Beyond X Rep

IRON MAN Training & Research Center Presents
B E Y O N D
REP
MUSCLE BUILDING
by Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building was written to help you get closer to your physical potential with sensible bodybuilding strategies. Weight training is a demanding activity, however, so it is highly recommended that you consult your physician and have a physical examination prior to beginning a weighttraining program. Proceed with the suggested diets, exercises and routines at your own risk.
Photography by Michael Neveux
Cover models: Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson Copyright 2005 by IRON MAN Magazine and Homebody Productions All rights reserved.
The material in this document may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner or form without prior written consent from the publisher. Homebody Productions P.O. Box 2800, Ventura, CA 93002 www.X-Rep.com www.BeyondX-Rep.com www.X-tremeLean.com www.X-traordinaryAbs.com
CONTENTS
Introduction......................................................................4 Chapter 1X-hilirating Muscle-Building Observations.................................................................5 Chapter 2X-treme Pumps and Pain to Gain.............11 Chapter 3Hormone Surges and Fiber Slicing..........17 Chapter 4Cut the Volume, Cover the Angles...........21 Chapter 5Time-Bomb Training..................................25 Chapter 6Stage Sets and Double-X Overload.........31 Chapter 7X/Pause and X-centric Training................37 Chapter 8Iso X and the X Fade..................................45 Chapter 9Our X-citing Results and Findings...........49 Chapter 10Split-Positions X-Rep Training................59 Chapter 11X Q&A........................................................77 Bonus Chapter AAnalyzing Mr. Olympias WorkoutsFrom an X-Rep Perspective...................93 Bonus Chapter BThe Inner Workings of Steroids: Mimicking Their Anabolic Power Without Drugs...103
Introduction
The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book showcased our gains with X Reps and explained that mass-building technique in detail. It essentially kick -start ed the X -Rep muscle-bu ilding phenomenonand the gains of muscle-building enthusiasts all over the world. Our results with X Reps showed that, if used correctly, it has the power to transform a physique in as few as 35 days. Trainees have reported incredible gains in size and s t rength in only a few workouts due to finally being able to overcome the nervous system roadblock during any set to failure ( i t s usually the nervous system that craps out first, not the muscle). Power partials at the sweet spot along an exercises stroke at the end of a set to exhaustion obliterate that roadblock, allowing you to trigger new hypertrophic stimulation like never beforeso much so that many trainees said that X Reps are the last word on building massive muscles. But are they? Our latest research and experiments (or should we say Xperiments?) confirm the power of X Reps, but as any seasoned bodybuilder knows, nothing works forever. You have to find ways to jack up the intensity if you want X-traordinary growth. So after more analysis and research we created new ways to X-ponentially increase the intensity of the X-Rep technique. The best of the best of those X-Rep hybrid techniques helped us pack on nearly 10 more pounds of new muscle to our already developed physiques (which is even more amazing when you consider that Steve is now 46 years old!). These techniques can do the same for youtake your mass to the next level at a rate that will astound you. Consider yourself in the fast lane to X-treme muscle. Are you ready? Lets put the pedal to the metal! Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson Steve H. and Jonathan L.: Bigger IRON MAN Training & and better in 05 thanks to new Research Center X-Rep hybrid techniques.
4 Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building
CHAPTER 1 X-hilirating Muscle-Building Observations
Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building 5
It all started when we began analyzing the way the biggest bodybuilders train for mass. These men are huge, so they have to know a thing or two about getting extreme development just dont ask them because theyll say something like, Do six to 10 reps on a lot of exercises. No wonder the failure rate in bodybuilding is outrageous. Its much more than that! T h a ts why we decided to observe rather than ask. We watched them train, analyzed their techniques, read up on training research and then applied what we saw to our own workoutswell, sort of. Due to our drug-free status we had to be more discerning and keep an eye toward science (we even a n a l y zed how steroids work in order to get many of those effects naturally, as youll see in an upcoming chapter). And thats when our gains began to skyrocket. More on that later. First, lets look at a few things we discovered when we opened our eyeslike all the cheating that goes on (and were not talking about steroids). Youve no doubt heard a mass monster at your gym or in a magazine article go on and on about strict form, but when you see him train, most of his reps look more like a re j e c t e d Olympic lift. Ronnie Coleman, Mr. Olympia and one of the biggest and strongest bodybuilders of all time, is the perfect example. In fact, on some of his exercises the weight is so heavy, t h e res ve ry abbre v i a t e d m ovement. On shru g s, for e x a m p l e, he loads up an o u t rageous poundage, s t raps onto the bar and pulls for all hes worth, but
Watch Ronnie Coleman train and youll see that he does most of his exercise in an explosive, partial style, blasting the weight through the key semistretched position and only moving it halfway or two-thirds of the way up through the stroke.
his shoulders barely rise. It looks like arm-stretching torture f rom the Middle Ages. (Well have a complete exerc i s e - byexercise analysis of his training toward the end of this e-book.) To be fair, not all of his sets and reps are partial ra n g e and/or explosive, but a lot of them areespecially on the big, compound exercises like pressesand for good re a s o n : Cheating is one way to trigger extraordinary muscle growth. Say what? Most scientists say that one of the big keys to muscle growth is force. The more force you can get a muscle to generate, the more growth youll stimulate. Thats one reason compound, or multijoint, exercises produce more mass gains than isolation m ovements doyou use more weight when a number of muscles work together, and you can increase the poundage m o re easily over time. Thats pro g re s s i ve overload. ( Were getting to the cheating part; hang on.) But theres more to it than just adding more weight to the bar on the big exercises, much more. As we explained in UMW, many re s e a rchers believe that the real growth trigger on certain exercises is near the turnaround, where you move from the negative stroke to the positive. Why? Because thats where the most force occurs. And where do m ost of the big bodybuilders cheat or explode? Near the turnaroundbottom of a squat or press, for examplewhich provides a wicked, growth-jolting overload. (Force-plate studies show that as a trainee recoils and then explodes near the bottom of a press to re verse the direction of the bar, the force can more than double. Its a wicked hypertrophic shockwave!) Think about it. At the bottom of an incline press your pecs have to put the brakes on and then reverse the direction of the bar. Lots of potential for maximum overload, or force, there. The problem: Many scientists say that the pecs cant quite exert maximum force at the very bottom of the movementtheres too much stretch. That means the muscle must be elongated to exert maximum force but not to the extreme. The key max-force point, then, is just below the middle of the stroke but not all
the way down at the bottom, stretch position (and not at the completely c o n t racted p osition, as many people believe). Its at a semistretched point. T h e re f o re, if you can overload the position thats just above the stretch but not quite to the midpoint, you can si gnificantly i n c rease the anabolic power of any set. T h a ts exactly what Force-plate studies show that when a trainee recoils and explodes near the many of the biggest bottom of a press to reverse the bodybuilders do on almost direction of the bar, the force can e ve ry rep. Watch them do more than double. Thats a incline presses, and youll tremendous stress overload on the muscle right at the key semistretched see them re verse the bar point. However, thats a dangerous b e f o re touching their practice. A better way to overload that upper p ecs, exploding max-force point is with end-of-set Xupward from there. (Some Rep partials or one of the new Xe ven bounce it off their hybrid techniques. chests to get the bar to the more advantageous max-force point.) By stopping a little short and exploding, they hit the semistretched position with more overload. That makes the exercise much more effective although it also makes it more dangerous. What about Ronnie Coleman and the shrug example above? By using a weight thats too heavy for full movements, he only works the bottom part of the stroke, never getting it near the contracted position. Though he only works the stretched and s e m i s t retched points and slightly above, he does it with extreme overload. And thats why his traps are gigantic! (He actually uses a hitch at the bottom, but well have more on that Double-X Overload technique later).
One of Arnolds favorite biceps exercises was cheat curls. Notice how it overloads his biceps right at the max-force point, just below where his elbows are bent at 90 degrees. Thats the X spot.
Arnolds Olympia workouts contain a number of examples. One of his favorite biceps exercises was barbell cheat curls. Hed take a heavy weight, lean forw a rd slightly and then explode the weight up to his shoulders. Where does the most f o rce occur on a set like that? The semistretched position, where the arms are not quite bent at 90 degreesjust below the halfway point of the stroke (see the photo above). Theres ve ry little resistance anywhere else during the entire curl. Could that have been at least part of the reason for Arnolds giant biceps and incredible peaks? Possibly. Eve ry exercise has its own sweet spot, and the biggest bodybuilders seem to instinctively know where that key point is and then exploit it for gigantic leaps in mass. (We explained and identified the key exercise for each bodypart and its sweet spot, or X position, in UMW.) They do a lot of their reps with a slightly shorter range of motion and explode out of the t u rn a round with heavy weight. (Watch Co l e m a ns tra i n i n g videos, and youll see a lot of that.) Its precisely what gives them excessive hypertrophic overload at the sweet spot of key exercises. It shifts the muscle machinery into overdrive! As you know if youve been to our Web site or read our other
e - b o o k s, we dont advocate jerking and heaving giant weightsespecially if you dont use things like grow t h hormone to fortify ligaments and tendons. Thats the wrong s t ra t e g y, despite what the pros do (re m e m b e r, even with pharmaceutical help a lot of pros have been seriously injured doing that, from pec and biceps tears to vertebrae blowouts to shattered shoulders). So heres what you should learn from this discussion... Muscle-building lesson 1: The semistretched point of an exercises stroke is key. You need to overload that sweet spot, especially on the big, compound exerc i s e s, if you want to maximize your mass gains. The best way is with X-Rep partials at the end of a strict set or Stage Sets, which are a series of e x a g g e rated X Reps right off the bat that encompass the semistretched position, and/or Double-X Overload, which is the between-reps hitch method we saw Ronnie Coleman using on shrugs at the semistretched point and that big Jay Cutler uses on almost every exercise in his mass-building program. Well review X Reps and analyze all the other X-Rep hybrid techniques, as well as have more discussion on those two pro bodybuilders training techniques, later in this e-book.
CHAPTER 2 X-treme Pumps and Pain to Gain
Do the biggest bodybuilders always explode on their reps? No, there are exercises that they ra rely cheat onusually isolation movements that create continuous tension, like leg e x t e n s i o n s. Whats so special about continuous-tension exercises? They block blood flow to the target muscle, which can have a spectacular impact on muscle size and strength. Its called occlusion, and one study, which was reported on in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research (15:362-366), applied it to subjects forearms by placing a blood pressure cuff on their upper arms for two minutes. The cuff was then removed, and the subjects did wrist curls. Results: Those who had their blood flow impaired prior to exercise showed a 20 percent strength increase over the subjects who didnt use the blood pressure cuff. Yes, 20 percent! What about muscle size? Rob Thoburn, an I RON MAN c o n t r ibutor and muscle-science re s e a rc h e r, h as been c o r responding with Japanese scientists who have been experimenting with Kaatsu, or occlusion, techniques. Thoburn reported that Takashi Abe, Ph.D., got a 7 percent increase in quadriceps cross-sectional area in four months with standard t raining, but when he used occlusion, he got an 8 perc e n t increase in cross-sectional areain only two weeks! Thats right, better results in about one-eighth the timetwo weeks as opposed to 16 weeks. Thats about an 800 percent increase in gains when blood flow was impeded. Wow! You can see why the biggest bodybuilders include continuous-tension sets in their routinesthey force blood out of the muscle and create those mass-and-strength-increasing occlusion effects. Why does blocking blood flow produce such spectacular increases in muscle size and strength? Part of it may be due to the incredible rush of blood to the bodypart once blood flow resumes (ah-ha, so maybe getting a pump does matter!). Scientists have suggested that the bodypart bloodbath that occurs post occlusion can produce everything from upgraded release of heat shock proteins to alterations in muscle calcium metabolism (calcium contributes to contraction) to greater
recruitment of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Interesting and exc i t i n g e s p e c i a l l y when you do the math: Lets see, a conservative 8 p e rcent increase in quad s i ze times 12 months Holy cow! Thatll doublesize your thighs in a year! But hold on. You use leg extensions in your quad Blocking blood flow to a muscle with ro u t i n e. Why are nt yo u continuous-tension movements can create bigger gains in size and getting 8 percent size strengthif you can stand the pain. increases every two weeks or even eve ry two months? Answe r: pain tolerance and/or nervous system failure. See, part of the reason is that right when the most occlusion is occurringnear the end of a continuous-tension setyou stop. Its a simple case of t e rminating sets too soonwhen you cant get any more complete repsand that severely limits occlusion effects. The big bodybuilders like Jay Cu t l e r, who do a lot of continuous-tension move m e n t s, have exc e p t i o n a l neuromuscular efficiency, or nerve-to-muscle connections, as well as pain tolerance. So they can keep the muscle firing as m o re occlusion occurs. (Legendary trainer Vince Gi ro n d a always said that what separates the champs from the wannabes is mental focus and pain tolera n c e. He was onto something.) It hurts like a mother when occlusion is occurring, as the muscle gasps and sputters from lack of blood and ox y g e n . Most of us mere mortals cant stand the pain and terminate the set way before we get a hefty dose of growth stimulation from occlusion. The champs just keep pushing through the pain barrierbut even they stop their sets too soon. Yep, super pain tolerance and focus can only get you so much extra stimulation on any given set. Their muscles crap
Stopping short on dumbbell flyes gives the pecs continuous tension and more occlusion. That technique was an Arnold favorite and contributed greatly to his unreal pec size.
out earlyat least sooner than theyd like partially due to nervous system failure, which is why they do so many sets. Each additional set gets them a tad more stimulationa shift in f i b e r- r e c r u i t m e n t o rde rbut i s all that e x t ra volume re a l l y n e c e s s a r y? Not if yo u train a little smarter, as we explain later in this e-book. Heres something else to consider: If you cant keep enough tension on the target muscle during a set for full occlusion to occur, youll minimize the anabolic effects even further. For example, if you have weak nerve force in your pecs, you may d i ve rt tension to your front delts near the top of dumbbell f l ye s. That allows blood to move into your pecs, dera i l i n g occlusion. If thats the case, it may be wise to follow Arnolds lead and do only the bottom half or two-thirds of the stroke. (By the way, Ronnie Coleman uses that partial technique on almost all of his exercises, even squats, doing only the bottom two thirds of each repits a supercharged occlusion workout.) The biggest bodybuilders often use exercises or parts of e x e rcises that keep max tension on the target muscle throughout the set to get occlusion. Lou Ferrigno did it on incline presses. Remember the scene in Pumping Iron when he was training at that cave-like gym in New York with his dad screaming at him (Come on, Louie! Ah-nolds nothin!)? He
was only doing the bottom two-thirds of the presses, achieving occlusion and hitting that important max-force-generation pointthe sweet spoton every every partial rep. Another example from the current crop of champs is Victor Martinez, an IFBB pro with spectacular delts. How did he build them? Check out this quote from his Q&A column in the June 05 Muscular Development: Pa rt i a l - rep lateral ra i s e s. The difference between my version and standard dumbbell lateral raises is that I move the weight only through the first quarter of the movement. Doing them this way takes the traps completely out of it; its all side delts moving the weight. Pl u s, I get to use much heavier poundages, since Im not raising the dumbbells up to peak contraction. In other words, Martinez is using X Reps from the get-go. He goes superheavy and does partials at the semistre t c h e d position on every rep. And his delts are X-tremely massive! Ronnie Coleman does the same maneuver on the Na u t i l u s lateral-raise machinesemistretched-point partials, and Jay Cutler does only the bottom part of his seated laterals, which really look like seated dumbbell upright rows. Something else to keep in mind: Rep acceleration, as well as lack of neuromuscular efficiency, can take tension off the target muscle. As mentioned above, an explosive rep can create an overload at the fully stretched or the import a n t s e m i s t retche d point (near the bottom of a press), but momentum can remove a lot of the tension halfway through. So while a number of pros use explosive movements on compound exercises like presses, they may also do lighter sets using partials for more occlusion (warmup sets and back-off sets count). On most isolation, or contracted-position, exercises, like leg extensions, howe ve r, they almost always use relatively slow reps to keep tension on the mu sc le, which maximize s occlusionalthough they may not realize thats why they do it. They do know the importance of the pump, though, and after a
The biggest bodybuilders like Jay Cutler, who do a lot of continuous-tension movements, have exceptional neuromuscular efficiency, or nerve-to-muscle connections, as well as pain tolerance. He X-Reps too, as youll see.
continuous-tension set, blood rushes to the targ e t bodypart like a flood surge after a dam collapse. Incidentally, while most bodybuilders use occlusion to finish off a bodypartto augment the pump created by multijoint actiona number of champs have l e a rned that getting some occlusion in the target muscle b e f o re a big exercise can increase strength, similar to what the scientists did with the blood pressure cuff. For example, Ronnie Coleman usually does a number of high-rep leg extension sets before he moves into his squats. Those preliminary continuous-tension sets of 20 to 30 reps each squeeze blood out of the muscle and then cause a flood right after. Is he using occlusion to jack up his size and strength? We say absolutely! (Well have more on using occlusion as part of a quick, precise warmup sequence to enhance muscle growth in the Q&A section of this e-book.) Muscle-building lesson 2: While its important to overload the semistretched position on every exercise, you should also strive for continuous tension to block blood flow. T h a ts one reason to use isolation exercises after your big compound movefor more concentrated continuous tension, which produces si gnificant occlusion, or blood-flow impairment, which in turn stimulates another level of muscle growth. Note: Some isolation exercises require partial-range reps to occlude the muscle properly, such as dumbbell flyes on which you should do only the bottom two-thirds of the stroke of each rep to maintain continuous tension. (That was an Arnold favorite; see the photo on page 14.)
CHAPTER 3 Hormone Surges and Fiber Slicing
Which exercises create the most mass? Any big bodybuilder will tell you its the compound, or multijoint, movements. The bodys muscular structures are designed to work together to p roduce maximum forc e. Compound movements re q u i re muscle synergy, or team work, so theyre more naturalmore ergonomicand allow greater overload. They also blast up testosterone output if you work them hard. (We described the best ones for each bodypart in The Ultimate Mass Workout ebook.) Those are the reasons the biggest bodybuilders construct their workouts around the core exerciseslike squats, rows, presses and so on. As we discussed in the last chapter, they also rely on continuous-tension isolation exercises for occlusion, pump and muscle burn. The burn is directly linked to growth h o rmone re l e a s e, as ve rified by a study published in the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology (22:244-255; 1997), a connection that may have something to do with higher blood lactic acid levels, which are partially responsible for muscle burn. Or it may be the occlusion effect or both. Why is GH important? Because it synerg i zes with other anabolic horm o n e s, like testostero n e, to make them much more potent. (It also helps burn bodyfat at a greater rate.) So, if you can max out GH and testosterone at the same time, you create a supergrowth environment, which is what the big men do. (Okay, many of them do it with syringes too, as well as in their training, but thats beside the point.) Whether they realize it or not, they get a testosterone release with compound movements and a GH surge with burn-igniting continuoustension exerc i s e s, whether its part i a l - range compound exercises or isolation moves that keep the pressure on. Does that mean a program of compound-only exercises is inferior to one that includes isolation moves? Possibly, from a hormonal standpointand from an occlusion standpoint as well if you lock out on all sets, which relieves target-muscle tensionbut there are ways to get more muscle burn on compound exerc i s e s. If you add X Reps to the end, yo u
automatically get some occlusion and a severe muscle burn. You may or may not recognize the name Tom Platz. Hes known for having the most spectacular leg development ever, even by todays freaky standards. His quads looked like giant striated water balloons hanging off his hips. Inhuman! With one leg flex he could make onlookers eyes widen to the size of pancakes and their jaws hit the floor. How did he get the mindnumbing development that made people go into Looney Tunes shock? One reason: He was notorious for taking his sets past failure with power partials, usually near the stretch position of certain quad exercises. For example, on hack squats hed crank out reps till failure, and then he would move down near the bottom, turnaround position and pulse, feeling his quads stretch and burn for what seemed like an eternity (end-of-set partials; thats familiar.) Platz also used that technique on leg extensions, at both the top and bottom positions. Leg curls too. And all the pain paid off bigthe mans legs grew to phenomenal proportions! Sure, genetics had something to do with it, but so did his attention to detail and tremendous effort with stretch- and semistretched-position overloadand his emphasis on stretch may have triggered muscle cells to replicate. Yes, its possible that a lot of his extreme eye-popping size may have had something to do with muscle fiber division, or hyperplasia. Hows that? Well, one study done by Antonio and Go n yea in 1994 showe d that fiber splitting can occur fro m s t retch overloadand more fibers would equ al more mass potential. Heres what John Hansen, Mr. Natural Olympia, had to say about that study
Tom Platzs freaky quad development may have at least partially been caused by hyperplasia, or fiber splitting. Stretch-position overload has been linked to that phenomenon in animals.
and fiber splitting in his book Natural Bodybuilding: Most of the research on hyperplasia has used animals such as birds, rats and catsas subjects. Jose Antonio, Ph.D., p e rf o rmed a study on a bird in which he used weights to p ro g re s s i vely overload one wing and stretch the anteri o r latissimus dorsi muscle. The overload scheme started with a weight that was 10 percent of the birds weight and increased it by 5 percent up to 35 percent. Two days of rest preceded an increase in weight. After 28 stretch days, the study recorded the greatest gains in muscle mass ever in an animal or human model of tension-induced overloada 334 percent increase in muscle mass with a 90 percent increase in fiber number. Wow! We mentioned earlier how Arnold overloaded his pecs in the stretch position with partial flyes. He would only pull the dumbbells up about halfway out of the stretch position and then lower back down for another replike exaggerated X Reps. That gave him occlusion via continuous tension, but perhaps even more important, it created a severe rapid-fire pec stretch. Could he have been triggering hyperplasia in his pecs with extreme stretch overload? Hmm. His pecs were certainly among the most massive ever. Platz and Arnold are examples of legendary bodybuilders who intelligently emphasized stretch overload at almost every w o rkout. Could that be why they excelled at building i n c redible muscle mass at a time when steroid use was minimal? It may be at least part of the reason. They may have created some fiber splittingand the more fibers you have, the bigger your muscles can get! Muscle-building lesson 3: While semistretched overload is important, you also need stretched-position exercises to ramp up anabolic hormones and perhaps trigger hyperplasia, or fiber splitting. Its another layer of growth production that can get you bigger much faster! (Well identify stretch-position e x e rcises for each bodypart later in this e-book and the Double-X Overload tactic that can supercharge their massbuilding power.)
CHAPTER 4 Cut the Volume, Cover the Angles
Most of the champs tend to train with lots of sets. Why is that necessar yor perc e i ved as necessar y? Most do it instinctively, but its because of what muscle physiologists call the size principle of muscle fiber recruitment. We explained it thoroughly in The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book, but heres a quick review: When you do a set to failure, the first few reps fire the low - t h reshold motor units. Then, as they fatigue, the medium-threshold motor units kick in. Once those start to give out, the important high-threshold motor units finally fire. In other words, you dont get to the fastest-growing fasttwitch fibers till the last few reps of any set to failure. That explains why experienced bodybuilders always say the last few reps are the most importantwithout the painful finale you barely scratch the surface of fast-twitch recruitment. Theres a glitch, though. Once you get near the end of the domino effectlow- to medium- to high-thre s h o l d yo u r nervous system craps out before you blast enough of the fasttwitch fibers to trigger significant growth. Thats why scientists say that any set to failure hits only 30 percent of the fast-twitch f i b e r s. Less if your neuromuscular efficiency sucks. Yo u r nervous system, short-circuited by fatigue, stops you short every time. Researchers believe its a protective mechanism. So what do most bodybuilders do to get around it? They do set after set to failure or close to it. With each additional set they get a slightly different recruitment pattern and get a few more fast-twitch fibers involved, if theyre lucky. But talk about inefficient: They have to do all those pre l i m i n a ry reps to activate the motor-unit domino effect just to get at a few more fast-twitch fibers. Then they do it again and again and again, getting only slig htly more growth stimulation via fiber recruitment with each set of the same exercise. A better way is to do only one or two work sets with X Reps tacked onto the end at nervous system exhaustion. That way you leapfrog nervous system fatigue and keep the key fasttwitch fibers firing right at the important max-force point. As weve said, with that strategy you make each set three to five
times more effective as standard positive-failure sets. So two sets on any exercise gets the job done. But what about training a muscle from different angles, which the pros do a lot of? Using different exercises can attack different fibers, and the more fibers you can get growing at once, the bigger youll get. What were saying is that you do need multiangular training once youre more advanced in order to stimulate more of the muscle (but probably not as much as you think; more on that in a moment). Ok a y, you probably want some scientific c o r ro b o ration. He res a quote from Designing Re s i s t a n c e Training Pro g ra m s by Steven J. Fleck, Ph.D., and William J. Kraemer, Ph.D., two of the most respected researchers in the strength-training field: If the body position is changed, the order of recruitment can also change (Gri m by and Ha n n e rz 1977). The order of recruitment can also change for multifunctional muscles from one movement or exercise to another. Recruitment order in the quadriceps for the performance of a knee extension is different f rom that for a squat. The va riation in re c ruitment ord e r provides some evidence to support the belief held by many strength coaches that to completely develop a particular muscle it must be exe rcised with seve ral different movements or exercises. Does that mean you have to do every exercise known to man for every bodypart in order to max out growth? No, you see each muscle has three distinct positions, or arcs, of flexion from which you should train it to maximize fiber recruitment m i d ra n g e, contracted and stretched. Those familiar with Steves work over the past decade and a half recognize that as Positions of Flexion. A midrange movement is usually a big multijoint exercise that triggers the most fiber activation. Examples include squats for quads and decline presses for lower chest. Co n t racted-position movements are usually isolation exercises that provide continuous-tension occlusion effects. Examples include leg extensions for quads and cable
crossovers for chest. Stretch-position movements fully elongate the target muscle against resistance, which can trigger anabolic hormones and possibly muscle-fiber spitting. Examples include sissy, or limbo, squats for quads and dumbbell flyes for chest. Muscle-building lesson 4: You must train a muscle from three distinct anglesmidrange, contracted and stretchedin o rder to maximize fiber activation. Eve ry exercise for each bodypart falls into one of those categoriesand if you add X Reps and X-hybrid techniques, which well explain later, correctly, you only need one to two sets in each position to maximize size stimulation very, very quickly!
Positions-of-Flexion Biceps Program

Midrange Barbell curls with a slight cheat train the midrange position, concentration curls work the biceps in their contracted position, with occlusion, and incline curls (below) work the biceps stretch position, which can trigger fiber splitting and anabolic hormone release. Stretch
Contracted
CHAPTER 5 Time-Bomb Training
Unless youve read The Ultimate Mass Workout and/or tried the X-Rep technique correctly, you may not realize just how powerful it is. At the end of a set to failure, when the important growth-oriented high-threshold motor units start to kick in, your nervous system fails. Thats when most people stop a setwhen they cant get another full-range repand growth stimulation is minimal. But with X Reps, instead of stopping, you lower the weight to the max-force-generation point and continue to fire out partials. Thats how you leapfrog nervous system failure and continue to recruit fast-twitch fibers. Heres how you do a standard X-Rep sequence on Smith machine squats: After a warmup your knees are lubed, youve got blood in your quads, and your legs are ra ri n to go. First you do one smooth set to positive failure, which is more of an extension of the warmup and primes your nervous system with a heavy work weight. No forced reps; no X Reps; stop at positive failure. Now comes the money set. After about a three-minute rest, get comfortable under the bar and unhook the safety catches. Your feet are slightly in front of your hips just wider than shoulder width and toes pointed out slightly. Inhale as you lower to a count of two to a point to where your hamstrings touch your calvesupper legs past parallel to the groundand then quickly reverse the action as you exhale. Dont bounce with the weight; its more of a controlled explosion. The weight should reach lockout in about 1 1/2 to two seconds. As soon as you hit lockout, or close to it if youre doing partials, begin the next rep. Continue with that cadence till you stick. At that point your partner should step in so the bar stalls for only a millisecond. He should apply enough pressure to the bar to keep it moving all the way to lockout. Note that we said the bar should keep m oving. That so-called forced rep should notnot!be a s l ow-motion tort u re tactic. Your partner should prov i d e enough help to keep your rep cadence intact for a smooth finish on your final rep. Otherwise your X Reps could suffer a
s e ve re shortfalland yo u dont want to shortchange max-force-point overload! At lockout take a deep breath and lower to a point just below parallel. Now s q u e eze the bar hard into your traps, innervate your quads to the max and pulse t h rough about an ei ghtinch range with X Re p s. Think of these as controlled m i n i - e x p l o s i o n s. Yo u should feel your qu ads screaming by about X-Rep number five. If not, yo u may be too high on the s t roke; tr y going a little X Reps can be brutal on the big deeper so you get a bit more exercises and may require partner assistance. stretch in your quads. When your quads are fried and you can no longer pulse, hold the weight statically for a few seconds down low, squeeze your quads as hard as you can, thenBam!rack it. You may have to rack it low if your partner cant help you get back to the top, but thats one reason you do these on a Smith machine. (The other is that X Reps are impossible at the end of a set of freebar squats due to a leverage shift.) Youve just done more to stimulate growth in that one set than most people get in three or four of the haphazard variety. Think about all the energy you save, energy your body can now channel into recovery and growth, thanks to getting the job done with half or a quarter of the volume! It all comes down to overloading the max-force generation point. Just the way Ronnie Coleman instinctively tries to overload that point on so many of his exercises. On an X-Rep set, however, instead of jerking or heaving every rep, wait till the end of the set and
attack that key mass-building sweet spot safely and efficiently. Getting more fast-twitch-fiber invo l vement and energ y c o n s e rvation is only part of X Re p s extra o rd i n a ry powe r, h owe ve r. Theres occlusion too. Because X Reps are part i a l m ovements and create continuous tension, you get some occlusion at the end of every set you use them on, even if its a f u l l - range multijoint exerc i s e. Pa rtials create continuous tension. And if you use X-Rep partials at the end of a set of a continuous-tension isolation movement, like leg extensions, you occlude the muscle even longer than if you stop at failure. As we mentioned earlier, most people are forced to stop their sets too early to reap all the size-and-strength-building benefits of occlusion, but if you grit your teeth and continue with X Reps, youll force longer occlusion times and your gains can skyrocket. So if you dont have the superior neuromuscular efficiency of a pro bodybuilder, X Reps can help you overcome that limitation. Power partials at the max-forc e - g e n e ration point attack more fast-twitch fibers with fewer sets and block blood flow for occlusion-growth effectsand where theres occlusion, theres usually burn. Thats the growth hormone connection. If youve been bodybuilding for any length of time, you know that its difficult to get a burn on compound exercises. Not anymore. If you add X Reps to the end of a set, you can trigger muscle burn at willon just about any exercise. That means you can get t e s t o s t e rone release and a GH surg e, a double-barre l e d anabolic blast. And if there is such a thing as hyperplasia, or fiber splittingthe jurys still outX Reps may be a key player (or splayer, in this case). X Reps produce spectacular muscle-building and shredding results, as the gains Jonathan Lawson and I made in only one month in 04 clearly show (see next page). I RON MAN Pu blisher John Balik said, X Reps are the single most important muscle-building concept to come along in years. But now theres moreX-Rep hybrid techniques that can
take you to the next level. Weve experimented with a number of new X-Rep-style training methods, and we got bigger and better after we honed them and harnessed their power. (We discuss them in the next few chapters.) Check out our new results belowno drugs, no trick photography. Muscle-building lesson 5: Change on a regular basis can create faster adapation, i.e. growth. Thats the reason you need a variety of X-Rep techniques in your mass-building arsenal. Switch them up often, providing your muscles with different stress overloads to cope with, and youll grow like never before.
Bigger and better in 05!
1-month XRep results in 04.
Experimenting with X Reps gave us amazing gains in only one month in 04. In 05 we mixed it up, experimenting with new X-Rep hybrid techniques like X/Pause and X First Stage. Results: We both were almost 10 pounds heavier than in 04in the same extremely shredded condition! 1-month XRep results in 04. Bigger and better in 05!
Muscle-Building Lessons Review

Lesson 1: The semistretched point of an exercise is key. You need to overload that sweet spot, especially on the big, compound exercises, if you want to maximize your mass gains. Many of the biggest bodybuilders in the world, like Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler, use it on almost every set of every exercise. Well have more analysis of their training techniques later in this e-book. Less on 2 : While its important to overload the semistretched position on every exercise, you should also strive for continuous tension to block blood flow on at least some movements. Thats one reason to use isolation e x e rcises after your big compound movefor more concentrated continuous tension, which produces significant occ lu sion, or blood-flow impairment, which in turn stimulates another level of muscle growth. Examples include leg extensions and leg curls. Lesson 3: While semistretched overload and continuous tension are important, you also need stretched-position exercises to ramp up anabolic hormones and perhaps trigger hyperplasia, or fiber splitting. Its another layer of growth production that can get you bigger much faster! (Remember the bird study that created over a 300 percent increase in muscle mass in only 30 days? Our new Double-X Overload tactic on stretch-position exercises mimics that and can supercharge mass gains. Very exciting!) Lesson 4: You must train a muscle from thre e d istinct angl esmid ra nge, contr act ed and s t re t c h e d in order to maximize fiber activation. Eve ry exercise for each bodypart falls into one of those categories and if you add X Reps and X-hybrid techniques, you only need one to two sets in each position to maximize size stimulation very quickly! Lesson 5: Change on a regular basis can cre a t e faster adapation, i.e. growth. Thats the reason you need a variety of X-Rep techniques in your mass-building arsenal. Switch them up often, providing your muscles with different s t ress overloads to cope with, and yo ull grow like neve r before.
CHAPTER 6 Stage Sets and Double-X Overload
We decided to start our X-Rep hybrid discussion with Stage Sets because its similar to how Ronnie Coleman trains, and we mentioned his training in many of the previous chapters. He essentially does partial reps, from the semistretched point up to only about two thirds of the way through the stro k e. Its essentially explosive nonlock partials on most exercises. We got rather excited when we noticed his training style on his Redemption DVD because it verifies a lot of what weve been preaching about with X Repsand it also answers a common question: What if you do X Reps firstor at least exaggerated X Repswithout preliminary full reps? Answer: It can build big-time mass. In past years, before X Reps, we noticed that every time we i n t roduced Stage Sets to our w ork o u t s, we got su dden muscularity and vascularity increasesand now we know why: The technique is essentially a unique type of X overloadan intense out-of-the-blocks blast right at the max-force point. He res how an X-Rep Stage Set works for Sm i t h - m a c h i n e incline presses. You position yourself on the incline bench, grip slightly wider than your shoulders. Unhook the safety catches and then lower the bar to about an inch above your upper chest. From there you drive it back up, but only to just slightly higher than the midpoint of the stroke. When you reach that point, lower back to the semistretched position, and so on, doing low-range partials till you cant stand the burn. Youre essentially doing piston-like exaggerated X Reps right off the bat through the max-force point, which is what Coleman does, but we take it a step further. When you cant do another exaggerated X Repyou should get about 10 of those lowdown partialsget the bar to lockout, with help from your partner. Now you do the top stage of the stroke. First, squeeze your pecs hard, contracting them in the lockout position, then lower through about the top one-third of the movement. Blast back to the top and squeeze your pecs again. Flex at lockout on every one of those top-end reps. Are Stage Sets better than standard X Repsthose power
p a rtials you do at the end of a positive - f a i l u re set? No t necessarily. As weve said, full reps can prime the muscle for optimal fast-twitch fiber recruitment at the end of the set. In other words, it appears the first full reps or near-full reps on a standard set make your end-of-set X Reps a more powe rf u l fast-twitch switch, which is due to the size principle of recruitment that weve covered in an earlier chapter and in UMW. Basically, its a motor-unit cascade that makes X Reps more power packed! Ne ve rt h e l e s s, Stage Sets have their place and when we began mixing them into our program we once again saw better mass gains. He res the sequence we usually used when we wanted to incorporate this new, potent X-Rep mass attack: 1) Warmup Sets. Do two progressively heavier setsuse 50 percent and then 80 percent of your work-set weight to get your nervous system primed to fire the most muscle fibers possible on your first work set. (T heres more on precision warmup sequences in Chapter 11.) 2) Positive-failure S e t . Do a standard positive-failure set (you can add X Reps to the end, but only if yo ure a d vanced and have good recovery ability). 3) Stage Set. Do a second work set, but this time use the Stage technique de scri b e d a b ove e x a g g e rated X Reps to exhaustion first f o l l owed by top-end reps with concentrated l o c k o u t s. (Yo ull feel it Stage Sets can provide more working, we guarantee semistretched-position overload as it!) well as anabolic occlusion.
[ Note: The Staged technique, as described, w ill be impossible on some move m e n t s, such as upright rows. We insert this technique in the upcoming routines only on the exercises that work best with it.] We said above that you may want to add X Reps to the first work setif youre advanced. Doesnt that contradict what weve said in the pastthat you should do your first work set to positive failure only? Not really. We said that because the first set is designed to prime your nervous system for your second work set that includes X Reps. Weve discovered that if youre fairly advanced and know how to warm up properlyheavy enough to get your nervous system jacked, but not so heavy that you fatigue the target muscleyou should be able to get the full-blown mass stimulation from X Reps on your very first work set. Then your Stage Set will act as a bonus blockbuster mass builder to really kick your mass-building machinery into gear! X-aggerated X + X Reps. Thats a lot of Xes, but its a good description of another version of this hybrid technique. With X-aggerated X + X Reps, you still do the first stage, moving through the semistretched position with exaggerated X Reps, but when you hit nervous system exhaustion, instead of moving to lockout, you move to the X Spot, or semistretched point, and perform X Reps. Thats more brutal than regular Stage Se t s, so be pre p a red for some X-cruciating pain. Its w o rth it though . Yo ull see muscular results almost immediately. Now back to our friend, Ronnie Coleman. Weve mentioned his mass training and how its heavily dependent on maxf o rce-point overload. He does a lot of part i a l - rep sets with explosive turnarounds at the semistretched point, the X spot, never getting close to lockout on any exerciseand his mass is incredible! It verifies a lot of what weve discovered. Well, after watching his Redemption DVD, we picked up on something even more exciting, a simple exercise tweak that could pack incredible new mass on your physiqueand
another X-Rep hybri d technique. Double-X Ove rl o a d . First, you have to realize that Co l e m a ns traps are absolute ly freaky! On the DVD hes working out in a s t ring tank top, and weve n e ver seen such gigantic t ra p s. They sit on h is shoulders like tw o-ton boulders! What does he do for them? Only three sets of behind-the-back barbell s h rugswould you believe 11 reps with 745 pounds?! Now, thats not a real unique e x e rc i s e, and he does ve ry few sets compared to his other bodypart hits, but his t raps are arguably his best, most freaky muscle group. Is it genetics? Maybe, to a degree, but he also has a unique way of p e rf o rming his shru g s,
Bottom.
Top.
Colemans Double-X Overload tactic on shrugsa hitch at the bottom of each rephave helped him develop outrageous traps! Its basically an X Rep at the semistretched point between every full rep. Also notice that he doesnt move the bar very far even on his full reps (see photos above)yet his traps are huge. Check out the still from his Redemption DVD when he was wearing a string tank top (left). Amazing! (Colemans DVD is available at www.Home-Gym.com).
something he doesnt do for any other exercise (and after seeing the size of his traps, we have to ask, Why not?). Heres what he does: When he stands erect with the massive weight suspended at arms length behind his legs, he pulls up only a few inches, shrugging with a very limited range, but when he gets to the bottom semistretched positionthis is the important parthe double hitches. He uses that controlled m a x - f o rce-point double blast on eve ry rep of eve ry set of shrugs. Could it be that his double overload at the semistretched position is creating extreme anabolic reactions in his upper back? Remember, there have been scientific studies correlating stretch overload with hyperplasia, or fiber splitting. Could his double-hitch method be triggering muscle-fiber replication as well as max-force-point overload for a double-whammy massmorphing effect? It sure looks that way! Think about it. His traps are incredible, yet he only does three sets for them. How about this: On Jay Cutlers Ripped to Shreds DVD, he uses the Double-X Overload technique on almost eve ry exercise! Were convinced its how Cutler has overcome many of his genetic limitations to become one of the best bodybuilders in the world. Were very excited about these observation, and after trying D o u b l e - Xes in the gym we can honestly say that you will almost feel growth happening (is it hyperplasia?). For example, the next time you do leg curls, lower to the bottom semistretched point on the first rep, pull up only about 10 inches, lower to full stretch again, and then pull the weight up for a full rep. Continue that sequence on every rep, DoubleXing at the bottom turnaround. At nervous system failure, you can add standard X Repsif you can stand the burn. Double X Overload obviously works for Ronnie Coleman and has allowed him to build amazing trap mass with very few sets (Ronnie, youve got to try it on other exercises!). Give it a go and watch yourself grow!
CHAPTER 7 X/Pause and X-centric Training
Ou r first foray into X-Rep hybrid techniques was X Overload. What we did was take a set to nervous system failure, rack the weight, add 10 to 20 percent more poundage, then crank out a heavier X-Rep-only set. We thought that would overload the X Spot and create some exceptional new gains. It sure looked good on paper. Unfortunately, we didnt get a lot out of itand we were puzzled. Why didnt it ramp up our mass gains? Then it hit us: By stopping at nervous system failure, we were derailing the size principle of muscle fiber recruitment and not extending the set with occlusion. We did get some strength out of it, but that may be because of the tendon and ligament work we were getting on the heavy X-Rep-only set. It was essentially like doing a second partial low-rep set (sets in the one-to-four-rep range are notorious for building more strength than size for that very reason). Then, as luck would have it, we ran across some of Mike
Mike Mentzer used a technique he called rest/pause, taking six-second breaks between max singles. That never did much for our muscle size, so we retooled it into X/Pause training, a more severe form of standard X-Rep work.
Mentzers writings on Heavy Duty training and rest/pause. His technique was as follows: a heavy single, rest six seconds, another heavy single, rest six seconds, another heavy single with help if necessary, rest six seconds and a final heavy single with a reduced poundage and/or with help from a partner. Once again, that sounds like a strength-building regimen, and thats exactly what we found when we tried it as outlined by Mentzer. But we also realized that he made good gains with it (perhaps because of his superior neuromuscular efficiency), his reasoning being that the pauses between all-out efforts helped clear the target muscle of lactic acid and other waste products that can short-circuit the nervous system and cause premature failure. That got us thinking... What if you did a regular set to nervous system exhaustion, tacked on X Reps to force the muscle to continue to activate fast-twitch fibers, and then rested for six seconds. After that short pause you take the same weight and blast out an X-only set. Bingo! We saw mass increases almost immediately. We think the reason X/Pause works and X Overload doesnt work so well is because the X Reps tacked onto the first part of the set better deplete the muscle and add more occlusion. Also, because the rest is so shortsix seconds as opposed to a longer rest to change the weight on X Overloadthe size principle is still intact and fast-twitch fibers continue to fire efficiently without overbearing tendon and ligament support. To review, heres how to do an X/Pause set on close, parallelgrip pulldowns: Strap on to the pulldown bar and wedge your thighs under the support pads. Pull the handle down to your chest and then release almost to lockout before pulling it back d own to your chest. At nervous system exhaustion, which should occur at around rep nine, move to the semistretched point, just shy of lockout, and do X-Rep partials, pulling the bar down about eight inches in a controlled, explosive manner. When you cant do anymore X Reps, stand up, let the weight stack down, but dont release the handle. Count off six secondsone-thousand one, one-thousand two, etc.then
reposition yourself under the thigh-support bars and crank out an X-Rep-only set, getting as many of those semistretchedposition partials as you can stand. The pain is not fun, but you have to remember that youre using intensity to supercede volume. In other words, youre t raining harder so you dont have to train longer. Were all about efficient mass building, and the X/Pause technique does the trick quicklyjust dont abuse it. Its severe! X - c e n t ric Tr a i n i n g . And speaking of intensity, almost e ve ry trainee knows that you can lower much more weight than you can raise. In fact, a few decades ago negative-only training, doing only the lowering part of the exercise, was very popular for building strength. Why? Because you can use 20 to 50 percent more weight than a normal positive/negative set and eccentrically overload the muscle. It produces unbearable soreness, but thats only part of the drawback. For a number of exercises you need a couple of strong, willing helpers to lift the weight into position on every rep so you can lower it. (Imagine a guy on each side of the bar as you squat, picking up the weight for you after you slowly sink to the bottom position. We dont think theyd stick around too long.) Weve discussed negative, or eccentric, training at the X-Rep s i t e, but to understand the X-centric hybrid technique, we should re v i e w. We mentioned watching the most massive bodybuilders like Ronnie Coleman explode with heavy weights. That puzzled us for a long time. They werent getting full contractions, so why in the heck were they growing? Okay, theres the anabolic steroid connection, but it had to be more than that because the way they were training appeared to do little for total-muscle stimulation. After thinking it through, we realized that by exploding to get a heavy weight up, they automatically created more overload on the negativethe lowering, or eccentric, part of every rep. They could lift more, so they had to lower more. That had to be the key. Sure, their control was minimal, but maybe having to fight, even a little, to slow down that heavy weight so
A new study shows that fast lowering of resistance creates more muscle growth than slow, controlled movementbut it may not be the speed that triggers results. Its probably the extra overload at the semistretched point on the stroke caused by stopping the fast downward movement at the bottom.
it didnt rip muscles and joints was the key. After all, scientists have often said that the negative part of a rep is the most important. If our thinking was correct, heavy negativeonly training should produce outstanding results in size and strength. Nope. The studies comparing heavy negative-only sets to standard positive/negative work dont show much difference in results. The spectacular size and strength increases from heavy negative-only training just dont happen. The studies find that negative-only training with heavier weights produces about the same results as regular sets. That blew our theory out of the water. Then researchers compared regular positive/negative sets to positive-only (concentric) setsonly raising the weight. What happened? Standard positive/negative work won every time. The mystery continued: From the first studies it looks like negative work is nothing special. But when negative work is missing, gains are near zero. Why? Its not that negative work is more important than positive work; its just necessary to trigger more growthat least more than positive-only workbecause the most important point in many exercises is near the turnaround, when you shift from n e g a t i ve to positive. With positive-only work there is no turnaround, that critical directional shift.
When you do positive-only work, you just lift the weight. In other words, maximum force production doesnt occur at that key turnaround point in the stroke. You do get a little overload there with positive-only workwhen you have to drive from a dead stop out of the bottom of a press, for examplebut not as much as when you have to reverse the movement of a weight in that position. That semistretched shock is the missing element in positive-only training, which is why it does little for muscle growth. But hold on! Heavy, negative-only work doesnt include a turnaround eitheryou just lower a heavy weight. So shouldnt it produce the same meager results as postive-only work? No, because overload at the turnaround point is not missing from heavy negative-only work. Think about it: Youre much stronger during the negative phase of a rep than the positive. So negative-only sets require you to use much more weight than in a standard setusually more than your one-rep max, in fact. That means you do overload the turnaround point with a much heavier weightthere is semistretched shock. No, you dont reverse the movement, but you do have to slow it down (at least youd better! That weight is friggin heavy!). A recent study ve rifies the importance of turn a ro u n d , although the re s e a rchers seem to miss that result. Jo s e Antonio, Ph.D. discussed it in his Anabolic Drive column in the October 05 issue of IRON MAN: Twelve 24-year-old subjects performed maximal resistive lengthening isokinetic exercise with both arms for eight weeks, three days per week, during which they trained one arm at a fast velocity and the other at a slow velocity. Type 1 muscle fiber size increased in both cases. Type 2a and 2x muscle fiber increased in both arms, but the increases were greater in the fast-trained arm. The researchers concluded that training using fast (3.66 radians per second) lengthening contractions leads to greater h y p e rt rophy (growth) and strength gains than slow (0.35 radians per second) lengthening contra c t i o n s. The gre a t e r
hypertrophy seen in the fast-trained arm may be related to a greater amount of protein remodeling. Why do we say the conclusion is askew? Well, from the results it appears that training faster stimulated more muscle. But is the speed of movement really triggering extra growth or is it max-force overload right at the semistretched position? Realize that when you move fast, it takes more effort to stop the resistance and/or reverse it. In fact, research indicates that when a trainee standing on force plates moves fast and uses momentum, the actual weight he has to re verse at the turnaround of a rep can be double or triple the poundage hes lifting. The reason? Gravity plus momentum. As the weight is quickly lowered and then heaved at the turnaround to reverse its direction, the force is multiplied two- to threefold. How does that cause more muscle growth? Exc e s s i ve overload at the ke y hypert rophic point. The key fiberactivation point on the stroke is near the turn a ro u n d t h e semistretched point, where maximum force generation can occur. When you move fast through the negative phase of the stroke, as in the study, it takes more effort to reverse or stop the poundage at that max-force point, so you achieve more targetmuscle overload right at the muscles sweet spot. (Imagine dropping a heavy weight through the eccentric phase of a leg curl and then stopping it right before your legs are straightas opposed to lowering it slowly under control.) Obviously, training fast is much more dangerous than using a slower, controlled cadence. We prefer to train safer and still get all the benefits of max-force-point overload that occur with fast training. In other words, we dont recommend fast ballistic movements; instead we use X Reps and the X-hybrid tactics. While the conclusions may be askew, the above study along with our other forays into negative training did help us devise X-centric training, which allowed us to get bigger and stronger in 05. Heres how it works on chins: When you hit nervous system exhaustion on chins, move to
near lockout and do as many X Reps as possible. When you crap out, use a chair or stool to put your feet on and get back into the top position of the chin. Lock into it, take your feet off the stool and do a four-second negative. When you reach the X Spot, near the bottom, pulse with X Reps. You may only be able to do one or two of those slow negatives plus Xes, but what an incredible mass-kicking method! Weve never tried it, but you could do a few X Reps on every rep of a pure-negative set too. For example, you tie about 20 percent more weight around your waist for those chins, climb to the top, lower slowly and then do about three X Reps near the bottom. Do four or five of those pure negatives plus Xes,but be carefulyouve guaranteed to get mighty soreand your lats may be ripping out of your shirt before you can say wicked V taper.
CHAPTER 8 Iso X and X Fade
In The Ultimate Mass Workout we made the case for doing X Reps at the top of contracted-position exercises, even though weve said over and over that the semistretched position is the best spot for ultimate muscle fiber recruitment (see, we said it again). Heres our reasoning: We know that an important point on the stroke for [stretch- and contracted-position] exercises is full elongation on stretch-position exercises and full contraction on contracted-position exercises. Therefore, you should do your X Reps close to those points. For example, on incline curls, a stretch-position exercise for biceps, when you can no longer do full reps, you pulse just a b ove the stretch position. On concentration curls, the contracted-position movement for biceps, once you hit failure, use your free arm to get the dumbbell up into the contracted position and pulse at that key point. While we made the a rgument that elongation is important for max forc e production on X Reps, you already get that on midrange and stretch exercises. So X Reps in the contracted position will p rovide another unique muscle-building stimulus. Re m e m b e r, many re s e a rchers believe that the best grow t h stimulus occurs when the muscle is semi-elongated, so X Reps in the fully contracted position may not be idealjust unique. That last statement is important and the reason that after using X Reps at the top of contracted-position exercises, like concentration curls, leg extensions and leg curls, we felt like something was missing and that our gains could be better. We kept asking ourselve s, If the semistretched position is so c ricically important for muscle growth, why are nt we emphasizing it on contracted-position exercises as well? Despite the explanation from UMW, we knew we had to do something to change our Iso-X strategyusing X Reps in the c o n t racted position onlyto something that blasted the s e m i s t retched position in addition. X Reps at the maxcontraction point made some sense, but doing them at the semistretched point seemed even more beneficial, especially
The X Fade has you do X Reps in the top contracted position, then move to the sweet spot, the semistretched point near the bottom, for more X Reps.
after all the tra i n i n g analysis and experimentation wed been doing. (Heck, Ro n n i e Coleman almost neve r m oves to the contra c t e d position on any exercise, as youll see when we analyze his training routine toward the end of this e-book.) Thats how the X Fade was born. It started out as a three-position X-Rep sequence. At nervous system exhaustion the trainee got help to the top, contracted position and pulsed for three to four X Reps. Then he lowered to the middle of the stoke and pulsed there for another three or four X Re p s. Fi n a l l y, he lowe red to the semistretched position and did X Reps there till the pain was too much. That ended the set (usually with horri f i c screaming!). In the beginning we liked that triple-X method, but then we realized that we werent getting a heckuva lot of Xes in the last positionand that was the most important spot for fiber activation, the semistretched point! By the time we got there, the target muscle was spent, the burn was too intense, and we just couldnt do our X Reps near the bottom the justice they deserved. So the X Fade become a two-position fade instead of three. Our new, improved version: At nervous system exhaustion we get help to the top, contracted position for X Reps, fire out as many as possible, then lower to the stronger semistreched point and do X Reps there. Ah, much better with noticeably better muscle-size results. Here are all the X-hybrid tactics...
X-Rep Hybrid Techniques Cheat Sheet

STAGE SETS. Do the two-thirds of the exercises stroke that includes the semistretched point first , like the bottom two t h i rds of squats; at nervous system exhaustion, move to lockout and do the top one third of the stroke to exhaustion. ( Note: This technique works best on exercises with bonesupport lockouts; for example, squats, bench presses, overhead presses. You can also do the first stagethat encompasses the X spotand then at nervous system exhaustion move to the X spot and continue with standard X Reps. Stage Sets dont work well for exercises that have continuous tension.) DOUBLE-X OV E R LOA D. Use a hitch, or X Re p, at the semistretched point between every full rep. For example, on shrugs you move the bar down to the lowest point, pull up a few inches, move the weight back down to the lowest point and then do a full rep. You can use this technique on almost any exercise, even squats; however, you may have to lighten the weight. Its ideal for stretch-position exercises and may trigger fiber spitting! X / PAU S E . Do you r normal set to ner vous system exhaustion, blast out X Reps at the semistretched position and then rack the weight. Count to six, then take the same weight and grind out more X Reps at the semistretched point till you cant move the weight. X-CENTRIC TRAINING. Do a normal set to nervous system exhaustion, blast out X Reps, then get the weight back upto the top of chins, for example with help. Lower the we i g h t slowly for about five seconds and at the semistretched point do three or four X-Rep pulses. Get the weight back up again and repeat the slow negative plus X Reps. Do that till you cant lower through the negative phase with control. X FA D E. This is more for continuous-tension isolation exercises (contracted), like leg extensions and leg curls. Do a normal set to nervous system exhaustion, then get help to the top contracted spot. Do X Reps there, then lower to the semistretched point and do X Reps at that key point till the muscle is spent.
CHAPTER 9 Our X-citing Results and Findings
Since our 04 X-periment, when we first began using X Reps, weve made some startling discoveries that increased our gains s i g n i f i c a n t l y. Yo uve already read about the X-hybri d techniques that helped take our intensity and muscle mass to the next level in 05. We also used a different split that had us working legs only once a week. What?! Havent we said that working a bodypart once a week doesnt work for most people and has never given us results? Thats correct, but theres a minor detail that makes the strategy viable, at least for quads. They seem to need more recovery time, especially if youre doing cardioand during our ripping phase in the summer months, we do lots of cardio, and it all involves legs. We snapped to the need for more leg recovery time when we saw a new study reviewed by researcher Jerry Brainum that appeared in the August 05 IRON MAN. Heres an excerpt: In a study presented at the 2004 meeting of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, researchers from the Un i versity of Alabama examined just how long it takes to recover from a weight-training workout. Fifteen men and 15 women were tested for strength recovery at 48, 72 and 96 hours after a weight workout consisting of three sets of eight repetitions done with weights equal to 65 percent of one-rep maximum in the bench press and leg press.
X-Rep hybrid techniques helped us take our muscle mass to the next level in 05, but we had to be careful with them. They are powerful and can trigger overtraining if they are abused.
Analysis showed that 66.7 percent of the male subjects needed 96 hours for full recovery on the leg press. In contrast, 93.3 percent of the men showed full recovery on the bench p ress after 72 hours. As for the female study subjects, 66.7 percent recovered on the bench press after 72 hours, while only 46.7 percent showed full recovery on the leg press at the 96hour mark. We do a few more sets than three for our quads at any one leg workout, and we add intense X Reps. Plus, like we said, we were doing lots of leg-related cardio during our ripping phase. All that considered, we figured once-a-week leg training should be about rightand we we re correct. Our strength start e d moving up on almost every exercise, and our legs got more shredded and vascular. Du ring our 05 ripping-phase split our once-a-week leg workout occured on Wednesday. We split the upper body over two days, Monday and Tuesday, and then repeated the split on Thursday and Friday. We tried to minimize the overlap, but unfortunately we still got some. Heres how our 05 rippingphase split looked: Monday: delts, traps, midback, rear delts, biceps, forearms Tuesday: chest, lats, triceps, abs Wednesday: quads, hamstrings, calves, lower back Thursday: delts, traps, midback, rear delts, biceps, forearms Friday: chest, lats, triceps, abs The major overlap occured with back. We trained traps and midback one day, and then the following day we worked lats. Biceps also got some overlap: We worked them that first day directly and with midback and then they got some indirect work the next day, when we worked lats. Despite the small amount of overlap, we liked this split. And
the once-a-week leg training on Wednesdays kept our program in the five-day workweek schedule we must use because we cant train on weekends (Steve has kids on club soccer teams and Jonathan teaches at car-racing schools). What we failed to consider was that compared to 04, we were training our upper-body muscles more frequently. Last year a bodypart would get hit once a week every third week, like a built-in re c ove ry rotation (see The Ultimate Ma s s Workout for that program). In 05, training legs only once a week, we trained our upper body muscles twice a week every week. Add to that the more intense nature of the X-Rep hybrid techniques we were using, and you see why we believe we may h a ve been ove rt raining to a degree this year (but we still managed to pack on almost 10 pounds of muscle! Were convinced we couldve packed on more.): In 04 we were doing the first work set to failure, and then adding X Reps to the second work set. In 05 we used the more severe X-hybrid techniques, and on some of our compound exercises we did the first work set with X Reps at the end, paused for six seconds and did more X Reps (the X/Pause technique), and then we did the second work set in Stage style or Double-X Overload. Thats much, much more intense than 04! Lets quickly review those X-hybrid techniques so you can see how much more severe our 05 program was. Heres how we used X/Pause on Smith machine incline presses. After doing two progressively heavy warmup sets, we loaded the bar with a poundage that we could get about nine reps with. When we reached central nervous system exhaustion, we lowered the bar to the max-force point, just above the chest, and pulsed, firing the bar up to about the middle of the stroke on each X Rep. We usually got about four to six, then we racked it. After a six-second pause, we would unrack the bar again, take it down to the X spot and blast out about three more X Reps.Talk about
overload! That six-second rest gives some of the fatigue time to subside, but its not long enough to take the stress off the fasttwitch fibers. In other words, they will still be engaged when you continue the set with more X Reps. Now for the Stage Set. After about a two-to-three-minute rest we reduced the poundage slightly. He res the stage protocol: We would rep out on the bottom two-thirds of the stroke first, which encompasses the X spot. At nervous system exhaustion we pushed the bar to lockout, usually with partner a s s i s t a n c e, and then we would do the top one-third of the s t roke to lockout. Thats a weak area, so a little part n e r assistance was usually necessary on each of those reps. You may think the top range is mostly triceps on incline presses, but by doing the bottom two-thirds of the stroke first, we essentially pre-exhausted our pecs, so we really felt the toprange partials in our chestsbelieve us! Its a wicked burn. A Stage Set is a unique way to extend the tension timeyou get to attack the semistretched position, or X spot, first in the set, albeit with a more exaggerated X-Rep movement. Stage sets work nicely on most compound exercises that have a lockout positionpresses and squats for example. The problem is, on exercises that dont have a lockout position, where there is continuous tension throughout the replike rows and pulldownsin order to use the stage technique, you have to do the contracted-position phase first and finish with the third of the stroke that includes the X spot. That just doesnt work as well, so we used other X-hybrid techniques on those. For example, the Double-X Overload techniquefullrange reps with a hitch at the stretch position. (As we said, big Jay Cutler uses this technique on almost every exercise, and it may be a key trigger of hyperplasia, or fiber splitting, necessary for extreme size.) To use the Double-X-O technique on cable upright rows, for e x a m p l e, we pull the bar to the chest, lower to the arm s extended position, pull up about eight inches, lower to full
extension again, then do another full-range rep. That hitch at the bottom provides more overload at the key semistretched point on every rep. You can even end with standard X Repsif you can stand the burn. We also incorporated the X Fade on almost all of our singlejoint contracted-position exerc i s e s, like leg extensions, c o n c e n t ration curls and pushdow n s. As we mentioned in Chapter 8, the X Fade is tailor-made for those exercises, and we often used it on a second set after a standard set done with X Reps in the semistretched position. Once again, a review is in order. Heres how we used an X Fade on leg press calf raises: We did a straight set to nervous system failure, and then added X Reps near the stre t c h position. After a brief resttwo to three minuteswe did another set to central nervous system exhaustion, but this time instead of lowering to the X spot, we got the weight into the top, contracted position, usually with partner help, and did X Reps there, then we lowered to the semistretched position and finished with X Reps at the sweet spot. An X Fade enables you to stress different areas of an exercises stroke with the powerful X-Rep technique. The only problem is that you hit the semistretched point at the very end of the set, after you do X Reps at the higher position on the stroke. That means fatigue may prevent you from getting a lot of overload at the important semistretched pointbut thats precisely why you do X-Fade sets second, after a standard XRep set, which emphasize semistretched-point overload. Heck, you could even use the Double-X Overload technique on every rep, then do an X Fade. That may sound insane, but intensity is the name of the game if youre after X-treme mass! All of the X-hybrid techniques helped make our 05 ripping phase our most successful everdespite a bit of overtraining (we think we couldve done better with a different split, as youll see in the next chapter). How effective? Well, you saw our photos in Chapter 5 and at the beginning of this chapter. We did our annual photo shoot in mid-June, almost three weeks
earlier than in 04. Its a testament to our X-Rep strategy and the X-Rep hybrid techniques, which helped us get bigger and leaner faster in 05. We were both about 10 pounds heavier than in 04 but in the same ripped condition. Thats especially impressive for Steve, who was right at 200 pounds the day after the shoot. Hes never weighed that much in such shredded condition in his lifeand he was just shy of his 46th birthday! Ne ve rt h e l e s s, we thinkmake that we know we can do better, as youll see in the next chapter (and we want you to come along for the ride to pack on more size). If you want to try the pro g ram we used during our 05 ripping phase, its on the next few pages. Keep in mind, however, that despite our gains, we felt as if we may have been overtraining, especially if you compare it to our 04 X-periment program that we listed in The Ultimate Mass Workout. You may want to try reducing the sets and/or plugging it into the split in the next chapter, which still trains legs once a week but provides the upper-body muscles with more recovery time. What are we going to do next? Thats what the next chapter is all about! [ Note: The pro g rams on the next few pages may look somewhat complicated; however, each workout contains only about 25 work sets total. Considering the intensity of the new X-hyrid techniques, as we explained above and in previous chapters, weve simplified the program based on our findings and results and distilled it all into the new streamlined version in the next chapter. Thats the one we suggest you use, as its the program well use in our next mega-mass phaseand well update it at X-Rep.com n the X-Blog.]
05 Ripping Phase Routine Monday and Thursday: Delts, Midback, Biceps, Forearms
Rack upright rows or seated laterals (first set is a drop with X Reps; second is with X/Pause) 2 x 10(6), 10 Forward-lean laterals (X Reps; second set is a drop) 2 x 8-10, 8(6) Smith-machine behind-the-neck presses (X Reps; second set Staged) 2 x 8-10 Superset One-arm cable laterals (X Reps) 1 x 8-10 Incline one-arm laterals (X Reps) 1 x 8-10 Superset Cable upright rows (X Reps) 1 x 8-10 Shrugs or Nautilus shrugs (X Reps or Double-X O) 1 x 8-10 Machine rows (second set with X Reps) 2 x 8-10 Behind-the-neck pulldowns (X Fade) 1 x 8-10 Superset Bent-arm bent-over laterals 1 x 8-10 Bent-over dumbbell rows (X Reps) 1 x 8-10 Bent-over laterals or standing uncrossovers (drop set; X Reps) 1 x 10(6) Preacher curls (X Reps) 1 x 8-10 Cable curls with Biceps Blaster (X Reps) 1 x 8-10 Concentration curls (drop set; X Reps or X Fade) 1 x 8(6) Rope hammer curls (drop set; X Reps or X Fade) 1 x 10(6) Superset Reverse wrist curls (X Reps) 1 x 15 Forearm Bar reverse wrist curls or dumbbell reverse wrist curls 1x8 Aftershock superset Wrist curls (X Reps) 1 x 15 Forearm Bar wrist curls or dumbbell wrist curls 1x8 Rockers (drop set every other workout) 1 x 15-20(8)
05 Ripping Phase Routine Tuesday and Friday: Chest, Lats, Triceps, Abs (Friday Add Calf Work)
Smith-machine incline presses (X/Pause; second set Staged) High-low cable flyes (drop set to high cable flyes with X Fade) Superset Decline-bench presses or wide-grip dips (Staged) Flat-bench dumbbell presses (X Reps) Middle cable flyes (drop set to low cable flyes with X Reps) Narrow, parallel-grip pulldowns (second set with X Reps) Superset Chins (X-centric) Dumbbell pullovers Superset Pulldowns (X Reps) Rope rows or machine pullovers (X Reps) Decline extensions (second with X Reps in press position) Tri-set Rope or elbows-flared pushdowns (X Reps) Stiff-arm kickbacks Bench dips (X Reps) Tri-set Cable pushouts (X Reps) Stiff-arm kickbacks Bench dips or parallel-bar dips (X-centric) Incline kneeups (X Reps) Superset Incline kneeups Bench V-ups Ab Bench crunches Tri-set Ab Bench crunches (drop set; X Reps) Freestyle twisting crunches Bench V-ups Friday only Seated calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises 2 x 10, 8 1 x 10(6) 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 10(6) 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 2 x 10, 8 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x max 1 x 15 1x8 1 x max 1 x 8-10 1 x 8(6) 1 x 15 1 x max 2 x 8-12 1 x 20-25
05 Ripping Phase Routine Wednesday: Quads, Hams, Gastrocs

Smith-machine squats (second or third set with X Reps) Leg extensions (drop set; X Reps) Leg extensions (X Fade) One-leg leg extensions (X Fade) Hack squats (feet high and wide) or leg presses (feet high and wide) Leg curls (drop set; X Reps) Leg curls (wide with X Fade) One-leg leg curls (X Reps) Hyperextensions (X Reps) Dumbbell stiff-legged deadlifts (Double-X O) Leg press calf raises (X Reps; second with X Fade) Superset Hack-machine calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises (X Reps) Machine donkey calf raises or leg press calf raises (Double X O) Seated calf raises Low-back machine (X Reps) 3 x 10-12 1 x 10(8) 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 2 x 10, 8 1 x 10(8) 1 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 1 x max 1 x 10-12 2 x 15-20 2 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 1 x 12-15 2 x 20-25 1 x 10-15
CHAPTER 10 Split-Positions X-Rep Training
As we mentioned and you saw in the last chapter, our annual photo shoot occurred in mid-June, almost three weeks earlier than in 04. As we explained, we included new X-hybrid techniquesX-centric training, X/Pause, Double-X Overload and X Fadewhich we believe are the reasons our results came much faster during our second X-periment. We we re both bigger than at our 04 photo shoot but in the same, or perhaps better, conditionshredded! Thats impressive, especially for Steve, whos a middle-aged hardgainer. He finally saw the scale hover in the 200-pound range in his hardest, leanest condition e ve r. Jonathan dialed it in too, with more muscularity at a heavier bodyweight. We were very happy that we improved, but the question remains: Could we have been even better? Muscle just shouldnt be that difficult to build. Sure, w ere fairly advanced, so gains wont be 20 pounds a ye a r, as they we re in the beginning of our lifting careersor could they be? After analyzing everything we do, and reviewing all weve learned, we have to ask ourselves, Why the heck not?! One of our strategies created an ah-ha moment was how we approach our mass-building phase, usually in the winter. We continue to hit it fairly hard five days a week (which may be a problem too; more on that in a moment), but we also try to maintain visual contact with our abs. Weve always thought that staying fairly lean makes it easier to get shredded as summer nears; howeverand this is a big howeverit also makes muscle much, much more difficult to build. Huge muscles are a luxury for the human body, not a necessity. Before your metabolism will permit a lot of leanmass gain, your body has to be damn sure famine is never going to happen. In other words, you need a fairly large calorie surplusof the right nutrientsto kick your body into anabolic ove rd ri ve and prevent it from burning muscle for energy. Just as important, those calories have to be spread out over the course of the day every day. Hunger is an absolute nono. Keep your body in positive nitrogen balance and positive
quality calorie abundance, and if your workouts are intense enough to stimulate growth and you get enough recove ry Bam!new muscle should appear very quickly. Bodybuilders who got huge before the stero i d - i n s a n i t y e ra A rnold, Da ve Dra p e r, Larry Scottused to appro a c h winter as a muscle-feeding/building fre n z y. A good laye r covering the abs was considered a necessary evil during a maxmuscle-building phase. These days thats not so much the case because a lot of bodybuilders cycle anabolic stero i d s throughout the winter. The right pharmaceuticals make excess calories a minor player. Sure, the body needs something to w o rk with, but thanks to drugs its always in anticatabolic m o d e, being overly efficient with all the muscle-building blocks it receives. (No, its not fair, but its reality.) You can see where were going with this: Well be shoveling in more musclebuilding calories during our mass-building phase, which means were throwing ab visibility out the window. More on our mucho-mass-diet strategies in a moment. Lets segue into training, as our new split is rather ingenious, something we adopted before the end of summerand its a gain maximizer! Weve never been able to come up with a perfect recoveryoriented split, mainly because we cant train on the weekends. Weve said that, ideally, we should be on a three-on/one-off split, with a leg-training workout falling between two different upper-body workouts. If you do the math, youll see that you cant use that split without training on the weekends. One of our solutions was to still train on a three-way split, but train f i ve days in a row, Monday through Fri d a y, picking up the missed sixth workout the following Monday and continuing with the sequence. That five-day plan worked well for us in 04, but the new re s e a rch we mentioned in the previous chapter about legs needing more re c ove ry time had us rethinking things. In a nutshell the research tells us that we should get better gains hitting a leg workout only once a week, especially when were using X Reps and X-hybrid techniques that jack up the
intensity and muscle damage significantly. We used that strategy for the last few weeks of our ripping phase over the summer, and it worked extremely well, even when we were doing cardio on a daily basis. If we put on quad s i ze then, we should get even better gains over the winter, c o n s i d e ring our cardio cutback. Ok a y, lets rewind and go through our new mega-mass-building strategy point by point. 1) Mega-Mass split. So whats the ingenious split were so excited about? Here it is, no weekend training, no bodypart overlap (well outline the program in a moment and explain the A and B designationsits not as complicated as it looks, trust us):
Week 1 Monday: Workout 1A (delts, midback, biceps, forearms) Tuesday: Workout 2 (legs, lower back) Wednesday: Workout 3A (chest, lats, triceps, abs) Thursday: Off Friday: Workout 1B (delts, midback, biceps, forearms + calves) Weekend: Off (with cardio) Week 2 Monday: Workout 3B (chest, lats, triceps, abs) Tuesday: Workout 2 (legs, lower back) Wednesday: Workout 1A (delts, midback, biceps, forearms) Thursday: Off Friday: Workout 3A (chest, lats, triceps, abs + calves) Weekend: Off (with cardio) Week 3 Monday: Workout 1B (delts, midback, biceps, forearms) Tuesday: Workout 2 (legs, lower back) Wednesday: Workout 3B (chest, etc.) Thursday: Off Friday: Workout 1A (delts, midback, biceps, forearms + calves) Weekend: Off (with cardio) Week 4 Monday: Workout 3A (chest, lats, triceps, abs) Tuesday: Workout 2 (legs, lower back) Wednesday: Workout 1B (delts, midback, biceps, forearms) Thursday: Off Friday: Workout 3B (chest, lats, triceps, abs + calves) Weekend: Off (with cardio) Repeat Week 1 62 Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building
Notice that we hit legs once a week, on Tu e s d a y, which b reaks up the two different upper-body sessions. Then Thursday is a complete rest day, and Friday is a repeat of Mondays bodyparts. We never work upper body two days in a row, which should make for some awesome progress. How does all of that pan out on the recovery scale? Check it out: Monday bodyparts: 96 hours, or four days, to Friday Tuesday bodyparts (legs): 168 hours, or seven days although weekend cardio affects leg recovery. ( Were also adding a mini-calf blast to our Friday workouts because calves recover much faster than the upper-leg muscles.) Wednesday bodyparts: 120 hours, or five days, to the following Monday As we said, Friday is a repeat of Mondays workout butand this is importantwith different positions, which brings us to our next strategy and explains the A and B designations on upper-body workouts (we could see that was puzzling you). 2) Split-positions training. Upper-body workouts are categorized as either A or B. In the program in this chapter, youll see that the A workouts contain a big midrange exercise and a contracted-position movement for each bodypart. For example, the 1A delt routine has dumbbell upright rows, the big midrange, multijoint exercise, followed by forward-lean l a t e ra l s, a contracted-position delt move. At the next delt w o rkout, 1B, we use the same midrange exerc i s e, dumbell u p right rows again, but this time we follow with a stre t c h position delt movement, incline one-arm laterals. Thats how it is for every upper-body muscle group. The m i d range exercise stays constant, but the second exerc i s e alternates between a contracted-position movement and a stretch-position movement. Remember, change is necessary for growth. Heres an example from the 3A and 3B workouts for upper chest: The A workout has Smith-machine incline
presses, the constant midrange exercise, followed by incline cable flyes, a contracted-position upper-chest move; the B workout is Smith-machine incline presses again, but thats followed by incline dumbbell flyes, a stretch-position exercise. With split-positions training you cover all the positions, or arcs, of flexion, but over two workouts (a Positions-of-Flexion p rimer is on page 76 if yo ure not familiar with that masstraining protocol). That provides a lot of variety, unique stress and more recovery, since you dont work all three positions at every workout. Its a system that provides optimal recoveryif you divide your workouts correctly. We use the split-positions approach for every upper-body exercise. That way the target muscles get some unique stress at every session, la Ronnie Coleman (he also alternates between two routines for every bodypart). In the routines that appear at the end of this chapter, the A workouts are m i d ra n g e / c o n t racted, and the B w orkouts are midrange/stretch. Ingenious. (Modest, arent we?) 3) Mega-Mass nutrition. Recovery is also about nutrition and getting the right compounds in sufficient quantities to fuel intense workouts and provide a surplus for growth. Yes, were still depending on our X Stack postworkout comboRecoverX plus Cre a Sol (www. X - Stack.com). Thats got eve rything we need to take full advantage of the after- t raining anabolic window; however, theres also research that says you should feed your muscles d u r i n g your training. That makes sense because the bodyparts you train last get the most from your postworkout drink. Think about it. The bodypart you train first has to wait almost an hour or longer for refueling. In reality the first bodyparts anabolic window is almost closed by the end of your workout (and you thought it was best to work yo u r weakest bodypart first). The solution is to drink as you train (no, not beer!although the Mexican beer Dos Equis means two Xes. Hmm.). Our recipe? Were going to mix about a scoop of RecoverX, about a half scoop of CreaSol (titrated creatine) and a scoop of
GAKIC together in a water bottle and sip it throughout our workouts, trying to down most of it early on. The RecoverX and Cre a Sol will feed and refuel the muscles as we blast them, especially those that get hit early in the session (they wont get cheated any longer). GAKIC, a Mu s c l e Tech product, is an ammonia buffer that has given us some amazing stre n g t h increases, which we reported on in the IM Research Team in the November 05 IRON MAN . The problem with GAKIC is that when we took it before the workout, it wore off about twothirds of the way through. With continuous fueling as we train, we should be able to sustain the higher power output weve been experiencing early in our workouts with no drop off. Were also going to have one or two scoops of Pro-Fusion protein powder before bed. Its a mix of micellar casein and whey proteins, so it should provide our resting muscles with more recovery and growth-promoting building blocks as we s l e e p. Weve never done that because of the fear of exc e s s calories making us fat. Now we realize that its necessary to prevent catabolic actions during the sleeping/fasting phase of the day in order to max out muscle growth. (Many scientists believe that more than 75 percent of muscle growth occurs because of catabolic pre vention as opposed to anabolic a c t i o n s h ow much muscle is your body burning when it d o e s nt have ac cess to amino acids, like during sleep? In t e resting.) We just have to learn to accept some exc e s s baggage (bodyfat) as a necessary evil if we want to pack on the most muscle possible over the winter. 4) Mega-Mass variation. We mentioned that the splitpositions approach will keep the stress on our muscles fresh, but what about the powerful X-Rep hybrid techniques that helped us add more muscle very quickly during our 05 ripping phase? You bet were going to use them. In fact, they should work even better during the winter when were not restricting calories. We plan to rotate those various X-Rep techniquesXcentric training, X/Pause, X Fade, Stage Sets and Double-X O verloadon most of our exerc i s e s, especially the big
midrange movements that stay constant. For example, well use Smith machine incline presses at eve ry upper- c h e s t workout, but one workout we may do standard X Reps at the end of the second set, the next workout we may use X/Pause or a Stage Set. If you follow our Mega-Mass program, you dont have to pick a technique out of a hat. Weve provided the best X-Rep technique for each exercise, and you can stick to those for every workout on the second set. But if you want to get creative feel free. The more variation the better. Also notice that we usually only do one set with X Reps or an X-hybrid technique. Thats because X-Rep methods are very potent and intensethey can cause ove rt raining if abused. And on compound, or midrange exercises, the big multijoint movements, the first heavy set to nervous system exhaustion s e rves to prime the central nervous system to perf o rm optimally on the second set, which includes X Reps or an Xhybrid technique. Remember, dont get carried away with X Reps. (More on doubling up on X Reps in Chapter 11, X Q&A.) As you can see, our Mega-Mass strategy is built on a surplus of quality calories, optimum recovery, va ri e t y, overload and intensity. Youll definiely want to follow our lead and make a big move into the X-treme growth zone with us. We suggest you p rint out the pro g ram, a separate page for each day (and maybe print out the X-Rep Hybrid Techniques Cheat Sheet on page 48 too). Put the workouts in order, on a small clipboard with a pencil, and follow the sequence with us on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (if it looks as if you may have to miss a Friday workout, train on Thursday instead; the small bit of overlap is better than missing a workout). Weve even provided space at the right to jot in your poundages for each exercise (when it gets too messy because you just keep getting stronger and stronger, print out a clean page and fill in all your weights). Well no doubt be modifying and changing things as we go, so check out our X-Blog at www.X-Rep.com often. Can we (and you) add another 20 pounds of muscle in the coming months? Its very possible! Prepare to grow!
X-Rep-Hybrid Mega-Mass Program

Workout 1A: Delts, Midback, Biceps, Forearms
(M) Dumbbell upright rows or wide-grip rack pulls (X Reps) (C) Forward-lean laterals (X/Pause) (M) Dumbbell presses (Double-X O) (M) Cable upright rows (Double-X O + X Reps) 1 x 10-12 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10
Poundage
(C) Barbell shrugs (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) 2 x 10-12 (M) Nautilus rows (X/Pause) (C) Bent-arm bent-over laterals (X Reps) (M) Behind-the-neck pulldowns (Staged, bottom first) (C) Bent-over laterals (Double-X O) (M) Cable curls (X/Pause) (C) Concentration curls (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) (M) Rope hammer curls (X Reps) (C) Barbell reverse wrist curls (X Reps) (C) Barbell wrist curls (X Reps) (C) Rockers 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 2 x 15 2 x 15 1 x 15 1 x 10-12 1 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 10-12
Add to Fridays workout Seated calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises 2 x 9-12 1 x 20-25
Where X-Reps or an X-hybrid technique is designated, use it only on one set, the second set if two sets are designated. (M) = Midrange, (C) = Contracted, (S) = Stretch

Workout 2: Quads, Hams, Gastrocs, Low Back
(M) Smith-machine squats (X Reps; Double-X O on 2nd) (C) Leg extensions (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) (S) Sissy squats (X Reps or Double-X O) (M) Leg presses or hack squats (feet high and wide) (C) Leg curls (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) (S) Bottom-range stiff-legged deadlifts (Double-X O) (S) Hyperextensions (X Reps) (S) Leg press calf raises (X Reps) (C) Hack-machine calf raises (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) (C) Standing calf raises (Double-X O) (S) Machine donkey calf raises (Double-X O) (S&C) Seated calf raises (S&C) Low-back machine (X Reps) 2 x 12-15 2 x 8-10 1 x 12 2 x 8-10 1 x max 3 x 15-20 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 1 x 10-12
Poundage
2 x 15-20 1 x 8-12

Workout 3A: Chest, Lats, Triceps, Abs
(M) Smith-machine incline presses (Staged, bottom first) 2 x 8-10
Poundage
(C) High cable flyes (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) 2 x 8-12 (M) Dumbbell bench presses (Double-X O) (C) Low cable flyes (X Reps) (C) Middle cable flyes (X Fade) (M) Parallel-grip pulldowns (X Reps) (M) Chins (X-centric or Double-X O) (S&C) Machine pullovers (X Reps; X Fade on second) (M) Decline extensions (Double-X O) (C) Pushdowns (X Reps) Superset (M) Incline kneeups (M) Bench V-ups (C) Twisting crunches 2 x 10 2x8 2 x 10-12 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-12 1 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 1-2 x 8-12

Workout 1B: Delts, Midback, Biceps, Forearms
(M) Dumbbell upright rows or wide-grip rack pulls (X/Pause) (S) Cable laterals (X Reps) or incline one-arm laterals (Double X O) (M) Dumbbell presses (X Reps) (M) Rack pulls (X Reps) (S) Dumbbell shrugs (Double-X O) (M) Nautilus rows (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) (S) One-arm dumbbell rows (Double-X O) (M) Behind-the-neck pulldowns (X Reps) (S&C) Uncrossovers (X Reps) (M) Preacher curls (X Reps; 2nd set Staged) (S) Incline curls (Double-X O) (M) Incline hammer curls (Double-X O) (C) Dumbbell reverse wrist curls (X Reps) (C) Dumbbell wrist curls (X Reps) (C) Rockers 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 1 x 10-12 2 x 10-12 2 x 8-10 2 x 10-12 1 x 10-12 1 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 2 x 15 2 x 15 1 x 15 2 x 8-10
Poundage

Workout 3B: Chest, Lats, Triceps, Abs
(M) Smith-machine incline presses (X/Pause) (S) Incline flyes (Double-X O) (M) Wide-grip dips (X-centric) (S) Decline flyes (Double-X O) (S) Flat-bench flyes (Double-X O) (M) Parallel-grip pulldowns (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) (M) Chins (X Reps) (S) Dumbbell pullovers (Double-X O) (M) Decline extensions (Staged) (S) Cable pushouts or overhead extensions (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) Superset (M) Incline kneeups (M) Bench V-ups (S&C) Ab Bench crunches or full-range crunches 2 x 10-12 2 x 10 2x8 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 1-2 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 2-3 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-12 1 x 8-12
Poundage
Weve had a number of trainees request home -gym programs that include X Reps, so were including a version of our Mega-Mass routine that uses only basic exercises that are available in most bare-bones home gyms. For more on setting up a basic home gym, see IRON MANs Home Gym Handbook, available at www.Home-Gym.com. We have an X-Rep e-book in the works specifically for home-gym trainees coming soon.
X-Rep-Hybrid Mega-Mass Home-Gym Program

Workout 1A: Delts, Midback, Biceps, Forearms
Dumbbell upright rows or wide-grip rack pulls (X Reps) 2 x 8-10 Seated forward-lean laterals (X/Pause) 2 x 8-10 Dumbbell presses (Double-X O) 2 x 8-10 Barbell shrugs (Double-X O) 2 x 10-12 Bent-over barbell rows (X/Pause) 2 x 8-10 Bent-arm bent-over laterals (Double-X O) 2 x 10-12 Bent-over laterals (X Reps) 2 x 8-10 Dumbbell curls 2 x 8-10 Concentration curls (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) 2 x 8-10 Hammer curls 1 x 8-10 Barbell reverse wrist curls (X Reps) 2 x 15 Barbell wrist curls (X Reps) 2 x 15 Rockers 1 x 15 Add to Fridays workout Seated calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises
Poundage
2 x 9-12 1 x 20-25
Where X-Reps or an X-hybrid technique is designated, use it only on one set, the second set if two sets are designated.

Workout 2: Quads, Hams, Gastrocs, Low Back
Squats (nonlock; last set Staged) 3 x 8-10 Leg extensions or hack squats with a quad squeeze at top of each rep (X Reps) 2 x 8-10 Sissy squats (Double-X O) 1 x 10-12 Hack squats (nonlock) 1 x 8-10 Leg curls (X Reps; X Fade on 2nd) 2 x 8-10 Bottom-range stiff-legged deadlifts (Double-X O) 2 x 8-10 Hyperextensions (X Reps) 1 x max Donkey calf raises, standing calf raises or one-leg calf raises (X Reps; Double-X O) 3-4 x 15-20 Seated calf raises 2 x 15-20 Where X-Reps or an X-hybrid technique is designated, use it only on one set, the second set if two sets are designated.
Poundage

Workout 3A: Chest, Lats, Triceps, Abs
Incline presses (X Reps; Staged) 2 x 8-10 Incline flyes (squeeze at top of each rep) 2 x 8-12 Dumbbell bench presses (Double-X O) 2 x 8-10 Decline flyes (squeeze at top of each rep) 1 x 8-12 Flat-bench flyes (squeeze at top of each rep) 1 x 8-12 Parallel-grip chins (X Reps) 2 x 8-10 Chins (X-centric or Double-X O) 1 x 8-12 Undergrip rows (X/Pause) 2 x 8-10 Decline extensions (Double-X O) 2 x 8-10 Kickbacks 2 x 8-10 Superset Incline kneeups 2 x 10 Bench V-ups 2x8 Twisting crunches 2 x 10-12 Add to Fridays workout Seated calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises 2 x 9-12 1 x 20-25
Poundage

Workout 1B: Delts, Midback, Biceps, Forearms
Dumbbell upright rows or wide-grip rack pulls (X/Pause) Incline one-arm laterals (Double-X O) Dumbbell presses (X Reps) Rack pulls or dumbbell shrugs (X Reps) Bent-over barbell rows (X Reps) One-arm dumbbell rows (Double-X O) Bent-over laterals (Double-X O) Preacher curls (X Reps; Staged) Incline curls (Double-X O) Incline hammer curls (Double-X O) Dumbbell reverse wrist curls (X Reps) Dumbbell wrist curls (X Reps) Rockers Add to Fridays workout Seated calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 10-12 2 x 8-10 2 x 10-12 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-10 2 x 15 2 x 15 1 x 15 2 x 9-12 1 x 20-25

Workout 3B: Chest, Lats, Triceps, Abs
Incline presses (X/Pause) Incline flyes (Double-X O) Wide-grip dips (X Reps) Decline flyes (Double-X O) Flat-bench flyes (Double-X O) Parallel-grip chins (X-centric) Chins (X Reps or Double-X O) Dumbbell pullovers (Double-X O) Decline extensions (Staged) Overhead extensions (Double-X O) Superset Incline kneeups Bench V-ups Ab Bench crunches or full-range crunches (X Reps) Add to Fridays workout Seated calf raises (X Reps) Standing calf raises 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-12 1 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 1 x 8-12 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 8-10 2 x 10 2x8 2 x 10-12 2 x 9-12 1 x 20-25
Note: On any exercise in either program we may choose to do a drop set in place of a straight set to enhance the workload and pump. A drop set is doing a set to exhaustion, decreasing the weight and immediately doing a second set to exhaustion. We may do X Reps on the first set, the second set or both. Drop sets help increase capillary beds in the muscle and are excellent for building intermediary muscle fibers.
Positions-of-Flexion Primer
With a Positions of Flexion protocol you train each target bodypart in three positionsmidrange, contracted and stretchto complete the full-range muscle-building chain. Each of those positions has a specific purpose, as follows: Midrange: Stimulates the bulk of the muscle fibers with synergy, or muscle teamwork. When a number of muscles work together such as the chest, triceps and deltoids during bench pressesthe target (chest) is more effectively stimulated with heavy overload. The human muscle structures are designed to work in tandem for maximum power output, so these movements are simply more natural than forced isolation. Examples include squats, bench presses and chins. Best X-hybrid technique for midrange exercises: X/Pause, Double-X Overload, Stage (on those with bone-supported lockout, like squats and bench presses). C o n t r a c t e d : Here you place the target muscle in the most advantageous position for it to contract. These exercises usually have continuous tension, so they are perfect for extreme occlusion. Examples include leg extensions, cable crossovers and leg curls. Best X-hybrid techniques for contracted-position exercises: X Fade, Double-X Overload. S t r e t c h : Here you put the target muscle in its ultimate elongated, or stretched, state against resistance. Examples include flyes for the chest, stiff-legged deadlifts for the hamstrings and sissy squats for the quads. The stretch forces the activation of the myotatic reflex, which is believed to cause the recruitment of reserve muscle fibers in the target muscle. When the target is stretched with a quick twitch to reverse the movement, the nervous system receives an emergency-response signal, and the muscle is put in a hypercontracted state. This can recruit reserve muscle fibers, which means more of the target muscle is stimulated to grow, a perfect way to end a bodypart workout. Important bonus: Stretch overload has also been found in research studies to trigger hyperplasia, or fiber splitting, in animals. Best X-hybrid techniques for stretch-position exercises: Double-X Overload (an X Rep between every full rep, which emphasizes the stretch). Note: For more information on POF as well as other POF routines, see Train, Eat, Grow: The Positions-of-Flexion MuscleTraining Manual, available at www.Home-Gym.com.
CHAPTER 11 X Q&A
Q: Can a skinny hardgainer type use X Reps and get results? A : Ab s o l u t e l y, and St e ve is a perfect example. Hes an ectomorph, smaller bone structure who has a hard time putting on weight, and he made the best gains of his entire training career when he started using X Repsat age 44! X Reps work for virtually everyone who uses them correctly. And hardgainers are no exception. In UMW we said that many researchers believe that less than half of the fast-twitch fibers are involved in any all-out set. Thats right, a single set to failure is not very efficient for stimulating growth. And its even less efficient for hardgainers, who get maybe 20 to 30 percent fiber activation because of their poor nerve-to-muscle connections. In other words, their central nervous system craps out even earlier than the CNS of other bodybuilders on any given set, leaving most of their fast-twitch fibers snoozing. Re m e m b e r, the faster- g rowing fast-twitch fibers activa t e toward the end of a strict set, as dictated by the size principle of muscle fiber recruitment, but hardgainers get at very few of those fibers because their below-average nervous system shuts down early. Can they just load up on more sets to compensate? If youre a hardgainer, you know thats impossible because hardgainers also have a less-efficient recovery systemthey cant tolerate a lot of work. What about just a few more sets with more explosive movements, which could help activate more fibers? Bad idea. As we said, most hardgainers have poor neuromuscular efficiency. That means explosive-style training isnt very effective and is often dangerous. They must do their sets with strict styleand that does very little to overload the important semistretched position (near the turnaround) of the big mass-building exercises. So it appears that the harder a hardgainer trains, the less he gains because he overstresses his recovery ability and/or gets injured when he tries to explode with heavy weights to overload the sweet spot of certain exerc i s e s. Its the fru s t ra t i n g
hardgainer paradox. X Reps work for hard g a i n e r because they help him ove r ride the i n h e rent neuromuscular deficiency somewhat and ove rload the s e m i s t retched position in one set. That makes the X-Rep set two to five times more effective at triggering fasttwitch-fiber growthand many of the X - h y b rid techni ques do an eve n better job of that. Thats why theyre so very important for hardgainers. X-Reps power partials at the sweet Steve is proof that X spot of each exercise gets at much Reps work big-time for old more of the muscle in any one strict hardgainersand guys too. Hes 46! setand you dont have to do set after recovery-draining set. The end-of-set partial technique is an absolute godsend for hardgainers. Heres why it works: When your nervous system craps out, leaving so many growth fibers unused or understimulated (70 p e rcent in some cases), you move to the key point in the exercises stroke, like near the bottom of an incline press, and keep firing the musclepulsing in a very short five-to-10-inch range. You essentially leapfrog nervous system fatigue and get at a much larger percentage of muscle fibers with those power pulses at the target muscles maximum-force-generation point, where fiber activation is optimized. In other words, you get a quantum leap in mass-building efficiency without having to add sets, just what hardgainers need for jacking up growth stimulation to exceptional levels without volume overkill. In fact, X Reps can help slow-to-grow bodybuilders trigger more size increases in a few months than they have experienced in years. Exciting stuff! Q: You guys usually suggest at least two warmup sets prior to most compound [or multijoint] exercises. Do I just take a lighter weight and do the same number of
reps or what? A: Thats a very important question because small details can add up to bigger re s u l t s. Even something as seemingly insignificant as a proper warmup can be the differe n c e between anabolic acceleration and stagnation. For example, weve discussed occlusion, or blocking blood flow to a muscle, and how scientists found that it can jack up strength significantly. In our X-traordinary Abs e-book and in Chapter 2 of this e-book we discussed how researchers placed a blood pressure cuff on subjects upper arms for two minutes. The cuff was then removed, and the subjects did wrist curls. Results: Those whose blood flow had been impaired showed a 20 percent strength increase over that of the subjects who d i d nt use the cuff. Ye s, 20 percent! ( T h e re have also been amazing size increases from occlusion, as we described in Chapter 2.) That indicates significantly better fiber recruitment. Along the same lines, studies on warming up muscles found that doing a number of lighter sets prior to heavy work can help the t a rget muscle contract much better than without those p re l i m i n a ry setsabout 20 percent better, in fact. Hmm, theres that 20 percent figure again. So could occlusion merely be acting as a warm u p ? Absolutely! After all, a warmup is simply a means of priming the pumppushing blood into the muscle so it will perform to the best of its ability on the heavy sets. If you block blood flow instead of (or in addition to) doing some lighter pumping sets, you end up with a warm, ready-to-fire muscle. Either way you get a rush of blood to the bodypart immediately after. Now, the qu estion becomes how you can use that information to set the stage for the most grow power from your w o rk sets. (Keep in mind that you want to max out hypertrophic stimulation with the fewest work sets necessary so you dont drain your re c ove ry system with too much volume.) Weve said in the past that for big multijoint exercises like
squats and bench presses you should do two warmup sets. Do the first one with about 60 percent of your first work-set weight and the second with about 80 percent. But theres more to it than percentages. Weve seen bodybuilders in the gym jerk through their warmups, wasting lots of time jabbering and not paying attention. Trust us, theyre severely limiting their gains and creating the need to either do more warmup sets, more work sets or extensive rehab work once they get injured. Were convinced that if you take care of a few details on your warmup sets, two is all you need on multijoint exercises to stimulate more muscle growth (how about 20 percent more?). Heres how to make it happen: Warmup set 1: Take 60 percent of your work-set weight and do 10 repsfive full-range reps and five partials. Go from full stretch to complete lockout on the first five. Then do the second five only through the bottom two-thirds of the stroke, without locking out. That will lube your joints and get the blood pumping (partials produce occlusion). Warmup set 2: Up the poundage to 80 percent of your work-set weight. Do four full-range reps followed by four nonlock partials for occlusion. (Individual strength may vary; if four plus four feels too taxing, try three plus three. Remember, it should be a fairly nonstressful set that doesnt tax your strength but amplifies it.) At the end of each warmup set you should feel blood f l owing to the target due to occlusion from the nonlock p a rt i a l s. That blood increase will make your work sets significantly more effective. For example, on bench presses youll push the bar from your chest to just above the midpoint of the stroke on your partials. If you dont feel blood moving to the target, especially after the second warmup, you may have done your warmup reps too fast. Keep each rep fairly slow and controlled to activate your nervous system, get your mind in touch with the target muscle
and prime the pump. That quick, efficient warmup strategy can get you bigger gains from your heavy work, and it will take fewer work sets to get the fast-twitch blast youre after. Q: W hi ch is b etter, volu me tr aining or sh ort , abbreviated high-intensity-style workouts? A : High-intensity workouts or higher- volume methods? Both will work. Legendary bodybuilder Bill Pearl used to train with 20 or more sets per bodypart, but he never trained to exhaustion on any set. It just didnt suit him. He got at more muscle fibers by doing set after set. Others prefer to do fewer sets and push harderfor example, past centra l - n e rvo u s system exhaustion with X Repsto hit the majority of fibers. When you do that, you have to scale back the vo l u m e. As Nautilus creator Arthur Jones used to say, You can train long or you can train hard, but you cant do both. There is a lot of truth to that. Is one style better than the other? It depends on youyour body, preferences and personality. Bill Pearl probably wouldn't have gained much on an HIT-oriented routinebecause he wouldve hated it and quit if that was the only way. Luckily for all of us, theres more than one way to grow. We prefer to get it done as quickly as possible and get out of the gym. Were efficiency minded, so X Reps and the X-hybrid techniques help us make that happenand we certainly cant complain considering the gains weve mademore in the past year than in the previous four! Q: What the heck is an uncrossover exercise? A : Its a great re a r-delt and midback movement with continuous tension, something you dont get with bent-over dumbbell lateralsthe resistance goes to almost zero on those at the key semistretched point. Heres how to do the much more effective uncrossover: Stand in the crossover machine and grab one of the upper handles with the opposite hand, holding it at the opposite shoulder. Now step over to the other side and grab that handle with the opposite hand, bringing it
to the opposite shoulder so your arms are crossed over your chest. Move to the middle of the cro s s ove r a p p a ra t u s, step back about a foot, and extend your arms out and above your head, hands together and cables crossing. With a slight bend in your e l b ow s, pull the handles back. Us e your midback muscles, squeez i n g your scapulae together as you pull, and your rear delts to get the handles back. In the finish position yo u should look like youre doing a back Jonathan midway double-biceps pose with bad form through an uncrossand your midback muscles and rear over. You can do them sitting or standing. delts will be contracting hard. Q: W hat are your thoughts on the Bowflex? Im thinking about buying one. Can it deliver a wo rk o u t good enough for someone using it to gain muscle and look better? A: A Bowflex is just okay as a stand-alone home gym. Some exercises are good; others arent so good. My main gripe is that the max-force point for most muscles is near the semistretched pointfor example, near the start of an incline press when your hands are close to your shoulders. The way the Bowflex is designed, with rods that increase pre s s u re as you extend, theres less resistance at that key point and more at the top of the movement, where the rods are maximally flexed. Its the same with pulldowns and row s. From that standpoint its mandatory to incorporate X Reps at the max-force point when you hit nervous system exhaustion on most sets to stress the muscle optimally. Otherwise, youll be getting even less maxforce-point overload than if you used standard barbells and dumbbells (because the most force occurs at the top of the stroke on most Bowflex exercises). If I had to use a bare-bones home gym, Id get an adjustable
bench and the heaviest selectorized dumbbells availablelike a Powe r Block. That gives you the most ve r s a t i l i t y e ve n though the setup doesnt look nearly as cool as a Bow f l e x . [ Powe r Block selectori zed dumbbells are available at www.Home-Gym.com.] Q: You guys say that the incline one-arm lateral raise is a good delt exercise. Why, and how do you perform it correctly? A: We conside r incline one-arm lateral raises an indispensible movement because it allows you to get some stretch in the medial-delt head. Regular dumbbell laterals lack resistance down at the bottom; the real overload doesnt occur until your arms are about a third of the way up through the arc, arms away from your torso. Also, the resistance is pulling your arms down at the bottom not across as it should for medialhead resistance. Due to the nature of dumbbell laterals and its arc of movement, when your arms are hanging straight down, gravity pulls the weight toward the ground, putting more stress on your traps not your delts. One-arm cable laterals are a better solution for semistretched-point overload (bottom of the stroke) than standing laterals because the cable pulls your hand and arm across your torso rather than straight down like a dumbbell; howe ve r, torso twisting and leg thrusting can make the exercise less delt specific and more of a trap builder. And like regular dumbbell laterals, if you use enough weight to blast the strongest low position, you wont be able to move your arm very far without some heavingbut its still a decent delt exercise. Which bring us to the incline one-arm lateral raise. You sit sideways on a 45-to-55-degree incline bench, leaning your nonworking side against it. Now your torso is at an angle. With a dumbbell in the hand of your outside arm, move the dumbbell down in front of your body till its just lower than your waist. Dont allow your arm to move all the way down till its perpendicular with the floor; that will take tension off your
The incline one-arm lateral raise, a great stretch-position exercise for the medial delt with critical X Spot overload.
delt. Reverse the movement right when the dumbbell is even with your hip area thats against the bench. Then raise it till your arm is just about parallel to the floor. A slight bend at your elbow is acceptable. You get resistance when your upper arm is close to your body due to the angle of your torso. And you raise it to parallelbut because your torso is angled, that top position is really only about two-thirds up the arc of a standing lateral raise. Youre essentially working the bottom two-thirds of the lateral raise stroke andthis is the important pointyoure getting lots of overload at the turnaround when the dumbbell is in front of your hips at the bottom of the stroke. By the way, a version of the incline one-arm lateral was a favorite of Arnolds, which may explain why he got so broad and had that eye-popping width, even when he was fully clothed. Thats a ve ry impre s s i ve feat considering that his clavicles were fairly narrow. Q: What exercise can I substitute for toes-pointed leg curls, the midrange movement for calves listed in your Train, Eat, Grow Positions-of-Flexion book? A: There really isnt oneand even toes-pointed leg curls a re nt a true midrange exercise for calve s. Weve re c e n t l y discovered that leg-oriented cardio is the best midrange work for calves, especially walking hills and sprinting. Weve noticed
that w hen we start i ncreasing our cardio as summer a p p ro a c h e s, our calves get considerably better. Weve also discovered that less-padded running shoes, like Nike Free, are best for calf stimulation, whether youre running or attacking calf raises in the gym. Shoes that are adve rtised as like running barefoot give you a more natural movement, and you get less rebound at the important max-force point near the bottom of the stroke. That means your X Reps will be much more effective as wellif you can stand the pain of Xing on calf work. Q: Ive bought many of your books and e-books, but I h a ve questions about training to failure, which yo u suggest in your X-Rep training. Isnt it a bad thing? Ive read that its not required to gain muscle and it can cause central nervous system fatigue. If thats tru e, wo nt t rai ni ng to failure indu ce burnout and overtraining? A: As we mentioned in a previous answer, training to failure isnt necessary; howe ve r, it does make building muscle less time-consuming. It has to do with the size principle of muscle fiber recruitment. When you do a set, the low-threshold motor units fire first, followed by the mediums, followed by the highthreshold motor units (the pure fast-twitch fibers). If you dont go to failure, you dont make much inroad into high-threshold territory. You can activate a few more fast-twitch fibers by doing additional subfailure sets and getting a different recruitment p a t t e rn d i f f e rent fibers may be brought into play on additional sets; however, were more interested in finding the most efficient way to train (we have jobs and families, for crying out loudwho has time for three-hour workouts?), and we believe that way is to limit training to only a few sets to f a i l u re, perhaps one or two of those being X-Rep sets. It appears to be the best way to activate as many fast-twitch fibers as possible without spending excessive time in the gym. Does it cause nervous system burnout? Not if you keep the
volume low and the training frequency sensible. You should also use phase trainingafter six weeks or so of all-out workouts, do the same routine with the same poundages for a week, but stop all sets two reps short of failure. Or take four to five days off. Either tactic will help regenerate your nervous system, and yo ull come back feeling bigger and stro n g e r. In c i d e n t a l l y, using a volume approach can also cause CNS burnout, so no matter how you train, do incorporate phase training into your mass-building strategy. We also recommend that beginners break in to intensity training to avoid overstressing the CNSthey need to build up to this type of exertion, as described in the beginner section of The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book. Q: Whats the deal with soreness? I work out one day, Im sore the nextand its even worse on day two. As a beginner, and a hardgainer, should I avoid working out again if Im sore? Or is it okay to train after two days of rest if Im only slightly sore? A: Soreness is muscle damage; however, its probably okay to hit a muscle when its slightly sore (there are even studies that say its beneficial to train a muscle two days in a row, but were not big fans of that idea). Nevertheless, you shouldnt be getting extremely sore after eve ry workout. What could be happening is that youre not hitting your muscles frequently enough. That means theyre regressing before you train them againthey superc o m p e n s a t e, stagnate and then re ve rt to status quo before you hit them again. Its as if youre starting from scratch every time, which explains the soreness. Its the perfect example of the phrase spinning your wheels. Try training muscle groups more frequently, like twice a week or once eve ry five days, as we outline in the Sp l i t Positions Pro g ram in Chapter 10. By the way, there are no studies connecting soreness to muscle growth, so dont think you need to get sore to grow. Q: In The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book you say to do one positive-failure work set, rest, and then do a
second positive-failure work set with X Repsbut Ive been using Xes on the first work set with great results. I do two pro g re s s i vely heavier warmup sets, my first work set with X Reps at the end, and then one or two standard sets. What Ive noticed is that additional sets after the initial X-Rep set are more effective due to a kind of preexhaust effect that comes from working in the X zone on my very first set. Can I continue doing my first work set with X Reps, and then add an X-hybrid technique to my second work set? A: Weve noticed that the more experienced we get with X Reps, the better they work on the first work set. It probably has a lot to do with neuromuscular adaptionyour nervo u s system gets atuned to getting in the groove earlier, like right after a semiheavy warmup set (80 percent of your first work-set weight; see the previous Q&A on proper warmup). So if youre a fairly advanced lifter, doing X Reps on your first work set should be fine. Should you add a X-hybri d technique on your second set? That can work, too, but you have to be careful. X Reps are powerful, and most of the Xhybrid techniques are even more potent. For example, if you do your first work set with X Reps and your second with X/Pause, yo ure hammering the target muscle with a lot of heavy partials right at the max-force point. That could trigger ove rt raining. Using X-centric training, slow negatives at the end of a set with X Reps on each, is also very taxing due to all the power partial work combined with slow negative tension. Other X-hybrid techniques arent as grueling, and you may be able to use them on your second work set with great results. For example, weve experimented with doing our first work set with X Reps at the end, and then doing the second set Stage style. We often use the same weight as the first set. For that first stage we move the bar from the bottom, hitting the semistretched position, to just above the midpoint. We usually get about eight, and then we have to help each other move the weight to lockout, where we do the top third of the
stroke, trying to squeeze the pecs at the lockout position on each one. Now if you add X Reps to the end of that sequence, you may be pushing the limits. The same goes for Double-X Overload. After your first work set with X Reps, you can reduce the weight by 10 to 20 percent and do every rep with a hitch at the maxforce point. That double-bang at the max-force point betwe e n every rep is excellent for stressing Weve found that more the muscle right where it needs it advanced trainees may most for more growth; however, if benefit from doing X Reps on the first work set, after you go further and add X Reps to a semiheavy warmup. the end of that Double-X- Should they add an XOverload set, you may be pushing hybrid technique to their second work set? That it. Re c ove ry and intensity may depend on the technique and t o l e rance is an individual specific individual recovery ability. c h a ra c t e ri s t i c. When were motivated, we often go overboard and flirt with overtraining, but when were pushing ourselves to the brink, we try not to exceed three weeks of that type of insanity. Most of the time we prefer a straight set followed by an X-Rep set or X-hybrid set (the more seve re the better, like X/Pause), or an X-Rep set followed by a straight set or a set with one of the milder Xhybrid techniques, like Stage or Double-X Overload. Q: You say that Stage Sets are nt good to use on exercises that have continuous tension, like pulldowns. But what if I do the bottom two-thirds of the stroke to failure, then follow with the top one-third, where the X Spot is? A: Well, youre essentially doing a normal set with X Reps, only yo ure stopping your standard reps short, before the
semistretched point, or X Spot. Thats not so good because you want to include that semistretched point on every repits the most important point for growth stimulationthen blast it further with X Reps when more full reps are impossible. So to improve on the example you just gave, instead of doing the bottom two-thirds, make it the bottom three-fourths so you move to the X Spot on every rep before you reverse the movement of the bar. Then at exhaustion, do X Reps at that X Spot, up near the top. Thats standard X-Rep procedure on pulldowns and rows. You can also use the Double-X Overload technique on those and other continuous-tension exercises, using an X Rep between each full rep, then end with X-Rep partials at the semistretched point. Q: Does ove rloading the max-force point of an exercise create a different type of growth from what you get by blocking blood flow? A: We know what youre getting at. Overloading the maxforce generation point of an exercise may provide unique fasttwitch-fiber activation, while occlusion may do things like pump up fluid volume and increase capillary bedstwo s e p a rate layers of growth. Pl u s, with its influx of blood, occlusion may cause endurance fibers to take more of the initial load during a set of an exercise, so you get more growth in those fibers as well as fast-twitch hypert ro p h y. Thats another mass layer. It appears that the champs get big by maximizing a number of growth factors, or layers, which is what we explained in the first few chapters of this e-book. Weve also tried to explain why adding X Reps, or power partials, to the ends of sets of certain exercises is a much more efficient means of attaining pro-style mass than simply doing set after set on multiple exercises. Heres a bit of a review: By adding X Reps to incline presses, you take the pecs past failure at the key max-force generation point, getting much more fast-twitch-fiber activation than if you stop at positive failure. Its the best way to move past nervous system exhaustion and fatigue to get more fast-twitch
fiber action. Yo u also create some postfailure occlusion with X Reps because p a rtial pulses keep tension on the target muscle. You can almost feel the blood being squeeze d out with each pulsing action. Weve found a number of pieces to the You also g et mass-building puzzle with our testing and some stre t c h experimentation in the gym: Positions of overload with X Flexion, X Reps, X-hybrid techniques and so Reps, which may on, but theres still lots to learn. Keep up h a ve a with our latest findings at www.X-Rep.com. connection to hyperplasia, or muscle-fiber splitting. Remember, you do X Reps at a semistretched point, so they seve rely stress the muscle when its in an elongated state, which may help initiate hyperplasiaand the more fibers there are to grow, the bigger your muscles can eventually become. (Double-X Overload, an X Rep between every full rep, on stretch-position exercises is proving to be a very powerful size building technique, probably due to that stre t c h - overload/muscle-mass connection! As weve mentioned, Jay Culter, one of the biggest bodybuilders in the world, uses that technique a lot in his size - b u i l d i n g routine.) Much of our analysis also gave credence to the Positions-ofFlexion muscle-building methodworking a muscle with midrange-, stretch- and contracted-position exercises. You can trigger the most fiber activation with compound, or midrange, exercises like presses, especially when you add X Reps to the end of a set. Then you can get the best occlusion effects with
continuous-tension contracted-position exerc i s e s, like crossovers. Add X Reps to those, and you increase occlusion time and its size- and strength-building effects. Finally, you can use stretch-position exercises for even more occlusion, dormant-fiber activation (thanks to the myotatic reflex, an e m e rgency response tri g g e red by fu ll stretch ag ainst resistance) and perhaps more fiber-splitting action. Exciting stuff! Were not saying weve found the answer, although POF plus X Reps and X-hybrid techniques may be the training Holy Grail for a number of bodybuilders, but we will say weve pieced together a huge section of the mass-building puzzle. Were getting closer to finding the final pieces as we keep experimenting and learning. Well keep you posted on new discoveries in the pages of IRON MAN magazine, the IM e-zine and via our X-Blog at www.X-Rep.com.
BONUS CHAPTER A Analyzing Mr. Olympias Workout From an X-Rep Perspective
T h roughout this e-book weve mentioned how Ro n n i e Coleman, Mr. Olympia, trains with an emphasis on semistretched overload. Those observations were the result of watching his latest DVD, The Cost of Redemption, which is an ungodly display of muscle mass and raw strength captured by videographer Mitsuru Okabe. In fact, his mass-training style is a prime example of max-force-point overload on almost every exercise. Re m e m b e r, the max-force point is the place along an exercises stroke at which the target muscle has the most poweroutput potential. Its essentially the most important point of any movement because its where the most fiber activation can o c c u r m o re force equals maximum muscle invo l ve m e n t . W h e re is that point? Well, its usually at the semistre t c h e d position, near the turnaround of a repalmost at the bottom of an incline press, for example. When a muscle is semistretchednot fully stretched, but almostthe muscle fibers are perfectly aligned for ultimate p ower generation. In simple term s, if you want to tri g g e r e x t reme mass, you need to overload that point somehow. Coleman does that Coleman and i n s t i n c t i ve l y his incredible with heavy traps! p a rt i a l - ra n g e re p s. Fo r e x a m p l e, he does only the bottom half of a benc h p ress stro k e. In fact, he almost neve r does fullrange re p s. Th at means
he slams that mass-morphing sweet spot with severe overload on every single rep. To drive home that point, we thought it would be interesting to discuss his workout day by day...
Workout 1
Calves. He begins with seated calf raises, and the first thing t h a ts noteworthy i s that he never gets close to full contractionnot even on his first, lighter sets. He works from just above the middle of the stroke to down just short of full stretchthe semistretched point. He does the same thing on one-leg leg press calf raises; however, its interesting to note that on all calf exercises, even the seated va ri e t y, he double bounces when he gets to the highest point, which for him is just above the middle of the stroke. There is still some stretch in the calf muscle at that point, but not as much as closer to the bottom of the stroke, as dictated by X-Rep protocol. So from a scientific standpoint he might get better results double-clutching at the semistretched point, down near the bottom where the most fiber activation can occur (the DoubleX Overload technique). Thats exactly how he trains his shrugs, double-dipping at the bottom stretch and then only moving the bar up a few inches before he lowers and double bangs againand his traps are absolutely enormous! Could his calves get even better with extra semistretched-point overload? We think so. (Incidentally, as weve mentioned a number of places in this e-book, Jay Cutler, Colemans biggest nemesis in his quest for more Olympia titles, uses the Double-X-Overload technique on almost every set, holding and hitching at the semistretched point between groups of reps or single reps. As we said, he may be triggering hyperplasia, or fiber splitting, instinctively at every workout thanks to that unique tweak that has the power to create a freak physique!) Delts. He kicks off shoulder work with seated dumbbell p re s s e s, using a seat with back support. He dri ves the dumbbells from ear level, the semistretched point, to about eight inches above his head, far short of lockout. (Its during
this exercise that you get to hear his first surprising and somewhat humorous battle cry, Yeah, buddy! He loves that stuff, no matter how painful the set.) He does four sets of part i a l - range dumbbell pre s s e s, increasing the weight on each till hes using the 160s on his last set for seven reps. (Yes, 160-pound dumbbells!) His first three sets are all in the 10-to-12-rep range. It was rather shocking to see that Coleman prefers higher reps on almost all of his sets, but its probably to hammer the target muscle with more tension time. Speaking of higher re p s, heres a big surprise: A fter dumbbell presses he goes to the Nautilus double-shoulder machine and does lateral raises, only the bottom half of the m ovement (semistretched point again), for about 20 re p s. Then he follows immediately with presses on the machine, turning his palms out (ouch) and moving the bar from ear level to just above his head, no lockout, for about 20 reps. He does three of the high-rep combo setsand his delts get pumped to the extreme. For front delts he does a few progressively heavier sets of alternate dumbbell front raises, stopping each rep at about eye level. His reps start at 15 on the first set and creep down from there. Uncrossovers are next. What the heck is an uncrossover? We explained them in the X Q&A section, but heres a quick review: You stand in the middle of a cable crossover, the cable handle from the opposite side in each hand, your arms crossed at midforearm in front of your face with a slight bend at each elbow. You uncross your arms and drive your hands out to your sides at shoulder level, keeping the slight bend at the elbows. After a few reps you should get a wicked burn in your rear-delt heads and midback. Coleman does four sets, increasing the weight on each and decreasing his reps, going from 15 down to eight. Next its bent-over cable laterals in the same cro s s ove r machine but using the low handlesand zero full-range reps.
Holy He does only half reps from the stretch #%@! point to about halfway up. In other w o rd s, his arms never get close to p a rallel to the floor for complete contraction. He does four sets of these stretch-emphasis delt/back burners. A re you seeing a pattern? The s t retched and semistretched points appear to be critically important for building mass. Co l e m a ns tra i n i n g indicates that in a big wayeven more strongly on the next exercise. Tr a p s. To finish, he blasts out heavy behind-the-back barbell shrugs. He does them while holding the Olympic bar behind his legs rather than in front, and he uses a tremendous poundage that rattles the power rack at the end of his sets; howe ve r, his shoulders barely move. He only does bottomrange partialsand his traps look like eight-ton boulders sitting on his shoulders. He starts with 445 pounds and does 15 reps. Then he bumps it up to 645 for 12 and, finally, 735 for 11. And as mentioned above, he double-clutches at the bottom, stretched position on every rep, providing serious Double-X Overload at the maxforce point. Our primary thought at the end of his workout, other than shock and awe, was this: Considering the impressiveness of his traps, which may be his freakiest bodypart, we wonder why he doesnt try the double-clutch semistretched-overload tactic on more of his exercises. Could it make him even larger? Scary thought, but its very possible considering its connection to muscle fiber replication.
Workout 2
Quads. Coleman starts with four progressively heavier sets of leg extensions to warm up his knees. He does 30 quick reps on each set. As before, its, Yeah, buddy! as he primes his
knees, his quads (with occlusion) and his mind for squats. Prepare to be impressed! He does five progressively heavier sets on squats: 225x12, 405x10, 595x8, 745x4 and 800x2. Whoa! But even more impressive is that he doesnt use a power rack. He shoulders the bar from heavy-duty power stands and then squats without any safety catchersother than his training partner and the Metroflex Gym owner, neither of whom look too thrilled about having to pull 800 pounds off of Ronnie if he misses. Oh, and did we mention that all of his reps are down below parallel and only partial range? Yep, its semistretched-position overload, never pushing close to top-end lockout; however, Coleman does take quite a bit of time between heavy sets, as he wraps his knees and squeezes into a power suit. Still, 800 for two deep reps nonlock style is amazing. Another eye-popping display occurs on leg presses. He does four pro g re s s i vely heavier sets with his feet close and in nonlock style. On his last set he appears to have every 45 in the gym piled on, and a calculator is brought out to determine that he was using 2,250 poundsfor eight reps! Yep, more than a ton. Ha m s t ri n g s. Those leg pre s s e s, with feet high on the p l a t f o rm, provide a good transition to hamstring work. He begins with one-leg leg curls, once again doing only the bottom two-thirds of the movement (semistretched point) and no pauses. His reps are rapid fire, and he alternates legs for three sets of about 15 reps apiece. Stiff-legged deadlifts are last on his day-two agenda, and the theme slapped us in the face again: He only moves the bar f rom ankles to kneesstretched-position part i a l s. And his weight is relatively light. It looked to be only about 275 pounds for all three sets. He appears to be using the exercise as more of a stretch-emphasizing movement, and as we keep saying throughout this e-book, stretch-position work has been linked to hyperplasia, or fiber splitting, in the lab. Perhaps thats one reason Ronnie is so dam n h ugemaybe stretch and
semistretch focus has produced considerable replication of muscle fibers. ( The same can be said of Jay Cu t l e r, who e m p h a s i zes stretch even more than Coleman.) In t e re s t i n g concept, which is why its part of our mega-mass program! Stretching. Even more evidence of Colemans attention to muscle elongation: He ends this workout with hamstring and adductor stretches.
Workout 3
Abs. Colemans ab routine is an almost endless giant set. He does bench cru n c h e s, bottom two-thirds of the move m e n t o n l y; bench kneeups, bottom range only; standing cable crunches and twisting crunches. It appears as though theres no specific order; he just does whichever exercise he feels like doingbut he still emphasizes the semistretched point on almost all of them, never holding a contraction and almost always just doing partial-range, rapid-fire reps. C h e s t. He begins with bench presses, five pro g re s s i ve l y heavier setsand his range is almost shorter here than on most other exercises. It looks as though hes moving through only the bottom half of the stroke, exploding on every rep at the low, semistretched point. How much does Mr. O bench? At this workout his last three sets were 315x12, 405x10 and 495x5. Not too shabby. For incline presses its a repeat performance as far as range goespartial, max-force-point emphasis. He does only the bottom half to two-thirds of the stroke, often reversing the
Colemans bench press range is from the chest to just above the midpoint of the stroke on every rep. That allows him to hit the semistretched point more quickly and keep continuous tension on his pecs for anabolic occlusion aftereffects.
movement of the bar and exploding on it before it touches his chest. He does three sets: 225x15, 315x12 and 405x8 plus one forced rep. Forced reps are a rare occurrence. Next up: decline presses. Bottom half of the stroke only, and he does three sets: 225x15, 315x15 and 405x10. He lowers the bar to his low-pec line on every rep. Tri c e p s. He begins with quick-hit one-arm ove rh e a d extensions in a seated position. He lowers the dumbbell to just off his shoulder, hand at about ear level, then drives it up till his hand is just above his head, not even close to lockout. He just keeps pulsing in that middle ra n g e, kicking out of the semistretched position, for three sets of 12 to 15 reps. Machine dips are next. Here he sits and grips wheelbarrowtyp e handles. The fulcrum is at the middle of the two handlebars, and the weight is at the opposite end. He drives the handles from the semistretched point, hands up next to his pecs down to well short of lockout. He does those pistonlike reps for three sets of 12 to 15 reps. Narrow-grip pushdowns finish off his triceps. Not to belabor the point, but (you guessed it) his range of motion is from about the middle of his chest (triceps semistretched point) to just short of lockout. He fires out 10 to 15 reps with zero pauses for three sets.
Workout 4
Calves. He starts the day with some high-rep calf work in his home gym, once again doing short, pulsing reps through the bottom range only and double-clutching each rep at about the midpoint (Ro n n i e, try double-clutching closer to the bottom, where the X spot is; I swear yo ull like it!). After pumping up his calves, hes off to the gym. Back. Wide-grip lat pulldowns are first. That may be the exercise he uses the fullest range on. He pulls from just shy of lockout, semistretched point, down to his middle chest. The explosive heave just before lockout at the top of every rep really overloads that max-forc e point for some seriou s mass
stimulation in his upper lats. You can see it happening. Unreal! He does four sets of 12 reps, the last with the stack plus a 45 pinned to it. Behind-the-neck pulldowns are next, although theyre really behind-the-head pulldowns. He never pulls the bar past ear level, and he releases to just short of lockout. He does three sets of 12 reps here. Cable rows followrapid-fire reps from the forward-lean, semistretched position and pulling the parallel handle to near his upper abs as he straightens his torso. He does three sets of 12 again, and on his last set he rows the stack plus two 45s that are pinned to it. To finish off back, he goes for some serious stretch (and maybe some critical fiber splitting, or hyperplasia). Cro s s bench dumbbell pullovers, with one bell, give his lats some wicked elongation, especially when he gets to his last set, pulling a 160-pound dumbbell from back over his head to just over his eyes. He does three sets of 12 again, partial-range with a considerable stretch emphasis (how could you not emphasize stretch with that amount of weight?). Biceps. He begins attacking his mountainous biceps with machine curls. It looks like an old Nautilus machine with an EZ-curl handle, but he doesnt do full-range reps. He curls from the semistretched point, arms just bent out of the straight-arm position, to just above the middle of the stro k e n o contraction emphasis at all. His reps are partial, pistonlike max-force-point-overload reps for all three sets. Next up are alternate dumbbell curls. Nothing special here, just rocking the weight up in a see-saw motion. Each of the three sets seems extremely long because of the alternating armsone arm rests while the other curlsplus the fact that he does 10 full reps on every set. Last is a unique cable curl. Instead of facing the we i g h t stack, he turns his back to it so the cable runs down between his legs. He bends over slightly at the waist and curls from the s e m i s t retched point, never straightening his arm s, to just
above the midpoint of the strokelike slightly exaggerated X Reps. He performs three sets of 15, 15 and 11 reps. Then he hits a few posesan incredible impromptu display of raw muscle size and separation, despite his being months away from the Mr. Olympia.
Mass-Building Lessons
So what can we learn from all of this? First and foremost, it a p p e a r s, as we continue to say over and ove r, that s e m i s t retched- and stretched-position overload are much, much more important than squeezy contractionsat least in the massive Coleman camp. Weve been explaining why in this e-book and the rest. Colemans training verifies a lot of what weve discovered the past few years at the IRON MAN Training & Research Center. Next, continuous tension appears to be a very big player in building muscle. When Coleman does partial reps, such as nonlock squats or pre s s e s, the target muscle never gets a breather. The technique creates occlusion, or blocked blood f l ow, and that produces a skin-stretching pump as well as spectacular anabolic responses in muscle tissue. One thing you dont learn on the DVD is that Co l e m a n usually trains with two different workouts for each bodypart, an A-and-B approach (sound familiar?). He rotates them to hit the muscle with different stress at eve ry session. In other words, we only described half of his workouts. The others hit the same bodyparts but usually with different exercises, similar to our new X-Hybrid Mega-Mass Program in Chapter 10. The last thing we picked up on is that Coleman is one heck of a personable guy and loves training. You can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. Yeah, buddy! is now a common battle cry at all of our X-Rep workouts. Note: Ronnie Colemans three-hour-and-15-minute The Cost of Redemption DVD is available for $29.95 plus shipping from Home Gym Warehouse. Call (800) 447-0008, or visit www .Home-Gym.com.
BONUS CHAPTER B The Inner Workings of Steroids: Mimicking Their Anabolic Power Without Drugs
Lets face it: Steroids enable an athlete to leapfrog hormonal roadblocks and reach a new level of physical prowessfasta level that was impossible without drugs. Hold on! Impossible without drugs? That may be a bit pre m a t u re. In fact, if we analyze the way steroids work and do everything in our power to mimic those effects naturally, many of us can get results similar to what happens when were on mild anabolics (we say mild because theres no way to get your body to produce five times its normal testosterone output, which is the amount a lot of bodybuilders inject). You read that right: steroidlike results without the steroids. Adopt the 10 roid-mimicking techniques weve got here, and youll experience new muscle growth, a strength explosion and a rush of self-confidence. We have and now were often accused of using, but we dont. We consider those accusations the ultimate compliment for a d ru g - f ree athlete! [Note: The intros in italics are from Jerry Brainums Anabolic Steroid Primer that appeared in IRON MAN magazine, used with permission.]
Anabolic-hormone Surge
Simply put, anabolic steroids are either testosterone itself or synthetic versions of testosterone. Recent studies confirm another route through which anabolic steroids increase muscle size: augmented release of other anabolic hormones in the bo dy, such as gro wth hormone and insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Th e primary anabolic hormones in the body appear to have a synergistic effect in building muscle. It should be obvious that to start the steroid-mimicking process, you want to kick your testosterone into high gear, as t h a ts what steroids aresynthetic versi ons of that anabolic/androgenic hormone. You also want to increase your growth hormone so you get a synergistic anabolic effect, as GH boosts testosterones potency and vice versa. Triggering an insulin uptick at specific times during the day can also amplify those effects even more.
The anabolic synergy of those three hormones is the reason so many bodybuilders drug stacks include all of themand the reason there are so many 250-plus-pound behemoths stalking the stages of pro bodybuilding shows. Boost yours n a t u ra l l y, and at the right times, and yo ull grow as neve r before. The mistake most drug-free bodybuilders make is thinking that any type of weight workout they do gives them optimal s u rges in the anabolic horm o n e s. Su re, almost any type of intense weight training increases testosterone and GH to some degree, but were after maximum output. To get steroidlike e f f e c t s, you g otta have si gnificant amounts of both testosterone and GH coursing through your system. And thats not just an educated guess. In one study men who took both GH and testosterone showed lean-mass increases three times greater than those who took testosterone alone.1 Getting that anabolic triple whammy takes specific strategies, not random workouts. Te s t o s t e ro n e. Intense anaerobic exercise is the key to increasing testosterone production. And research indicates that you get the biggest test surge when your pro g ram is dominated by multijoint exercises, such as squats. In fact, the l a rger the bodypart yo ure training, the more testostero n e release you get. Also, you have to do enough volume, but you dont want to overdo it. Common wisdom is that workouts lasting more than about an hour and 15 minutes cause a testosterone crash, probably due to elevated cortisol, a stress hormone that smothers anabolic hormones and eats muscle. You want to stop the workout before cortisol goes into musclemunching Pac-Man mode. So here are your first two steroid-mimicking strategies: 1 ) Make sure your workout is dominated by the big compound exercises, two to three sets of eight to 10 reps. Do squats for quads, chins for lats, rows for midback, upright rows and presses for delts and bench presses for chest. (Those are the midrange exercises (M) in the Mega-Mass routines, the
ones with which you kick off each bodypart blast.) 2) Try to keep most of your workouts at about an hour. If you use one or all of the cortisol-control strategies coming up, you may be able to push some to an hour and a half. Gr owth horm one. Re s e a rchers belie ve that GH supercharges the anabolic properties of testosterone, and the study that got the triple-gain results verifies that. So how do you get your pituitary gland to secrete more GH and crank up tests effects? Studies indicate that theres a direct correlation between higher blood lactic acid levels and GH release.2 That means the more muscle burn you induce, the more GH you can stimulate. To go for the burn, use supersets, drop sets and/or X Reps on some sets. Also continuous-tension exercises, that keep blood choked off from the muscle that help concentrate the b u rn t h e res resistance through the entire range of movement. Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler both get that on most of their exercises by using only a partial range of motion, especially on exercises that have lockoutthey never get close to locking out so the muscle can rest. Obviously, exercises that enable you to lock out and rest at one end of the movement, such as squats, can produce burn if you dont go to lockout, so the partial technique is a good one for GH release. Single-joint isolation exercises (contracted-position movements in POF protocol) also produce muscle burn. So your third steroid-mimicking strategy is this: 3 ) Use an isolation exercise along with part i a l - ra n g e compound movements for each target muscle. Drop sets, X Reps and the various X-hybrid techniques can help intensify that muscle burn, which, in turn, can increase GH. The answer lies in research showing that large doses of steroids, such as those commonly taken by athletes, incr ease the number of androgen receptors. Any kind of intense weight training can increase androgen receptors; however, theres evidence that elongating a muscle, as when you use a stretch-position exercise like stiff-legged
deadlifts for hamstrings and overhead extensions for triceps, does a bang-up job of increasing IGF-1 receptors in the muscle. IGF-1 is a highly anabolic metabolite that can occur as a direct result of GH. In other word s, steroids incre a s e androgen receptors in muscle, and stretch-position exercises can accomplish some of that same action. Thats why stretchposition movements are mandatory for maximizing the s t e roid-mimicking effects of weight training. And stre t c h overload has also been linked to hyperplasia, or muscle fiber division, so exercises that stretch the target muscle can trigger muscle growth in a number of different ways. And the DoubleX Overload technique can make stretch-position exerc i s e s even more powerful in both of those areas. That gives us one more steroid-mimicking strategy: 4 ) Use stretch-position exercises to increase andro g e n receptors on muscles and to perhaps spur hyperplasia. And the Double-X Overload X-hybrid technique to some sets to s u p e rc h a rge their mass-building effects. St re t c h - p o s i t i o n exercises include sissy squats for quads, stiff-legged deadlifts for hamstrings, pullovers for lats, shrugs for midback, one-arm incline laterals for delts, ove rhead extensions for tri c e p s, incline curls for biceps and flyes or wide-grip dips for chest. (Stretch-position exercises (S) are included in the Mega-Mass programs in this e-book.) Steroids work by binding to specific cell receptors called androgen receptors. That initiates a cascade in the cell that results in upgraded muscle protein synthesis. That means you have to do your best to jam-pack yo u r muscles with amino acidswhich leads us to the infamous storage hormone known as Insulin. It can cause your body to store fat in fat cells and amino acids and creatine in muscle cells. That upgrade in protein synthesis is one of the main reasons steroids build muscle quicklyand precisely what you want in order to create steroidlike effects naturally. To get the anabolic reactions without fat storage, you need
to trigger an insulin surge after you train but minimize those surges at all other times of the day. Use a shake made with s t raight whey protein and/or hyd ro l y zed whey and simple carbs. Go for about 60 grams of carbs and 40 grams of whey. Immediately after an intense training session your muscles are like bone-dry sponges ready to soak up nutrients, so give them what they crave in that anabolic window. ( We use the X-Stack, available at www.X-Stack.com, which also includes five grams of titrated creatine.) Fasting has also been shown to create an import a n t anabolic window, so you may want to experiment with getting fast protein and fast carbs in the morning as soon as you wake up. Try 20 grams of whey protein along with 30 grams of simple carbs, like grape juice. (Or use a half serving of the X-Stack; its designed for optimizing the postworkout anabolic window, but it works well in the morning too). To minimize insulin surges throughout the day, eat six small protein-based meals spaced a few hours apart. Overfeeding at any one meal, no matter what the macronutrient percentages, causes an insulin surge at the wrong time. Dont gorge yourself. A l s o, avoid eating carbs alone. Simple-sugar snacks cause insulin to skyrocket. The basic rule is that each of your six meals should have at least 20 grams of protein, a medium number of carbslowglycemic carbs are bestand a small amount of fat, preferably good fat from nuts or fish, for example. Okay, add three more steroid-mimicking strategies to the list: 5) Get some fast protein and fast carbs as soon as you wake up to take advantage of the secondary anabolic window created by the overnight fast (unless you raided the fridge at 2 a.m., which means you didnt fast). 6 ) Drink a postworkout shake that has 40 grams of fast p rotein (whey) and 60 grams of fast carbs (high-glyc e m i c sugar) to spike insulin immediately after every workout and drive amino acids into your muscles (the X-Stack).
7) Eat six small meals a day, each with at least 20 grams of p rotein30 to 40 is better. That will keep amino acids circulatingyou never want recovering muscles to be starved of those building blocksand avoid insulin surges that can cause fat deposition. Re m e m b e r, steroids increase pro t e i n synthesis, and the only way to maximize protein use without them is to make sure there are enough aminos available to your system at all times to swing the anabolic/catabolic balance in favor of growth.
Catabolic-hormone Blockade
Androgens bind with low affinity to glucocorticoid cell receptors, the cell receptors that interact with cor tisol. Anything that interf e res with cortisol activity, such as anabolic steroids, would tilt the balance toward anabolism, not catabolism. Enemy number one in your quest to mimic steroid actions without taking drugs is cortisol, which smothers anabolic actions, diffusing your GH and testosterone output. One way to combat cortisol is to sip a high-glycemic-sugar mixture during your workout. (We mentioned that as one of our megamass strategies; were using a half serving of our X-Stack along with the new supplement GAKIC, thats an ammonia buffer, which helps you get more re p s.) He res what Eu ro p e a n researcher Michael Gndill said about that strategy: Blood glucose levels tend to fall during training. As a result, insulin s e c retion is re p ressed while the secretions of cortisol and glucagon are enhanced. You want to re verse the situation, which is easily accomplished by increasing your carb intake before your workout and/or using a carb drink through the session. A study re p o r ted in mid-2002 ve ri fied that dri n k i n g c a r b o h yd rate beve rages during high-intensity interm i t t e n t exercise decreases cortisol levels.3 Even Kool-Aid will work, but we suggest some fast protein added to the mix to feed the muscles. Research scientist Jose Antonio, Ph.D., has written
about athletes drinking flat Coke (regular, with sugar, not diet) d u ring workouts to bolster energyand no doubt blunt cortisol release. If you try it, make sure the carbonation is out, or you could get nauseated. Theres one more steroid-mimicking strategy: 8 ) Sip a hig h-carb-and-protein mixture during yo u r workout (diluted X-Stack).
Sleeping It On
C o rtisol receptors in muscle far outnumber andr ogen receptors. So a true anticatabolic effect would r equire larger doses of anabolics. Once again, your best bet for building muscle steroid-free is to minimize cortisol, maximize anabolic hormone output and enhance recovery whenever and wherever possible. That way you optimize your androgen receptors (remember, you can build new ones with stretch-position exercises) and minimize the cortisol receptors. Do that as often as possibleeven when you sleepand your gains should skyrocket. Yo uve already seen a number of ways to maximize anabolism and de-emphasize catabolism during the day, but how do you stay in control while youre sawing logs? Dreaming of Carmen Electra giving you a hot-oil rub will no doubt raise your testosterone, among other things, but if Dennis Rodman s h ows up, your cortisol will soar. Instead of focusing on Ca rmen, simply try to get eight to 10 hours of sleep each nightand make sure its uninterrupted, sound sleep. Even minor sleep disturbances can alter the hormonal response yo ure afterwhich i s maximizing growth h orm o n e, testosterone and IGF-1.4 If you have trouble sleeping soundly, you may want to try a melatonin supplement. Melatonin is a natural horm o n e secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, and it can intensify REM sleep, the good, deep sleep youre after, and boost GH levels.5 Two to five milligrams before bed may help, but use it infrequently, as your body could develop a dependence on it if
you use it every night. If youre not interested in melatonin, you may get similar effects with a cup of caffeine-free green tea. Bonus: Green tea has also been shown to help burn fat and improve anti-oxidant activity. If you have a small bladder, however, tea before bed may do the opposite and cause a sleep interruption. In other words, youll be cursing your loss of REM sleep as you take aim at the dark silhouette you hope is the toilet. You also want to minimize cortisol release as you sleep. Youre already aware that it can burn muscle during a workout, but keep in mind that it can turn shut-eye catabolic as well. For people who work out, cortisol tends to rear its ugly musclewasting head in the first few hours, so take about 400 milligrams of phosphatidylserine, or PS, before bed. PS is a n a t u ral lipid thats been shown to help control cort i s o l releasea for- real all-natural muscle booster due to its anticatabolic properties. As weve seen, one reason anabolic s t e roids are so effective is that they interf e re with cort i s o l l e ve l s. PS does that in a slightly different way with similar anticatabolic results. By minimizing cortisol during sleep, yo ull set up an anabolic environment. Ah, but as you know, growth cant happen if hypert rophic building blocks are nt ava i l a b l e, namely, amino acids. To make sure your body has the musclerepair materials it needs through most of the night, take a micellar casein-and-whey protein drink before bed. That mix is whats known as complete milk protein and provides a tricklefeed effect thanks to caseins slow-digestion properties. (Thats a must for our mega-mass strategy as well.) Your final two steroid-mimicking strategies: 9) Get eight to 10 hours of sound sleep a night. Melatonin or green tea before bed may help. 10) Make sleep more anticatabolic by controlling cortisol with a PS supplement before bed. Make sleep more anabolic by trickle-feeding your muscles amino acids during sleepdrink a micellar casein-and-whey protein shake before bed (we use
Pro-Fusion protein powder in water). Note that you dont want too much protein right before you hit the hay because you still want a fasted state when you wake up to create an anabolic window (see item 6). Try about 20 grams of micellar caseinand-whey protein before bed. Also, you dont want to get so much liquid that you wake up to pee. You want re s t f u l , uninterrupted sleep. Go over this checklist often. By following all 10 rules, along with our Mega-Mass programs in this e-book, you should get some of the best muscle-building results of your life, no p h a rmaceuticals necessary. How about 20 pounds of new muscle in the coming months to radically change yo u r physique? Lets get to it!
References
1 Blackman, M.R., et al. (2002). Growth hormone and sex s t e roid administration in healthy older women and men. JAMA. 288:2282-2292. 2 Mulligan, S.E., et al. (1996). Influence of resistance exercise volume on serum growth hormone and cortisol concentrations in women. Journal of St rength and Conditioning Re s e a rc h. 10:(4): 256262. 3 Bi s h o p, N.C., et al. (2002). Influence of carbohyd ra t e supplementation on plasma cytokine and neutro p h i l d e g ranulation responses to high-intensity interm i t t e n t exercise. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. 12(2):145-156. 4 Forsling, M., e t al. (1999). The effect of melatonin administration on pituitary hormone secretion in man. Clin Endocrinol. 51(5):637-642. 5 Mougin, F., et al. (2001). Hormonal responses to exercise after partial sleep depri vation and after a hypnotic dru g induced sleep. J Sports Sci. 19(2):89-97.
E-books Available at www.X-Rep.com

X-traordinary Abs. If you dont have visible abs now, dont worry you soon will. And if you kick your motivation into overdrive and get your bodyfat down, youll have a visible six pack without even flexing. Forget those set-after-grueling-set ab programs10 minutes is all you need. You just have to know how to apply the best full-range movements in precise combinations with X Reps and the occlusion technique. The new X-traordinary Abs e-book teaches you all of that and more! Includes a big Midsection Perfection Q&A section and watch as the top-9 ab myths get blown to smithereens!
X-Treme Lean Fat-Burning and Nutrition Guide. Nothing grabs attention like a shredded physique. If youre ready to shed your excess bodyfat and build some muscle at the same time, then this is your answer. Its time to stop talking about it and start working on it. You want those etched abs? Well give you the diet info to let em rip! Includes the amazing X-treme Lean HighDefinition full-body Workout that features X Reps and the occlusion phenomenon to build muscle as you burn fat. Ready to kick-start the fatburning machine? Youre going to get X-treme Lean!
The Ultimate Mass Workout, featuring X-Rep Training. Here it is: The original X-Rep manual. You may think youve tried it all to build muscle, but until you ignite the anabolic fuse with The Ultimate Mass Workout and X Reps, you havent experienced explosive growth. This program maximizes all the elements your body requires for an extreme hypertrophic responsethe single best exercise for each muscle, precision workouts, neuromuscular target training, capillary-expansion tactics, anabolic hormone activation and maximum muscle fiberrecruitment techniques. Its all here, waiting for you to light the fuse and create your own ultimate muscle-size-andstrength X-plosion.

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IRON MAN Training & Research Center Presents

by Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson

Photography by Michael Neveux

CHAPTER 1 X-hilirating Muscle-Building Observations

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CHAPTER 2 X-treme Pumps and Pain to Gain

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CHAPTER 3 Hormone Surges and Fiber Slicing

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CHAPTER 4 Cut the Volume, Cover the Angles

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Positions-of-Flexion Biceps Program

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CHAPTER 5 Time-Bomb Training

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1-month XRep results in 04.

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Muscle-Building Lessons Review

CHAPTER 6 Stage Sets and Double-X Overload

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CHAPTER 7 X/Pause and X-centric Training

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CHAPTER 8 Iso X and X Fade

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X-Rep Hybrid Techniques Cheat Sheet

CHAPTER 9 Our X-citing Results and Findings

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