I know I have been talking down a lot of styles in the last chapter. But before I build my case on why they are inefficient; we need to go over how the penis works.
The penis has 5 main parts the Urethra, the Glans, the Corpus Spongiosum, the Corpus Cavernosum, and Tunica Albuginea.
The urethra is encased in the Corpus Spongiosum. The urethra is what carries fluid out of the penis. The Corpus Spongiosum acts as padding to the urethra so that it does not become blocked during the pressures from sex.
The Corpus Spongiosum runs into the glans of the penis (the head.) It is largely the same system except that the glans has many terminal ends of nerves making it quite sensitive. The glans purpose is mainly sensation. It is softer than the rest of the shaft so that during penetration, it creates a buffer between the very stiff Corpus Cavernosum and whatever orifice said penis has entered.
The main working chamber of the penis is the Corpus Cavernosum. It has two distinct sides and is sheathed in the Tunica Albuginea. This essentially acts like a pressure vessel during an erection. Think of a tire.
When it is flat, it’s smaller in size and easier to push in.
Meanwhile, when full of air, it is larger and very dense. The same principles apply to the Tunica and corpus cavernous. This relationship is what makes your erections hard. More on that later.
These two parts of the penis are the primary focus of PE. The relationship in size of them determines the overall hardness and max size of the penis.
During an erection, the muscles in your pelvis relax. The Ischiocavernosus Muscle allows blood to fill both the Corpus Cavernosum and the Corpus Spongiosum. As the Corpus Cavernosum swells, it exerts pressure on the Tunica Albuginea, causing it to stretch and inflate.
Eventually, the pressure becomes so great that the small veins that allow blood out of the penis begin to occlude, causing stronger pressure to build in the Corpus Cavernosum. Eventually, either the Tunica cannot be stretched farther, or the Cavernosum is at max capacity leading to a full erection.
An erection is lost when the Pelvic floor begins to contract, cutting off blood flow to the penis. While the veins in the shaft slowly dilate and blood rushes out of the penis.
That’s the basics of the penis, A tube filled with a blood sponge. But we can take that a step further.
The Specific Tissue for Penis Enlargement
I already mentioned this, but an erections max size is controlled by the amount of Tunica and the amount of Corpus Cavernosum. But what makes up these two parts?
First, the easy one, Corpus Cavernosum is an endothelial smooth muscle. More specifically, sinusoidal endothelial smooth muscle has many perforations and cavities, allowing blood to fill the area. This tissue also lines your sinuses. So, if you are unlucky like me and sensitive to Cialis and Viagra, you can develop a wicked stuffy nose from them.
When people say the penis is smooth muscle, it’s a bit of a misnomer.
Technically yes, it is smooth muscle but a specific kind. This is similar to saying the Jugular vein is smooth muscle, as all blood-holding tissue has smooth muscle to allow for vasoconstriction and dilation. It is nothing like, say, the stomach. Unlike skeletal muscle, smooth muscle is a catch-all term for certain tissues that move involuntarily.
We know that endothelial tissue, the stuff that makes up the Corpus Cavernosum grows pretty easily everywhere in the body. The most common stimulant is hypoxia, The lack of oxygen in tissue. If a tissue goes without oxygen for too long, it sends singles to the repair mechanisms in your body to build more blood pathways to said tissue so there is ample supply in the future.
There is a method of physiotherapy called Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) therapy used to build up limb strength after immobilization from either surgery or injury. The main idea is to limit blood flow to your legs and enter the hypoxic state in a controlled manner. We can cause the regeneration of the endothelial tissue with many growth factors the fatigued tissue releases. On top of that, increase nerve density and muscle size, strength, and endurance.
In the body, High-pressure events also cause growth as the endothelial tissue is trying to relieve the pressure. This typically happens when a vein or artery becomes partially blocked. The tissue will actually start stemming out blindly, trying to create a way around the blockage. This is known as arteriogenesis.
Not to mention you can train the inherent flexibility of the tissue to hold more blood. There would be a reasonable limit to how much a capillary can stretch. And since blood literally carries nutrients and hormones, Endothelial tissue heals and grows extremely quickly compared to other tissues in the body.
In general, the growth of blood vessels is pretty easy and fast, so that part of the penis, Corpus Cavernosum, grows exceptionally quick under the right conditions. The tricky part lies in the Tunica Albuginea.
The Tunica Albuginea is an organized collagen structure. Collagen is what makes up all connective tissue in your body. The Tunica also has a small amount of elastin. Which allows the tissue to stretch more than collagen allows alone.
The Tunica is organized into longitudinal and latitudinal bands, one layer running up and down a shaft’s length and another one acting as rings over these bands. 95% of men will have two layers. 2.5% will only have one layer (forgoing one run), and the remaining 2.5% will have 3 or potentially more Tunica layers.
Organized collagen structures are found throughout the body. Like tendons that connect muscle to bone, the Tunica is exceptionally strong its size. Some kinds of fascia are also ridiculously strong for their size, like Fibrous Pericardium, which keeps your heart from overexpanding.
Much more research has been done on tendons and ligaments compared to fascia. However, the Tunica is more than likely more related to the Fibrous Pericardium than it is to tendons and ligaments. But collagen is a building block protein, so how it behaves to one stimulus in one tissue is how it will respond to the same stimulus elsewhere.
The main hypertrophic factor or tendons and ligaments is strain. Strain is the sense that the tissue is pushed beyond normal bounds of length without severely damaging the tissue. FATIGUE, not injury. Stretching in simple terms.
Collagenous tissue follows Davis’s law of adaptation. No work means a loss in size and performance. Too much work leads to injury and scarification and a sweet spot where positive adaptation in strength, size, and flexibility occurs.
Fascia, while it responds to stretching, much prefers sheer stress and pinpoint release for health and flexibility as well as changes in size. Fascia release is becoming a widespread practice in sports therapy and performance as it allows the muscle more room for operation and potentially more growth.
The real kicker about collagenous tissues is that they operate without a direct oxygen supply. Meaning the same growth factors from angiogenesis and arteriogenesis do not apply to collagen. This also means Collagen Fibroblasts heal, grow, and proliferate very slowly compared to endothelial tissue. In my research, it seems to be 3 to 7 days for collagen compared to 22 hours for Endothelial. This leads to an exponential increase in endothelial tissue compared to collagenous tissue.
By all accounts, growth will always be limited by the Tunica Albuginea.
The Science Applied
Let’s get into the theory with the basics out of the way. This primarily revolves around collagen proliferation, which is the growth bottleneck. As we described above, the Tunica is an organized collagen structure. Like all other collagenous forms, it adapts via Davis’s law of adaptation.
Strain is the name of the game. The amount we elongate the penis during a session determines the effectiveness of that session.
A penis stretched to its current max is at 0% strain. Meaning there is no excess tension on the collagen fibrils. As we elongate the penis beyond the baseline, we will start seeing collagen fibrils fail. Meaning they will not return to their baseline crimpled-up shape. 2% strain is the expected working range of collagen.
Meaning it will return to baseline shape after the stretch. 4% strain is where the tissue degrades enough to not return to its normal shape without damaging the tissue, just enough to tire it out for an extended period. That fatigue response releases growth factors to cause the collagen fibroblast to heal and overcompensate for the trauma. This over-compensation is slight growth of the tissue and increased strength and flexibility (we are largely trying to avoid major strength adaptations.)
At 6% strain, we begin to see partial tears in the collagen, meaning they will need much more time to heal. This also causes a greater stress response. At 8% strain, we see greater tears, and at 10%, we normally see full-on rips of the collagen fibrils, much like a torn tendon.
Source: Robi, K., Jakob, N., Matevz, K., & Matjaz, V. (2013). The Physiology of Sports Injuries and Repair Processes. InTech. doi: 10.5772/54234
From the same paper, a neat little trick happens when you load and unload a tissue consistently. The amount of weight needed to reach that level of strain/ elongation drops, and after about 10-15 cycles, the amount of weight needed to reach a certain level of strain no longer changes.
So, for us, the more reps and sets we do, the less amount of work is needed overall. With this and what I am calling “non-loaded fatigue,” we can largely avoid the strength adaptation as we don’t apply the stimulus long enough for collagen strengthening (on paper, at least.)
Beyond elongation, which is the most tried and true method for length, if we get handsy with it, we speed up results. With the addition of fascia release techniques, we can release growth factors without applying much strain to the tissue. However, the tissue will not do anything without fatigued tissue to treat. Using release techniques is a great tool, but it probably won’t do anything outside of treating Peyronie’s. Elongation is what causes the gains. Release techniques speed up the process by making fatigue much easier to generate.
To understand what we are trying to achieve, let’s briefly explain what traditional myofascial release is. First, what is fascia? The fascia was originally thought just to be a lining that surrounds all organs and structures of the body… basically, the glue that keeps things in place. But recently (as in the past 2 decades), research has shown how complex the fascial system is. First and foremost, it is a responsive system riddled with nerves. Meaning it stiffens and relaxes to stimulus. During impact or high strain, the fascia will tighten to have the body be better able to handle that stress. Over time the fascia can actually tighten so much to the point where it limits mobility and obstructs posture. (This is also seen in tendons and ligaments as well but is normally categorized as repetitive strain injury)
This is where fascial release techniques come in. With the use of pressure point massages and scraping techniques (formerly known as a gua sha.), we can reduce the stiffness from trauma, break up fibrosis and get the fascia back to its normal flexible state.
For penis enlargement, if we can make it easier to elongate with fascial release techniques (assuming the Tunica is a form of fascia), we can hit the target strain faster. This leads to less risk of injury and less time pulling on our dicks. With all that of that leading to more progress overall.
Lastly, remember how I mentioned that Collagen structures are avascular, so they are slower to heal? In some cases, they don’t heal at all without surgery (think full ACL tear.) If we give this tissue more time to recover afterward, we will have much higher chances of long-term success. Not to mention all the benefits of a slurry of growth factors without continuous degradation of the tissue, which include dramatically higher EQ, increased sensitivity, larger flaccid size, frequent erections, and in some cases, much higher libido.
Based on this paper, collagen Fibroblasts take 2-4 days to proliferate depending on environmental conditions. This is not a 1:1 to protein transcription but it’s a good starting point for base recovery periods.
One more thing on rest. Soft tissues reach peak degradation at 6-8 weeks of repetitive strain. Meaning that about weeks to 3-4, the tissue is at its lowest point in health. And we will probably not see fast changes beyond this point. So, it’s probably a good idea to take 1 week off every 4 weeks to maximize recovery and, more importantly, avoid strength adaptation.
To sum up, shorter but more numerous sets are more efficient than 1 set of the same length. The tissue becomes weaker as you progress in your session meaning less weight is needed overall. The turnaround time for repair is about 2-3 days, so our frequency should match. Hypoxia, while important, is not going to be the main driver for length. If we believe the Tunica is like a fascia, we can cause elongation and strain to set in quickly with some therapeutic primers.
Compared to the old ways, which were about extremely long sessions, with higher weights, as often as possible. This is a much more manageable approach. Who has time to hang weights off their junk 2 hours a day every day? Certainly not me and most men have ambition beyond penis size.
The Ligament Footnote
Long before I came on the scene, the suspensory ligament was a primary target of PE. There are two prevailing schools of thought. One, the ligament is what connects the penis to the body. We have 4-6 inches of penis rooted into the pelvis. If we pull deform that ligament enough, we can pull out the internal penis. Two, the suspensory ligament controlled the erection angle, so higher erection angles would have more penis closely riding the pubic bone, making it largely unusable for length. The first theory has no scientific merit. We cannot pull any internal shaft. It is so tightly packed and interconnected that if the “root” of the penis moved 1 quarter of an inch, it would lead to all kinds of pelvic floor issues.
Subtle difference at the base but notice the gradual change in skin insertion point. Shaft stays the same length but the penis sits farther out.( This diagram is dramatized )
The second theory is more accurate anatomically speaking.
There is no hard evidence that even cutting the ligament via surgery leads to more length. However, many that have practiced suspensory ligament targeting made gains (relatively quickly as well), but they are finite. Since there is no definitive science on it, treat it as optional when finally discussing routines.