This week I decided to totally mix my workouts up. If you've been following my blog I've recently been focusing on one big set for each exercise where I go max out at the most maximal weight possible. This has hugely helped with strength and size gains however, recently I've been feeling really heavy and along with a few little injuries I've been picking up I've opted for a change to hypertrophy for a few weeks. This is my routine so far for the week:
Chest:
- Here as oppose to my normal pyramid, working up to heavy set flat bench I focused more on incline DB press.
- Going no less than 8 reps and no more than 15 with attention very much paid towards the contraction, squeezing and engaging the muscle.
- When it comes to flies and dips really focus on maximal stretch to squeezing the muscle as much as you can. Doing flies on a bench with cables instead of DB's is always good for this as you can bring the handles together.
- I put bench press right at the end and still managed 100kg for 9 which really shows the strength gains I've made.
Back
-Back is always one of those muscle groups you want to hit hard yet a lot of people find it a difficult muscle group to train. A few points I used in order to get a good workout in.
- Make sure you hit the back from many different angles, lat pulldown and a DB row just isn't enough. With all rowing exercises go close grip, body width and wide, along with some form of twisting motion. I like a shot gun based row on cables. When pulling down from overhead try to use both close and wide grip.
- Ensure you're contracting the muscle, much like I've mentioned when training chest you can do the same for back. Force your shoulder blades together contracting rhomboids and lats.
- Stretch the muscle at the top of the movement. This is at its most effective when pulling from above but can also be used when using a rowing motion. Let the weight stretch the muscle prior to pulling and contracting the muscle. This will give you a much fuller range of motion ensuring the whole muscle is working at its optimum capacity.
- Lastly it's volume. The back is a huge muscle group so hit it hard. A good 20 sets utilising super sets and drop sets along the way to really burn the muscle group out.
Legs:
Legs I haven't really changed, I'm still going heavy but no less than 6 reps. Little things just to keep it interesting are as follows:
- Pyramid up to one heavy set, then straight away dropset back down the pyramid hitting the same number of reps for the same weight you did when ascending. Take rest when needed but try to prevent this as much as possible. For example I got up to 160kg back squat for 6 then drop set straight down to 140kg for 6, 120kg for 8, 100kg for 10 and 60kg to failure. My legs were on fire after this so give it a go, just make sure you don't max out on the ascent up to your max.
- Pause squats are always great to use in your programme, helping improve you stability in your squat. Go light at the end of the sessions to see the best results trying to hit 12-15 reps with a 4 second eccentric phrase, a pause of 3 seconds then exploding up out of the squat.
- Supersets of quad and hamstring especially when it comes to the isolation work always gets a good pump. Ensure you squeeze the quads on leg extensions and the same with a leg curl.
- Lastly something I've been using is upsets. Now normally as the set goes on you drop the weight, turn this on its head and start adding weight. Now obliviously don't start at your max, start at 50% then slowly add weight. Perform 10 reps at 5 different intervals and the muscle group will be on fire. This is slightly like a cluster set, but will cause total confusion to the muscle which will always aid in growth.
This is only where I've got up to this week, a push and pull workout left to do which I'll put up in another entry.
Keep the training up,
Jack
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