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Huge-Muscle Dimensions With Continuous Tension
We’re all about getting the most mass bang for your effort buck. In other words, quick-hit mass blasts that don’t take a lot of time but provide the most size stimulation possible—no wasted effort. After looking back over our 40-plus years of combined training experience and analyzing the workouts of many champion bodybuilders, we’ve determined that one of the biggest contributors to bigness is—drum roll, please—continuous tension. And not getting enough of it may be the reason for your sluggish gains. Let us explain...
We’ve talked about Ronnie Coleman, the current Mr. Olympia, who does only partial reps on almost every exercise—and those partials always include the max-force point, where fiber activation is red-lining (the X Spot). Another interesting detail is that he rarely does low reps as you’d expect—they’re usually up around 12. So what he’s doing is keeping tension on the muscle for a considerable length of time (we’ve said that around 30 seconds or more is best for hypertrophy). He’s also enhancing fiber recruitment by using a controlled explosion right at the semistretched point on the stroke—like near the bottom of a bench press. But let’s talk tension time first...
Locking out on exercises where the target muscle can rest is useless because it kills continuous tension. That means moving the bar all the way up on bench presses and squats is costing you mass gains. The top range of the squat is almost all glutes, so the quads get a rest. At the top of a bench press your pecs relinquish the load to the triceps and front delts. So if you lock out, it’s like doing a series of singles, which is fine for powerlifters interested mostly in strength development and who have to lock out in competition (we’re interested in maximum muscle mass first, with a strength side effect).
We’ve come to the realization that if you’re after the most mass stimulation possible, you should avoid the top third of the stroke on those types of exercises. Remember, continuous tension blocks blood flow to the muscle (occlusion), which triggers an incredible anabolic response—if that tension lasts long enough. (Longer tension times is one reason Ronnie Coleman is so freaky huge!)
Time under tension—King TUT—is very, very important. In fact, we’ve labeled short, or lower-rep, sets as one of the biggest mistakes, if not the biggest mistake, in muscle building. Why? Because most bodybuilders are obsessed with using heavy weights and lower reps, so time under tension is cut short on every set. They’ve been conditioned to believe that low reps build the most mass, which isn’t true.
Extended tension times—up to a point—do more for muscle mass than lower reps (one reason is the size principle of muscle-fiber recruitment, which is explained in The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book). Low reps are more for strength with a slight size side effect. Nevertheless, lower-rep sets every now and then can enhance your bodybuilding progress by increasing your nervous system response—more strength may allow you to involve more fibers eventually on any one set (Coleman does low reps every so often, like on squats). If you want to insure more muscle stimulation, we suggest you add X Reps to those low-rep sets. That way you exponentially jack up the mass-building effects. For example...
Let’s say you do a set of bench presses with a heavy weight that allows you only seven reps. If every rep lasts about three seconds, that’s only 21 seconds of tension time—good for strength, not so good for size (and remember not to go to lockout so that your pecs stay engaged throughout). When you miss on rep eight, you want to somehow keep firing the muscle to extend the tension time. Lower the bar to just above your chest, the X Spot, and blast up to just below the midpoint of the stroke. You may need help from a partner, but the growth response you’ll get from more stress right at the max-force point will be well worth the extra effort. (X Reps are impossible on free-bar squats, so you may want to do your X-Rep set on a Smith machine or hack machine.)
Think about it. If you can get six X-Rep partials, each one lasting more than one second, you can push your low-rep set closer to 30 seconds of total tension time, the anabolic time zone. That gives you a double-whammy—strength-building effects from the lower reps and more size stimulation by extending the tension time.
You get bigger muscle dimensions with more continuous tension, so blast out some X Reps on most of your lower-rep sets. It’s like size-building insurance!
—Steve Holman and
Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
We’re all about getting the most mass bang for your effort buck. In other words, quick-hit mass blasts that don’t take a lot of time but provide the most size stimulation possible—no wasted effort. After looking back over our 40-plus years of combined training experience and analyzing the workouts of many champion bodybuilders, we’ve determined that one of the biggest contributors to bigness is—drum roll, please—continuous tension. And not getting enough of it may be the reason for your sluggish gains. Let us explain...
We’ve talked about Ronnie Coleman, the current Mr. Olympia, who does only partial reps on almost every exercise—and those partials always include the max-force point, where fiber activation is red-lining (the X Spot). Another interesting detail is that he rarely does low reps as you’d expect—they’re usually up around 12. So what he’s doing is keeping tension on the muscle for a considerable length of time (we’ve said that around 30 seconds or more is best for hypertrophy). He’s also enhancing fiber recruitment by using a controlled explosion right at the semistretched point on the stroke—like near the bottom of a bench press. But let’s talk tension time first...
Locking out on exercises where the target muscle can rest is useless because it kills continuous tension. That means moving the bar all the way up on bench presses and squats is costing you mass gains. The top range of the squat is almost all glutes, so the quads get a rest. At the top of a bench press your pecs relinquish the load to the triceps and front delts. So if you lock out, it’s like doing a series of singles, which is fine for powerlifters interested mostly in strength development and who have to lock out in competition (we’re interested in maximum muscle mass first, with a strength side effect).
We’ve come to the realization that if you’re after the most mass stimulation possible, you should avoid the top third of the stroke on those types of exercises. Remember, continuous tension blocks blood flow to the muscle (occlusion), which triggers an incredible anabolic response—if that tension lasts long enough. (Longer tension times is one reason Ronnie Coleman is so freaky huge!)
Time under tension—King TUT—is very, very important. In fact, we’ve labeled short, or lower-rep, sets as one of the biggest mistakes, if not the biggest mistake, in muscle building. Why? Because most bodybuilders are obsessed with using heavy weights and lower reps, so time under tension is cut short on every set. They’ve been conditioned to believe that low reps build the most mass, which isn’t true.
Extended tension times—up to a point—do more for muscle mass than lower reps (one reason is the size principle of muscle-fiber recruitment, which is explained in The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book). Low reps are more for strength with a slight size side effect. Nevertheless, lower-rep sets every now and then can enhance your bodybuilding progress by increasing your nervous system response—more strength may allow you to involve more fibers eventually on any one set (Coleman does low reps every so often, like on squats). If you want to insure more muscle stimulation, we suggest you add X Reps to those low-rep sets. That way you exponentially jack up the mass-building effects. For example...
Let’s say you do a set of bench presses with a heavy weight that allows you only seven reps. If every rep lasts about three seconds, that’s only 21 seconds of tension time—good for strength, not so good for size (and remember not to go to lockout so that your pecs stay engaged throughout). When you miss on rep eight, you want to somehow keep firing the muscle to extend the tension time. Lower the bar to just above your chest, the X Spot, and blast up to just below the midpoint of the stroke. You may need help from a partner, but the growth response you’ll get from more stress right at the max-force point will be well worth the extra effort. (X Reps are impossible on free-bar squats, so you may want to do your X-Rep set on a Smith machine or hack machine.)
Think about it. If you can get six X-Rep partials, each one lasting more than one second, you can push your low-rep set closer to 30 seconds of total tension time, the anabolic time zone. That gives you a double-whammy—strength-building effects from the lower reps and more size stimulation by extending the tension time.
You get bigger muscle dimensions with more continuous tension, so blast out some X Reps on most of your lower-rep sets. It’s like size-building insurance!
—Steve Holman and
Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
