[themccannman]

Greasing your surgical tubing greatly increases it's life since the tubing tends to crack over time from frictional rubbing with other surgical tubing or with the bars it's mounted to. Elastic materials lose their stretchiness based on how far they get stretches relative to their starting length.

I'm not a professional so this may be wrong, but with most elastic materials it seems that stretching the material a longer distance has an exponential affect on it's life; e.g. stretching the same tubing twice the distance for a half the number of repetitions seems to wear it out faster than stretching it half the distance for twice as many repetitions.

Thicker walled surgical tubing tends to live longer before it loses it's stretchiness due to the fact you can get the same force while stretching it a shorter distance. We also found that using more wraps of tubing while reducing the overall travel also increases the life of each piece as each one is being stretched less but you're getting a larger net force between all of the pieces.

Aside from that, just spend a lot of time checking your shot, if it's losing power re-wrap the tubing or replace it.