Yesterday I mentioned X-Reps, and that the growth spurt is real…
If you continue to get stretch loading, you’ll keep the gains; however, like any training manipulation, growth will slow from the initial surge…
For those who don’t have OMYM2 or only skimmed it, X-Reps are stretch partials at the end of a set…
Those three to four end-of-set X-Rep partials can spur more high-threshold motor units to fire as well as boost area-specific growth, such as near the ends of the muscle.
That happened to my partner Jonathan and me back in the day when we first began using them. Yesterday I mentioned the X-Rep results photos that appear in the new ebook. Here are those photos taken five weeks apart—no drugs, no Photoshop…
I hesitated to put them in for a few reasons:
1) We were much younger—I was around 40 and Jonathan was around 30
2) We had just tightened our diets for the final phase of our photoshoot prep
3) The after lighting was in a professional studio at the photoshoot with one of the best photographers in the business, Michael Nevuex
4) In the after photos we were tanned, oiled, pumped and full of wine for vascularity (good times)
I mention all of that because I don’t want to give anyone unreal expectations.…
Another thing to keep in mind is that when we went into that 5-week X-periment, we reduced our training volume to compensate for the intensity uptick with X-Reps (similar to the full-POF workout that appears in The Ultimate-Mass Exercise Guide).
It was the perfect transformation storm, as our bodyweights stayed near the same as we saw new muscle and rippedness—a sign that we were losing fat and gaining muscle.
And yes, the heightened hypertrophy surge did not continue, at least not at the initial fast pace. That’s when we pivoted…
We continued to use X-Reps periodically, but also developed some unique variations, like Double-X Overload, X Fade, and others, which spawned new gains.
I’ll have more on those X variations and how to apply them to the Old Man Young Muscle 2 workouts in future newsletters.
Grow with the latest mass-building research:
Old Man Young Muscle 2 is here, giving you insight into most recent hypertrophy studies, how to apply them to your training, and a complete mass-building workout featuring STX, Speed Sets, and X-Reps. And for a limited time, you can get The Ultimate-Mass Exercise Guide FREE, which includes a New Positions-of-Flexion Workout. This is a $29 value, but for a limited time you can add both ebooks to your mass-building library for only $19 HERE.
