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Q: Your 4X mass method has 35 to 45 seconds rest between sets. I’ve seen research that longer rests between sets can be better for strength and muscle growth. What’s your take on that?
A: Legendary trainer Vince Gironda, the Iron Guru who trained Mr. Olympias as well as Hollywood stars to build muscle fast, first got us into reducing rest between sets for muscle growth—he called it Density Training…
[Read more…]Q: I just got the Vince Gironda Legend & Myth anthology. Incredible info, but I’m wondering a few things. His drag curls and diver cable rows are cool exercises, but how do they fit into your Positions-of-Flexion system? Drag curls are similar to standing barbell curls, but you pull the bar up next to your body to your lower pecs, so the poundage is fairly low. Is it still a good midrange exercise?
A: Vince’s drag curl is similar to a regular barbell curl, but you keep the bar in contact with your body all the way up, so it’s much more isolated. And at the top, when the bar is at your lower chest line, your upper arms are more in a position that’s like the top of an incline curl, a stretch-position exercise. Now you’re probably really confused. LOL!
Q: My training partner and I are arguing. He wants to start using heavy negative-only training, but I told him that your e-book [the X-centric Mass Workout] warns against it. He reads your newsletter, so please convince him that it’s not a good idea.
A: In the X-centric e-book we cited a study that showed the extreme damage caused by negative-only training (someone lifts the weight for you, and you lower slowly). Muscle recovery for some of the subjects took weeks; however, most of those subjects were untrained, so they didn’t have the cumulative capacity to handle traumatic loads. If you’ve been training for a year or more, that’s probably not your case… [Read more…]
Q: Incredible interview with [Mr. America] Doug Brignole in the Power-Density e-book. So cool that he has studied kinesiology and physiology and determined the number-one best exercise for each muscle. He said decline dumbbell presses are the best chest exercise for overall mass. Does he ever use barbell declines or Hammer-machine decline presses, which bring your hands from a wide stretch to close at the top for a better pec contraction? Or what about dips? [Read more…]
Q: I’ve been on the basic Positions-of Flexion biceps and triceps routines you outline in 3D Muscle Building. I’m getting spectacular pumps, and I think my arms have grown already. I’m ready to go to all the POF routines in 3D for all my bodyparts. My question is on biceps. I don’t really feel concentration curls. Is there another ending [contracted-position] exercise I can do instead to help build 3D arms?
A: For the uninitiated, Positions of Flexion is training each bodypart through its full range. For example, for biceps, it’s barbell curls (midrange), incline curls (stretch), and concentration curls (contracted). [Read more…]
Q: I’m thin and consider myself a hardgainer. I’ve been training with weights for two years and have managed to add only about 10 pounds of muscle. Not very impressive. I recently got your X-traordinary X-Rep Workout [e-book] and started using the X Reps in my workouts. They feel great, and I wanted to report that after using them for only a few weeks, I’ve added five pounds and look much bigger. I’m so thankful I found this technique! Are there any others I should be using? I feel like I’m finally getting the size gains I’ve been looking for.
A: Great progress! As we often say, hardgainers tend to have more of an endurance component to their muscles. You know how calves and forearms tend to respond better to longer tension times? That’s how most of the muscles on a hardgainer’s body are constructed, so they need longer tension times to grow… [Read more…]
Q: I read in one of your previous articles where you mentioned that you sometimes do Stage Sets. What are Stage Sets, and is that a good mass technique for me?
A: Many years ago, even before we developed X-Rep partials, we noticed that every time we introduced Stage Sets to our workouts, we got sudden muscularity and vascularity increases—and now we know why: The technique is essentially a unique type of X overload—an intense out-of-the-blocks blast right at the max-force point where the target muscle is semi-stretched, like near the bottom of an incline press…
Here’s how a Stage Set works for Smith-machine incline presses. You position yourself on the incline bench, grip slightly wider than your shoulders. Unhook the safety catches and then lower the bar to about an inch above your upper chest. Without pausing, you blast it back up, but only to just slightly higher than the midpoint of the stroke.
When you reach that point, lower back to the semi-stretch position, and so on, doing low-range partials till you can’t stand the burn. Notice that you’re essentially doing piston-like exaggerated X Reps right off the bat through the max-force point, which is how pro bodybuilders and former Mr. Olympia winners like Jay Cutler and Ronnie Coleman would train most of their exercises, but we take it a step further.
When you can’t do another exaggerated X Rep—you should get about 10 of those lowdown partials—get the bar to lockout, with help from your partner. Now you do the top stage of the stroke. First, squeeze your pecs hard, contracting them in the lockout position, then lower through about the top one-third of the movement. Blast back to the top and squeeze your pecs again. Flex at lockout on every one of those top-end reps.
We like to do a Stage Set as the last set for an exercise. They work exceptionally well for most types of squats and any type of press—flat, incline, decline, and even leg presses. You get extended tension time and a division of work that provides unique mass-building stimulation. Try it, and prepare to grow!
Note: For more on Stage Sets as well as many other X-hybrid mass techniques, see the Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building e-book. It also contains our complete post-X-Rep-year program that incorporates many of those fast-mass techniques, taking our physiques to a new level of impressiveness. For photos and more info, see our Beyond X-Rep page.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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Q: I’ve made the best gains of my life the past year with X Reps, going from 185 to just under 200 pounds. But my gains have stalled. You talk a lot about muscle adaptation, so I’m wondering if I’ve adapted to X Reps. Should I stop doing them for a while so I can pack on more muscle?
A: Adaptation to training techniques and even bodypart routines can happen in as few as six workouts. If you train a muscle twice a week, that means you can adapt in three to four weeks. We’ve talked about phase training, which is downshifting intensity for one week with sub-failure workouts after four to six weeks of all-out workouts. But sometimes even that’s not enough to kick-start new gains once you resume a high-intensity phase. Usually, you have to mix things up somehow…
We noticed that adaptation phenomenon after our initial X-Rep gains. We improved for about five months with standard X Reps, using phase training along the way, but we could tell size increases were slowing down. That forced us to think and develop X-hybrid techniques, which we outline in the Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building e-book. We suggest you give end-of-set X Reps a rest and try these two X-hybrid tactics on the second set of your big midrange exercises (like presses, squats, etc.) instead…
Stage Sets. Here you do slightly exaggerated X-only reps first, like the bottom two-thirds of squats—say, nine of those non-lock partials—moving from the low position to just above the halfway mark. When you can’t get any more of those low-end reps, you push to lockout and do top-end X Reps, moving through the top one-third of the stroke for about six partial reps (we like to flex our quads hard on each lockout for extra occlusion).
As we explain in Beyond X, Stage Sets work well for almost all midrange moves. Some not so well, however, such as dumbbell upright rows, chins, and machine rows. If you do the semi-stretch range first on those exercises, the top contracted position will be even weaker, with no chance for you to get partials in that range. For those exercises, do DXO…
Double-X Overload (DXO). These emphasize the important semi-stretch position with an extra hit on every rep. How? You simply do an X-Rep partial between each full-range rep. On dumbbell upright rows, for example, you start with the ‘bells at the arms-extended position in front of your thighs. Pull them up and out till your upper arms are parallel to the floor, lower, pull them up one-quarter of the way, lower, then pull for another full rep. Repeat, with an X-Rep partial, the quarter rep down low, after every full rep.
DXO provides a double hit at the point where you get the most fast-twitch fiber activation—the semi-stretch point, or X Spot. It works very well on chins and other exercises that don’t accommodate Stage Sets. [We discuss the best exercises in the Beyond X e-book. Also, See Bonus Chapter A—Analyzing Mr. Olympia’s Workouts From an X-Rep Perspective, page 93 in that e-book, for how Ronnie Coleman used to use DXO sets for mass.]
Remember, use one of those two techniques on the second set of your big midrange exercises instead of X Reps for four to six weeks. Then you can go back to X Reps—but mix in Stage Sets, DXO, and other X-hybrid techniques as well. That mix-and-match strategy worked incredibly well for us after we adapted to X Reps. We added another 10 pounds of muscle the very next year—the first two photos below are before and afters from our first X-Rep phase (after only 35 days) and the last photo is after adding even more muscle with X-hybrid techniques (these techniques work!)…
You gotta have change for maximum gains.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
“You gotta feel the muscle working if you want it to grow.” So say many of the biggest, freakiest bodybuilders. Trainees in search of big and ripped muscle interpret that to mean that they need to slow down their reps to a snail’s pace. Not true. Once again, it’s a case of watch, don’t ask, or you could go down the wrong road. The champs rarely do slow reps; usually they’re more like the pistons in a car engine. So what the heck do they mean by “feel the muscle?” [Read more…]
Throughout this e-book we’ve mentioned how Ronnie Coleman, Mr. Olympia, trains with an emphasis on semistretched overload. Those observations were the result of watching his latest DVD, “The Cost of Redemption,” which is an ungodly display of muscle mass and raw strength captured by videographer Mitsuru Okabe. In fact, his mass-training style is a prime example of max-force-point overload on almost every exercise. [Read more…]
