You’ve seen how stretch-position weight-training exercises produce significantly more hypertrophy than stretching alone; however…
With full-stretch-resistance moves you inflict more muscle damage—unless your freehand stretch is jumping off a table into a full sissy-squat (not recommended—but definite viral-video potential).
To me, it’s only logical that if we’re doing the ideal exercise first and then adding a stretch-position exercise for even one set, muscle damage is amplified…
What does that mean? Probably that you need an extra day of recovery. Hypertrophy researcher Chris Beardsley has said that a muscle generally recovers in 48 hours, but that no doubt depends on the amount of damage…
With good stretch on the ideal exercise, plus more severe stretch with a stretch-position add-on movement, optimal recovery time will increase for most trainees. To be safe, I’d say an extra day is warranted. My sore muscles are nodding in agreement…
And as Mr. America/Mr. Universe Doug Brignole observed, that damage recovery does not include the supercompensation phase, which is when growth happens. That takes another 24 hours.
So that’s a total of four days to get damage repair after a stretch-centric workout plus new growth from that workout. Let’s apply that in the gym…
In Old Man, Young Muscle, I suggest a Tuesday and Saturday workout for upper body. That’s four days from Tuesday to Saturday…
That means it’s best to add stretch-position exercises after the ideal at your Tuesday workout—before the four-day recovery window…
What about Saturday? There are only three days until your next upper-body session on Tuesday. So you want to de-emphasize stretch and use contracted-position add-ons for one or two sets. Those exercises have less resistance in the stretch area of the stroke and are much less damaging…
Let’s use triceps as an example.
Tuesday triceps workout: dumbbell decline triceps extensions (ideal) + high-incline dumbbell overhead extensions (stretch)—pics above
Saturday triceps workout: dumbbell decline triceps extensions (ideal) + cable pushdowns or dumbbell kickbacks (contracted)
The Positions-of-Flexion Exercise Matrix on pages 42 and 43 of Old Man, Young Muscle lists ideal, stretch- and contracted-position exercises for every major muscle group.
There are other things you could do to minimize damage on Saturday:
1) For your ideal exercise, use a cable extension, set up for proper resistance curve (see Brignole’s book The Physics of Resistance Exercise). Weight-stack drag on cable machines tends to lighten the eccentric, or negative, stroke of an exercise, which reduces muscle damage somewhat.
2) Do the ideal exercise only—three sets of dumbbell decline extensions or cable extensions with proper set up, no add-on move.
3) Stop two reps short of failure.
4) Hit your toe with a hammer so you’re distracted during the entire workout (kidding—don’t do this)
So in a sense, this is similar to the old-school “heavy/light” method, but I call it Traumatic/Non-Traumatic, or TNT. Great initials because for new muscle mass, it’s dy-no-mite.
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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