Dedicated to Your Physical Transformation
I’ve been putzing around with my workouts, trying to put more mass on this 62-year-old body while staying healthy and injury free. The older I get, the more elusive extra muscle becomes…
Through all of my tweaks, I let one important mass accelerator fall by the wayside—and I didn’t even realize it until I looked back at my workouts listed in Old Man, Young Muscle. [Read more…]
I’ve been a proponent of stretch-position exercises for decades. I talk about the ones I use as add-ons to the ideal exercises in Old Man Young Muscle.
Stretch-position moves can add a new “layer” of mass to your physique. What the heck do I mean by that? [Read more…]
I’m often asked how I could possibly build muscle with only a 50-pound PowerBlock dumbbell set and a bench, as chronicled in Old Man Young Muscle.
It’s a common misconception that you need heavy weights to trigger hypertrophy—and besides, I had no choice… [Read more…]
In the past few newsletters you’ve seen real-world examples and interpretation of scientific data indicating how too much volume or intensity can derail your muscle gains. Muscle damage appears to be hypertrophy homicide for many. [Read more…]
In yesterday’s newsletter, we looked at a new interpretation of hypertrophy research that suggests going to all-out muscular failure may do more harm than good with heavier loads.
Researcher Chris Beardsley says that heavier sets to failure do most of the damage on the last two reps; therefore you should stop two reps short to achieve most of the hypertrophy stimulation while avoiding that severe damage. [Read more…]
Mechanical tension, or mechanical loading, is resistance stress on the muscle fibers. It’s the big key to hypertrophy.
And for the purpose of muscle growth, we want mechanical loading that targets fast-twitch engagement. That occurs optimally with a cascade effect, activating slow-twitch fibers first followed by fast-twitch… [Read more…]
This is the continuation of a story Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus machines, relayed on the subject of muscle gain, overtraining, and recovery in the February/March 1972 issue of Muscle Training Illustrated. [Read more…]
I’ve explained the mass-building benefits you can get by emphasizing the biomechanically ideal exercises in your training…
Energy cost and injury risk is much lower. Plus, you activate the most fibers in the target muscle. It all adds up to efficiency of effort. [Read more…]
A few newsletters back I discussed energy cost and how multi-joint exercises that don’t optimally load the target muscle can take from your hypertrophy gains in exchange for some strength…
However, I also mentioned that you can focus on barbell squats at one leg workout and the ideal quad exercise at the next. Just keep in mind that it’s not the most efficient muscle-building strategy… [Read more…]
Q: I haven’t seen you mention Speed Sets in the newsletter. Are you still using them? You have them in Old Man, Young Muscle.
A: In the spirit of change to gain, absolutely. I generally do speed reps on the last set for a body part…
While studies show that the best rep tempo for building mass quickly is lift in one to two seconds, lower in three, using a different cadence can produce unique size effects… [Read more…]
