What Benefits does an ADS provide?

Just to clear up any misinformation, yes I used a noosestyle extender but not one that makes use of only the noose to attach. If I had to compare it to anything, its kind of a noose/afb hybrid, so instead of sandwiching yourself between two pipes you sandwich between a pipe and a strap. This makes a huge difference in comfort with tension applied, or at least it does for me, not a lot of reports that I’ve heard of other people using a similar attachment method, so maybe it’s just me. I would start a set probably somewhere around 7 or 8 lbs. and end around 4 or 6 lbs. due to my stretched length increasing from anywhere between 1/4 to 1/2” during the set. I do this for a hour, twice a day, if my schedule permitted.

I would certainly say what I did was closer to hanging than stretching in the way the force is applied. Only without the temptation to keep stacking on the weight, which in my opinion, hangers do too soon, thinking from the same perspective as lifting weights at a gym.

marinera,

Nice post, thanks.

I’m sorry to repeat the examples that I know of, they are so limited. I talked to cantlook about his noose style extender some time back. I agree that it’s a nasty style of device. Cantlook’s opinion was that because he was using the extender for such short periods, the attachment wasn’t problematic. In other words he was willing to forgo circulation because he was not using his device in the mode of a traditional extender.

Baba talks about increasing tension beyond erect length. Who knows exactly what that means.

Westsidetoni combined his penimaster use with manual exercises*, so he’s not a good example. I can’t find good info for pudendum’s routine.

>Then, try to figure out what you are meaning with ‘low tension’ and ‘high tension’.<

I agree that this is a minefield. If, using your figures, we take 6lbs (~2.5kg)* as the maximum for an extender and compare that to 50lbs (~22.5kg) possible for manual or half that for hanging, it seems to put these devices in a different class and that seems fair.

I think an extender is probably capable of more, especially if springs are ignored. The nylon noose style is extremely aggressive and that has to limit the upper tension but the vacuum extender, it seems can go a little higher, the limiting factor being negative pressure/time. Even with an upper limit of 10lbs (~4.5kg), it’s distinctly different from the kind of tensions with other methods.

The way you lay out the differences in devices and tensions certainly helped me visualise those differences better. It’s been a while since I’ve though about it.

Maybe then I am mischaracterising cantlook’s experience. He has commented now, so I guess we have it from the horses mouth.

I think Dino would probably still credit hanging with the majority of his gains, even if he was very aware of stepping up weight gradually.

You are right, there is a lot of research showing the efficacy of extenders. It’s sponsored by manufacturers and small scale but a meta-analyisis would probably confirm what you are saying in that tension applied for a long period will cause change. How much tension, what kind of period and what’s the best mix of the two for fast gains is I think harder to gauge from the work that’s been done.

You’re conflating muscle and fascia with your barbell example. We know how muscle reacts to stress but the penis is not a muscle. Pumping at high levels has many problems and they probably aren’t related to the tension placed on the interesting (to us) inner tissues of the penis but rather the effect on the skin and circulation of lymph and blood.

I would argue that most, if not all members, get their gains through an increased manual routine over time, so their experience is not dissimilar to mine and that if you compare the results of manual PEers with extender users, extender users take much more time to get results and by the time they get them, they are often using combination routines, so it’s hard to judge what is effective. It’s no clearer on the manual side what is effective in what proportions because by default manual PEers almost always use a combined routine. It’s probably fair to argue that combination routines are beneficial in part because of the interaction of the components but I still don’t think it’s useless to look for examples of pure extender use, which is why I think your own experience would be useful in this context.

I can give you my own. I have tried separating out the different techniques in PE. When I tried extenders for the second time, I only used an extender, I tensioned to beyond erect length and increased the tension as the tissue relaxed, much like DomXZ, ignoring springs. I wore the extender for 6 plus hours a day in 20 minute bursts with 5-10 minute gaps for a period of 6 months. I noted no gains. As this happened long after my manual PE, it could be argued that I had prevented further gains through the manual PE or that some maximum had been reached.

cantlook,

It does look very like a noose.

I’m not afraid to call a noose a noose. ;)

All I was trying to relay is that something about the device I used (details of the device are of no benefit to this thread) made it comfortable enough to use forces more equivalent to hanging than typical extenders so my experience might more accurately be compared to low weight hanging, rather than what is typically considered commercial extender use.

The below, at and past stretched length seems to be the preferred method of commercial extenders to gauge their devices. I personally think it is their way of safely building up to a functional amount of force by starting way under, causing nearly no force, and slowly building up from there. Makes the instructions almost idiot proof, and scale-able to any size using the device without making things too overly technical for the user. I don’t think it is the best way to gain, but I think it the best way they’ve come up with to avoid lawsuits by guys trying to strap into devices incorrectly sized.

I got my 1.25 inch 1/4 wire stainless steel o-rings at my local hardware store, but these would be pretty close to the size from the site:

Visually the 2.4 oz’s seems to eliminate turtling if that is all I want to do. Now, if there is a benefit in avoiding turtling, let the discussion continue, but the o-rings do as good a job for me as the “Get a Grips” do to simply stop turtling.

I have some of MB’s weights that go past the 10 oz lead PEs. They use silicone sleeves and come in 6, 9, and I think 12 oz’s. M/B’s ADS is very comfortable, and stealthy, but it is more weight than I would want for rest days. The 2.4 oz is just for rest days. Some days that I stretch I will use MB’s ADS in between stretches, or I could pile on 1.25 I.D o-rings. I haven’t tried, but I think I could get up to 10 or more ounces of o-rings if I wanted to go that route. It is just about doing things in the most efficient, safe, and convenient manner, and you are probably doing the same.

Yes, stood at the same 7.8 inches halfway through hanging and during the following decon break.

At the end of a session it’s a little cold. To illustrate, less than 5 seconds of massage is sufficient for colour and warmth to return. I’d go longer if I could but I’d rather not risk anything.

Hello all, I’d like to post something relevant to this discussion from what is known about the behavior of connective tissue.

We really need to stop talking about “microtears” when we are talking about PE. The idea that you accumulate a bunch of microscopic tears which then fill in to produce a net increase in the size/length of tissue. This idea has been around forever in relationship to both skeletal muscle hypertrophy and connective tissue deformation, but as these processes are researched more and more it is being discovered that this process is actually responsible for very little in all kinds of tissue size increase. This is really not how the remodeling of connective and soft tissues works. Instead, we should speak in terms of microfailure.

To explain briefly, when connective tissue is relaxed it’s collagen fibers are crimped up and resting in many directions that are roughly parallel to the grain of the tissue, but not perfectly parallel to the axis. And some fibers are more parallel than others. As stress is applied to the tissue and it becomes strained, the crimps are first pulled out of the collagen fibers that are the most parallel to the grain, followed by the next most parallel and so on. As this is happening, fluids are squeezed out of the collagen matrix causing relaxation and further elongation. The process continues and the fibers are pulled into a taught and parallel formation. As strain increases, the first fibers to be uncrimped begin to fail, they break. This breaking of collagen fibers is microfailure.

Here is the important part: once several microfailures have accumulated as the tissue is strained, when the stress is removed and fluid flows back into the collagen matrix, the fewer number of remaining intact collagen fibers have less ability to recoil and pull the connective tissue back to its original size because of the resistance of the interstitial fluid - depending on the amount of microfailures, the tissue stays in a slightly more elongated state than before and is remodeled/healed in this new state.

I can’t say that keeping the tissue elongated will aid this process or not, but it certainly will not hurt. But with or without an ADS you should still gain. When athletes stretch joints and tendons they manage to create plastic deformation without remaining stretched all day, and despite what some might think, the process is basically the same with all kinds of traction.

I can see one possible reason why and ADS might help: crosslinking. When collagen matrices heal, broken crosslinks between collagen fibers are re-linked as well. Keeping the tissue elongated MIGHT cause these crosslinks to reattach further down along the fibers adding to net elongation. Maybe. But the structure of a collagen matrix is very hierarchical, as in the fibers relative position in relationship to one another does not change much whether relaxed or strained (until failures begin to happen, that is), so I could just as easily see this not happening. I’ll look into it.

About toughening: as microfailures heal in connective tissue, the tissue is remodeled tougher. ANYTIME there are microfailures the tissue heals tougher. Additionally, more microfailures equals more toughening. So, generally speaking the relative stress being applied being higher will produce more toughening because more relative stress produces more strain. Note that this is RELATIVE stress. Hanging 20 pounds by a newbie will produce a lot of toughening while hanging 20 pounds by Bib probably will not. ;)

Hopefully this helps you guys come to some conclusion with this. I’ll keep my eye on this one, it is shaping up to be very interesting!

Roots

Completely agree Rootsnatty. I told the same thing many times (although not that well worded) without apparent effect. Bad money vs. good money.

Mem, again if you read the threads I linked, and do other searches (which would require a hell of time, since you should search for threads with the name of the commercial devices, often mispelled), you’ll see that there are many people reporting gains with the extender alone.

The fact that more experienced users do use different techniques at once, is true for any techniques: you hardly find somebody who has done manual stretching or hanging alone, they will near always practice a bit of jelqing : this was hat Bib walso suggested, just to make an example. That’s what I suggest to everybody who wants to start using an extenders too. But you know that if you read enough reports, notice what they did or didn’t, etc., you can come to a persuasive conclusion about this or this other technique. If doing more than one technique at once makes impossible to conclude if this or this other technique is effective, than that is true for all PE techniques, and you are left with zero.

Nope. When you lift systematically a big weight, your muscles and tendons become stronger and thicker. Tunica albuginea is tendon-like structure and is what costraints penis size, so to speak. If you apply too much force, the predictable outcome is a thicker, stronger tunica. When you want to stretch muscles and tendons, you apply a low, prolonged force. So it’s not true that everything happens in physical training abides different principles than PE (that would be a very strange thing, actually). We do say that PE is not weight lifting exactly because uneducated people believes that the penis becomes longer (or girthier) like a muscle, what is not true - but that is a different story.

Which means that you refute any evidence that extenders do actually work. Which again is irrational IMHO. Or maybe your point is that manual stretching is more effective than extenders? That’s not the point we are debating. I never said one technique is better than the other. And if I’m not wrong, I wrote a pretty detailed thread on manual stretching, so being looked at like an extender spammer is not what I deserve.

20 minuts bursts, it is not the way to go. You have to wear it the longer you can - at least 45 minutes per ‘set’. One hour set is better than 3x20 minutes, everything else being equal. Research shows that connective tissue under constant traction goes on lenghting for up to 6-8 hours (although most of the lengthening happens in the first hour or two). That is not to say that longer sets can’t give gains.

I have posted my experience many times, there isn’t really anyhthing special in it. I gained with jelqs, hanging and wearing an extender. Each of this technique gave me about half inch in length. The extender was the last thing I used, and I used it alone apart very short and infrequent jelqing
just to avoid my EQ going completely to hell (which did anyway, but I had a bad EQ to start with). I think I knew pretty well that so little amount of jelqing gave no gains, since I had enough experience with it. Of course if one wants to play the overly skeptic, he can go on arguing that even one stroke of jelq per week will make unclear if the extender was effective or not…

Now I have to say something about ‘newbie gains’. You say half inch is ‘newbie gains’. Well, I think you are having an unrealistic picture of the gains of people. Most of people will be lucky if gain a honest half inch their first year, with a serious dedication. And a large percentage of people will not gain much morethan half inch , even being consistent for several years. Half inch is a lot, if correctly measured.

No, 20 minutes isn’t going to do much as far as stress relaxtion goes.

Test how far beyond your EL you can comfortably go. First condition to 1-hour sets. Once done you start below your EL, wait a few minutes and simply pull the penis gently. Very little force is needed to increase stretched length, eventually surpassing EL. From below EL I can increase stretch length comfortably by 3.5cm and even further If I want to.

DomXZ, traditional extenders do not work based on stress relaxation, any extender with springs is primarily creep-based. I don’t have time to explain, headed to work, and I don’t know how to post a link, but if you go to my thread “My Stress Relaxation-based Traction Device in Action” I explain this to Austfred pretty early in the thread. And there are some good explanations about viscoelasticity in general. You are correct though, 20 minutes probably will not be long enough for most to make gains through stress relaxation-based methods.

Maranera and Mem, to cause plastic deformation you want to JUST overcome the threshold for this kind of deformation. It is the safest way to go about it and will cause the most favorable deformation:toughening ratio. I think either extending or hanging can accomplish this, but with hanging the weights need to be kept low enough to JUST overcome the threshold, then increased gradually over time to stay ahead of the toughening that will occur. Extenders do not have the ability to increase stress beyond a certain point, but they are applied for a much greater time. This low force, very high time combo will probably show slow and steady results for a long time, as shown by most the empirical and anecdotal evidence of their efficacy, but without increasing stress at some point the gradual toughening of tissue will eventually cause the gains to slow as the stresses involved lose the ability to produce enough strain, eventually even to point of imperceptibility.

So you are both right in a way, but I tend to agree more with Maranera on this one.

Roots

Looks like this thread has gravitated to an argument among Moderators.

Nice to see all have agreed with me. :rolling:

Rootsnatty;
You can use an extender with springs easily as a stress relaxation unit.
The moment you extend the screws above the give of the springs it is a stress relaxation “device”. Its then static.

Now, what would be interesting is to find out at what point/traction a penis is above the BPEL. This might give some hints at growth potential and the state of toughening.

Dickerschwanz, good handle, your point about stress relaxation is a bit off. Now, even though I’m at work, I must explain - and get paid to do it! ;)

So, both stress relaxation and creep are viscoelastic properties of connective tissue, and they both happen due to the exact same process: when a tissue is stretched fluid is squeezed from the collagen matrix. This fluid generally reinforces the matrix so as it is removed the entire collagen matrix becomes softer, pliable, and more susceptible to stretch.

Now to define the two in terms of their place in traction methods.

Creep: continuing increase in elongation that happens at a constant level of stress.

Stress relaxation: continuing increase in relaxation (pliability) that happens at a constant (completely static) elongation.

Any time an extender has springs it will be applying a constant stress, and actually in your example of tightening it down until the springs can’t give anymore/are fully compressed, the constant stress is the greatest. Constant stress causes creep because the tissues are forced to stretch more as they relax. The only way to make an extender a true stress relaxation-based device is to remove the springs completely and use only the adjustment nuts or the addition of more rod segments to apply further increases to stretched length as the tissue relaxes. Or buy a “slider” type extender.

I hope this clears this up. I can give further explanation if needed as well.

Monty, you definitely started another moderator debate! Nice work! I like the debates when they remain civil and don’t get nasty.

Roots

Oh, forgot something. Dickerschwanz, was your question about how far past BPEL (actually BPFSL) a stretch is required to be to produce plastic deformation?

I never used an extender based on springs actually. Better said: I never used a commercial extender. If what Rootsnatty is saying is true, than there isn’t much of a difference between hanging and extending either than the amount of tension. So what would come out of this, is that very low weight hanging for long period of times is better than hanging with higher weights. Wait, we already knew that right? :) Anyway if the extender can get fixed at given length for how much time is needed, than I imagine it could allow stress relaxation, and work on differenct principle than hangers do.

I would start a public petition for declaring illegal terms like ‘healing’, ‘trauma’ and ‘plastic deformation’ referred to the penis. When studies on connective tissue began to be read by PEers in search of enlightnemnt, they read that to achieve plastic deformation the tissue has to be stretched over its maximum length for, say, 5%. Now, those studies were not in vivo, and what ‘plastic deformation’ actually meant was ‘big injury’. This is not what we want.

An injury will not make your penis longer, possibly it will make it shorter. The process through hich the penis becomes longer is way more similar to how the muscle becomes stronger (or longer!) than to the way an inanimate object can be made longer .
It is a matter of biological adaptation, which is mostly delayed. On the short term, what you can see are just viscoelastic changes; it is, basically, when you rest that the processes that will make your penis bigger will happens, not when you stretch. That’s why you hear speaking of ‘cementing’: your penis is temporarily longer, but it is still adapting to this new length and not all the stuff needed to build it longer are yet there.