These days I’m always insisting that you emphasize the ideal exercises for efficient mass workouts.
Those moves have specific characteristics or factors, such as optimal range of motion, ideal resistance curve, and so on (see the new ebook for details).
But other exercises can “feel” like they hit the target muscle harder or just as hard—you know, that wicked flex action for a cramping contraction. Take triceps, for example…
According to biomechanics expert and 2019 Drug-Free Mr. Universe Doug Brignole, the dumbbell decline extension is ideal.
That’s a “skull-crusher” with dumbbells on a decline bench. The resistance curve is excellent because you get the most resistance near the stretch point, when the dumbbells are at the sides of your face, and the least at the top where your arms are straight…
Remember, a muscle is strongest when it’s elongated and weakest when it’s contracted as the fibers crowd into a flex.
But what about a pushdown when you’re back away from the pulley—so that you get the most resistance at the flex point? Is that useless?
I say it’s an excellent “add-on” exercise for two reasons:
1) You’ve already trained the optimal resistance curve the with skull-crushers, so you’ve essentially weakened the stretch zone with very little stress at contraction…
So why not train the weakest range of the muscle with a contracted-position exercise like pushdowns after the extensions?
2) Number 1 makes sense because there is a high probability of unique muscle-fiber recruitment order with a different exercise. That means you can stimulate another “layer” of hypertrophy. Here’s what researchers Steven J. Fleck, Ph.D., and William J. Kraemer, Ph.D., had to say on the subject…
[Muscle fiber] recruitment order in the quadriceps for the performance of a leg extension is different from that of a squat. Variation in the recruitment order may be one of the factors responsible for the specificity of strength gains to a particular exercise. The variation in recruitment order provides evidence that to completely develop a particular muscle, it must be [trained] with several different movements or exercises.
It’s why I add to the ideal exercise with either a contracted-position or stretch-position move. Or if the ideal falls into one of those categories, I’ll add a compound exercise—for example dumbbell squats after sissy squats, sissies being the ideal.
I believe that’s how I got impressive muscle gains in my pathetic home gym training with only 35-minute workouts three times a week…
While I emphasized the ideal exercise, I followed with one or two sets of a missing-position move. That’s the basis of my reloaded Positions-of-Flexion method outlined in the new ebook.
So while you want to emphasize the ideal, don’t ignore feel if you want to make fast mass gains real.
Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, my complete workouts, exercise start/finish photos, and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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