Injured myself the second day of the "beginner routine"?

I am new to PE and decided to try the Beginner Routine provided by this website. I followed the routine as written, except I actually cut the jelqing from 10 minutes to 5 minutes to start, because I wanted to start even slower. I also did 1 day on 1 day off rather than 2 days on 1 day off. The first on-day was fine. The second was fine as well — I did the routine in the morning. However, I jacked off later that night, which I thought would be fine since there was like 11 hour in between. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary with regard to jacking off. When I finished, however, my penis was the worst I have ever seen it. The frenulum area was really swollen, bulging, and dark red. I was actually worried that I had caused permanent damage. It improved like 70% yesterday, and I’d say it’s 90% better as of this morning. It’s looking and feeling pretty normal now. I’m not touching my dick for another 5 days at least, it’s off limits including masturbation. I’ve already sworn that I will never jelq again. It definitely doesn’t seem to be worth it, especially considering my dick is already 7.25 inches. Also, before you blame the injury on my technique or something, I really don’t think I did anything wrong. First of all, I cut the time in the routine by 50%. I watched the videos, and I was pretty gentle doing it. There was no pain.

Other than my above word of warning/complaint, I do have one question. I would consider continuing the manual stretches in the future. They seem to be a lot safer. Could I make gains from this alone? Would it even be worth trying?

Well, you’ve said you’re already quite long. So, what are your goals? Why are you interested in PE? If you’re looking for girth, stretching isn’t the exercise for you.

It’s not uncommon for the tissues to get insulted from starting off and they usually quickly heal, just as you described. If you continue, you’ll find that everything becomes more resilient. If you still want to grow and gain, you don’t necessarily have to give up. Just go slow and easy, like you have been, and keep paying attention to what your body is telling you. You saw that something was wrong and backed off, so I think you’re on the right track.

Any pain or discomfort?

The night it swelled up and yesterday there was discomfort. I wouldn’t call it pain because there wasn’t any kind of sharp pain. I would have been a lot more worried if this was the case. Do you know when you jack off a few times in a row and your dick feels sore? That’s kind of what it felt like. The discomfort seems to have subsided today, though.

I suppose that’s circulatory system damage. You can try later to see if jelq was real reason for that. And if yes, then it might be quite dangerous. Because you had most of changes near frenulum, then maybe it’s capillaries between arteries and veins. For example, you could press that area strongly, or maybe you did jelqs too fast/strong and pushed much of blood. Basically, arteries have wide opening, and veins have wide exits, but there are narrow bridges between those two and it’s one of the main sources of erection.

You probably can’t do significant damage in few tries, but generally it’s not very healthy to have inflammation.

Do you think it was only a temporary issue? I’m not going to jelq again so that’s not a concern. My dick is looking pretty normal right now, and it’s fine with an erection too. I haven’t tried jacking off obviously because I want to give it a few more days. Peeing is totally normal as well.

Oh. That’s a good sore. That is the tunica albuginea feeling sore from being stretched; the growing pains of PE.

You’re still correct to rest it until it feels better, but that soreness is a sign that your workout was effectively stretching the fascia. If you resume your exercises, pay attention to not overdo, and stick with it you’re sure to get some of those great newbie gains.

I am not so convinced. It’s much more about how it looked than felt. It looked alarming. Like I said the frenulum was super swollen, bulging and red. I thought I was gonna have to go to the doctor when I first looked at it. Thankfully it seems better.

No one’s really answering my other question — can you make length gains from stretching alone? Would it be worth doing?

Stretching is main source of length gains. I got my length gains in like 2-3 months, after that mostly stopped to do stretching, because it’s more than enough length for me. I love balls deep and going further would only reduce chance to get it. So yes, stretching is very effective for length. But there are 3 different ways to do it. There is low force/long time routines (for example, extender and hanging), there is mid-high force/short time routine (manual stretching), and when stretching is side effect (as pumping). It’s mostly split, because how body reacts to stress. At sharp action body reacts more with defense reaction, to protect tissue from rupture. It’s not something we are looking for, because tissue is going to become harder. At the same time low force can stimulate growth more effective, it says to body there is need to expand to get rid of pulling. The problem is, you need very long time with low force to see any results, and that’s why routines can be 4+ hours long. And honestly I don’t know if there is any decisive difference between those two. Like maximal gains, or speed. I only know people can gain with both and it’s different approach.

I did manual stretching, but more in mix. If we measure force from 1 (almost zero pull), to 8 (slight pain or discomfort) and ten (huge pain and major injury), then I either used 6-7 pull for 15-20 minutes, or did progressive exercise, what I found out later and actually should work very well. Idea of that exercise is to make it step by step in intervals. For example, pull at 5 force for 30s, then at 6 for 30s, then at 7 for 30s, then at 8 for same 30s. But because it was made step by step, at this stage it doesn’t have any pain at all. Main rule of stretching, no pain or discomfort. As result, If I pull from 0 to my limit in single step, it makes my BPFSL measure about 8.5 inches. If I do it step by step, it can go up to 8.6-8.7 inches. So it’s probably better version and it really pushes limit.

General PE rules also apply here. Heating, kegels and so on.

It might be. Once I got edema from newbie routine. I did nothing different, but at the end had around 1/4 inch edema on whole shaft. Never before, never after. So I don’t know what was reason for that, just some coincidence. You always can try different exercise, or change intensity and so on. If you stick to few rules like “no pain, no discomfort” and check quality of your erection, you should be fine. Conditioning also plays big role, but before you do PE for very long time, you don’t know your limits and reaction or recovery time. So it’s better to start slowly and lightly, and add more later. It’s not like you can’t get gains later and have to do it asap. Some people never knew about PE for 30-40 years, so what’s the reason with haste to get gains in next few months. First thing I did, I was reading this forum for few months before I even started. Just to get knowledge and do it right.