Theory on tissue toughening and expansion, with numbers. Everyone please read.

I’ve been thinking about some of the issues related to toughening and expansion. I read somewhere once on a thread that PEers tend to turn from ‘growers’ into ‘showers’. I.e. flaccid size increases at a faster rate than erect size. I’ve been thinking about this a bit and I think it may have to do with tissue toughening, and if we can measure a fairly accurate co-efficient of expansion, we could have a way of tracking toughening. For example:

Person A has 4 inch flaccid length and 6 inch EL before starting PE. Co-efficient of expansion is 6/4 = 1.5 = EL is 150% greater than FL
Three months in, he has 5 FL and 7 EL. Co-efficient of expansion is now 7/5 = 1.4 = EL is now only 140% greater than FL. The 10% expansion loss can be explained by tougher tissues inside the penile structure, which inhibit greater expansion because they are now harder to stretch during an erection than they were before.

I figure if I could construct a database that tracks the amount of ‘loss of expansion’ and get Thunder’s members to start inputting their numbers, I could construct a relative range with percentiles and such. That way, members would be able to see where they fall, and new members would be able to refer to the data to judge if they are working too hard and losing too much of their penile tissue’s expansive capability (as compared to how much expansion loss other members have experienced in a given time frame). One could then also separate groups of members according to the type of exercises they did, and maybe there would be correlations between expansion loss and certain exercises. This would be very useful because then one could argue that some exercises cause more or less toughening than others, and one would have actual numbers to compare just how much. In conjunction with overall exercise effectiveness, this could give an accurate picture of the pros and cons of doing a particular exercise for a particular PEer with a particular ‘co-efficient of expansion’ and a particular historical ‘loss of expansion’. Alternatively, instead of measuring loss of expansion based on either length or girth, one could use flaccid volume vs. erect volume to get a more complete picture. In fact I think this would probably be more accurate since it incorporates the fact that penile tissue expands in more than one direction during an erection, because it’s constructed like a mesh.

Another idea would then be, well how do we keep loss of expansion as low as possible? I don’t have any concrete ideas on this, but perhaps trying an exercise/recovery supercycle - e.g. workout for 3 days, off for 6 days, with some very light ADS on the 6 off days? That way, it’s like building a mini-decon cycle into the actual routine. Just an idea.

I admit this model’s numbers would be somewhat guesstimated, and also, this model functions on the assumption that everyone’s penile tissue has more or less the same properties with regards to toughening, but I think it’s definitely a step towards being more scientific and empirical about this.

Once again, this is all based on what I’ve been reading in the forums. To really ascertain what I’m claiming here, I’d have to do some number crunching. I definitely feel like my overtraining has made me a victim of expansion loss - I’ve got a fairly large-ish 5x5.125 flaccid hang, but that only expands to about 6.3 x 5.5 most of the time. Compared to some of the statistics I’ve seen in the PE database, that’s really poor expansion.

This is an interesting idea. I’ve always thought that the grower-to-shower transition reflected an increase in flaccid size due to various effects of PE, rather than a shortfall in erect size due to overconditioning. As nothing is really known for sure, it would be good to collect the numbers and have a look.

I personally have found that the tendency for PE to make me more of a shower reverses during my decon breaks. The longer I am away from PE, the more of a grower I become again. I suspect that the shower-to-grower transition may be some kind of message that my penis is ready for a new round of PE.

Exploring this phenomonon further would be a good idea. Rather than constructing a whole new database, you might have a look at Sizemore’s data (see my signature), and see whether you can either extract what you need from there or perhaps work with him or whoever has taken over that effort to get the data you need.

I like the theory that the interwoven elastin in the tunica is gradually “worn out” by PE - so our dicks don’t contract as much when not in use. Under full blood pressure, the elastin is just stretched out to the limit of the rest of the tunica (I always forget the name of the other fibres!).

Makes sense.

I think Modest’s idea of using it as a measure for when decon is complete is worth looking into.

I feel it is important for us to have some objective measure for decon completion…especially as deconditioning becomes a more critical part of our thinking here.

Good job dog.

Maybe we could just use the PE data on this site, plug it into an excel spreadsheet. It would have to be formatted somewhat though, because I’d have to create a new graph/data set/bell curve for each particular time interval e.g. 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 8 months. I think those sound about right because generally most PEers don’t really get noticeable gains before 2 months, and most PEers don’t PE beyond 8 months without taking a break (I think?). Either way, this would be a good way to develop a rudimentary model with some statistics and bell curves and such, that can give individual PEers something to refer to to get an idea of how long to work out for, when to decon, how long to decon, etc. The model could also tell us something about the behavior of penile tissue under stress over time and what signs to look for.

I also still think its most powerful application could be in terms of developing the ‘ultimate’ workout routine: one that maximizes the growth upside while minimizing the tissue toughening downside. I mentioned a 3 on, 6 off type workout in my first post (above) but that’s just an intuitive guess. What do y’all think? I’d really like it if we could pull more vets and knowlegeable PE guys into this discussion.

So…yeah I just read the above two paragraphs…man, sometimes I can sound like a nerd…

Then wouldn’t the reversing effect during your decon breaks imply that the tissue becomes softer, and so you get more flexbility/stretch/whatever you want to call it during decon?

One point I’d like to correct you on: I assumed that the shortfall in erect size isn’t necessarily due to overconditioning. It can be, but doesn’t have to be. In my mind, in terms of this theory, any repetitive strain whatsoever will cause conditioning, and therefore will have a “grower-to-shower” effect.

I think the example that Doghound gave in the first post in this thread indicates more of a loss of contraction when flacid than a loss of expansion when erect. Maybe when all of the micro-tears heal, the scar tissue or whatever forms a less uniform structure. An analogy would be to crumple up a sheet of paper vs folding it neatly again and again. There’s still only one sheet of paper, it just takes up more space because it’s structure is more erratic. After a long decon break, the tissue might realign itself in a more uniform pattern allowing the tissue to occupy less space.

This also reminds me of another seemingly unrelated yet possibly important analogy. When I was a teenager, I used to race sailboats in the summer and would on occasion collide with other boats if I was aggressively jockeying for the best position on the starting line. Anyway, we were responsible for repairing the hulls with fiberglass and epoxy. There are basically two types of fiberglass fabric you can use. One is a kind of woven cloth, and the other is a kind of cloth where the fibers are oriented totally randomly and erratically. We were told not to use the regular woven one because it is structurally weaker. If the random and erratic structure of the scar tissue and healed micro-tears follows the same rules, then it might explain the plateaus that long term PE’ers experience. Once the tissue realigns after a decon break, further gains should be possible.

VERY INTERESTING theory….who knows.

My thoughts have always been that flaccid hang is pretty much directly proportional to erect girth. A couple years ago they had the thread with graph numbers to show the trends.