22/04/15 Day 24
– Shoulders & Abs
Today
I was hitting one of my favourite muscle groups of the week, the
Deltoids (shoulders). The Delts are group of muscles that I am really
starting to get some nice development out of and it just makes me
push even harder when I know that I am getting results.
Being
up at 6am for my training I wasn't fully awake going in the gym, so I
may have forgotten some of my static contractions and stretching here
and there, but I made up for it by destroying my shoulders on the
last exercise. So here is today's plan:
Seated Dumbbell
Shoulder Press – 4 Sets x
8-10 Reps
Seated Lateral
Raises – 3 Sets x 8-10 Reps
Incline Bench Front
Barbell Raise – 3 Sets x 8-10
Reps
Peck Deck Reverse
Fly – 3 Sets x 8-10
Reps
Smith Machine
Shoulder Press – 7 Sets x
8-10 Reps
Rollouts
– 3 Sets x Failure
Cross Body Crunches
– 7 Sets x 8-10 per side
Cardio –
Interval Training 15mins Total
Beginning
the workout with a series of nice and light mobility exercises as I
tried to wake up and get in the zone for what was to be a pretty
hardcore and heavy shoulder session. After some progressive heavier
sets on my Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press I
moved on to my working sets, using my wrist straps to support me I
pumped out some sets that I was really happy with, although my form
started to slip on my last rep I felt as though I held strong and
really pushed through, as a result I actually a PB for my weight. Try
not to fully extend the arms at the top of the motion and save your
elbows.
After
getting what was a pretty nice shoulder pump on I grabbed some
lighter dumbbells and went through a few warm up sets for the Seated
Lateral Raises, I like to do
this just so my muscles know what is coming next, allow the fibres a
few sets to get firing properly and then get stuck in. The way I like
to think about warming up is, you would never expect an F1 Race car
to just pull up on the track and win, you need to warm up the engine,
warm up the tires and let the driver get comfortable, exactly
the same with training!
The
Incline Bench Front Barbell Raise
was a tough one, really having to dig deep to push the reps out here,
the anterior head (front head) of my deltoids where really struggling
to deal with the heavy weight. To get good form out I dropped the
weight down slightly and really tried to work on squeezing the muscle
as much as I could to pump as much blood into it as possible.
Feeling
pretty damn awake by now I was purely focused on ploughing through
this workout and up next was an exercise I'm not entirely happy with,
its the Peck Deck Reverse Fly,
now I am pretty sure its just because my arms are so damn long that I
feel its a really uncomfortable machine, but I just don't feel the
contraction very much when I do this exercise, so I really tried
focusing on engaging the posterior head (back) of my deltoid to help
draw back the elbow. So instead of pulling back from the wrist, I
focused my attention to pulling back from the upper tricep to help
activate the muscle more.
Finishing
off my shoulders with some Smith Machine Shoulder Press.
My gosh this was hard, I really struggled with this exercise, as the
smith machine at my gym moves in 4 directions it makes it very hard
to do basic smith machine exercises, so I had to contract my back a
lot and try to fixate my shoulders in place, on reflection I might as
well have done it with a standard barbell, but none the less I made
sure I was contracting during my 30 second rest breaks in the final 7
Sets, just in the attempt to
swell up that muscle, manipulate the fascia and try to keep on
progressing with my body.
“Without
deviation from the norm, progress is not possible”
- Frank
Zappa
I
want to take this opportunity once again to thank everyone for the
kind support, touching word and the incredibly positive response I
have got from doing this. I hope it may go on for a very long time.
Bless
you all where ever you may be.
Happy
Lifting,
Matt
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