Are rest days necessary?

[eiffel]

I think for a length-only routine, which is what you should be on if you have any more length goals you want to achieve, rest days are counterproductive, unless you're actually injured.

We don't want our penis to rest and recover, that would make it stronger. We want it as stressed, fatigued, and weak as we can get it without causing injury, so that it'll be as susceptible to plastic deformation as possible.

Try to hold your stretches for as long as you can. Do them slowly, trying to reach maximum FSL without any jerking or bouncing. If you can just hold it for 20 minutes straight (this is doable in some positions) before taking a break and then re-gripping, that'd be ideal.

If you need stealth, you may want to look into getting an extender.

[Toadstool]

Wow those are some pretty impressive gains you made there.

Gallows, I think what you're going through right now is something a lot of us here at the Gym are frustrated with. Once you're finished with the beginner routine ... now what? You're given a long list of exercises and not really taught how to use them. You're bombarded with other people saying what worked for THEM and you get excited, wanting to try it all at once.

That's why I went with BigAl. It got rid of all the confusion and put it in someone else's lap. What he basically tells me to do is pick one length exercise and one girth exercise, do as many as you feel you can do, and then slowly increase the amount each subsequent session. On top of that, throw in kegels and stamina work and you have a full load.

You can try the jelq-free routine (you'll have to do a search for it since I don't have the link on hand) or one of the other beginner routines. You can even consider continuing with the JP90 and see if you gain more in the 4th or 5th month. Or you can pick one of your length exercises, one of your girth exercises and go from there.

Hanging and manual routines concepts don't necessarily blend. A lot of people on here recommend that manual workouts require resting, and lots of it. I myself take 4 days of rest per week (which is good because I'm also a very busy person). Hanging is recommended to be done every single day.
Some people challenge that, but for safety reasons it is not recommended. Talk to the user named eow. I'm sure he has some good sources on every-day workouts and what you should do.

[eow.]

If people can hang 4+ sets per day (80 minute+) without rest days, surely they can do 20 minutes manual stretching daily. I will say that hangers often experience periods of decreased EQ, but I think this is something we should expect when we are trying to deform our tissues. People often get scared at the slightest drop in EQ and quit their routine for a couple of days. I don't necessarily think that's a good idea. If you want maximum EQ, don't PE for gains. How can you expect to have maximum EQ while deforming your tissues?

If you are including REAL girth exercises (not just light jelqs) then this changes things a bit, of course. Due to the stress on the blood vessels I think girth-oriented routines do need some rest.

It takes a lot of mental stamina to keep going day after day after day, which is probably the main roadblock for most people. I'm nearing the two month marker for hanging and I'll admit I'm pretty burnt out mentally with barely any gains to show for it. However, I must trudge on because 2 months is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I still have a lot of room to progress with weight and various techniques like OTS, RSDT, etc. I think people wrong themselves when they make ultimatums such as "if I don't gain in the next xx months/weeks I'm taking a deacon break." IMO, keep going, up the intensity, change your angle of attack slightly, but don't give up. Like I said, I think doing a serious, dedicated PE routine for gains is a major mental drain on most of us. After 2-3 months most people either give up or become inconsistent/lost.

If it takes 2-3 years to get to my goal, so be it. What's 2-3 years out of your entire lifespan? Not much, and for the rest of your life you can enjoy a big dick and get back to any hobbies you missed out on while PEing. If I end up wanting more size down the road I can always dedicate another year or two when I'm in my 30s or 40s. I love playing video games, but since I started hanging I've had a lot less time for them. I can watch TV and play with my phone while hanging, but not competitive video games, lol. It's a price I'm willing to pay for now.

Okay, I got pretty off-topic. Sorry.

[Toadstool]

I haven't seen anything that really says exercising more frequently leads to greater gains. What do you think, eow?

[eow.]

I dunno, honestly.

If you reach plastic deformation, you reach plastic deformation, period, end of story, the collagen is deformed permanently. This has to happen DURING our routines (obviously you can't reach plastic deformation unless you're pulling on it), so theoretically you could PE one day per week and pull so hard your dick nearly rips off and get a couple millimeters of deformation, then repeat every week until you reach your goal.

This isn't exactly feasible, though, and we want to gain with as little force as possible so we have more room for progress in the future. We know that collagen and IGF-1 are produced when we mechanically stress our tissues, so our penis will get tougher and tougher over time I think.

The question is, by PEIng every day do we keep the tissues in a state more susceptible to further stretching? If so, then frequency does matter. Unfortunately I don't have the answer to this question. Plastic deformation = microtears which will take a little while to be filled in with healthy collagen fibers. The question is how long? And what will happen if I continue to stretch while the microtears are healing? How do we know if we have reached plastic deformation by the way our dick looks/feels? I don't think we have the answers to these questions.

When we are talking about plastic deformation of collagenous tissues, we are talking about 1-2mm deformations MAX. Very tiny, and when you let go of the stretch, the collagen fibers, even if they are plastically deformed, will bounce back slightly. So even if you achieve deformation, you're looking at probably less than a 1mm permanent gain. If you only PE once per week, like my example above, it would take a long time to reach your goal. Are there any other mechanisms which contribute to gains besides deformation (and EQ)? Like I said, we know that mechanical stretching induces IGF-1, collagen, and SMC production, but there is no evidence which suggests this will do anything besides just make our dicks tougher.

There is guy in this thread over at TP named Tweaking (Knowing whether you are limited by Dorsal Thickening/Septum - Thunder's Place Free Penis Enlargement Forums) who says he gained 11/16" during a 2-3 week period of heated fulcrum hanging using a TDP IR lamp after being plateaued for months. THAT is true plastic deformation and is very impressive. He went to the extreme and was rewarded with extreme gains. It takes balls to do that, knowing the risks involved. I would eventually like to buy a lamp and try this method as a last resort.

In terms of how long you hold a stretch for, time is an uber important variable. It's called viscoelastic creep, which is the combination of force, time, and temperature. I think time and temperature are the most important factors. I read in a biomechanics book that even if you attach a sub-maximum tensile load to a ligament, given enough time that ligament WILL fail, which is interesting, and that's what creep is. The longer you hold a stretch, the less force you will need to deform whatever you're pulling on. The more sets you can hang or stretch, the better.

Unfortunately I only have time to hang 4 sets, so I've come to terms with the fact that I will not gain as much as someone who has time for 12 sets (fuck you Bib!). It's just a fact of life. If you take two dudes with the exact same dick size and tunica thickness and one hangs for 4 sets per day and the other for 12 sets per day, the 12 sets per day guy will always have a better chance at gaining. People don't like to think about this because it makes them feel bad, but it's the truth.

[going411by7]

Rest days should not be necessary if you build up slowly and gradually with a progressive routine. However,
if your body--i.e., penis tells you to rest, then rest. I never needed to rest because I worked up to a two hour
routine so slowly. My penis was thus fully conditioned and raring to go each day.

I think overall physical conditioning is also part of this approach. I was long distance swimming and spending
long hours in heavy physical labor, so that my body was in excellent condition. My fat pad was also at a minimum
at the time.

[DaddyDick]

I haven't seen anything that really says exercising more frequently leads to greater gains. What do you think, eow?

Hangers are recommended to do split sets and this increases frequency. There could be proof somewhere about frequency being important. I believe the hanging 101 thread recommends the split sets.

[bored]

Great posts, eow.

You can gain by taking rest days.

You can also gain without taking any. Look at people like Bib and DLD. These two gained 3+ inches in length and 1+ inch in girth and took as few rest days as possible unless they had a bad problem. I am of the belief that the best way to gain is by taking no rest days, and keeping a routine you know you can do. Don't set yourself up to fail with a 2 hour routine that you can only do 1-2 times a week.

As for people saying you need rest days for girth work.. Bib said "I did my Ulis for girth with an Uli thing. Many sets per day."
Of course he was well conditioned. But that's the point. If you ease into your routine, you won't need rest days eventually. In fact, they can become counter-productive

[Kaneda]

This thread remembered me os something i've been thinking lately. It's like a "DESTROY YOU PENIS FOR SOME TIME" thing. I tought of that while taking like 2 weeks off PE. It felt like my gains really SHOWED UP in that period, so I tought "maybe we do have to destroy our penises with intensive exercises for some time and then later stop and give it time for it to restore itself"

don't know, just throwing thoughts..

[DaddyDick]

This thread remembered me os something i've been thinking lately. It's like a "DESTROY YOU PENIS FOR SOME TIME" thing. I tought of that while taking like 2 weeks off PE. It felt like my gains really SHOWED UP in that period, so I tought "maybe we do have to destroy our penises with intensive exercises for some time and then later stop and give it time for it to restore itself"

don't know, just throwing thoughts..

Others and myself have gained when taking small breaks! For me it seems that a week or two off every few months is a good thing for gains!