Arnold was revered for his arms, particularly his sky-high biceps—but check out Arnold’s delts in the photo below. They were really popping that day.
We’ve mentioned in previous newsletters how Arnold had an instinct for training every muscle from the three critical angles—midrange, stretch, and contracted, what we call POF. And his shoulders were no different…
While he used overhead presses and dumbbell lateral raises for midrange and contracted exercises, he also used stretch moves that you rarely saw other bodybuilders doing consistently.
For his medial delt heads, that included incline one-arm lateral raises and one-arm cable laterals. Notice in the photo below how his medial head is stretched in the photo at right.
Midrange, stretch and contracted: Those three exercises each train a different target-muscle position. You not only train the target muscle through its full range of motion, it also attacks the 3 key hypertrophy triggers, according to Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D.:
1) Mechanical tension (with heavier training: midrange; example dumbbell presses)
2) Muscle damage (via microtears in the fibers: stretch; example one-arm cable laterals)
3) Metabolic stress (by blocking blood flow—during sufficient tension time—for cell swelling: contracted, example standing lateral raises)
That explains why POF is so powerful as the ultimate mass-building protocol. And it’s interesting to note that stretch-position exercises are the most neglected in the gym—but not by Arnold…
You see one-arm cable laterals above, but you can also find photos of him doing dumbbell flies for chest, pullovers for lats, incline curls for biceps. He did stretch moves for almost every muscle…
Could those moves be one of the big keys to his ahead-of-his-time mass development? Hmm.
It’s clear that muscle stretch is one of the 3 key hypertrophy triggers that you should attack for freaky muscle growth. In other words…
Include loaded muscle elongation for super-size stimulation! For more…
The Freak-Physique Stretch-Overload Workout contains mass-building research, stretch exercises for every muscle plus multiple workouts supercharged with anabolic stretch, including 3D Power Pyramid (POF) and Pure-Positions STX (slow-twitch exhaustion). For a limited time you can add it to your mass-building library, a $19 value, for ONLY $9 HERE.
If you want the main Position-of-Flexion mass manual, which shows you full-range POF workouts for every body part along with complete hypertrophy programs, you can get 3D Muscle Building
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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