even if I only hold the side position for 2-3 minutes/side each set, it has a tremendous effect on fatigue and lig soreness.

Andrew and Hobby have the right idea, and so do you (sort of) with the swinging: concentrate the stress into a more localized area.

>Your pulley method sounds great. I may try that soon. I just hesitate to raise my hanging angle given the value of my LOT. What is your LOT?

About 7:45 last I checked. I don’t think I have any remaining lig potential, at least not for now. At full BTC I felt stress in the lower ab fascia and the suspensory lig, but nowhere else. I wasn’t getting a decent temporary post-session BPFSL increase. The position felt different than when it used to be productive.

At SD and “almost BTC” the load was on the CC’s.

Since ligs didn’t seem to be the limiting factor and I wasn’t gaining or even seeing any signs of an impending gain, I decided to focus on the shaft. Fulcrum may have worked again, but I wanted to try something different and hit the tissues in a way they hadn’t been targeted before.

My setup is similar to Piet’s, except the pulley is off to the side and I sit closer to the desk. Lowe’s sells pulleys in various sizes. Mine swivels and cost only $.98. IIRC, the sticker on the bin said they were rated for 88 lbs. max safe working load.

I occasionally swiveled a little in my chair to pulse the stretch. However, with the pulley attached to the clamp via a short piece of rope, swinging the weights also worked. I saw the tugging action on my dick with each outward swing. The effect was more apparent with heavier weight. 15 lbs. worked pretty well. I don’t know if swinging, swiveling, or rocking provides any benefit apart from keeping us amused. :)

Please no…..

Oh the Humanity! We need to keep him under watchful eye for the next 48 hours to make sure he doesn’t tie anything to a car.

Decondition before you begin Hobby’s or Ram’s suggested programs. Your dick sounds like it’s on the brink of death!