Dedicated to Your Physical Transformation
Q: I’ve been following your newsletters. Interesting ideas. One question I have is that you talk about emphasizing the ideal exercise for mass for each target muscle, but then say that you follow it with a less efficient one. Why not just do the ideal exercise only for all sets and then move to the next muscle?
A: We’ve found that different exercises can have unique mass-building effects—and research backs that up… [Read more…]
Q: After reading your new page, I’m not sure 35-minute workouts three days a week can build muscle. Wouldn’t it take more time and more than a couple of sets per muscle to get the fastest gains possible?
A: According to Richard Winett, Ph.D., a recent joining together of experts from multiple countries looked at empirical studies and systematic reviews on muscle hypertrophy… [Read more…]
Back in the 1990s, Steve’s very first book was titled Iron Man’s Home Gym Handbook. Looks like we’ve come full-circle. At the moment, there’s no place like home—or nowhere else to train but home…
Like most iron men and women, we’re at home with limited equipment. Luckily, our decades of bodybuilding experience have resulted in multiple mass-training tactics and moves to keep gains coming. Here’s Steve’s report on what he’s doing in his bare-bones pump-atorium. [Read more…]
Q: What do you think about stretching between sets? I’ve heard a lot of big bodybuilders do it, but I’ve seen studies that show stretching can make you weak.
A: The old study you’re referring to showed that stretching a muscle for 20 to 30 minutes before training it compromised strength. That’s a lot of stretching—and one reason we don’t do much prior to a workout-—just some range-of-motion loosening… [Read more…]
Q: You said in a previous newsletter that an X-centric Mass Workout user reported building bigger arms in 1 week, gaining a full half-inch gain in arm mass. Muscles can’t grow that fast. Sounds like full-on B.S. to me.
A: Not B.S. at all. It’s completely possible to have bigger arms in 1 week and did happen, as our X-Rep trainee reported. As we mentioned in a previous e-zine, X-centric-style training that emphasizes the negative stroke triggers much more muscle trauma than standard sets. That excess trauma can result in inflammation… [Read more…]
Q: I have a hard time feeling some of my muscles working, especially short-range ones like abs. Should I go heavier, lighter, slower, or what? I know feeling the target muscle working is very important for the fastest results.
A: You can say that again. Getting in touch with the target muscle on every rep is a big key to muscle hypertrophy…
[Read more…]Q: I am making solid gains with the Pure Positions routine in the Stretch Overload ebook. Training the midrange exercise at one workout, contracted at the second, and stretch at the third is some killer change to gain each week. My question is, you have STX [high-rep set followed by a lower-rep set and rest/pause set] for every exercise. Your most impressive ebook, IMO, is Super-Size Crash Course, with TORQ, Progressive-Speed 4X, and, my favorite, Downward-Progression 4X. Can I use those instead of STX every so often for even more variation?
A: Absolutely—in fact, we encourage it because all of those are amazing unique mass methods. Remember, something in your workout must change if you want to continue to gain…
Switching to different mass attacks is the best way. Why? Because it’s [Read more…]
Q: I’ve been following the current bodybuilding training trend of hitting each muscle once a week with lots of sets. Growth has been slow, but you’d think that with so much volume and intensity at one workout, it should take a full week for that muscle to completely recover, right?
Well, training each muscle with lots of volume once a week will produce some growth—if intensity is high enough to produce significant damage. The question is how much is enough?
Less volume for each muscle but with more frequent body part hits has proven a better, more sure-fire method for optimal hypertrophy in most cases and works as a sort of anabolic phasing… [Read more…]
If you’ve been with us for a while, you know we harp on “change to gain” a lot, especially for those who want insane hypertrophy…
It pays BIG muscle dividends to periodically alter your workouts—sometimes radically. And, yes, even we get stuck in ruts and forget to rotate in some new hypertrophy smart bombs… [Read more…]
Q: I gained 8 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks using the Ultimate 10×10 Mass Workout [in Chapter 3]. It transformed my physique. I noticed that Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D.’s 3 hypertrophy triggers include mechanical tension from heavy weights, but I used light weights. Would I have gained even more muscle by incorporating heavy sets?
A: Before we answer, let’s lay some groundwork — like the 3 key hypertrophy triggers for optimal mass stimulation [Read more…]
