Shiver's Routine

Heat 30 mins in IR tube (constructed from heating elements of a thermotex pad), with 3 mins stretch. Normally 1 day on 2 days off. If a gain is perceived then I do a second session midweek. If no gain measured (talking around 1mm here) then I will add one day to the interval, so instead of exercising 1 on 2 off, It would be 1 on 3 off. If still no gain then take 4 off, then 5 off etc. So far I have not needed to increase the interval, but any shorter an interval seems to prevent gains happening at all, meaning for me 1 on 2 off is the most frequent I can do without stalling gains or resting unnecessarily.

The idea behind this routine is to stress the tissue as little as possible to prevent any conditioning or excess collagen deposition that occurs in a standard more intense routine. By keeping the exercises very mild and short duration, hopefully the Inflammation/Proliferation/Remoddeling (IPR) cycle can complete before the next one is started, thus preventing multiple cycles of IPR overlapping and creating ‘collisions’.

The current routine is for Length only. When I reach a target length (probably 8” BPEL) I’ll switch to Girth only. When I’ve reached the intermediate Length and Girth goals then I’ll start a routine based on the same interval technique but alternating Length and Girth each session to see if it’s possible to gain both at the same time. For now though I’ll stick to length only as it’s working so well and don’t want to mess it up.

Update Jan 16th 2005:
I’ve noticed what seems to be a good guide to when to exercise. the day or two following exercise my max BPEL is slightly reduced. By the third day it seems to be back to max BPEL. If this pattern remains, then instead of using the interval method I’ll switch to using BPEL as the indicator that it is ready for the next exercise session, which will make this a more adaptive process.
Imported from old PE database