X-REP.COM

Dedicated to Your Physical Transformation

Do this Now to Get Ripped by Spring—While Growing Muscle

Q: It’s the new year, and I feel bloated, guilty, and smooth. Abs are gone from all the holiday eating and so is most of my vascularity. Should I start dieting now to get ripped by spring? I’d guess I’m about 15 pounds overweight.

A: It’s still winter, so you want to continue building as much muscle as possible; however, it’s never too early to start leaning toward lean. And if you say you have 15 pounds to lose, it’s probably more like 20. So that’s 10 to 12 weeks to lose it—late-March, which is right when you want to be fairly lean if you want to be ripped by spring…

[Read more…]

Anabolic Fasting + Shredded-Muscle After-Effects (pics inside)

Intermittent Fasting is all the rage right now and for good reason—it works! Even jacked movie stars like The Rock, Terry Cruz, and Hugh Jackman use it for shredded muscle.

We’ve used it off and on for years. Check out Steve’s initial results, which were spectacular—and he’s in his 50s…

[Read more…]

Less food, more Testosterone?

Q: I’m thinking about trying the intermittent-fasting that Steve used to get more muscular and ripped [Super-Size Crash Course e-book, Chapter 8]? I’m extremely curious about the whole idea of eating less and producing more testosterone. I need something to get the ripping start, and it obviously burns fat quickly. I’m just so paranoid about losing muscle. I thought I would try it once a week, and if it works well, increase to two nonconsecutive days a week as Steve did. Any insights on muscle loss during IF?

All of us bodybuilders are paranoid about losing even an ounce of muscle, so we hear you. But you won’t lose muscle—you should gain more… [Read more…]

Are You Working Out Too Hard?

Q: I train my butt off in the gym. I hit it harder than every other guy in there, but I haven’t gained much muscle in a long time. Is it my genetics? My nutrition is perfect, so I should be growing like crazy, but I’m not. It’s very frustrating… Help?!

A: Yes, your genetics could have something to do with it; HOWEVER, you may have just been working out too hard for too long. It’s time to step back with a new plan…

Steve spotting Jonathan for a forced rep - Are You Working Out Too Hard?

Even hardgainers start growing at warp speed when they snap to the fact that too much ALL-OUT training stops all muscle gaining flat in its tracks. You need to take new less-stress action for a major mass-building reaction (we’ll outline that exciting change to gain in a moment)…

But isn’t intensity the key to muscle-size results? To a point, yes—but too much triggers nervous system burnout and floods your bloodstream with cortisol. If you don’t know what cortisol is, realize that it’s the devil incarnate when it comes to building muscle (and even burning fat)…

Cortisol is a stress hormone that results from the emergency fight-or-flight response. When you’re in an extreme situation, cortisol spews from your adrenal gland and your body begins using muscle tissue for energy. In other words, your body starts throwing your hard-earned muscle tissue into the energy furnace. NOT GOOD!…

The ironic thing is that the all-out intense workouts you do to build muscle send your cortisol through the roof, especially if you overdo it. Too much and you can actually lose rather than gain muscle. That’s why most high-intensity routines call for only a few all-out sets per exercise…

But even doing only a few all-out sets per exercise results in a CUMULATIVE stress effect that can build to an overtraining cortisol crescendo—muscle gains stop and it’s time to back off. You need an intensity downshift…

In many of our e-books, we’ve mentioned phase training and the need to back down on your intensity after about four weeks of all-out training. We often suggest stopping every set short of failure—but a better MASS-ACCELERATOR is something many pros of yesteryear used to build muscle right up to a contest on low calories…

It’s 4X mass training. With this method, you trade in multiple all-out sets on an exercise for a fast medium-intensity supersaturation sequence. Take pulldowns for example…

Pulldowns - Are You Working Out Too Hard?

Here’s the 4X drill: Take a weight that you could get 15 reps with, but only do 10; rest about 30 seconds and do 10 more; rest 30 seconds and do 10 more—and so on until you do four sets of 10 reps. If you get 10 reps on your last set, add weight at your next workout. It’s quick, simplified muscle supersaturation training for more super-size increases! And you use that 4X mass method for every exercise.

When we first started using a total-4X Mass Workout, we got dramatic muscle-size increases like we’d never experienced during our previous ripping phases. We believe that’s because dieting itself is a cortisol producer. We’d been training TOO HARD during our dieting phases, and that caused us to lose rather than gain muscle mass thanks to excess cortisol…

We believe that’s why so many bodybuilders of yesteryear, like Danny Padilla, used 4X-style workouts for a few months before their competitions—it minimized cortisol output and allowed them to continue to pack on muscle as they dieted away body fat. Check out Padilla’s results and judge for yourself (Note: He didn’t use the exact 4X method above but a tweaked version one of his former training partners discusses in our 4X e-book)…

Danny Padilla "The Giant Killer" - Are You Workout Out Too Hard?

We won’t say 4X workouts are easy, but your joints, tendons, and ligaments will get much less stress due to the medium poundages you use (great for older trainees). Less joint damage also results in less evil cortisol release…

Plus, each exercise takes you less than five minutes to complete, so you’ll be working hard, but you won’t be working out too hard—and the pump is unreal! Remember, only the last, or fourth, set is all out, and even then the muscle is pre-exhausted from the previous sets. But that’s exactly what allows you to reach the ultimate GROWTH THRESHOLD quickly and efficiently with minimal stress. Exciting stuff!…

Training hard is crucial for making gains, but working out too hard can backfire in a hurry… If you’ve been busting your ass in the gym with slow to no muscle growth, give the 4X Mass Workout a spin—and let your new muscle-mass surge begin!

Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.

—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com

Boost Testosterone…
With Cardio?!

If you want to build muscle (of course you do!) and ramp up your testosterone levels while burning a ton of fat at the same time, you need to try this workout if you haven’t already…

–> Use this cutting-edge cardio trick to boost testosterone and muscle growth
Note: This is NOT traditional HIIT or boring steady-state cardio