Q: Great timing on your recent P/RR/S newsletter! I’m using the X-Rep Power/Rep Range/Shock Workout [on pages 103-114 in the 3D Muscle Building e-book], and my size and strength are totally thriving on the variation, like nothing I’ve ever tried before. What a great concept! Now I’m reading The Ultimate 10×10 Mass Workout, and I want to put that method into the mix, using mass merger techniques. Where should I use it, Power, Rep Range or Shock week? And on which exercises?
A: First, we must give credit where credit is due: a big thumbs-up to Eric Broser for creating the Power/Rep Range/Shock protocol. We simply altered it to include full-range Positions of Flexion and X Reps. To put it in simple terms, Power week you do all low reps; Rep Range week you do one exercise in the 7-9 range, another for 10-12 and the last for 13-15; Shock week is supersets, drop sets and other intensity techniques to totally thrash the muscles.
Now to explain 10×10 for the uninitiated…
You take a weight that you can do 20 reps with, but you only do 10—every rep in a two-seconds-up-two-seconds-down cadence. Then rest for 30 seconds and hit it again, 10 reps. You continue until you complete 10 sets, which takes about 10 minutes. While the first few sets will feel light—almost too light—by the eighth set, you’ll be struggling to get 10 reps. And on sets 9 and 10, you should only get eight reps or so no matter how hard you try. If you get 10, you need to use more weight. The last few sets should be brutal.
Where do you put that quick-hit mass attack in the P/RR/S protocol for a full mass merger? There are a number of possibilities:
- The most logical place would be on Shock week, as it’s a seriously shocking technique. For example, you could do one big compound, or midrange, exercise for each bodypart in 10×10 style. Try the Ultimate Exercise for each muscle, as listed in The Ultimate 10×10 Mass Workout. That’ll make for a fast and furious Shock week.
- Do the standard Shock-week workouts, but end each bodypart with a stretch-position exercise in 10×10 fashion; that will give you key fascia expansion; the fascia is muscle-fiber encasement that can constrict and restrict growth. (Think about it: You get 100 reps of elongation after the muscle is pumped from previous exercises you do in superset or drop set fashion. You will feel it. There’s more on fascia expansion in the X-Rep Update #1 e-book.)
- End all bodypart workouts, whether you’re in Power, Rep Range or Shock week, with a contracted-position exercise in 10×10 fashion–kickbacks for triceps, leg extensions for quads, laterals for delts, etc.
If you’re excited about 10×10, that last choice will probably be the best, as you’ll use it at every workout, finishing with a skin-stretching pump and burn you won’t believe. As you read in 3D Muscle Building, one of the problems we had with Power week was the lack of long tension times and minimal pump—all sets of all exercises with low reps didn’t do it for us. However, ending with, say, cable flyes for chest in 10×10 style solves the problem exponentially—and it only takes about 10 minutes.
We classify 10×10 as one of those effective X techniques—as in X-cruciating: It hurts but it works. Give it a try to pack on new size. [Note: In The Ultimate 10×10 Mass Workout we discuss how some bodyparts like calves and forearms respond better to 8×15 rather than 10×10.]
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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