Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/1522027
Page 18 | Abby's Magazine | instagram.com/abbyshealthfood We all want to gain muscle fast. But for a long time, us "natties" could only rely on pure hard work, determination, and consistency to get there. There were no hacks ... until stretch-focused training. Want to gain muscle fast? Well, you might be able to grow your muscles almost twice as fast as you are right now — and still remain "natty". How? With what I like to call "stretch-focused training". A training technique that has seemed to crack the code to muscle growth. I've even started experimenting with it, and honestly, it seems like it's working. Don't just take my word for it, though. I've assembled my elite crew of researchers to: • Dive into the science. • Separate the truth from the fad AND • Figure out the best way to use the training to build muscle faster. W H A T I S S T R E T C H - M E D I A T E D H Y P E R T R O P H Y ? H O W D O E S I T W O R K ? Before diving into the practical, let's explain the concept behind "stretch-focused training", so you understand how it helps you gain muscle fast. Whenever you lift weights, your muscles contract to lift the weight up and then stretch in order to lower the weight back down. But something special seems to happen when your muscles become stretched under load. The muscles can sense the stretch in the contractile units and, in response, kickstart a complex process that tells the body to build more muscle. This is what researchers now term "stretch- mediated hypertrophy". The stretching of the muscle under load is what drives muscle growth. Now, we've known of this theory for a while. It's why in most cases, such as with squats, using a full range of motion to get a deeper stretch in your muscles leads to more growth than using a partial range of motion. But not until fairly recently has more specific research actually put this theory to the test. The findings were quite surprising, even to me. Let's dive into what we found and then discuss what it means for your training, plus how you could make use of it to gain muscle fast. E V I D E N C E T H A T S T R E T C H - F O C U S E D T R A I N I N G C O U L D H E L P Y O U G A I N M U S C L E F A S T There are 4 studies I want to look at, with each of them testing a different muscle group. The first two tested what would happen if you only performed the bottom part of an exercise where the muscle is stretched. Study #1: Preacher Curls One of the two, published just last year, tested this using preacher curls and assessed the growth in the biceps after five weeks. The result? The subjects that performed only the bottom half of the curl experienced 2.6x more biceps growth than those who only performed the top half of the curl. Cool, right? Well, here's where it gets even cooler. HOW TO BUILD MUSCLE ALMOST 2X FASTER P A R T O N E