Originally Posted by Tutt
No, I’ve described my treatment in fair detail a few pages back in this thread. But I have actually learned quite a bit over the past 2 weeks that will require alteration of the treatment. Basically what it comes down to is that rate of strain is MUCH more important than I originally thought. I knew that it was important because all of the research said that stretching very slowly allowed for greater elongation of tendons with much less damage. But in these studies, they usually didn’t test just how slow is best. There was one study that showed a 1%/minute strain was able to achieve incredible elongation. So recently I have tested a few different strain rates; 0.5%, 1.0%, 2%, and 12% per minute. The short summary is that 12% was WAY too fast and caused the tissue to stiffen dramatically. This means that when we quickly load into the stretch, the collagen tissues instantly stiffen and resist the stretch. This means in order to produce the permanent strain we would need to use really high loads. Then what happens is that our body will respond and thicken/strengthen the TA to be able to handle that high load the next time.
2%/minute was much better than 12%, but there was still a dramatic (I.e. Exponential) increase in the load as the strain increased. 1%/minute was significantly better than 2% and with heat I actually reached a point that the strain and load were increasing proportionately. 0.5%/minute was even better than 1%, but it wasn’t quite as much benefit, because what ends up happening is that it takes a REALLY LONG TIME, to achieve target strain at such a slow rate. Because for this to really work well, you have to start the stretch at about 0.5kg load, which for the most part will be well below the BPFSL.
For example, your relaxed length at 0.5kg load might be just 130mm while your typical BPFSL at high load might be 180mm. That means a strain rate of 0.5%/minute will be 0.9mm/minute. This means it will take 55 minutes just to progress up to the BPFSL. Then in my experience I’m able to stretch at that rate for another 10-15 minutes before I exceed 4kg load. But by then I’ve had my penis strained for too long and heated for too long, and my tailbone is hurting from sitting stationary for too long. So for me, it makes more sense to perform a warmup stretch at 1%/min and then do another 1%/min stretch on the second set just until I get close to the BPFSL and then slow down to 0.5%/min.
In the end, there are so far four elements to the treatment that are absolutely key.
1- Heat the internal tissues to at least 38-39C throughout all stretching. Then make sure that for the stretch close to and beyond the BPFSL, the internal tissues are heating to 41-42C for at least several minutes.
2- Try not to exceed a 1%/minute strain rate.
3- The ultimate strain must go at least 2.5-3.0% past the BPFSL to result in permanent elongation. And with a slow enough strain rate it can go well past that.
4- Once we reach the longest stretch, we need to lock the length and remove the heat to allow the tissues to cool in a fully extended state.
If there is a fifth key element, it will likely be to create a cyclic strain protocol, but so far it seems that the strain rate is more important than the cycles. And if we are limiting the treatment time to around 60 minutes, then multiple cycles aren’t really possible.
For the first part of protocol 30 mins of stress relaxation- we are building slowly our length to near our current day Starting BPFSL -
Then once we move on to US heat (40/42 celsius) we aim for the sweet 3% elongation strain. If we have to measure that - would be difficult to those doing over the leg US heating.
