"I am reading your second book, which is really great, and am wondering if I could modify your Hypertrophy Training for the Ectomorph program, since I don't consider myself fully an ectomorph. I don't have the typical ectomorph body, but still I think I am a hard gainer and am slow to put on muscle mass. The rep range is 10-8-6-15, and I want to know if I would profit from modifying it a bit - for instance by making the rep range 9-8-5-12 or so?"
-CS
My Answer: Perfectly fine to do that. People who have been training longer will find that over time, they will need to lower the reps and work with heavier weights. Part of the reason is that intermediate and advanced trainees have learned to tap into higher threshold muscle fibers.
Newbies don't have that ability, because the movements are still new to them. So to compensate, they need longer time under tension. In other words, longer sets from more reps. The greater number of repetitions helps newbies develop the neural pathways that tap into those muscle fibers.
Intermediate lifters can use a lower rep range, because their neural pathways were already developed from lifting. The exception of course is when the exercise is completely new. In this case an intermediate lifter would need to lift with higher reps to develop the neural pathways for that particular exercise.
So a pyramid with a lower rep range would be perfectly fine. That would be the natural progression of the Hypertrophy Training for the Ectomorph program.
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