Training primarily for strength, as in ultra-heavy lifts for low reps, is not the most ideal or safest way to grow…
Of course you should try to add weight to exercises when you can, but tendon-tearing, joint-shearing low reps are not necessary…
That’s a good thing because many of us would like to avoid being crippled later in life for a blip of extra muscle…
You saw that 8-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney relied on pre-exhaustion—doing an isolation move first—to avoid massacring his joints. As he said…
[Muscles] don’t understand how much weight is being lifted. All they understand is the feel. Pre-exhaust allows the weights to feel heavy and give you the same stimulation while using less weight.
Lee is still training today in his 60s completely injury free…
Danny Padilla, another legendary pro bodybuilder, had a different method, which I discovered back in the early 2000s interviewing one of his training partners for Iron Man magazine…
For an exercise, Padilla would pick a moderate poundage and do 5 sets of 12 reps, same weight on every set, with short rests between sets—less than a minute. When he was able to do 12 on all five sets, he would up the weight slightly. So the first sets were fairly easy, warming up the target muscle; the last few were brutally hard, bringing in the growth fibers…
It was an off-shoot of Vince Gironda’s Density Training—moderate poundages, short rests between sets. It’s safe size building…
The first “easy” sets pre-fatigue the slow-twitch fibers, gradually bringing in the high-growth fast-twitch fibers on the last tough sets…
STX (slow-twitch exhaustion) is a more condensed, more-efficient version of that, in my opinion: 15, 8, 6 reps with short rests and a moderate poundage so you achieve a fiber-array cascade for safe, multi-layered muscle growth…
Type-1 (endurance) —>
2a (endurance/power) —>
2b (power)
Bottom Line: You don’t have to lift mega weights to get mega massive, as Padilla proved….
If you do choose the go-heavy-or-go-home muscle-building method, you may still end up at home but not be able to leave without a walker.
Train sane for best muscle gains without ego-inflicted pain.
Train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
X-Rep.com
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