Q: Your before and after photos at the X-Rep site are impressive and, to be frank, almost unbelievable. You say that the next year after those were taken, you gained another 10 pounds of muscle. What exactly do you attribute those new gains to? They’re almost unbelievable considering you were both advanced and supposedly drug-free?
A: “Supposedely” drug-free? Thank you! We always take an anabolic-steroid accusation as a compliment. We totally understand the doubt, considering how tough it is to build muscle, especially 10 pounds of it. We often think of the late Mike Mentzer, former pro bodybuilder and high-intensity advocate, who often suggested imagining 10 pounds of ground hamburger piled on a table. That’s a lot of meat…
Pack that 10 pounds of beef all over your body, and you will have made a spectacular muscular transformation, shocking most people who hadn’t seen you in a while. True, we were already fairly muscular, but it still did a lot for our physiques. Here are our before and after photos from the X-Rep year, followed by a photo from the following year (with 10 extra pounds)…
Both of us were considerably thicker with the same muscular detail (in fact, we had some people say that Jonathan looked too big with the extra muscle—too crowded with mass). Those photos, along with your question, had us wondering the same thing you asked: How’d we do it? We went back to our second e-book, Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building. In Chapter 9, “Our X-citing Results and Findings,” we chronicle the techniques we used that post-X-Rep year (and the complete workout is there as well)…
We learned, or shall we say relearned, a lot rereading that chapter. Here are 3 intensity tactics from that e-book that are key…
X/Pause. Our X-Rep year we added end-of-set X-Rep partials to the second set of big midrange execises, like Smith machine incline presses. The Beyond X year we did the second set in X/Pause style. Here’s our description from that e-book:
When we reached central nervous system exhaustion, we lowered the bar to the max-force point, just above the chest, and pulsed, firing the bar up to about the middle of the stroke on each X Rep. We usually got about four to six, then we racked it. After a six-second pause, we would unrack the bar again, take it down to the X spot and blast out about three more X Reps.
X-tra intensity, X-cellent growth response.
Stage sets. We often used this technique in place of or in addition to the X/Pause set on big midrange exercises. Here’s our decription of the Stage tactic from that e-book [think of incline presses again]:
We would rep out on the bottom two-thirds of the stroke first, which encompasses the X spot. At nervous system exhaustion we pushed the bar to lockout, usually with partner assistance, and then we would do the top one-third of the stroke to lockout. That’s a weak area on some exercises, so a little partner assistance was usually necessary on each of those [top-end] reps. You may think the top range is mostly triceps on incline presses, but by doing the bottom two-thirds of the stroke first, we essentially pre-exhausted our pecs, so we really felt the top range partials in our chests—believe us! It’s a wicked burn.
X Fade. We used this on single-joint isolation moves like leg extensions, leg curls, concentration curls, pushdowns, etc. Here’s the drill from the Beyond-X e-book, using leg press calf raises as the example:
We did a set to central nervous system exhaustion, but this time instead of lowering to the X spot, we got the weight into the top, contracted position, usually with partner help, and did X Reps there, then we lowered to the semi-stretched position and finished with X Reps at the sweet spot.
You’ll have to fight back the tears and fears with this double dose of end-of-set Xes.
We suggest you do as we’ve often done in the past and use some or all of those in your current workouts for a blast of new mass. In other words, try those on for size—maybe 10 pounds of it to totally transform your physique.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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