We’ve been discussing extreme muscle growth and the anabolic impact of the recent realization that type-1 “endurance” fibers are also capable of showing a significant level of muscular hypertrophy. That may be why a longer time under tension for a muscle has shown more muscle-size increases than shorter sets–more slow-twitch activation and swelling…
And then there’s a new study just published in the International Journal of Applied Exercise Physiology [Vol. 5, No. 2, ’16] finding that a slower eccentric, or lowering, action during biceps curls (4 seconds) produced extreme muscle growth in arms compared to one-second eccentric strokes. The positive, or concentric, stroke for both groups were performed at about one second.
A researcher that we highly respect, Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., had this to say about the study: “The authors speculate that the discrepancies may be due to longer TUT. While this hypothesis can’t be discounted, I’d speculate results are probably more related to the fact that the target muscle does not carry out much work during fast eccentrics in ‘isotonic’ training, as you don’t adequately resist gravity. It really comes down to controlling the repetition on the negative so that the working musculature does the work, not gravity.”
However, we think that the time under tension may also have something to do with it, considering the new findings concerning slow-twitch growth potential. It makes sense that if you provide more growth-producing work to each “layer,” or hypertrophic pathway (slow-twitch, fast-twitch, sarcoplasmic fluid, mitochondria, etc.), you’ll get extreme muscle growth a lot faster.
One way you can take advantage of that finding, and perhaps double your muscle growth, is by using a slow-cadence set with a long tension time first. That’s the basis of our X-centric-first Superset method in the MMX e-book. Here’s the drill if you want to give it a try…
Pick a weight with which you can get 12 reps on the first exercise, but lift in one second and lower in six–Xcentric on the first exercise only. Do exercise 2 with a standard cadence. Here’s an example–since they used barbell curls in the study, let’s use that as the first exercise.
Curl in one second and lower in six. When you can no longer lower in six second, put down the bar and grab a pair of fairly heavy dumbbells and recline on an incline bench. Now do around eight reps using standard tempo (1/2).
The slower speed and the TUT of around one minute on the first exercise will stimulate a number of slow-twitch fibers and gradually bring in fast-twitch, priming more growth fibers to fire on the second exercise. Contributing to that growth-fiber activation is the fact that the second exercise is a stretch-position exercise…
The Ticket to Extreme Muscle Growth
Stretch-position moves can trigger an emergency response in the target muscle, firing more fibers in order to prevent injury. The X-centric-first Supersets we have for every muscle in the MMX e-book have a stretch move second for extra size stimulation [see pages 39-48].
We’ll have more on using the MMX extreme growth trigger to get you exponentially bigger in the next newsletter.
Till next time, train hard–and smart–for BIG results.
–Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com