Dedicated to Your Physical Transformation
Frank Zane’s chiseled physique is still considered near perfection today, etched muscle that seemed attainable.
He wasn’t from the gargoyle school of bodybuilding, so you rarely saw him hit a “crab” most muscular pose. This photo is about as close as he came to that. [Read more…]
Here’s Danny Padilla once again featured in our weekly Zen. Thickness and mass perfection onstage in the ’70s.
We’re fans of his physique as well as his training style that amplified his genetic gifts and preserved his joints…
In fact, our workouts evolved in many good way thanks to info on Danny’s training—and Vince Gironda’s methods as well.
Padilla’s workouts were best described as “progressive muscle-fiber exhaustion” using only moderate weights. That means no hammering joints into submission with crazy poundages…
That moderate-poundage style saved our joints and has us still training and gaining into old age—Steve is in his early 60s.
Our 4X Mass Method that we’ve been using for years now, is based on Danny’s training, which was an off-shoot of Gironda’s Density Training…
It consists of moderate weights for four to five quick sets. The method is designed to gradually exhaust the various muscle fiber types due to short rests between sets.
It’s a thorough, efficient, and safer way to get total muscle growth in almost all fiber types.
The 4X method is excellent for younger trainee looking to preserve their joints as they pack on new mass, as well as for older bodybuilders who are training around aches and pains. Oh, and the pump is unreal…
Now is the perfect time to try 4X for major muscle-growth success. For loads of motivating info and programs…
> The 4X Mass Workout 2.0 is available HERE.
Or for our other favorite density method, check out STX growth-threshold tactic in our latest retooled ebook, that includes many mass-building home-gym workouts…
> Quick-Start Muscle-Building Guide 2.0 is available HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
Vince Gironda was the Iron Guru, a bodybuilding legend ahead of his time. His most famous pupil in the bodybuilding world was the very first Mr. Olympia Larry Scott, and he also trained many Hollywood stars back in the day, like Clint Eastwood, and even Arnold consulted with him and was a fan (even though Vince told Arnold that he was a “fat f**k” when he first arrived in the U.S.).
Many of Vince’s mass-building tricks and methods have been forgotten, buried by information and misinformation overload on the Internet, but now you can find them all, his true methods, in this must-have, 330-page Vince Gironda e-book anthology…
You get everything from “Train 21 Rest 7” to 10-8-6-15 to Vince’s Stone Age Nutrition, the 8×8 method and program and much, much more (remember, it’s 330 pages). And it’s on sale at a discount for a limited time: Simply use the code GIRONDA20 at checkout for an extra 20 percent off.
Vince Gironda: Legend & Myth (300-page anthology + many bonus gifts and programs) HERE
This is a great photo of Lee Haney flexing at the beach. He’s a tad smooth, but what magnificent lines and symmetry—small waist, wide shoulders, flared quads… [Read more…]
We’ve featured Danny Padilla in our Zen installments many times, but this is a shot we don’t remember seeing. It appears to be at the famous Muscle Rock location in Southern California… [Read more…]
Mohammed Makkawy is one of the greatest short bodybuilders of all time. At only 5’3”, the Egyptian-born physique sculptor defeated men much taller and more massive. How? With his proportioned, no-weak-points physique chiseled to its peak. [Read more…]
We’ve featured Danny Padilla in our Zen installments many times, but he had such a great, well-balanced, and inspiring physique that he’s worth flashing back on again. This is a great twisting-back stage shot that highlights his mass and symmetry, things his training style magnified… [Read more…]
Frank Zane wasn’t the biggest bodybuilder of his era, but what a physique. He won the Mr. Olympia weighing around 190 at 5’9”. And 40 years later, the physique he displayed way back then is still considered an ultimate ideal by many, us included… [Read more…]
This is one of the best upper-body shots of Lee Labrada we’ve seen (it may be a Michael Neveux shot, but we’re not sure). Lee never won the Mr. Olympia, but he got close due to his incredible “Mass With Class” physique…
What was his bodybuilding secret? He was from the Lee Haney school of “stimulate don’t annihilate” your muscles during workouts; however, he fused that with the Mike Mentzer’s shorter workouts to failure—but with only moderate poundages.
He was all about “growth threshold” training. Here’s how Labrada defined it…
The growth threshold is the point at which the level of fatigue in the muscle is high enough that a growth response is elicited. Your goal during a workout should be to fatigue the target muscles you are training more and more with each succeeding set.
In other words, you want the muscles to progressively get more and more tired out, until you reach a point where the muscles are functionally ‘worn out.’ Signals are sent to the brain that set up the compensation, or growth, process during the post workout period, so that in future workouts, you can handle it.
Our two favorite ways to achieve a growth-threshold mass blast is with 4X and STX (slow-twitch exhaustion). Both methods have you use only moderate weights with short rests between sets to progressively hypertrophy all muscle fiber types…
By the way, Labrada still looks unbelievable now in his 60s thanks to this safer style of training. Now that’s Mass-With-Class longevity.
Try 4X for growth-threshold success—no joint stress.
> The 4X Mass Workout 2.0 is available HERE.
Or check out our STX growth-threshold method in our latest retooled ebook…
> Muscle-Building Quick-Start Guide 2.0 is available HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
With proper intermittent fasting, you can transform your physique faster than ever…
Brad Pilon’s book Eat Stop Eat is THE book on Intermittent Fasting. Besides the nuts and bolts of what to do and when to burn fat and build muscle simultaneously, Brad covers all the research on IF-related topics…
From how fasting affects blood glucose/insulin/leptin/testosterone to how it jacks the muscle-building process. You’ll see all the latest science.
Grab your copy now because Eat Stop Eat is only $10 till the end of this month (it’s a $49 value!). Check it out here…
> Get THE Book on Intermittent Fasting (only $10 for a few more days)
This is our first time featuring the great French bodybuilder Serge Nubret in our Zen newsletter. He was known as the Black Panther, and this photo should tell you why… [Read more…]
This black-and-white shot of Ray Mentzer is one we haven’t seen before (we’re not sure of the photographer). It’s when Ray won the 1979 Mr. America. [Read more…]