Had a good time at FitX this weekend

I braved the crowds and the HEAT and headed out Friday evening and Saturday day time to the FitX Sport And Fitness Expo in Melbourne.

It was a top event. Firstly the Exhibition Centre has very good air conditioning so that was a good start!

My haul of free samples I'll be reviewing this week!

We caught a bit of the qualifying for various categories in figure, physique and body building competition,
watched a decent amount of the strong man contest, cheerleading demonstration, and a little of the boxing and kickboxing. Also I went in the bench press and push up contests... didn't win but did some respectable numbers! Bumped into a few people I know and hadn't seen for a while as well, so that was nice.

Mostly though I picked up a huge stash of supplement samples, including proteins, pre-workouts, intra workouts and post workout recovery supplements. So in the week ahead I'll be roadtesting all of these and I'll post my reports right here.

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DHPT Power, Precision & Pump Day One

OK, back to the start again!

I've been posting videos most days for the past week or so, with a run through of what I did each day. Also every day I point out that the videos are kind of crap and there'll be some better ones coming before too long.

Today was back to Day 1 which is a big PUSH day.

Supposedly POWER day for horizontal pushing... but I dunno if it was the heat (we are in the middle of a record breaking heat wave down here at the moment and I am finding it hard to function) or what, but I couldn't seem to muster much power today. So after four sets instead of going heavier as planned I decided to go lighter and get a decent amount of reps out instead.

I dunno why my legs look so skinny in this video either! Here it is:



After the POWER horizontal pushing section we move on to a Precision move, in this case Hyght Flies. These are quite unpleasant but I find they force a really hard contraction in my pecs, which is where I want it.

Next up, PUMP stuff for lower body. I considered doing some supersets here but then I decided that was a bloody stupid idea in this heat, so it was Leg Extensions followed by Hack Squat. Hard work at the best of times!

Finally I always finish this routine with prefatigue supersets of Dumbbell Lateral Raises into Machine Shoulder Press.

Really a hellacious day, and tomorrow I get to do it all again in the opposite direction for Pull day!

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DHPT Power, Precision & Pump Day 8

I missed a few days of training reports & videos, but I'll catch up on those in the week coming. Again in case you missed it in earlier entries, the videos are crap but we have plans of doing some better ones soon. This is just me leaning my phone against something while I'm training, and hoping for the best.

So Day 8 on my program is PULL day and also double duty for legs!



I started out with deadlifts. I'm just easing back into these after some time off them and to be honest I'm not that impressed with my form on this video. I'll work on that next time and do a better job, and hopefully pull some better numbers too. I followed these with some Reverse Hyper Extensions which I'm in love with lately, before moving on to my upper body section.

First up here was High Row machine. On my card this is a "high to low" pulling movement, opposite to Incline Press which I did at this point yesterday. You see how it works? The video shows my last set on this exercise, not so heavy, lots of reps.... pulling back hard and fast.

Next up I decided to try some pull ups for something different, instead of latt pulldown which I do more often. Pull ups usually aggravate some problems with my forearm tendons but I figured I might get away with a neutral grip. I figured correct, but only 8 reps at a time? That's crap, I'll have to improve on that.

Finally some straight arm pull downs. I mix these up as I see fit on the day... sometimes with a rope, sometimes a little wider like this. Once again I watch the video and think to myself "wow that's a bit fast isn't it?"

To finish up it was back to hamstring and hip extension type movements, and for something different I decided to superset Reverse Hyper Extensions with Glue Isolation machine. It was quite horrible, I liked it!

That was it for Day 8! Tomorrow, back to Day 1!

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DHPT Power, Precision & Pump Day 5

OK here we go with day five, push day.

First off in case anyone missed it in the previous entries, I'm well aware that these videos are crappy as hell! I'm just leaning my phone up against stuff and hoping it is pointed in more or less the right direction. We ARE going to do a proper video soon though.

Anyway day five is a lot like day one, except we start with the vertical pushing movements and accessory exercises. Except for me, my "vertical" movement is more like a incline press. A little steeper than usual for an incline press... sort of half way in between. This program is designed to be customisable to each person's individual requirements, and this suits mine. On day one I do a stricter vertical push as you'll see four days from now.

So... watch the video and you'll see my "almost vertical" press from various angles... the first angle being not particularly dignified. I worked up to 40kg dumbbells in each hand for 6 reps here, which I was quite pleased with. I throw in some Dumbbell Flies after this just for good measure (that's not on most people's cards) and then move on to Side Lateral Raises.



Take a good look at my Side Lateral Raises for two reasons. One, the video is crappy as hell, and two this is how I want you to do them if you're on my program. Start out standing at attention, then rotate your shoulders in slightly. Now lift out to the side keeping your arms straight (but not locked out at the elbows), a little pause at the top, and lower down sloooowly. You'll see people do these a million different ways but in my opinion this is the best way to isolate those middle deltoid muscles. At the top of the movement, imagine you're pouring water out of a jug or something... that's the position your arms should be in. Pinky finger higher than thumb, you dig?

Next up is LEGS and today I supersetted some 45 Degree Leg Press with V Squat Machine. It was horrible. 240kg leg press in this video though. I was pretty happy with that.

Finally you have me doing some Cable Flies. A lot like the Dumbbell Flies earlier (and the Pec Dec the other day), I am trying to keep my shoulders back, squeeze those pectoral muscles, control the weight on the way back to the starting position and release the contraction slooowly. Sorry the camera positioning was a bit crap on this one. More so than usual.

I finished up with some flat Barbell Press (aka horizontal pushing), but I was knackered so that shit was NOT worth recording! Great session all up though!

Now, the drive home on the other hand... that's a different story!

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DHPT Power Precision & Pump Day 4

Yesterday I spontaneously decided to record some of my training and post it up here, and then today... about half way through training, mind you... I decided I should do that every day until there's a video and a post for each day on my 8 day split. Yeah, 8 day split. You heard me.

This is my Day Four of my Power, Precision & Pump Program, and it's a PULL day. 

POWER movement is DEADLIFTS. I did an OK job of these and worked up to 140kg for 3 reps which was quite satisfactory after having a couple of weeks off deadlifting with some tenderness in the lower back. Also I did some Reverse Hyper Extensions after this, just to stretch out a bit.

Now... today's a bit of a weird day on my card because I have a few movements where I'm focussed on going as heavy as I can aka POWER mode. Of course you always want to go as heavy as you can, but usually there's only one POWER movement and then some stuff that's more about doing more reps, more precise techniques and so on.

Anyway. After Deadlifts and Reverse Hyper Extension I did a little warm up for upper body and then went into Upright Rows. I recorded a set, watched it back, and noticed that I wasn't terribly happy with my technique. In the first set on this video you can see my elbows coming backwards a bit... which I don't want. This is one of the few exercises where I want to rotate my shoulders forward a bit, rather than pulling them back. I'm happier with my form on the second set in this video. Oh also with these pulling movements, we do want to pull nice and fast to really activate those back muscles (trapezius in this case)... so, this tempo is fine IMO even though it looks kinda fast and uncontrolled on the video.

Next up is shrugs on the Hammerstrength Machine. I love this machine cos I can pile a lot of weights on to it (140kg today) and it makes me feel like a big strong man! You can see in these videos I'm trying to keep my shoulders back, chest up, and squeeeze up nice and high. You'll see a lot of people doing more of a rotating type of shrug, but IMO that's no good. We're trying to work our traps here, and they're on your back. Pulling your shoulders back from the start of the exercise pre-engages the targeted muscle group and makes sure you get a strong muscle contraction.

All of this is moot if you're a woman though because I'll probably swap this exercise out and give you an Assisted Pull Up instead.

Next up in the video is Face Pulls which is one of my favourite exercises these days. In this one I'm really trying to hit the rear deltoid muscle which is at the rear of the shoulder. This is a precision movement and I'm focussing on keeping my wrists, elbows and shoulders even. There's a tendency with these to rotate from the shoulder and end up with your forearms more vertical.... that's not what I want though.

Finally some Hamstring Curls to finish off, and then I did more Reverse Hyper Extensions. I'm a bit embarrassed to include these Hamstring Curls in the video... they are WAY too fast and I'm not resisting / controlling the weight enough on the way down. This is why it is good to take videos once in a while if you train on your own and don't have a trainer or a lifting partner, you can spot any little mistakes than you'll know to keep in mind next time.

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