Q: I recently started following [Chris Beardsley’s research colleague] Paul Carter on Instagram [@liftrunbang1] due to your recommendation. He said that methods like rest/pause and drop sets are pointless for building muscle. Any comment?

Paul Carter: Gym portrait and doing cable curls

A: Shout out to Paul. I enjoy his posts and agree with him on many things, but…

After lifting for 50 years, being editor of Iron Man for 27 years, and interviewing researchers, bodybuilders, and trainers, I know that building muscle mass is not black and white…

Yes, heavy low-rep training with longer rests between sets can result in fast-twitch hypertrophy…

But it tends to work best for fast-twitch-endowed easy gainers. Most of us aren’t in that gene pool. Those of us who aren’t tread water until we learn a few things…

You will more than likely benefit from some higher reps and/or short rests between sets, as in rest/pause STX.

The first higher-rep set gives you an efficient warmup PLUS a fiber-array cascade…

Type-1 (endurance) —>
2a (endurance/power) —>
2b (power)

To look like a bodybuilder, most of us need to maximize ALL avenues of growth, including hypertrophy of multiple fiber types….

Even most champion bodybuilders include some of those longer-tension-time methods, like higher reps and rest/pause…

As respected researcher Jerry Brainum said: “It’s now known that type-1 (endurance) fibers are also capable of showing significant levels of muscular hypertrophy.”

To say modalities like rest/pause are “pointless” for building muscle is hyperbolic…

For most bodybuilders, including me, many of those methods can be a big key to more hypertrophy—no drug use necessary.

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Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
X-Rep.com

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