stretch overload Archives - Page 8 of 11

Shocking New Muscle Mass: TORQ – DP 4X – Modified Pre-Ex

Q: I do four-week phases of different workouts from your various e-books. That strategy works great for me. I’ve gained 10 pounds of muscle in three months, and that’s after training consistently for 10 years. I’m getting ready to start the Modified Pre-Ex 3X Mass Workout. After all the positive talk about TORQ, I was thinking about using that on the first exercise, the isolation move. Is that a good idea for building new muscle mass?

A: Absolutely. We’ve talked about that before, and we used to use TORQ-ed up modified Pre-Ex as a shock tactic in our old Freaky Friday workouts… [Read more…]

3 Simple Changes to Get You Growing

You know our mantra: You can trigger bigger gains with one small change. But let’s multiply that for even more mass. We’ve got 3 simple things to get you growing immediately… [Read more…]

Rev your Mass Machine with the S-Overload Workout

Q: I’ve been hearing a lot about muscle stretch and how it is uniquely anabolic. What is the best way to build mass with this information—a freehand stretching routine?

A: While freehand stretching routines can do okay things for muscle growth, a much more effective mass-building route is doing a workout of all stretch-position exercises with weights.

That way every bodypart will get the anabolic acceleration of [Read more…]

Old Men, New Muscle (with 2X-per-week training)

Q: I’m 62 and have been using the Stretch-Overload Pure Positions Workout [Monday contracted, Wednesday midrange, Friday stretch]. It felt great at first, training one exercise per muscle at each workout, but after three weeks I started feeling like I was losing ground muscle-wise. And I was more tired than usual. Should I take a week off, and then start again? Maybe I just need a downshift sooner than most because of my age.

A: Taking a layoff every three weeks might work, but it also might have you staying in one place as far as the size of your physique. You want to be able to extend your hard-training phase to at least five weeks before you need a downshift.

You can do that by [Read more…]

Study: Forgotten Muscle-Mass Trigger

It’s becoming clear that muscle elongation is very important for accelerating hypertrophy to a new level.

In other words, loaded stretching can provide another layer of freaky size quickly.

An older study that we often reference showing that was performed by Jose Antonio, Ph.D., et al.—and it produced incredible muscle size increases. Here’s what he said about it: [Read more…]

Progression Loading to Up Your Mass

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…]

Testo-Jack, Hyper-Hypertrophy Workout

Q: I’ve been reading that testosterone is the key muscle-building hormone. Does the hormone boost come from intensity, more reps or what?

A: Arthur Jones, creator of Nautilus machines and the overseer of the Colorado Experiment that saw Casey Viator gain 60 pounds of muscle in only 4 weeks, always said that training legs hard can have a big “indirect muscle-building effect.”

What that means is that you could train your legs hard and see size gains in other muscles, such as [Read more…]

Study: This quick hit can double your muscle growth

Dr. Jacob Wilson, who used to write for Iron Man when we worked there, recently performed a study with a technique we have recommended over the years—stretch holds, or Stat-X.

Dr. Wilson calls it “intraset stretching.” In his study, the subjects who included intraset stretching DOUBLED muscle thickness compared to those who did not use it. Amazing. [Read more…]

Size Principle Reload

Q: I’ve made the best mass gains of my life with your 4X method. I know you guys got new size with it too, so my question is, why Anabolic Reload STX (slow-twitch exhaustion)? I realize that it also does not require heavy weights, but is it better than 4X?

A: First, both methods accomplish the same thing: full-blown fiber hypertrophy with slow-twitch-fiber pre-exhaustion, triggering more high-growth fast-twitch fibers to fire on the last sets.

It’s the Size Principle of Muscle Fiber Recruitment… [Read more…]

Quick-Rep Modification for New Mass Acceleration

Q: I have your new ebooks, Anabolic Reload and Stretch Overload. Both are great, and the simple rest/pause add-on for progression has already helped me add new mass. But I overtrain easily, so I can’t keep adding those. Is there anything else I can do to keep my muscle growth moving forward without more volume?

A: First, bodybuilding is called “progressive-resistance” training because adding weight and/or reps to your exercises can increase muscle size… [Read more…]