064 Is time under tension important for muscle growth?

In this episode of Hypertrophy Past & Present, Jake and Chris begin with Reg Park’s 1949 pre-contest routine, which involved training six days per week, twice per day, including the infamous 20-rep breathing squat. This leads into a deep dive on time under tension: Does making a set last longer actually increase muscle growth? Jake and Chris explore why total time under tension may be the wrong thing to measure and whether we should instead be thinking about “time under stimulating tension.”

Key topics include:

• Reg Park’s 1949 twice-a-day, six-day-per-week routine
• Why total time under tension may be a misleading measure of stimulus
• The difference between time under tension and time under stimulating tension
• Why the early repetitions of a high-rep set may contribute little to muscle growth
• Whether slowing down the concentric can maintain stimulus with fewer repetitions
• Why very slow eccentrics may actually reduce the hypertrophy stimulus
• Whether the final repetition of a set is really the most stimulating
• Using isometrics to replicate the stimulus of a conventional set

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