Q: How much muscle can I expect to gain the first month using X Reps?

A: There’s no way to tell till you start using one of the programs (there are a number of different workouts in the book, some of which take less than 30 minutes). How much muscle you gain depends on everything from your genetics—including recovery ability, muscle lengths, fiber makeup, neuromuscular efficiency—to your persistence to your experience to your diet to your ability to generate intensity on any given set (which can be a reflection of your genetics or personality).

We can say this, however: We collectively have more than 40 years of training experience under our belts, and we made faster gains in one month with X Reps than we have with anything else we can remember. It was very exciting—and somewhat shocking considering our training experience—to see weekly and often daily changes in our muscle size and strength. It was especially impressive in Steve’s case, as he’s a 44-year-old hardgainer who has to fight for every ounce of muscle. After one month with X Reps, he looked better than he ever has. Even Jonathan was beginning to think he was at his genetic limit, but X Reps helped push him to a new level of muscularity. (Check out the photos in our gallery section.)

Q: I’m a beginning bodybuilder, and X Reps sound like just what I need. The gains you both made with them are impressive. My question is, Can a beginner like me use X Reps?

A: There’s a section for beginners in the the Ultimate Mass Workout, which suggests a break-in period of gradual intensity upticks before a beginner starts experimenting with X Reps (the book provides week-by-week instructions). Those gradual intensity upticks are necessary because it’s a good idea to have your nervous system up to par—as in learning an exercise—before you start adding intensity techniques to it. While it’s true that X Reps are very safe, much safer than forced reps because the movement is pulsing a few inches as opposed to straining and writhing through the full stroke, beginners need to acquire nervous system coordination to maintain control in a fatigued state (at the end of a set of full-range reps).

If you’ve been training consistently for a few months, you should try X Reps on some of your exercises. They can make a set exponentially more effective. They’ll help to further increase your neuromuscular efficiency, or nerve-to-muscle connections, so you get stronger as well as give your muscle fibers a new anabolic stimulus. That means faster growth—if you don’t go overboard. Beginners are usually extremely enthusiastic and can overtrain quickly. That said, don’t use X-Rep partials at the end of more than one set of one exercise for each bodypart (see the workouts in UMW). For example, if you do one exercise per bodypart for two sets, use X Reps on the second set only. They are intense. Also, be sure to use them at the correct point along the stroke of each exercise, for example, just below the midpoint of an incline press. [Note: The Ultimate Mass Workout lists the single best exercise for each bodypart and the optimal X-Rep position for each.]

Q: I recently started training my girlfriend with Positions of Flexion (the full-range POF system that Steve developed). I have two questions: 1) Can women use X Reps, and 2) which exercises target the glutes [butt muscles] most effectively?

A: By all means women can and should use X Reps once they are out of the early beginner stages. Because X Reps extend the tension time of any set and provide a significant intensity uptick, they will trigger faster results with fewer sets (as they did for us). And while you may know this, please remind her not to worry about “getting too big.” Women don’t have to be concerned with building too much muscle thanks to their female hormone balance—more estrogen, very little testosterone. Your girlfriend should train just as hard as you do and use weight training with X Reps to sculpt her body. If she thinks a bodypart is getting too muscular, she can reduce the intensity (no X Reps) and/or the number of sets for that muscle group.

As for your second question, the best glute exercise is the free-bar squat. Have her go deep, no bouncing, so the glutes get maximally involved—and have her add X Reps to supercharge one set at every workout. Another exercise many trainees don’t realize is a great glute getter is hyperextensions. Do them after squats or as part of a hamstring workout, and squeeze those glutes hard at the top of each rep. If she does deadlifts or stiff-legged deadlifts, she can add X Reps on the hyperextension bench immediately after one set of of either of those. Trainees shouldn’t do X Reps on deadlifts or stiff-legged deadlifts due to possible injury from lower-back fatigue—but you can move immediately to hyperextensions and perform X Reps. That will do great things for the glutes as well as hamstrings.

If your girlfriend has an aversion to free-bar squats (most women hate them, and if you hate something too much you’ll more than likely quit), she can use the Smith machine. She may want to try one set of Smith machine squats, with X Reps, lighten the weight and after a brief rest do one set of step-back lunges on the Smith machine. That’s like a one-legged squat that hits the glutes hard. Have her add a set or two of hyperextensions, either as stand-alone sets or as part of her deadlift workout as outlined above, and you, er um, she will be ecstatic with her new posterior roundness.

"Steve and Jonathan's training techniques worked wonders. I transformed myself working out three days a week with their program."
—Becky Holman
(Note: For Becky's complete diet and training, see X-treme Lean )

Q: I have most of Steve’s books—Train, Eat, Grow; 10-Week Size Surge and Fat to Muscle 2. They’re in my bodybuilding library, and I refer to them often. Will you ever print Ultimate Mass Workout or will it always remain an e-book?

A: We started writing UMW with the intention of printing it, just like Steve’s other books; however, once we analyzed the pros and cons of an e-book, that format won out for a number of reasons:

1) When the book was finished, we were able to put it online immediately—no waiting a month or more for it to be printed.

2) You get full-color photos throughout. It’s very expensive to do color images in a printed book. When we saw all the color photos in place in UMW, it made a dramatic difference in the presentation, and we had no doubt that readers would prefer vivid color images over black and white. You’ll especially appreciate the various color pics we took in the gym before and after X-Rep training. Many of them are quite dramatic and have to be in color for you to get the full impact and detail.

3) You get the book immediately; you don’t have to wait three to four weeks for it to be packaged and shipped. The Web makes getting the book instantaneous.

4) An e-book is easily corrected. If something in the book needs adjusting, we can ammend it and replace the uncorrected version in a matter of minutes.

Of course, the downside is that once you purchase it, the book resides on the hard drive of your computer in PDF form. There’s not a hardcopy version you can take on a trip to read or keep in the bathroom; however, you can print it out or take it to Kinkos and have them print it for you (they can even bind it for you). Then you have a printed version for handy reference.

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