Substitutions on Hypertrophy Training for the Ectomorph

Q: Thanks [for the Hypertrophy Training for the Ectomorph program]. I'm excited to give it a try. I'm 49 years old, 6 foot and 150 pounds. Always been the non-muscular guy, but was always under the opinion that there was no hope whatsoever of someone like me building any kind of muscle. But now I am feeling like there is hope. Thank you for the PDF.

Although the ectomorph info in your book is in the appendix, I am assuming that the info in the book is still relevant to me?

I have read through the entire PDF, and I think my only question is this: If I am doing this at home as opposed to a gym, and I do not have access to the pulldowns, what could I substitute for that in the antagonistic superset with the bench press?

-Dean


My Answer: Well it depends on what kind of equipment you do have. If you have a pull-up tower or a power rack, then do substitute pull-ups or chin-ups for pulldowns. If you don't have a pull-up tower or you can't do a pull-up, then substitute one arm dumbbell rows instead.

It's not the same as pull-ups and pulldowns, since you don't get as much of a stretch. So you got to make up for that lack of muscular tension by using heavier and heavier weights and moving that weight up as fast as you can. You still use the rep scheme of 10-8-6-15, but you got to use heavier weights from workout to workout and lift explosively.

With regards to the information in my book Neo-Classical Bodybuilding: yes, the information would be relevant to you, because the book shows you how to build a bodybuilding program for full muscular development. Not size as a by-product of strength development. Not muscle growth that is temporary and transient. But full muscular development in all the right places.

Now with that said, Neo-Classical Bodybuilding is a BRUTAL program. It is so brutal, that many readers that I've talked to only concentrate on one of the workouts in the program. They will stay on the GH workouts and not even tackle the rest of the program, simply because they love the pump and muscular growth.

Neo-Classical Bodybuilding teaches you how to build muscle through multiple pathways, not just "lift big, eat big, get big." We all know that muscular hypertrophy is far more complex than that.






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