I’ve mentioned that Mr. America and Drug-Free Mr. Universe Doug Brignole has been training differently lately. He’s now 62 years old—my age.
Here’s a nice sun’s-out-guns-out shot of him before judging a Muscle Beach contest in 2018 (Tony Redding photo)…
Doug’s workout methods and my workout methods are eerily converging, which I hope indicates that we’re both on the right track.
He’s down to four sets per muscle twice a week, which is what I’ve been doing for almost two years now, as outlined in my Old Man Young Muscle ebook.
I’ve adopted his superset method at some of my workouts for some change to gain, and, of course, I’m still emphasizing his ideal exercises with a vengeance.
Plus, I’m now trying to keep all of my sets in double digits, none below 10 reps. That’s something I got from Doug as well. He’s recently moved to higher reps with great mass-building success: 30, 20, 15, 10.
But while Doug is now training all of his sets close to failure, he doesn’t quite push all of them as I do. If you’ve read my new ebook, you know that I do every set until I can’t crank out another in perfect form. Here’s Doug’s take…
The inability to complete the full range of motion of a repetition is essentially ‘failure,’ although it doesn’t hurt to do a partial rep (first 1/3) or two before stopping the set. But not all sets need to be taken to complete failure in order to be productive.
I usually use 85 percent maximum effort on my first set (2-3 reps in reserve); 90 percent maximum effort on my second set (1-2 reps in reserve); 95 percent maximum effort on my third set (1 rep in reserve); and 100 percent maximum effort on my fourth and final set (zero reps in reserve). Your muscles will be plenty stimulated to grow if you keep your reps close to failure.
Notice that Doug is also suggesting a few partial reps after hitting failure on the last set. And those partials should be in the stretch phase of the stroke, like the bottom one-third of dumbbell decline presses, for optimal fiber engagement.
I coined the term X-Reps for those partials in the stretch position back in 2003, and they worked incredibly well for me and my training partner at the time, Jonathan Lawson, as well as countless others after the release of our first X-Rep ebook The Ultimate Mass Workout; however…
You can’t go crazy with them. As Doug said, only do a few on the very last set after you hit failure to rapidly engage more fast-twitch fibers.
What I’m discovering is that they produce new growth quickly, but at 62 years of age, I’ve had to pull back to three sets per muscle when I use them. Remember, I’m going to failure on all sets, unlike Doug…
Almost 20 years ago when Jonathan and I first experimented with X-Rep partials for five weeks prior to a photo shoot, we reduced our work sets to five or six sets per muscle, training each twice a week.
And we made some of the best gains of our lives within a five-week period. Here are the photos…
Keep in mind that Jonathan was about 30 and I was around 40—a lot younger, hence the ability to recover from five to six sets plus X-Reps on a three-way split. We were training Monday through Friday with weekends off (the exact workouts and X-Rep designations are in that first ebook, but I now regret many of the exercise choices)…
We were completely drug-free, but photographer Michael Neveux’s lighting abilities are phenomenal and magical for highlighting detailed muscle mass. We were actually shocked when we saw our most-muscular photos, which confirms that Mike is a master physique photographer. He made us both look pretty damn massive…
If you’re interested in a blast of new mass, give X-Reps a try to pack on new size.
New: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos, and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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