Type I fibers have the lowest force output and growth potential and take the longest to fatigue and Type II fibers have a higher force output and growth capacity and fatigue more quickly with Type IIa being intermediate between Type I and Type IIx.

The old Type IIb fibers turn out only to exist in animal models, IIx describes the highest threshold fibers in humans.Įach fiber type has a distinctive physiology in terms of force and growth capability, fatigueability, etc.

In (very) brief, there are three major types of muscle fibers: Type I (or slow oxidative), Type IIa (fast oxidative/glycolytic) and Type IIx (fast glycolytic). I’m going to assume that anybody reading this magazine has a basic understanding of fiber types. Squat left out a type of training of utmost importance to the bodybuilder: pure strength training. Different types of workouts were done in a fairly complicated cycling pattern (Hatfield called this ABC training) and, frankly, keeping everything straight was a huge pain in the ass.Īs a starting point, there’s fundamentally nothing wrong with this schema although I’m going to tech it up a little bit in a second. This included sets of 4-6 done explosively, sets of 12-15 done rhythmically and sets of 40 done fairly slowly. Hatfield proposed using three different intensity/rep ranges to optimally stimulate a muscle. In his original holistic training schema, Dr.

The Role of Pure Strength Training for Bodybuilders.

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