Yesterday I mentioned that once Mike Mentzer retired from bodybuilding and began training drug-free bodybuilders, he got rid of forced and negative reps. They were too demanding, creating way too much damage…
In one of his last interviews before his death in 2001, he was more adamant than ever that high-intensity resistance training is extremely damaging and more severe than people realize. It takes very little to trigger a growth response…
In fact, he said trainees who are considering a volume increase should not be thinking about adding sets, but only reps. He found that adding a set is too big a jump in volume and damage.
I think what he was saying is that if a muscle needs more, stick with your lower-volume workout, but add a quick rest/pause at the end of a set so you can do another rep or two. Or…
At the end of a set, add a few partial reps in the stretch area of the stroke…
I’ve mentioned end-of-set stretch partials, a.k.a. X-Reps, many times in this newsletter. In fact, the first ebook I wrote with Jonathan Lawson back in 2004, The Ultimate Mass Workout, was all about X-Reps—a best-seller at Iron Man at the time. It also had our workouts at that time…
Adding two to four of those X-Rep stretch partials to the end of one or two sets per muscle was very effective and allowed us to keep our volume low and make leaps in muscle mass, better gains than we’d ever made. Below are the results after only five weeks—no drugs, no Photoshop…
When I show those photos, I like to remind people that the after studio shots were taken by Michael Neveux, physique photographer extraordinaire. He was masterful with lighting, making us look massive, even though we weighed less than 200 pounds at 5’11”.
I’m back to using X-Reps consistently again because of those big-gain memories and also the latest studies…
All of the research on the superiority of training muscles at the stretch for hypertrophy has me realizing that X-Rep stretch partials are a mass-building smart bomb—if you don’t abuse them or train with too much volume.
As are stretch-position exercises. More on all of that in future newsletters.
Note: For a Mike Mentzer-inspired stretch-emphasized Positions-of-Flexion workout, see Chapter 9 of Old Man, Young Muscle.
Sculpt your perfect physique: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best stretch and contracted 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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