Articles

Illustration of a bodybuilder training with the X3 Bar by Dr John Jaquish to build muscle mass.

Review of the X3 Bar by Dr John Jaquish: Is It Good for Building Muscle?

Dr John Jaquish is quickly becoming known for making extravagant claims about the benefits of training with his resistance band system, the X3 Bar. According to him, the product that he developed is the very best way to build muscle—three times better than traditional weight lifting. And not only that, it’s cheap, safe, and can be done from the comfort of your very own home.

But is any of that true? Are resistance bands an effective way to stimulate muscle growth? Is the X3 Bar better than the other types of resistance bands? And how does it compare to traditional weight lifting for building muscle? Can it really compete? Does it really offer any advantages?

So, is the X3 Bar good for building muscle? Let’s take a look.

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Illustration of a bodybuilder who built bigger triceps with triceps extensions.

How to Build Bigger Triceps

There’s an old bodybuilding adage that your biceps are responsible for 33% of your arm size, your triceps for 67%. And, believe it or not, if we look at studies (like this one) measuring muscle size, we see that the average man’s triceps are indeed twice as big as his biceps. Building bigger triceps is indeed the best way to build bigger arms.

There’s an old strength training adage, though, telling us that all we need to build bigger triceps is to get stronger at the bench press and overhead press. That’s not the case, and perhaps that’s why most people’s triceps lag behind their biceps. They don’t train them directly enough, hard enough, or often enough.

So, what’s the best way to build bigger triceps?

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Illustration of a man doing skull crushers.

The Skull Crushers Hypertrophy Guide

Skull crushers are one of the best exercises for building bigger triceps, and they’re quite good for increasing bench press strength. They also tend to be fairly easy on the elbows compared to overhead triceps extensions. As a result, they’re popular in both bodybuilding and powerlifting routines.

In this article, we’ll teach you how to do skull crushers, how to add them to your workout routine, how often to do them, how many sets to do, and how many repetitions to do per set.

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Illustration of a man doing a barbell bench press

The Bench Press Hypertrophy Guide

The bench press is the best lift for building a powerful chest. It’s also great for bulking up your triceps and the fronts of your shoulders, making it a great overall lift for improving your aesthetics.

The bench press is one of our Big 5 bulking lifts, and in this article, we’re going to go over the best strategies for integrating it into your bulking routine. This article has nothing to do with powerlifting or even powerbuilding, just with using the bench press to becoming bigger, stronger, and better looking.

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Illustration of a man doing chin-ups (back view)

The Chin-Up Hypertrophy Guide

Chin-ups are a great lift for your upper back, abs, and grip strength. They’re even a great lift great for improving your cardiovascular fitness. What they’re most famous for, though, is building absolutely killer biceps.

In fact, the only other lift that’s as good for bulking up our biceps is the biceps curl. But given that curls are a smaller single-joint movement, they’re better thought of as an assistance lift to the chin-up anyway.

The chin-up is one of our Big 5 bulking lifts, and in this article we’re going to go over the best strategies for integrating it into your bulking routine, getting the most muscle mass and strength out of it as possible.

In this article, we’ll cover:

  • How to bulk up your arms, back, and abs with the chin-up.
  • Whether you should use a neutral grip, overhand grip, or underhand grip as your main chin-up variation.
  • How to assess your weaknesses and then fix them.
  • The best assistance lifts for improving your chin-up strength.
  • How to use accessory lifts, such as biceps curls and rows.
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Illustration of a man doing a barbell overhead press.

The Overhead Press Hypertrophy Guide

The overhead press (often referred to as the military press) is the best lift for bulking up our shoulders. It’s also fantastic for our upper traps, upper chest, triceps, posture, and even our abs, making it one of the best lifts for building a bigger shoulder girdle, developing general strength, and improving our aesthetics. And, of course, as you may have already guessed, pressing is the opposite of depressing. As a result, we consider it one of the five main muscle-building lifts.

In this article, we’ll go over how to program the overhead press into your workout routine, how to min-max your technique for even more muscle growth, and how to choose the best assistance and accessory lifts.

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Illustration of a man doing high-frequency training, working out his muscles every day.

High-Frequency Training: Should You Train Your Muscles Every Day?

A common question we get is whether we can train our muscles every day. And yes, that’s okay. There’s even a name for it: high-frequency training. The idea is that by training our muscles more often, we can keep them growing steadily all week long, speeding up our muscle growth.

The next question, though, is whether we should train our muscles every day. Does it offer any advantages? Are there any disadvantages we should consider? And that’s where things get more tricky.

There’s a reason why most workout programs that have stood the test of time recommend training our muscles just 2–3 times per week. But it’s also true that high-frequency training has some genuine advantages.

So, should you train your muscles every day?

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Illustration of a skinny guy's before and after results from doing a lean bulk.

How to Gain Less Fat While Bulking

One of the most common problems people have is that they bulk up, gain a bunch of fat, and finish looking out of shape instead of looking more muscular. They might have gained a fair amount of muscle mass and strength, but their progress is hidden by their rising body-fat percentage.

Most of us work out to build muscle, get stronger, improve our health, and improve our appearance. Bulking will certainly make us bigger and stronger, but if it comes at the cost of our health and appearance, is it really worth it?

Despite the protestations of your inner nihilist, yes, gaining both muscle and fat is probably still worth it. You can burn the fat while keeping the muscle and strength, becoming both leaner and more muscular by the end of it. It just means having to go through a period of fat loss. That’s a pain, but it’s still progress.

But wouldn’t it be nice to gain less fat while bulking? You’d finish your bulk looking great. You could spend longer building muscle before needing to trim off the fat. And you wouldn’t need to spend months cutting afterwards.

So in this article, we’ll talk about why some people gain a disproportionate amount of fat while bulking, and then go over a few strategies to increase your muscle growth and reduce your fat gain, allowing you to build more muscle more leanly.

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Illustration of a man doing a squat with a fast lifting tempo to build muscle faster.

Lifting Tempo: How Fast Should You Lift & Lower Weights to Build Muscle?

Lifting tempo is one of the more minor muscle-growth factors, not because it doesn’t matter, but because most people have a good intuition for it. Most people lift in the way that makes them stronger, and that’s also a pretty good way to lift for muscle growth. Still, there are ways that we can improve our lifting tempo, eking out a little bit more muscle growth with every repetition.

But there are also some trends that might hurt more than they help. For example, should we pause with the barbell on our chest when bench pressing? Should we drop the barbell down to the floor when deadlifting? Should we slow down our lifts to get a better mind-muscle connection?

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Illustration of a man working out his biceps.

How Often Should You Work Out Per Week to Build Muscle?

If you want to build muscle quickly, you need to work out often enough to keep your muscles growing all week long. There are two key questions we need to answer:

  • How often should you train your muscles?
  • How many days per week should you work out?

If you do a full-body workout 3 times per week, you train each muscle 3 times per week. However, if you use a 6-day workout split, dividing your body up into 6 different areas, you may only be training each muscle once per week. That means it’s possible to work out more often while training your muscles less often, or vice versa.

First, we need to determine how often you should train each muscle. Then we can talk about the best way to schedule your workout routine so that you’re working each muscle hard enough, often enough.

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