A Little Known Mass Building Technique

Are you a hard gainer?  I thought I was.  When I started lifting in high school I was very thin and soft.  Like a wad of cookie dough.  I spent most of my high school and college years reading every article I could find on adding mass and getting bigger.  I took every BS supplement available, and even had to go to the hospital once with a very bad reaction to one supplement that was supposed to give me 20 pounds of muscle growth in a month.  That type of gain is better than what even illegal drugs can do, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Of course, most of the articles and (mis)information I read came from body building magazines.  You know the ones: Muscle & Fitness, Muscle Mag, Flex or Iron Man, to name a few.  And each month there would be some new detailed workout by a top (drug using) body builder telling me on what days to workout, how many reps to do, and how this workout would make me massive!  So I would try this workout, and usually overtrain since I wasn’t using the chemical substances the bodybuilder was to recuperate so fast.

At one point, while I was totally out of shape, I decided once and for all I was going to learn how this is done.  Rather than reading the online “How To Get Big” eBooks, I went to Baylor’s Medical Library.  I figured I would learn a lot from studying medical text books on health and fitness.

Now here’s a funny thing that I have since confirmed with a few friends and relatives that are doctors: doctors know very little on health and fitness.  It’s not that they don’t understand the body outside of health, or on how to repair the body with medicine or surgery.  They just don’t know sports health.  I am very thankful for the skilled surgeon that rebuilt my knee with cadaver tendons to a point where it is actually stronger than before the accident.  I am extremely thankful for all of the doctors that have put this body back together after my multitude of bike and car wrecks.  The problem is, they (as a collective whole) don’t have a clue how to build muscle optimally, and I have had doctors even give me a hard time for wanting to be bigger.

In reading the text books at Baylor, I learned how muscle is built.  I learned about micro-tears and the rebuilding of not only muscle tissue, but the cardiovascular system that must grow to deliver oxygen for each rep, and the nervous system that must grow to deliver the electrical stimuli to contract this new muscle tissue so that is able to deliver more force when utilized.  All fascinating stuff.

What I couldn’t find in any of these books was HOW TO OPTIMIZE a routine to grow muscle.  We all understand the basics: overload the muscle to failure, and the muscle will grow back stronger.  It was at this time I decided to become a trainer and sports nutritionist to learn how this is done.  I did learn more through this process, especially about technique and form.  I did become certified as a trainer, but I dropped out of the nutritionist program.  I swear, every person that was teaching these classes or was a “certified nutritionist” was 80 lbs overweight, or so soft and flabby that it repulsed me (for reference feel free to Google “fat nutritionist”).  If they had the secrets, they weren’t using them.  Instead I started learning about evolutionary diets and following a modified paleolithic diet – one that I structured to ensure the metabolism stayed in high gear and the body’s natural muscle and fat burning hormones where maximized in their release.

While learning about muscle growth, I began to study nutrients, vitamins, essential compounds, micro-nutrients and so on.  There are certain substances that if you are deficient in, you simply won’t build muscle.  For example,  you can eat and lift all you want and you will not add one molecule of muscle without sufficient pyridoxine in your system.  For those of you not in the know, this is vitamin B6, and is only taken by the most devout bodybuilders.  Not because it doesn’t work, or is expensive or anything like that.  It is simply not taken because most people don’t know they need it.  It’s not sexy to advertise or sell vitamin B6 to become big and muscular.  There just isn’t enough money in it.

With my knowledge of training and side knowledge of body mechanics and nutrition, it finally made sense as to why body building is looked at like a three legged stool: rest, nutrition, resistance.  Miss any leg of the stool and you will not grow.  I had finally nailed the diet and I believe I have a fairly solid handle on supplements and nutrients (including vitamins), but I wasn’t sure on the lifting.  The routines that I did were the same routines everyone at the gym lifting weights did, with only minor variations.  And results were still slow in coming even with nutrients and a clean diet.

Around this time I learned about a little known (or little thought about) fact.  Did you ever realize you can hold more weight than you can lift?  Did you realize you can lower more weight than you can lift but not as much as you can hold?  I believe this is evolution’s little trick to keep us from lifting something heavier than we can hold, which prevents us from crushing ourselves.  Ah, Mother Nature, you sweet mistress.  We can use this trick to overload the muscles with an intensity most lifters never achieve.

From this I started doing a lot of negatives in my workout, which improved my results.  While researching medically documented muscle gains I read about the “The Colorado Experiment” and how static contractions can increase muscle mass.

Static Contractions

A static contraction is lifting as much weight as you can handle a minimal distance and holding it for 10 seconds.

By limiting the range of motion in an exercise, we can effectively increase intensity. The theory is that a subject could gain more muscle lifting 200 pounds a few inches one time than he could by lifting 100 pounds through his full range of motion multiple times.

Since intensity is so important in stimulating muscle growth, a study was created to see what would happen if bodybuilders used almost zero range of motion but with the heaviest weights they could possibly hold. Some hardcore bodybuilders were recruited who had already developed impressive builds. They were put on a routine averaging just 2.1 workouts per week where subjects statically held heavy weights (without any up and down movement) in their strongest range but without being “locked out”.

After just 10 weeks of static contraction training, these subjects:

•  Increased static strength 51.3%
•  Increased their full range 1-rep max 27.6%
•  Increased their full range 10-rep max 34.3%
•  Added 9.0 pounds of new muscle (one subject added 28.9 pounds)
•  Lost 4.9 pounds of fat
•  Added .5 inches to their biceps
•  Added 1.1 inches to their chest

In testing this myself, I found that just doing heavy static contractions did increase muscle mass. The biggest problem I personally saw was that of symmetry. While my muscles got bigger, I noticed that they were developing a little out of proportion to each other. This is when I decided to couple a static contraction with a few sets of negative focused drop sets to make sure every muscle fiber was exhausted – large and small, fast and slow twitch.

Now I do static contractions, then reverse pyramid drop sets, to completely work every muscle fiber. It was once believed that the soreness after training was from lactic acid buildup in the muscles. However, now I believe that science has shown that lactic acid leaves your body within a few hours, and that longer term soreness is actually micro tears in the muscle and nervous system.

I tell you this because soreness is one way to judge the effectiveness of your workouts. If you aren’t sore 3-4 days after doing one of these workouts, you are not pushing yourself.  And that is after every workout.  Not just the first two weeks of training, but every workout for life.

The Basics of a Static Contraction

Bench Press: This exercise is performed inside a power rack or on a Smith Machine. Position the bar within two inches of your extended reach. Place 30-100% more weight on the bar than you normally use. Press the bar up one inch (do not lock-out) and hold for a count of 10 seconds. Experiment to find the most weight you can hold for 10 seconds.

Leg Press: This exercise is performed with the safety stops engaged at ALL TIMES. Position the seat so the sled is within 2 inches of your full extension. Place 100-200% more weight on the press than you normally use. Press the sled up one inch off the safety stops. Hold for a count of 10 seconds. Experiment to find the most weight you can hold for 10 seconds.

Lat Pull Down: This exercise is performed with the lat ull down machine. Position the seat or chain so the bar is within two inches of your extended reach (I uses mountain climbing hooks to lower the bar). Select 30-100% more weight on the machine than you can actually do. Pull the bar down one inch (do not lock-out) and hold for a count of 10 seconds. Experiment to find the most weight you can hold for 10 seconds.

Push yourself to the limits of your capability. Most people using this method make the mistake of estimating the weight they can lift far too low. You literally want to experience complete failure at 10 seconds.  Then with each body part you add drop sets where you want the last rep to be at complete failure.  My current static contraction for the bench press is 545 pounds.  My first flat bench set is 315 pounds for 2-5 reps, wherever I happen to hit complete failure on that day.  I then drop the weight by 20 pounds and go again.  After going through all my bench press exercises with a negative drop set on every set, my final set is on a Nautilus bench press machine with a mere 40-60 pounds.  I try with everything I have to get 20 reps, and sometimes I just can’t do it.

When you repeat these exercises expect very significant increases in weight and muscle mass.  This routine coupled with a clean diet and a lot of rest was the foundation for my transformation from a 38 year old typical executive with a 40 inch waist barely able to bench 225 into a man with a 31 inch waist benching 385 for my max.  It feels good to be that man.

Good luck!

Read More:  How To Workout Correctly