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Limiting Stretch ROM for More Mass

Yesterday I went over the negatives of too many “garbage negatives.” The negative stroke on every rep of a standard set is lighter/easier than the positive; however, it’s the negative that causes the majority of the damage—and without a lot of hypertrophy return…

Doing half of your sets for each muscle with a faster rep speed, like 1.5 seconds per rep, as in the Old Man ,Young Muscle workout, can reduce damage and speed muscle growth… [Read more…]

How to Add More Mass With Stretch, Part 1

Q: You’ve been diving into the growth-promoting potential of movements that emphasize the stretch phase of a muscle’s range of motion. Your science and logic seem pretty solid and correlates with some of the exercises I’ve done that cause significant soreness in a target muscle group. Do you think this could be as much a result of micro-damage from stretching as enhanced fiber recruitment? I could see this micro-trauma also causing hypertrophy, but I was curious if you had an opinion on this. I remember the sorest I’ve ever been was from an overly exuberant dive into stiff-legged deadlifts. I know biomechanics says that it’s almost exclusively a glute movement, but hamstrings do get a significant stretch under load at full extension, which my soreness verified. 

A: Here’s a quote from hypertrophy researcher Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., on a human study using stretch only, which produced impressive muscle hypertrophy (from Old Man, Young Muscle)… [Read more…]

More Mass With Full-Body “Compound” Workouts?

Q: Researchers James Steele and James Fisher, based in the UK, claim one to two full-body workouts with compound lifts for one or two sets to failure will get you 98 percent of the results you’re after. They claim the angles of movements, or biomechanics, make little to no difference as long as the muscle reaches failure. What are your thoughts on this? What do you think about the compound lifts?

A: Using specific compound exercises to failure, or close, will of course trigger some hypertrophy.

The best compound exercise would put the target muscle as the prime mover and achieve a full range of motion (ROM) for that muscle. So some are better than others… [Read more…]

Ideal Exercises = Fast Muscle Gains + Slash Gym Time

“What are these ‘ideal exercises‘ of which you speak?”

I get that a lot—maybe not in those exact words; more like, “WTF you talkin’ ‘bout?”

Biomechanics expert and Mr. Universe Doug Brignole lays out 16 factors that exercises should meet to be in the ideal category. [Read more…]