How to Tug

Our recommended approach for foreskin restoration is to wear gentle skin tension 8 – 12 hours per day (70 hours per week), and wear the passive Your-Skin Cone to keep your skin comfortably retained over the glans during all non-tugging hours. So it’s a 24/7 commitment. Some guys exploit their working hours for tugging, others find they can sleep with a device on. (Nobody’s telling you to tug in bed, only you can judge what’s safe.)

Whichever method you choose you’ll find out about the details through videos on our Instructions page. You’ll fine-tune the tension setting by the 4-Hour Rule. Remember that productive tension can be so gentle you could forget you’re wearing it.

If you choose to do some of your tugging at a job or other situation where you can’t afford to have the unexpected happen, you need to carefully consider a fail-safe scheme. Devices will occasionally get loose. TLC Tugger recommends Tug N Wear for comfort and security, but there are lots of approaches including simply running a shoelace through a tugging handle and pinning it inside your pants. Even if you’ve taken reasonable measures, unforeseen events could create the need to explain your restoration process. Just remember you have nothing to be embarrassed about (unless you cut someone’s genitals) so just state the facts and thank someone for their compassion as you heal yourself.

For many guys the first step to recovery is defeating the hairy-shaft issue that circumcision caused. Any hairless skin you expand will only decrease the amount of hair-bearing skin dragged onto the erect shaft. But removing hair from any skin that can be drawn onto the shaft is a good idea. Keeping a pair of robust tweezers by the toilet makes it easy to keep the jungle tamed. Once you have ample slack, then trimming with an electric razor will be sufficient because the stubbly skin will never get near a partner’s mucosa.

Before you even de-hair, it is essential that you take before pictures under reproducible conditions including bright light. A very common regret among tugging men is that their first picture is not directly side-by-side comparable to their after pictures. Capture front and side views, and in various degrees of turgidity.

People ask how quickly they can expect glans rejuvenation. Short answer: Give it a few weeks to notice the start of distinct changes. Recall that the head of the penis and any surviving inner “skin” (between the glans and the circumcision scar) is not skin, but in fact has a mucosal surface. For maximum health and suppleness of this area never tolerate dry friction there again. Never again wash the area with anything but clear water. While washing, the more you prod the area to loosen and flush away the surface cells, the less of that epithelial matter will remain to be digested by beneficial bacteria. With excess washing you would accumulate less of the natural emollient and so you would rejuvenate more slowly.

Most restorers will eventually arrive at a state where they find the rolling and gliding of the slinky slack skin tube to be an improvement that contributes far more to their sexual enjoyment than even the new glans ticklishness does. Read more about the benefits of restoring.

For some the cosmetic nature of the outcome is of the utmost importance. TLC Tugger has devised an approach for targeting the Future Flaccid Roll-over Point (FFRP) to ensure the most natural looking puckered result.

Finally, set a goal. It needs to be specific and measurable. As you gain slack you’ll start to be able to show flaccid coverage. But while someone might for example say they want to tug until they have perhaps 50% glans coverage while flaccid, it doesn’t quite work like that. The penis takes on various states throughout a day. So improvements in glans coverage are not seen in how MUCH of the glans is covered. Rather, as you gain slack the glans will be covered more of the TIME throughout the day. So someone’s flaccid coverage goal might be “I can show flaccid coverage for a solid half-hour, ten days in a row.”

Whatever your goal, remember that when we first start tugging SOME of the apparent gain in slack is due to the initial stretching and distortion of existing skin, not due to addition of new skin cells. When you finally stop tugging the distortion will subside so some of the gains will seem to recede. We recommend tugging 10% past your goal to account for this. So, for example, if you hit your goal after 40 months of tugging, keep up your regimen 4 more months for a total of 44 months of tugging.

TLC Tugger recommends measuring your progress monthly while erect. The erection is a more consistent “yardstick” against which to gauge the skin’s expansion. We devised Forced Erect Coverage (FEC) as a systematic way to measure slack. It’s an indication of how far over the glans the skin can be forced to reach while erect. Having enough slack to force-cover the whole glans is called 100% FEC.

To really fool a doctor into thinking you’re intact you might need at least 200% FEC, meaning the skin can be forced one “glans-length” past the tip. For tightly cut guys that goal might seem very remote, but the journey starts the day you commit. These next few years will come and go whether you tug or not. You’ll get dressed every day whether you include a tugger in your ensemble or not. You may as well have something to show for it in a few years. TLC Tugger and our free online User Forum will be here to support you the whole way.