Mr. America Doug Brignole’s Training, Part 8

Is the ideal exercise all you need to fully stimulate a target muscle? Doug said absolutely—but he never convinced me.

I’m all in when it comes to emphasizing the ideal exercises. They are the best of the best, with some stretch and some contraction as well as correct resistance curve, etc. (see OMYM and OMYM2 for the key ideal-exercise factors).

But I think specific ancillary, or add-on, exercises can help accelerate hypertrophy. Why?

The scientific research, especially the most recent studies, point to 2 things:

1) Variation in fiber recruitment with various angles and resistance curves

2) Area-specific hypertrophy—areas or sections of the muscle show growth from different resistance curves (stretch loaded vs. contraction loaded)

The first is especially true with fan-shaped muscles, like the pecs and traps, but also is key with multi-headed muscles like biceps, triceps and deltoids.

Unique angles can activate different fiber bundles…

As for #2, that’s a more recent research discovery—specific areas of the muscle growing more than others from certain exercises. Doug did not believe it.

For example, he didn’t think stretch-loading the pecs with dumbbells flyes can create more inner-chest development via the sarcomeres, which is what the science was saying….

I thought it was entirely possible considering my own experience. I even sent Doug photos of the first Mr. Olympia Larry Scott who decided to attempt to build biceps peak that eluded him during his competitive years…

When he was competing, he relied mostly on preacher curls for his biceps work—so much so that many call them Scott curls. As an experiment, he eliminated that stretch-loaded exercise and focused on contraction. Here are his comparison before and after photos…

Doug wouldn’t have it. He said that maybe Scott’s biceps changed shape as he aged. I disagreed; however…

As I discuss in Old Man Young Muscle 2, development at the muscle insertion via stretch-loading may be short-lived…

It appears that it is prevalent in the untrained—or those who haven’t been training that specific torque curve—and then tapers off, with more development occurring in the belly of the muscle from contracted-position exercises.

All of this is not to say that you can’t get excellent development with just the ideal exercises. Doug was doing fine using only those…

If you choose the right ones, you’ll be getting some stretch and a bit of contraction—that’s if the resistance curve is correct and you get continuous tension on the target muscle.

Still, I think stretch- and contracted-position exercises can complement those ideals and create fuller, faster development.

Also, the use of Speed Sets, with faster 1.5-second reps, as prescribed in OMYM and OMYM2, appears to increase muscle size not only from earlier fast-twitch activation due to a faster tempo but also via the sarcomeres due to a more abrupt turnaround—moving from the negative stroke to the positive stroke more quickly.

In the next training newsletter, I’ll look at how Doug used rest between sets and his attempts to get me away from my 20-second rest/pause method.

Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.