Dedicated to Your Physical Transformation
Yesterday you saw the difference between stretching a muscle without contraction vs. stretch-position resistance exercises…
To recap, damage appears to trigger the hypertrophy produced by both; however, growth is usually significantly more with stretch against resistance PLUS contraction, as in stretch-position resistance exercises. [Read more…]
Mr. America/Mr. Universe Doug Brignole has some thoughts on my recent musing on stretching and stretch moves for mass.
He makes the observation that some muscles respond better than others to full stretch, and putting some into a full stretch can be dangerous, such as rear delts. Bringing the arm too far across that body can damage the shoulder joint…
And also lats. Here is Doug’s take… [Read more…]
Q: With all the focus on stretch-position add-on exercises, I’m wondering if simply doing freehand stretching [of the target muscle] after the ideal exercise would have similar mass-building effects. [Read more…]
My confidence in muscle stretch for more mass is growing. More studies continue to verify the importance of emphasizing the target muscle when it’s elongated to get the most gain bang from each set… [Read more…]
Q: Recently you mentioned using a pause at stretch on every rep of a set. You said you were giving it a try to see if it produced more muscle growth. I’m thinking about giving it a go. What’s your verdict?
A: To clarify, I’ve been using it on the first high-rep set of my ideal exercise—like dumbbell decline extensions for triceps… [Read more…]
Stretch-mediated hypertrophy has been a dominant theme in this newsletter for a while, but especially lately. That’s due to many recent studies pointing to stretch “overload” as being a key get-bigger trigger… [Read more…]
Anytime I see a study, especially a brand-new one, that confirms my mass-training efforts, I’m going to report on it.
A new one involved calf stretching to test for strength and, more importantly, hypertrophy… [Read more…]
I’ve reported on a number of studies in this newsletter, and from many of them, one thing is clear: the stretch area of the rep is very important for optimizing hypertrophy… [Read more…]
Mr. America and 2019 Drug-Free Mr. Universe Doug Brignole isn’t shy about emailing me when I’m right—or wrong. It’s the latter this time, and I concur. [Read more…]
All this discussion on stretch and ideal exercises had me remembering a study from my Iron Man magazine days that has significant correlation to efficient mass building… [Read more…]
