The characteristics of the tunica albuginea revisited

Kyrpa, my understanding is you are not that extreme with your view, but agree mostly.
Would you advise me to change my protocol so that I only load up cold until 1.2kg e.g. and then start US heating until I have the 3.6kg I want?
Because currently I slowly load up to 3.6kg and only then start US therapy.
I am a bit scared of strengthening my TA too much.

Actually, as you can see Tutt left the door open, he didn´t define the absolute numbers here.
What are the stress levels in the TA occurring during the normal erection and intercourse then?

According to the studies modeling the penile structure stress at various pressure stages, the TA gets under a 0.149 MPa stress at CC pressure of 200 mmHg.
So, we already know the mean CC pressure at full erection is between 90-120 mmHg and during the intercourse reaching up to 400-500 mmHG briefly due to the buckling forces. That will give you an insight into stress levels during a normal erection.

Clampers surely pass the 0.17 Mpa stress levels of inflection point easily with their aggressive protocols BTW.

It is clear that as long as you are below loads providing stress levels seen at the stress-strain curve before the transitional region the strengthening isn´t such a short-term issue at all. This of course within the strain rate we, including you, are experiencing.
Sudden fast loadings incidents surely would change the concept.

The problem starts to ignite and fastly increases at strain and stress level at the region the tissue stiffens.
Hitting this transitional region with excessive strain rate or excessive load increments you are going that strengthening road within weeks on the program.
Within the stage of hitting the inflection point, you should be already under the heat.

So I think there is no rationale for the imperative heat use from 0 to 0.10 MPa. You can see what it means in kgs in your case using the calculator.
Thereafter IMO the heat is imperative. I suggest not to go beyond without heat.

The early stages of the transitional region are the latest without heat as having been the core of the protocol I introduced from the beginning.

If you like to tune the protocol of your more tissue friendly, tune the loading intervals on 2.5 minutes with as low as possible load increments to keep the strain rate as low as possible as a consequence.

I am in full agreement with Kyrpa’s points above. His calculator provides a simple and convenient way to determine thresholds more applicable to your individual anatomy, so I encourage use of that tool.

Otherwise, as a very simple guideline for the average person, I would recommend not applying any heat prior to a brief period of 1kg load. Then initiate heat while slowly increasing to 1.5kg. Then once a stable and consistent temp has been reached above 40C, slowly increasing to the target max load.

Yourself, Tutt and others frequently and strongly recommend against using US when not stretched. Does this attitude still stand when considering a full erection which is not being elongated by external force and is only lightly clamped (with enough tightness to produce an observable increase in pressure from looks alone - but not too much pressure/stress so to overshoot 0.17MPa; by light I mean minimal clamping tightness to produce an effect)?

Is US applied to this context -only light clamping at full erection- best avoided?

Are bundled stretches under US too great of an unknown risk?
I ask because it seems immediately obvious as an alternate approach to girth as it doesn’t require clamping or a full erection.
However, I posit it as risky based on my uneducated intuition, it simply seems like an exercise where things can go very wrong and where the heat may encourage and even cement potential tissue harm.

This stirs a lot of eager anticipation.

During the erection in the TA prevails easily, almost or even 0.10 MPa multi-axial stress.
We know if putting such a load (~2kg) on a flaccid unit, the penis will stretch out producing strain at a certain timeline.
There surely is enough stress already to be free to apply US.

During an erection, this is not happening because of the overwhelming structural stability which of course is non-existent when flaccid.
It is easy to overshoot the 0.17 MPa limit as at the 200mmHG (0.149MPa) pressure the clamp does not even feel very tight.

But anyways there have been several guys trying the US with clamping, some of them actually reporting great heat profiles but still not incapable of producing gains similar to reached when stretching flaccid shaft with the heat. It is a completely different animal.
The double-layer construction with intracavernosal pillars preventing free expansion has to be dealt with differently if aspiring fast gains.

I have, amongst others, tried bundled stretching with heat prior to the clamping and pumping. Not a breakthrough I am afraid.
Also, the pre-pumping heated stretch has been tried long enough to tell there are no massive gains available.

With bundled stretch, it is even easier to produce a perfect heat profile than with conventional stretching.

The biggest risk is that nerves getting stretched at a pinched state which is known to impair the nerve blood supply significantly.
This alone imposes significant risks of nerve damage, supposedly more than a strain on the nerve.
For avoiding this kind of risk, we need to keep the bundled stretch sets short, having pauses between the sets.
If heat makes any difference on these risks I can´t tell, unfortunately.

I don´t know if I answered your question or caused more confusion.

What I am up to investigate with the pressure gauge clamp, is to cause artificial engorgement with a low vacuum pump having the clamp already in place.
After this, then starting to compress the penis longitudinally inside the water cylinder having ultrasound heating.

Starting low enough pressure there is not this natural erection rigidity, the structural stability is absent.
As a consequence, the possible expansion is much greater than in conventional clamping.
This of course without exceeding the 0,17 MPa limit or in other words approximately 250 mmHg clamp pressure.

You can try to cause a semi-erection. Then manually clamp the penis at the base, grabbing the glans firmly inside the other hand.
Then push your hands against each other compressing the shaft. By that maneuver alone you can reach greater expansion ever possible with conventional full erect clamping.
This has real potential with the US. More than the usual suspects with girth.

I can also affirm that bundled stretches are not a breakthrough in girth and are also not superior for length. Once drawing out the force diagrams it becomes obvious why this is. Unlike length which only has a single structure for reinforcement, girth is defined by two independent structures as referenced by Kyrpa. The twist action creates excessive strain longitudinally long before it could ever create enough strain axially. Then once it does begin to strain axially, it requires even more longitudinal strain to engage the pillars. This is because the attachment points of the pillars is also free to rotate axially so there is nothing to pull against.

For length, it is inferior to simply pulling straight out which inherently targets whatever the limiting factor happens to be. Bundling places all strain on the outer layer of the TA and corpus spongiosum, when most are limited by the septum which is coincidentally least engaged through twisting. In short, unfortunately bundled stretches are worthless at best and counterproductive at worst, because if you reach the strain levels necessary for girth gains, you’ll have far exceeded the stress levels for length that will trigger your TA to toughen rapidly making any future girth or length gains impossible without a lengthy decon.

After racking my brain for far too long on the concept of girth and the physics involved, I’ve landed in the same place Kyrpa articulated above. Fundamentally we are only able to adequately target the girth limiting structures by exploiting Poisson’s effect. This is accomplished as he described by bringing the penis into a semi-erect state (but not fully erect), restricting outflow of fluid, and then compressing the cylindrical structure. Kyrpa described the method that I believe is most optimal and would target girth along and around the entire shaft simultaneously. Another version compresses the shaft laterally instead of longitudinally. Imagine a clamped semi-erect penis that is then placed between two flat surfaces (dorsally and ventrally) which are squeezed together. This would require girth expansion to the sides. I don’t like this version as much, but the concept is the same.

Thanks a lot Kyrpa!
You were more than generous with your extensive answer which explains some nice features of the penile anatomy as a secondary benefit for me.
I took the discussed adjustments to hopefully reduce the needed decons in the future :-) .
I am already quite sure how you mean it, but just a last thing for better understanding:
The 0.17 MPa of force or in my case 3.5kg only has to be held for a few minutes while using the 41 C, right?

If I look at how TimeIt does it, he builds up to his 0.17M Pa force under the 41C and only holds his “max weight” of 6.5lbs for 2.5 minutes.
With the older strategy, I held this force for 20 minutes.
As I understand it, you want to elongate the penis gradually while staying under 41 C for 20 minutes, but the max force only needs to be applied for a few minutes to get the last bit of elongation.
Crazy that you two guys are still improving the technique at this rapid speed (for me at least it is rapid to catch up haha) :-) .

So, if I understand it correctly after I reach the point where I no longer see growing strain (the inflection point is it called?) then I should stop my routine because anything over this point is just counter productive, correct?
The heat just makes everything faster, more effective and allows me to get little more strain than without it, correct?

For example. I just did a test, five rounds of hanging straight down without heat.

Starting BPFSL: 17,7cm
1kg for 20min
1st strain: 17,9cm (+0,2mm)

2kg for 20min
2nd strain: 18,1cm (+0,2mm)

3kg for 20min
3rd strain: 18,2cm (+0,1mm)

4kg for 20min (actually my first time hanging this much weight. I felt intense stretching almost all the way up to my belly button every time when I leaned forward or backward while I was sitting in a chair.)
4th strain: 18,2cm (+0mm)

3kg 30min
5th strain: 18,2cm (+0mm)

What this tell me is that beyond 3kg and 60min of hanging time without heat there is no more strain/progress going on, so there is no reason to continue in my workout that day, is that correct?
And I suppose that there is no difference between reaching inflection point in 60minutes with increment hanging or with 6 hours of extending, correct? (assuming that 6hours of extending is the mark where I reach the same strain as with 60minutes of increment hanging.)

Great you took the chance and found this out yourself.

That pretty much it. Exercise without results is a useless exercise. Tha can be said from your latter two hangs.
I fact if you continue to do that, it is counterproductive as your tissue starts adaptation to these forces by tissue strengthening.
Unless there is no additional elongation the exercise becomes a strengthening exercise.

Your strain(2.8%) produced is actually a decent result and most often enough to bring some gains already.
At this point we can ask someone relying on this kind of protocol, are you gaining with the protocol? Did you gain with it?
If a person never did, the strain is not enough for the individual to gain size.

So, at this point your wording ” The heat just makes everything faster, more effective and allows me to get little more strain than without it, correct?”, is
as far from correct, it can possibly be.

The heat would yield the crucial extra strain needed to pass the threshold to gain in the first place. It is not a little more strain, it is for non-gainer ’ The Strain’.

Your conclusion at the end is correct, there is no treason to continue hanging that day.

The strain is the determiner, if a user of either low-force extender or hanger finds the maximal strain for the day you can call it quits.

It’s great that you took the chance and found this out yourself.

That’s pretty much it. Exercise without results is a useless exercise. That can be said from your latter two hangs.
I fact if you continue to do that, it is counterproductive as your tissue starts adaptation to these forces by tissue strengthening.
Unless there is no additional elongation the exercise becomes a strengthening exercise.

Your strain(2.8%) produced is actually a decent result and most often enough to bring some gains already.
At this point we can ask someone relying on this kind of protocol, are you gaining with the protocol? Did you gain with it?
If a person never did, the strain is not enough for the individual to gain size.

So, at this point your wording ” The heat just makes everything faster, more effective and allows me to get little more strain than without it, correct?”, is
as far from correct, it can possibly be.

The heat would yield the crucial extra strain needed to pass the threshold to gain in the first place. It is not a little more strain, it is for non-gainer ’ The Strain’.

Your conclusion at the end is correct, there is no treason to continue hanging that day.

The strain is the determiner, if a user of either low-force extender or hanger finds the maximal strain for the day you can call it quits.

I assume this is in reference to “The elasticity and the tensile
strength of tunica albuginea of the corpora cavernosa” do you have a copy of this one? Interesting that the modern study that you attached says the difference could be due to the condition of the specimen. The 1990 study used specimens that were 12 to 24 hours after death whereas the modern study used specimens that went through multiple freeze thaw cycles and they think that could be the difference.

Edit. Sorry I go through this stuff very slowly as I don’t have much time. Will still be asking opinions on this in 20 years time 🙂

The dynamics change if the whole workout is managed under therapeutic heat from early on up until the maximum load with.

TimeIt is going forward with a hybrid of mine and Tutt’s protocols pretty much.

He keeps a low strain rate in control like I do, using load stages but not as I did he does not prepare the tissue with condition stretch but like Tutt, starts the heating at a low level, still at the toe region both, in strain and load respect. Load increments being very small all the way to control the strain rate indirectly.
In Tuttś model, he has the ability to monitor the strain rate directly.

In my concept, I did use the toe region loads to build up strain as maximal as possible before getting into transition level, or inflection point load with heat.

In the future, I will go similarly. Still working out from 0 to 0.10 MPa cold with stress relaxation stretch. Up to 2.1 kg max in my case.
Then applying the heat and for the crucial transitional region, load increments kept very low for keeping the strain rate low up until the 0.17MPa.

I am not sure if it brings the gain rate up but surely the possibility for significant strain is there with less potent tissue adaptation to load.
We haven´t seen TimeIt gain with his hybrid protocol, but I think he will.

The tensiometer test with a 10 mm diameter slice according to them produces E module of 100MPa.
If that would be the case we would need to increase the load ~19 kg for every additional 1% of strain at the elastic range.
Additionally, if you look closely into their numbers it would mean an additional strain of 1% after the inflection point would already rupture the TA. Surely we already know this can´t possibly be true.

If the elastic modulus would still be debated, the inflection point found in the thesis correlates strongly with the findings we can all plot out any day if we choose to.

Here is the referred study attached. Despite some questionable values provided it surely has some revealing info on it.

Thanks for that, I’ll get a look. I found it more interesting that the modern study gave reasons why it didn’t match the previous, making its own numbers seem inaccurate. But conversely some people’s numbers here match the modern study. Interesting stuff

Thanks kyrpa, there’s a lot to digest, and it took me some time to read your post.

Your scientific approach is really exciting.

I’m currently using an all day device, from very low to low tension 8-9 hours a day. I adjusted tension incrementally over the months and I keep seeing slow increments in both BPFSL and BPEL, so without knowing your scientific data, I can say that maybe I followed your theory.