I’ve been putzing around with my workouts, trying to put more mass on this 62-year-old body while staying healthy and injury free. The older I get, the more elusive extra muscle becomes…
Through all of my tweaks, I let one important mass accelerator fall by the wayside—and I didn’t even realize it until I looked back at my workouts listed in Old Man, Young Muscle.
The strategy in that ebook worked some mass-building miracles on me, which is why I went back to see if I was now missing something. Dammit, I was.
While some studies show that longer two-to-three-minutes rests between sets are better than one minute for hypertrophy, my rests were 20 seconds. But here’s the forgotten kicker: I was also using a 10-second rest before the very last set for each muscle.
While that may seem minor, it’s actually huge from a fast-twitch-activation standpoint. For example…
In the snapshot of my training log on page 62 of Old Man, Young Muscle, I list concentration curls with reps as 18, 9 / 7. I rested 20 seconds between 18 and 9 reps, then the backslash indicates only 10 seconds between 9 and 7 reps. That got my biceps growing quickly with a decent peak for an old guy (please ignore the flesh-colored beanie).
The reason that shorter rest before the last set works so well was right in front of my eyes.…
The Size Principle of Muscle-Fiber Recruitment basically says that you are firing mostly slow-twitch fibers during the first easy reps of any set, and your high-growth fast-twitchers don’t join the party until the very end of that set after the slow-twitchers are exhausted…
Beginning with one all-out high-rep set, then following with a second set after a short rest of 20 seconds will have the fast-twitch fibers heightened to fire.
In other words, the slow-twitch endurance fibers are still oxygen starved because of the high reps on the previous set, so they will crap out fast on set 2. Now you’re dialing in an excess of fast-twitch growth fibers without adding poundage.
But here’s what I was missing until I looked back at OMYM: After that second set, whether you’re doing a third set on the ideal exercise or an add-on-exercise, rest only 10 seconds between sets 2 and 3. That will speed up the fast-twitch domino effect even more, jacking up hypertrophy exponentially.
These short rests create a drop-set effect, which researcher Chris Beardsley says “allow a larger number of stimulating reps to be performed very quickly, making them a very efficient use of workout time.”
So my tremendous gains were the result of compressing the sets, allowing me to fire an extraordinary number of fast-twitch fibers in less than five minutes per muscle. That’s efficiency of effort…
Beardsley goes on to say that 1 set to failure plus 2 drops, which is essentially what I was doing but without weight reductions, equates to 30 hypertrophy reps. That’s a lot more efficient than doing four heavier straight sets with much longer rests. And my joints didn’t suffer any trauma, which saps growth recovery…
My old-man muscle advice: Give short rests between sets a try, and you’ll quickly pack on new size.
Shocker: Tomorrow you’ll see why a big-name high-intensity guru now says training to failure is not the best way to build mass. If you’ve been around this game, you’ll recognize his name. His statement floored me, as you’ll see.
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
How to Get Ripped Using Harvard Research
Harvard researcher Dr. Dimitrios Stamou discovered an enzyme that eats bodyfat. It’s helping women and men lose up to 21 pounds on average in less than 28 days.
Plus, it can help bodybuilders get freaky ripped faster than ever (see the pic of the 69-year-old who is shredded at the link below).
Remember, when you’re leaner, you look bigger than ever… And best of all, your body can MAKE this fat-blasting enzyme by eating these specific foods… and they taste GREAT.
Our colleague, the man who owned the gym that Lou Ferrigno trained at in “Pumping Iron,” turned us onto this. He’s using it himself to shed fat faster than ever, and he’s in his 50s. Get the details and see his photo HERE.