We're going to do a proper training video soon, where my friend & photographer will bring a good camera and I talk and stuff as well as showing how I train. These ones are just me leaning my crappy phone against a wall, pointing it in the general direction of where I'm training and then hoping for the best! Just for a bit of fun really.
Let's run through today's session.
It was PUSH day, one of the big legs days on my card. I started off with some hack squats to warm up, just using the machine with no extra weights on it. Then into my POWER movement of the day, which was barbell lunges. I recorded my final, heaviest set which was 80kg for 6 reps. I feel like I can probably go a bit heavier next week.
Next up and not shown in the video was some Standing Calf Raises.
Moving on to upper body, first off a little warm up on the Pec Dec before moving on to some PUMP stuff. Watching this back I feel I could have gone a bit slower on this... my focus here was on keep my chest up and my shoulders pulled back to really activate the pectoral muscles. You see a lot of people leaning into this one, with shoulders pulled forward and I just don't think that's a very efficient technique. Lighter weight here, and lots of reps, stretching out at the end of the movement, and then squeezing in again.
Now PUMP movement for upper body. Decline Press. Again, it always seems a lot slower when I'm doing it than it looks when I watch the video later! On this one though we're using a lighter weight (relatively speaking) than we would in POWER mode, so we can really focus on technique and tempo. Again shoulders are pulled back to activate more pectorals, and on the downward part of the movement I want that bar coming down SLOOOOOWLY like you're a bit afraid of it or something. And then an explosive movement to push it back up again. You can hopefully see that even at the top of the movement my elbows are not locked out and my shoulders are still retracted. The last few reps start to speed up cos I was feeling the fatigue and wanted to make sure I got a few 12 reps. This was also 80kg!
Not shown in the video, I hit some cable flies and machine lateral raises next before heading back to the leg room for something horrible in the form of a Hack Squat & Leg Extension Superset. Straight from one to the other with no rest, just trying to squeeze every ounce of energy out of those quadriceps and get them pumped up full of blood and nutrients. In those Hack Squats I'm focussed on getting as low as possible, and on keeping my butt and lower back against the pad. There can be a tendency to roll the hips underneath at the bottom of the movement, and that's not good. Again, we're using a relatively lighter weight on these PUMP rep ranges so really lock in some solid and safe technique.
And that was it for today! Thank goodness the weather is a lot more mild today, so I didn't end up as much of a disgusting, sweaty stinking mess as usual the past few weeks!
There are also some Power, Precision & Pump Resistance Training Videos from last week, in case you missed those.
Let's run through today's session.
It was PUSH day, one of the big legs days on my card. I started off with some hack squats to warm up, just using the machine with no extra weights on it. Then into my POWER movement of the day, which was barbell lunges. I recorded my final, heaviest set which was 80kg for 6 reps. I feel like I can probably go a bit heavier next week.
Next up and not shown in the video was some Standing Calf Raises.
Moving on to upper body, first off a little warm up on the Pec Dec before moving on to some PUMP stuff. Watching this back I feel I could have gone a bit slower on this... my focus here was on keep my chest up and my shoulders pulled back to really activate the pectoral muscles. You see a lot of people leaning into this one, with shoulders pulled forward and I just don't think that's a very efficient technique. Lighter weight here, and lots of reps, stretching out at the end of the movement, and then squeezing in again.
Now PUMP movement for upper body. Decline Press. Again, it always seems a lot slower when I'm doing it than it looks when I watch the video later! On this one though we're using a lighter weight (relatively speaking) than we would in POWER mode, so we can really focus on technique and tempo. Again shoulders are pulled back to activate more pectorals, and on the downward part of the movement I want that bar coming down SLOOOOOWLY like you're a bit afraid of it or something. And then an explosive movement to push it back up again. You can hopefully see that even at the top of the movement my elbows are not locked out and my shoulders are still retracted. The last few reps start to speed up cos I was feeling the fatigue and wanted to make sure I got a few 12 reps. This was also 80kg!
Not shown in the video, I hit some cable flies and machine lateral raises next before heading back to the leg room for something horrible in the form of a Hack Squat & Leg Extension Superset. Straight from one to the other with no rest, just trying to squeeze every ounce of energy out of those quadriceps and get them pumped up full of blood and nutrients. In those Hack Squats I'm focussed on getting as low as possible, and on keeping my butt and lower back against the pad. There can be a tendency to roll the hips underneath at the bottom of the movement, and that's not good. Again, we're using a relatively lighter weight on these PUMP rep ranges so really lock in some solid and safe technique.
And that was it for today! Thank goodness the weather is a lot more mild today, so I didn't end up as much of a disgusting, sweaty stinking mess as usual the past few weeks!
There are also some Power, Precision & Pump Resistance Training Videos from last week, in case you missed those.