Q: Your last few newsletters on muscle damage have been interesting and have me rethinking some of my workouts. My question is, do you think the Speed Sets you have in the Old Man Young Muscle workouts are more damaging than regular sets? Should I keep doing them?
A: First, let’s establish that speed reps are not plyometric—they are not ballistic moves. In OMYM I describe them as slightly faster than the standard 1/3 tempo…
The reps in a Speed Set should be one second up and one second down. Always maintain control, no throwing the weight.
What’s interesting is that the 1/1 tempo is how most of the biggest bodybuilders train a lot of their sets. I just saw a video of Arnold doing pulldowns at a recent workout, and his cadence is still 1/1.
I only saw one set, so perhaps he uses some slower-tempo sets, too. I won’t judge the seven-time Mr. Olympia. The one I saw was what I call a Speed Set…
For your Speed Set, it may help to count “one thousand one” on the way up and “one thousand two” on the way down. That will prevent momentum, which disengages muscle fibers…
Ballistic, or plyometric, reps are a completely different animal. In fact, research is showing that plyometrics don’t have much hypertrophy benefits. Maybe that’s why basketball players don’t have gigantic quads.
Here’s researcher Chris Beardsley’s take: “When a single fiber shortens slowly, it is capable of producing a high level of force. When a single fiber shortens quickly, it can only exert a low level of force.”
He also says that the high-velocity 2X muscle fibers, which have little to zero hypertrophy potential, do almost all of the work in ballistic movements…
Other fiber types shut off—and with a lot of ballistic training, moderately fast 2A fibers can convert to 2X, losing their ability to increase in size. Not what muscle-mass seekers want…
That’s why a controlled 1/1 cadence on Speed Sets is important—that maintains engagement of the fibers with the most growth potential.
Do Speed Sets have more damage potential than standard sets? I would say no because the tempo isn’t that different. There may be slightly more stress at the turnaround, when you shift from the negative stroke to the positive, but not enough to do excess damage…
Even so, you may want to stop the set a few reps short of failure since it’s the last set you’re doing for a target muscle in the OMYM workouts.
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.
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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