Loading, lengthening, healing.

Nah that’s already great and exactly what I thought. What you describe as anecdotal evidence is in the same domain the PI’s are.
One has to hear into his own body/dick :D . + Some common sense..

I don’t think that there will ever be a perfect “how to” that works for everyone the same - impossible like finding the perfect body workout for everyone..
But like how we try to get near that in the pe community. All guys thinking and working on it produce a good amount of wisdom.

I can take very much with me what I read in this thread and some others.
I’m now in the process of doing a routine that incorporates all this stuff that makes sense while monitoring my dick thoroughly.
I think I open up a progress thread where anyone can follow.

Many thanks for now marinera.

No problem Dickerschwanz. I’ll read your progress thread with a lot of interest.

http://www.jbc. org/content/282 … /23081.full.pdf

Apologies if this has been posted before but I found this interesting.

I can’t remember either if that was posted before. It suggests that there could be CC gains due to sole manual stretching, for example. Thanks Capernicus.

What interests me is if gains are actually growth rather than injury/repair then how does that affect our approach ?

Does cell division only happen while under tension or continue for some time after ?

Not sure I understand this question. The mechanism that starts gains is always the result of a stress, so some kind of damage, even at a microscopic level, has to be caused. This isn’t what we call ‘an injury’, isn’t something that requires ‘healing’ as we mean this word. The difference would be that less time is required between working sessions and lower risks of an injury are involved.

Note that the article you linked is speaking of smooth muscle; we are mainly interested in the growth of connective tissue, because TA is a sheat of connective tissue which is limiting the expansion of CC.

The article above posted about sub-failure damage shows that the latter is often the case.

I probably didn’t ask the question very well, I’m really still trying to understand the process here.

So mild sustained tension as in tissue expanders causes cell division and what I would call true growth, as in new healthy tissue identical to the surrounding tissue, no scar tissue or adaptive toughening so presumably a “more is more” approach and no need for deconditioning ?

This is certainly what the sellers of extenders are claiming.

On the other hand we have the micro injury and repair idea with recovery time, increasing workloads, plateaus, deconditioning breaks, scar tissue etc

Are these process distinctly different from each other or are they just opposite ends of the same biological process ?

Maybe what happens in reality is we have a bit of both ? I’m still not sure !

I see. We could have a bit of both in some situations.

Low, prolonged tension cause celluar proliferation in connective tissue without anything that resembles to an injury; a study that was posted here before (I have no time right now to search for) shows that cellular proliferation begins with even the lightest stretch. What is unclear to me is in that study is : does that means the tissue is growing longer OR stronger OR both?

On the other hand we have a mild-injury model, caused by high loads, with repair, time needed to heal (not scarring, though, it seems) etc..

Maybe there is room for another kind of adaptation between the two mentioned, that can be triggered by medium tensions, which could be the optimum as far as rate of gains.

I guess the evidence from tissue expansion is that the new tissue is identical, not stronger, I would guess it only gets stronger if it needs too .

The interesting thing about tissue expanders it that the pressure is only increased say once a week so the stress starts high then is reduced as the body grows to remove it.

Maybe this kind of cyclic static stretch is more effective than constant tension ?

Anyway Happy new year :)

What means cyclic static stretch ?

In the case of tissue expansion it means holding a stretch at a fixed length for some days so the tension in the tissue is removed as it grows and then increasing the the tension again.
So the tension is fixed and applied in cycles where as extenders for example use springs to keep the tension constant so the tissue is always under the same tension.

I hope I’ve explained it well.

Point me to this evidence please. Which kind of tissue expansion do you have in mind? Skin is different from tendons which again is different from smooth muscle etc.. For example, in the specific case of the article you linked, both hyperplasia and hypertrophy where observed, so the tissue after the stretching wasn’t identical as before.

‘it only gets if it needs too’. So what does that means?

‘The interesting thing about tissue expanders it that the pressure is only increased say once a week so the stress starts high then is reduced as the body grows to remove it.’ - you are supposing already solved the question you need to answer to. How do you know how the tissue reacts to this stress? Actually, growth isn’t the only way connective tissue adapt to a stress, things are a bit more complex than this otherwise this thread wasn’t so long :) .

Your right that skin is different from tendons and smooth muscle but I wonder just how different ?
The tissue expansion I’ve read about was in connection with skin and leg lengthening, leaving aside the bone which is actually cut you still have veins, arteries, nerves, fascia and skin which presumably all grow to accommodate the new length.

I’ struggling to understand this as much as anyone but my best guess is, just enough low tension causes growth and high tension causes toughening or injury. But it’s just a guess

Not again leg lenghtening, please!! :)

I suggest you read this thread from the start if you are interested on the subject. It isn’t that big, after all.

There are posts in the hanger’s forum from individuals who said that they didn’t start gaining till they put on 10 pounds or more while you will also find posts from individuals who are gaining from less weight. Assuming everyone is honest and accurate, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that we each have a tension threshold that must be met for making gains, and that threshold is unique for each of us.