I'm more convinced than ever that we've stumbled onto something big here at the ITRC, something that could help you trigger extreme mass gains fast. I touched on it in the last newsletter, but I didn't explain its direct connection to how the biggest bodybuilders get so outrageously huge. If you've ever wondered why they get so big so fast, while you have trouble building a few measly pounds of muscle a year, you'll soon see that what we've found is a big piece of the puzzle. No, it's not steroids.

It's a little-known scientific training principle, and it's an adaptation of what the big men use regularly to grow like crazy—but they can't tell you about it because they don't even know they're using it! Once you understand the principle and apply it correctly, your workouts will get shorter as your muscle structures grow larger and larger. It's based on real science, and we have solid proof that it works. My gains with it have me more excited about training than I've been in 10 years!

First, understand that many researchers believe that the key to muscle growth is force output. The more force you can get your muscles to generate, the more growth you will stimulate. That's one reason compound, or multijoint, exercises produce more mass gains than isolation movements—you use more weight and you can increase the poundage more easily over time. That's progressive overload.

“Yeah, yeah, more weight on the big, compound exercises like squats,” you may be saying. “So what else is new?” Plenty! There's more to it than that, much more. For example, did you know that many researchers believe it's the turnaround on certain exercises, when you move from the negative stroke to the positive, that's the real growth trigger? Because that's where the most force occurs. Think about it. At the bottom of an incline press, for example, when the bar shifts directions, there's an extreme force overload as your pecs must stop the bar and then reverse it. But there's a problem. Many scientists also say that the pecs can't exert maximal force at the very bottom of the movement when there's too much stretch on the muscles; the key max-force point is below the middle of the stroke, but not all the way at the bottom stretch position. Therefore, if you can somehow overload that position, you can increase the anabolic power of any set exponentially! That means much more growth stimulation from any set.

That's exactly what the biggest bodybuilders do on almost every rep. Watch them do incline presses, and you'll see them reverse the bar before touching their upper pecs, exploding out of that position. (Some even bounce it off the chest to get the bar to the more advantageous max-force point.) By not going all the way down, they're hitting the point of max force with more overload. And an explosive turnaround makes it that much more effective—although it also makes it more dangerous (more on that in a moment; there's a much better way!).

Every compound exercise has it's own special sweet spot, although not all occur between the middle of the stroke and the lowest point of a full rep (changing leverage is a factor on many, like squats, so the sweet spot is higher). And not all compound exercises are created equal. For example, take chins vs. pulldowns. Same movement, same results? No. All the huge guys will tell you that the chin is the magic lat builder compared to the pulldown. They just don't know why. Here's the answer: While the sweet spot is just out of the arms-extended, or dead-hang, -position for both exercises, at the beginning of a pulldown you rock back, which reduces the overload on your lats at that important position. A hitch near the bottom of a chin (the sweet spot), on the other hand, can actually amplify lat overload rather than diminish it. No wonder chins are better for barndoor back development. Watch guys with the biggest backs do chins. They hang weight around their waists and usually explode upward before the full-stretch position.

So while the big men never shy away from the best mass exercises, they also—and this is key—do a lot of their reps with a slightly shorter range of motion and explode out of the turnaround with heavy weight. That's precisely what gives them excessive hypertrophic overload at the sweet spot of key exercises.

Am I saying you should start jerking and heaving giant weights? No! That's the wrong strategy, despite what the pros do (remember, a lot of them have been seriously injured doing that, from pec tears to biceps tears to vertebrae blowouts to shoulder trauma). Like I said, there's a better way to overload the sweet spot of the key exercises for incredible leaps in mass—a way that doesn't expose you to injury the way jerking excessive poundages does.

That way is X Reps. They extend a set at the sweet spot of all the key growth exercises. You get extreme anabolic overload at the end of a strict set, no jerking or heaving necessary. You keep your reps strict and safe, and when you can't get another full rep, you use short X Reps to extend the set and overload the fast-twitch fibers at the precise sweet spot—anabolic overload right where the muscle needs it most. (I described how to use X Reps on incline presses in the last newsletter.)

We're finding a lot of answers with our experimentation here at the ITRC, which should tell you that you should never stop experimenting. In fact, the upcoming fall and winter is the perfect time to give X Reps a go to max out your muscle size while your calories are up (you could pack on lots of extra mass by X-Mas). They've worked incredibly well for us. My training partner, Steve Holman, and I used X Reps on only one set of key exercises—while we were dieting strictly for a photo shoot—and we made the most spectacular gains of our training careers in one month, even after reducing our sets per bodypart by half. You read that right—with about half the amount of work, our gains accelerated at an unprecedented rate. Imagine what you can do without calorie restriction using X Reps on the best exercises. We've posted some of our before and after photos, that were taken about one month apart during our X-Rep experiment, here on our site (there's a big X Q&A section too).

You're definitely going to want to use X Reps on key exercises so you can pack on more mass just like the pros do, but without the danger of injury. Like I said at the beginning, it's an exciting muscle-building breakthrough you have to try to believe.

The X-Files are not intended as training advice for everyone. You must consult your physician before beginning any diet or training program. You may forward this email to as many friends as you want, but do not photocopy or reprint this report in any format without the written permission of the copyright holder.

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