Interesting 'Science of Flexibility'

I’ve been searching for something exactly like this for a LONG time. Finally I chanced upon it when researching ligament creep.
I am just reading through it now but I wanted to post it up here as I know quite a few people are interested in the science of PE. (I had to post it in the Newbie forum because I haven’t made enough posts yet.)

Science of Flexibility - Michael J. Alter - Google Books

A few words are cached due to the search I was running at the time but just ignore them.

Some interesting quotes:
Pg 41
Referring to stretching collagen:
'Such an extension is believed to occur initially through a straightening of the fibers followed by a gradual slip of one fiber relative to the next. This movement results in an increase in crystallinity or orientation that strengthens the intermolecular bond and increases resistance to further elongation.. Thus, simply stated, collagenous fibers allow elongation until the slack of their wavy bundles is taken up.'

In my opinion this is a good explanation on why newbie gains come quickly then dramatically screech to a halt, and thereafter any gains become much harder.

Referring to stretching elastin:
'Elastic fibers yield easily to stretching but return to virtually their former length when released. Only when elastic fibers are stretched to about 150% of their original length do they reach their breaking point.'
Pg43

Expansion of vascular tissue is also discussed which is of relevance to the enlargement of the corpus cavernosa. Pg 65

On pg 67 it discusses nerves which is also of relevance due to the dorsal nerve running along the top of the penis. (I think that is the right name?)

Pg 71:

'Elastic, or recoverable, elongation (I.e. Something we don't want at Thunders :P) Is optimized by high-force, short-duration stretching at normal or colder-than-normal temperatures. Plastic or permanent lengthening is more likely to be produced by low-force, long-duration stretching at elevated temperatures, followed by tissue cooling before release of tension' (last point is intriguing)

If anyone reading this comes up with some more relevant quotes then please post!

I found that last statement intriguing as well. Some have postulated that cooling down in an extended state was beneficial
but this is the first time I have ever seen any evidence supporting it.

Maybe one of the moderators could move this over to the PE Science Forum for you? Oh, wait… we don’t have a PE Science Forum ;)
Don’t make me beg…PE Science Forum

It wasn’t the light bed-time reading I was planning, but interesting it was.

Expansion of the vascular tissue is going to be more relevant to the blood vessels. The CC’s enlargement comes far more under collagen and elastin.

So lets grow more blood vessels and improve vascular health to the penis after the newbies gains reached it’s limits.

So how do we grow more blood vessels? Longer fatter more plastic blood vessels?

Rather like with muscles, I think it would be increasing the demand for oxygen and nutrients from those blood vessels. In other words, gaining more tissue in the penis.
They may also expand under pressure and remain expanded to a certain degree.

I know they state that low-weight, long-duration is best but I think the low-weight has still got to be more than the current crop of ADS. Otherwise everyone would be wearing an ADS and gaining inches.

I am quite interested in one item on the list of factors that determine tissue lengthening. That item is ‘the number of cycles of repeated loading’.

A huge problem with leaving a hanger on or leaving a clamp on for too long is the cut off of blood supply which starves the tissue of oxygen and other nutrients. Eventually killing them and causing discolouration.

I am interested to know what the effect of doing say.. 1-2 hours of clamping a day BUT taking a 1 minute break every 5 minutes. I know this would be tedious but if you are sitting at the PC for around that length of time then it wouldn’t be much of a hassle, plus you might not have to do it everyday depending on what kind of girth gains it gave.

With hanging it would all depend on how easy the hanger is to put on and take off and also how much it cuts the blood supply off. I think something like the redi-stretcher would be good, however I am uncut so it wouldn’t really work without wrapping. In fact most hangers require wrapping and in my experience of wrapping, this too can cut of blood supply to some degree if it is tight enough.

A question to the vets: Are there any recurring trends you see within the routines of those people that gain a relatively large amount? Do they do really long workouts? Maybe it is that they do hanging or that they do clamping etc.(I.e. A specific exercise)?

Oh, and one more questions: What are the longest lengths of times you’ve heard of people clamping and/or hanging in one day? Was it consecutive or broken up?

Hmm.. I’m still not sure on whether the gains are plastic stretching or IPR.

I mean if it was all plastic stretching then surely you could just stretch it to the length you wanted by increasing hang time and watching it draw out like a string of blu-tac. It would also imply that the girth would reduce as your length increased.

There is however a slight difference between plastic deformation causing permanent elongation and ‘creep’ causing permanent elongation. I am aware that creep is pretty well established as something that happens to tendons/ligaments/skin.

The fact that ligaments don’t heal very fast makes me wary of using high weights for hanging when it is focused on the lig. We might be thinking we are causing micro-trauma and by repairing this we lengthen the ligament but perhaps all we are really doing is storing up cumulative damage to the ligament.

I saw a drawing on Thunder’s which showed how downward stretching puts the ligament in tension and SO and upwards stretching put the stress on the penis shaft. I personally think the latter would be a good way to go. Ligament lengthening is probably done by plastic deformation. Tissue expansion (e.g. Skin and elastin etc.. Things with good enough blood supply) will hopefully occur by IPR hence not limiting PE by having a ‘limit of stretch’, so to speak.

Great read. Thanks for posting this, Bunch.

Here is a real interesting thread along the lines of your qoutes, bunch. Penile stress/strain relationship

However, I’m sceptical about the last qoute about permanent lengthening - they use the word "likely". Does this mean they have nothing to back that up, or is it explained why it is more likely later on in the text?

Oh, here is a post about measuring after cooling down elongated: More penis lab results

Great post, it goes with my conception of the mechanism very well.

I always try and cool down in an extended state, it just intuitively made sense, I’ve even tried icing when extended, but this didn’t seem worth the effort as far as results. Really the “cooling” down may just be about a 10-20 degree difference, but I don’t have any research on that.

So your saying plastic stretching can not cause penis enlargement?

Since the collagen fibers in the tunica are in different directions, like the grain of wood in plywood, that isn’t quite true.

Mgus: Thanks for the links. The use of the word ‘likely’ does seem to imply they aren’t certain. Being that it would be very hard to test this with a live ligament in a person or animal I think the main tests they can perform would be plastic deformation on ‘dead’ tissue. Being that it is dead it doesn’t even allow for IPR.
With those experiments that mbuc performed we have to think about a few things. Firstly: when low weight is attached to the penis it isn’t completely stretched to it’s full length as the tissue is ‘spongy’ as a whole. When you extend it by adding weight you aren’t actually causing the internal ligaments and tissue to being extending (even elastically). I think it is rather like stretching out a sock. You can stretch it to a point where it suddenly becomes taut. Then further force actually puts small extensions on the fibres of the sock. With a sock it is likely that the area of the stress-strain curve in the plastic region is very small. I.e. You can elastically stretch the fibres out quite a bit but then they will not actually permanently deform (much) as soon after you enter the plastic deformation region, the fibres will reach failure stress and snap.
I think this is the same as the penis. I don’t mean to say that it is easy to ‘snap’ the penis as you enter the plastic region.. Moreover the plastic region is only small and it would take a lot, lot more force to actually reach failure.
If however you reached the plastic zone and then kept the weight at that point, you could cause creep. I don’t fully understand creep yet however.

If the above that I have written about plastic deformation was true and if it was the only way the penis can lengthen then it would severely limit how far the penis can be enlarged; Unless creep can cause a slow elongation far past the length gains given by the original gains caused by entering into the plastic region and thereby justifying the concept of long hang times being key.
However it should be noted that you must enter the plastic region before creep will occur. Leaving the weight on for even a million years wouldn’t cause creep if you are still in the elastic region. (As far as I understand it)

Conclusion: Use weight addition to fully extend penis to natural length. Use weight addition to pass through the elastic region and into the plastic deformation region. Maintain this weight for extended periods of time to cause creep.

Now if IPR is the mechanism of enlargement.. That would require us to come up with a different model.

Dicko7x5: No.

What do you mean by this?

I’m not sure what you meant when you said it implies one would lose girth when gaining length? If the volume remains the same it’s not really penis enlargement. And why do you think that happens? That’s the only thing that confuses me otherwise it’s a good read. I like the sock analogy! :)

Hmm, so hang for 10 minutes with hot wraps… then jump into a cold shower while still hanging… I’ll give it a try.