Dedicated to Your Physical Transformation
This newsletter often waves the caution flag about muscle damage and how it can prolong recovery and even derail growth.
When you create a lot of damage during your workout, which most bodybuilders do continuously, that damage must be repaired before hypertrophy can happen.
And therein may lie the answer to why muscle growth is so slow for most—if anabolic drugs aren’t involved. [Read more…]
Q: I recently saw [hypertrophy researcher] Chris Beardsley say that high reps cause more damage than low reps due to calcium-ion accumulation from fatigue. Does that make you rethink the STX method? Maybe doing the first set heavier with lower reps for less damage would be better? [Read more…]
For older bodybuilders, haphazard training is more of a threat than ever—if they’re not on anabolic steroids that is…
The older you get, the more precise and efficient your training should be to avoid over-stressing your recovery ability and creating excess muscle damage. [Read more…]
Q: In Old Man, Young Muscle you have about half the sets in each workout as Speed Sets [1.5-second reps]. You’ve said that those cause less damage because you de-emphasize the low-intensity negative stroke. But doesn’t the bounce at the bottom of each reps cause damage?
A: NOT a bounce, but an abrupt turnaround, where you shift from a semi-fast negative to a semi-fast positive, such as at the bottom of a decline press… [Read more…]
Q: The study you discussed that showed eccentric [negative] contractions cause more damage than concentric [positive] or isometric is interesting. Makes sense, but I wonder that if more rest days were included after eccentric training if that would make a difference?
A: I would say yes, however, each type of contraction may contribute to growth in different ways… [Read more…]
Yesterday I discussed one recent damage-reduction strategy: I’ve re-introduced Speed Sets.
Those sets with 1.5-second reps reduce the damage from “garbage negatives.”
If you lower the weight slowly on too many sets, you trigger excessive damage without a lot of hypertrophic return… [Read more…]
Q: Your newsletter on how you got sick after overtraining struck a chord. That happened to me also. What exactly were you doing different? Were you still using the workout from Old Man, Young Muscle?
A: I discussed a lot of damage reduction strategies in the newsletters prior to the one on overtraining. My illness spurred much of that, and I’m now applying those…
After I became ill and looked at my training, I realized I was using a bastardized version of the original OMYM workout… [Read more…]
I’ve been discussing the negatives of too many “garbage negatives.” What does that mean?
When you do a set close to failure, the eccentric, or negative, stroke is still not demanding. But that’s not the problem… [Read more…]
Q: You said that maybe doing sets with a slow negative on each rep causes too much damage and can impair growth. But don’t studies show that lifting in one second and lowering in three seconds on all sets is best for mass?
A: My point is that a 1/3 tempo is the best rep speed for a few of your sets for each muscle; however… [Read more…]
I mentioned that hypertrophy researcher Chris Beardsley has said that a muscle recovers after only 48 hours. That’s two days. So does that mean we should train each muscle three times a week: M-W-F, for example?
There are considerations, such as intensity, muscle damage, and supercompensation… [Read more…]
