Weighing in on the weightlifting metaphor

Hey guys.

I’m a little confused (doesn’t take much) about how a lot of members I’ve read about seem to compare and base their PE routines around a weightlifting scenario, in regards to rest days, supplements, diet, etc.

My confusion comes from my personaly understanding that the range of PE exercises that I have seen are really all stretches of different sorts. If you disagree with my understandings, please feel free to enlighten me.

• Manual stretching is obviously stretching the tissues of the penis out.
• Extenders also stretch out the tissues like manual stretching, only with less manual effort.
• Hanging uses gravity to also perform a manual stretch on the tissues.

• Jelqing is using an increased volume of blood in the penis to stretch out the tissues.
  
• Clamping is trapping the blood in the penis (like a perpetual jelq) to stretch the tissues.
  
• Pumping is like an inverse of a clamp, in which the body pressure pushes blood into the penis to stretch the tissues.

So shouldn’t the tissue damage we are doing (if any) be compared to stretching, and not compared to the tissue damage that is done by other parts of the body when those muscles exert themselves so hard that they cause damage to themselves, and in turn repair themselves in the form of muscle growth. (bicep growth performing bicep curls with maximum weight)

At it’s purest form, what I’m asking is this:

Is the possible damage done by stretching a muscle, the same kind and quantity of damage that is done by the same muscle lifting enough weight that it damages itself?

I personally look at my PE workout as stretching (not as weightlifting) so I don’t take rest days, and try and exert the maximum quantity of stretching I can throughout the day, every day, while trying to avoid negative PI.

I would appreciate any opinion or discussion on the topic.

Thanks.

I agree with your analysis. However, even in the practice of sport stretching, it is recommended to let the tissues time to repair. Dr. Pascal Prévost which is an eminent expert advises to alternate stretches in order to allow 48 hours between two sessions involving the same ligament.

Forgive my ignorance, but is “sport” stretching done to increase the muscle strength or to increase the flexibility of the muscle (length)?

The sport stretching I have done is mostly about loosening up the ligaments.

It would be similar to something like our 5-way stretches.

Jelqing etc are more directed towards engorging the soft tissue that makes up the penis.

Main thing

- weightlifting motto: “No pain, no gain”
- penis enlargement motto: “If it hurts, DON’T DO IT”

In most of cases, stretching will not cause significative damage; but when it happens, it can take even more time than muscle soreness to heal. What will heal faster, a sore muscle or a strained tendon?

I hope to never go beyond the threshold between soreness and actual injury.

I’m actually trying to find the minimal amount of tension necessary to stretch the ligs just past the point where stretching becomes effective, so I can stretch at that tension as often as possible without risk of injury.

I guess what I’m having trouble accepting is the amount of growth that comes from supposedly building new tissue. It seems to me that increasing the flexibility of the tissue would explain most gains better. Obviously I need to do some more research, and probably should have before starting this thread.

But for now I’m going to pitch my tent in the stretching camp. (so to speak)

The ‘damage’ paradigm isn’t that immediately appliable. Damage when refferred to the tissue, so structural damage, is a consequence of very high forces and is bad : tissue requires a lot of time to; cellular damage starts, adversely, at very low levels of strains: actually, any force, whatever small, causes cellular damage and growth, according to some studies; you can give a read to these posts, if you are interested on the subject:

cellular proliferation
cellulare proliferation, cyclic loading nad creep
cellular damage

Although you are right, IMHO, that we basically are interested in stretching tissue (more precisely, connective tissue), it happens that responses of connective tissue to stretching can be different when duration, intensity, rest and other variables change. People who start wondering how we elongate our penis often tend to think at it just in terms of ‘plastic deformation’, like our penis was a piece of metal: wrong, it is living tissue, and it can be surprising adaptive.

I am thankful for your help, as always, marinera. I am certainly interested.

The goal of sport stretching is to make the ligaments, but also the tendons and fascias of the muscles more supple.

I already spread my manual stretching sessions (5 to 10 min.) throughout the day, but now I’m thinking that I might try this:
Instead of my non-stop 60 to 90 minute extender session in the morning, I am going to try to do a 20 minute extender session, stop and take at least a half hour break, then do another 20 min extender session.

I’ve suspected that the manual stretches have been responsible for the bulk of my gains, and from what I understand from some of the info marinera has provided is that after 15 minutes, the cells are as stretched as they are going to get, and that stopping the stretching at that point and starting again later is “more effective” than stretching the whole time.

Kind if like turning a light switch on and off dozens of times in an hour uses more electricity than just leaving it on for the whole hour.

That’s my understanding. How it applies to PE is another story. We’ll see.

LOL :)

My personal opinion is that you should use the extender in the ‘traditional’ way, Cantlook; manual stretching better fits with the short, cyclic approach. Again, this is just my opinion.

Stretching a muscle regularly will actually initiate hypertrophy, although in the longitudinal plane (more muscle sarcomeres are added in series, causing a fiber length increase).

Thanks, I’m not going to change anything from my current routine just yet because it’s still working.

I am however, trying to find out why it’s working, as best I can.

Is this a bad thing in the context of PE? I am researching what I can when I find the time but I’m no scientist (I put the “lame” in “layman”).

All I know for sure right now is that I’m growing, and learning.