Learning how to train properly and efficiently for the best mass gains is an evolutionary process…
Even so, you can work out for years thinking you’re on the right track and then—Boom!—an epiphany wakes you up.
The best example from our four decades of training is thinking that the exercises that allow you to use the most weight are the best mass builders…
Wrong.
As we’ve said, the target muscle doesn’t know poundage, only effort against resistance.
For example, you can upright row or overhead press a lot more weight than you can use on incline one-arm laterals, but the laterals trigger the most mass stimulation in the medial head of the deltoids. Why?
One factor is that the incline one-arm lateral raise matches the strength curve of the muscle. The weight feels heaviest at the beginning stretch position and lessens as you raise your arm.
We’ve shown this pic before, but here it is again to help clarify—from page 14 of Old Man, Young Muscle…
So at the top, your arm is almost perpendicular to the ground and there is very little resistance. That’s called early phase loading and late-phase unloading.
Now we’re not saying that you shouldn’t do dumbbell upright rows. In fact, we sometimes follow the incline one-arm laterals with one-arm dumbbell upright rows…
However, if you do upright rows, don’t allow your upper arm to raise past your shoulders or you can injure the joint…
Which is exactly why we do NOT suggest overhead presses. As biomechanics expert and Mr. Universe Doug Brignole has shown, it’s an inefficient and dangerous exercise due to shoulder-joint impingement.
And our shoulder damage can attest to that as fact.
The bottom line is that you should emphasize the ideal exercise to optimize gains in size. You can follow with less-efficient moves if you like, just try to avoid dangerous ones.
And yes, many ideal exercises don’t allow showboat poundages. But that’s a good thing as far as your joints are concerned—not so good if you need an ego boost.
Here’s a good closing quote from Brignole on the subject:
Sometimes people don’t want to know the truth…. They prefer the exhibition type of lifting where they are surrounded by people who are cheering them on because they are squatting 405…. It feels more ego gratifying. It takes someone with less ego, more intelligence, more logic, and less emotion to understand that you’re actually working harder than you need to—that you can get more benefit with less cost.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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