Short and Sweet

Short and Sweet - Shoulders and Arms

Training doesn't have to be an hours and hours training that one body part to exhaustion, mix it up!! This is exactly what I did today, cramping two workouts into one, achieving one of the best workouts I've had in a long time and here it is.

1. A) 10x10 Barbell Shoulder Press
       B) 10x10 Skull Crusher
       C) 10x10 Barbell Curl

My first exercise I worked as a tri-set using German Volume training as my basis hitting the main compound exercises for the muscles I was training. Little tip, always schedule tricep first into the tri-set. Its pre exhausted from the pressing with one thing you must always remember it's a bigger muscle group than the bicep, taking up more of the upper arm, so train it harder!!! This was hard but so rewarding in that I felt that I shocked the muscles more than my normal routine, 100 reps is a lot of volume. Don't focus on weight!!! Tempo, control and rest time is crucial. Always stay below 45 seconds between all sets.

2. A) 5x12 Seated Lateral Raise
       B) 5x12 Reverse Push Downs
       C) 5x12 Hammer Curls

We're now focusing more on the isolation of the muscle, splitting the muscles heads. Focus paid to the lateral head when performing the seated raise, avoid swinging and take the weight down if you can't reach a full contraction. Bring the bench up to 90 degrees, full range of motion with a slight twist at the top of the movement, 'pinkies high', so your little finger points to the sky. This will generate more of the movement onto the lateral and slightly the rear delt. Reverse push downs will target the lateral head, which often gets neglected when performing the usual push down along with hammer curls hitting the long head of the bicep.

3. A) 5x15 Cable frontal raise
       B) 5x15 Overhead Extension
       C) 5x15 Single Lying Cable Concentration Curl

Again perform all three as a tri-set with the focus now being on pushing the muscle beyond fatigue, don't neglect tempo as the reps have increased with attention always  paid to the contraction more so when training arms or just training in general, more so when you up the reps. Squeezing, along with a full range of motion and contraction I think always stimulates the muscle over weight used. With the frontal raise use a rope, squeezing the rope out at the top with thumbs high. The cable curls perform lying down, avoiding any swinging of the weight ensuring your arm is pinned in and elbow down.

And that's it, 20 sets in totally, over 220 reps for each muscle group all in under an hour. The pump and overall exhaustion to the muscle is something I haven't achieved in a while. So keep your workouts intense and you're onto a winner.

Jack

Steve Cook - BIG Programme

If any of you are avid followers of mine you will know I am a huge Steve Cook fan, for those of you that don’t know who this man is, you seriously need to check him out. Steve is very popular in the fitness industry after becoming an IFBB pro Men's Physique Competitor, Optimum Nurtition, GymShark and Bodybuilding.com spokesmen and of course the founder of Swoldier nation. Swoldier nation is Steve Cook's ethos on training in the gym but furthermore in life. Doing things the right way. This could be through setting goals to achieve in the gym or the mind set that underpins the drive that causes you to succeed in life. This has become massive with many followers really starting to bring a different light on the muscle building community.

Enough on the man himself lets now see what he can do for you and this comes in his new programme called the BIG programme. The programme is designed for people who want to improve mobility and body functionality, don’t have the desire or time to create a program themselves along with a real desire to be stronger but yet still remain lean. It has been designed by Steve himself along with two of his close friends Michael Cazayoux and Jacob Hutton who physiques and abilities to rival anyone. The thing however that I love most about this programme is Steve is following it himself. He's not just the poster boy for it, telling everyone how they should be doing it yet training totally differently, no he's there putting the hard work in himself and suffering just as much as you will be, you can see this on his most recently posted video.

https://www.youtube.com/user/swoldiernation

Here is a quick break down of the 24 weeks, I’m currently on week 8, time to lift big!!!

• Week 1 : Test Week – Find your max to use in the programme over the following few weeks. 

• Weeks 2-7 – Muscle endurance is the focus along with hypertrophy and dynamic as through the whole programme. 

• Weeks 8-12 – Maximal Strength and Hypertrophy are the primary focus

• Weeks 13-24 – This segment is split into three 4 week blocks. The focus for this block of training is maximal strength and hypertrophy. These 12 weeks are the ‘Show weeks’ experiencing what the top guys go through to get ready for a show.

This is a MUST programme if you're struggling for motivation in the gym and really want to push your body into the next stage of growth. So many of my clients approach me with ludicrous high volume workouts they've read in magazines which they're never going to be able to do, thus becoming demotivated and quite often leading to injury. The fitness industry has a lot of smoke and mirrors but this programme isn't that, no matter where you are at whether it be a beginning or a professional this programme is going to work as the programme is catered to your ability not others. My only point would be is when it gets tough you've got to stick to it whole heartedly, as elements of this programme are very tough. So check it out

http://www.stevecookhealth.com/big/

I’m not one to pump and recommend things but this you really need to check out. So get to it!!!

Jack 

Getting in Holiday Shape

With July upon us the airports are becoming busy, the sun tan lotion going on sale along with the crash diet plans but all you seemly need to is follow three simple points. 

1. Don’t leave it to the last minute and go on a crash diet!! Things won’t change over night, yes you might in your mind see some changes but for the long term this won’t work. You’ll starve your body of what it requires and end up binging 3 days later, it must be sustainable, so plan in advance. Attempt to start 4 weeks out, with a 3 day rotation on a food plan. This will keep you from getting bored but ensure on the third day to one treat meal. This could be a bar of your favourite chocolate or drink you just crave, this meaning you are less likely to have a binge day and keep you on track with the diet. 
2. Cut out on empty calories. I’m sure you are going to be drinking plenty on you're holiday away so cut down on this before you go. Drinks are empty calories that are just going to bump up the overall in take when you could be getting further, better nutrition out of eating food. The big hitters are coffee, especially the cool, high in sugar cold coffee’s from Starbucks. Stay away from these as much as you can and you shall see results. 
3. Additional cardio. This doesn't mean extra session or long, time consuming time on the cross trainer just a quick 10 minutes on the end of your workout. Row 2000m, run a mile or intervals on the bike anything that shall keep the heart rate high, burn some extra calories and boast the metabolism post workout. 

These are three easy tips that any one can structure into their diet and training running up to a holiday and shall easily see the benefits. 

Now hit the gym hard, eat clean and look great on holiday.

Jack

Summer Training Tips

Following on from my last post talking about what’s needed in your summer diet to get the body of your dreams, I thought I would talk about how to train your body to achieve these goals. Much the same as with your diet there are a few alterations needed to really move you're training away from the bulking, lift as much weight as you can training over the winter, so here we go.

Keep compound exercises in your routine!

Now in the off season I personally tend to really focus on the big three, (Deadlift, squat and bench) developing additional strength and often mass to the areas I'm targeting. Now often people believe when you're eating less calories you can't perform these so often as they put so much strain on your body due to muscle recruitment and prefer the more isolation exercises. Second to that you won't be able to hit the weight or reps you were when your calorie consumption was higher. This is all wrong!! You want to burn as may calories as you can in your sessions and what exercises recruit the most muscles and therefore burn the most calories, yes you guessed it, compound!! Don't go ludicrous with the weight and volume, but use things such as on the minute every minute for 10 minutes principle. I like using 80% of my 1rpm and perform 5 on every minute, performing 50 reps total. Now anyone who says this won't build strength, condition the muscle, burn calories and somewhat count for cardio is lying. The quicker you perform the reps the more rest you'll get ensuring your being explosive and powerful = strength. The sheer little rest you're getting ensures you're HR is through the roof for a considerable long period of time. Its just ideal when cutting as it ticks every box so keep compound exercises in your routine. 

Use supersets and tri-sets in your programme! 

Supersets are when you perform two exercises consecutively after one another with ti-sets being three. These can be for the same muscle group, opposing muscle groups or just a cardio based movement, I'll explain. First of all, supersetting can be done in a few different ways. You can do antagonist supersetting, which is the pairing of two opposite muscle groups such as biceps and triceps, chest and back, and quads and hamstrings. For example, you can superset bench press with dumbbell flies or squats with leg extensions. Usually agonist supersetting is a combination of a compound movement with an isolation movement. Pairing two compound movements could be too intense, the same way that pairing two isolation movements could lack the intensity provided by a combination of compound and isolation. Tri-sets are much the same in that a third exercises is just added. I like this third exercises to be a cardio based one, just to raise the heart rate slightly more. Mountain climbers, squat jumps, box step ups or even a quick sprint. These are not too taxing on the body and shall just increase the HR that little more making your workout a cardio blast as well as still focusing on muscle growth, two workouts in one. 

Use HIIT!

HIIT is a training idea in which low to moderate intensity intervals are alternated with high intensity intervals. HIIT can be applied to running or to exercises such as squatting. HIIT is considered to be much more effective than normal cardio because the intensity is higher and you are able to increase both your aerobic and anaerobic endurance while burning more fat than ever before. This is my choice in cardio when I do it over LISS. Jump on the rower and perform best effort 10x250m rows, resting for 40 seconds between, really focusing on a maximum output. You can incorporate things such as Tabata into this which is the principle of 20 seconds work along with 10 seconds rest for 4 minutes, this is great for bodyweight exercises such as squat and press ups attempting to beat your score of reps for the 20 seconds prior. 

So there you have it, three adjustments to your training in order to get summer ready. Any questions be sure to leave a comment below!!!

Train hard, fight easy!!

Jack