Week 6 Day 1 - HIT Time

04/05/15 Day 36 – Legs & Calves

Today saw the start of a brand new week, with a brand new training method. This weeks I will be following in the foot steps of 6 x Mr Olympia the one and only Dorian Yates. His HIT style of training will be focusing on small 45min-1hr training sessions, packed with high intensity. The idea is pre fatiguing the muscles, followed by sets that are pushing your muscles to absolute failure and then going beyond that with the aid of forced reps and negative reps.

Starting the week with Legs allow us to focus our energy on the biggest group of muscles in the body. Here is what my session looked like:

Leg Extensions – 2 Sets x 15-20 Reps

Leg Press – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Hack Squat – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Dumbbell Laying Leg Curls – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Seated Leg Curls – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Seated Calf Raise – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Standing Calf Raise – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Cardio – Intervals 15mins Total

Starting off the session with some light leg work it allowed me to focus both my mind and muscles on the session ahead. I made sure there was plenty of stretching throughout the warm up, this was due to the fact the session ahead was designed to test the muscles more then they have been worked in previous weeks, so keeping the muscle nice and supple will mean I can get the most out of them without sustaining injury.

Leg Extensions began the working sets of the session, here we were seriously heavy. Making sure that we were failing before we hit the rep limit, meaning that my partner was having to aid me through the following reps, some times introducing negative reps can also promote serious levels of HGH release in the body and inhibit growth, which is exactly what we want.

From the extensions we moved onto the Leg Press, were we performed some nice light warm up sets to get ready for the failure that would follow. For myself my stance was slightly tighter to put more emphasis on the quadriceps, where as my partners stance was wider, with the foot placement higher as well to put more of an emphasis on the glutes. Trying to force yourself to failure is not an easy task, but made a lot easier with the knowledge that you have a partner with you to support you.

With our legs well and truly burning it was fair to say at this point we were not looking forward to the Hack Squat which followed. With this I was once again focusing on a smaller stance to put more strain though the quads, be careful with the hack squat as it can some times put strain through the knees if your foot base is too close, so don't be afraid to push those feet slightly more forward than you usually would.

With the quadriceps fully burnt out at this time, it coincided with the perfect transition to hamstring work. Starting with the Dumbbell Laying Leg Curls was a great start to the second half of the session. With a few light sets in the bag the hamstrings seemed amply warmed up by now and allow my partner and I to work into our two working sets. Due to the fact you have to pinch the dumbbell in between the feet you are also getting a secondary contraction in the adductor muscles, which just adds to the awesomeness of the this exercise, it now takes No.1 place as my favourite hamstring exercise.

With the dumbbells racked it was time to move onto the Seated Leg Curls. Where once again the need of a training partner was made even more prominent, due to me never really working my hamstrings to failure it made it very hard to push myself out of my comfort zone on this exercise, but I clicked a few extra plates in place and hooked myself into the machine and repped. With my partner standing by to help me achieve full range it felt like my legs were going to split in half and I loved it!

At this point our legs were feeling pretty damn swollen, which meant it was a good point to move across to the calf work. Starting with the Seated Calf Raises was slightly nicer as it meant we got to finish the calves with the Standing Calf Raises which allows you to utilise a little bit of momentum. With working to failure on the seated calf raises you partner will need to assess how to aid you, if you are using a leg press machine they will find it easier to aid the forced reps, where as on the seated machine there isn't always much room to hold, making it slightly harder for them. Remember – always assess the situation before you do anything, you must always know what you are doing and how to over come boundaries that can potentially stop you.

With the bank holiday coming to a close its back to normality for everyone, so wishing you all a fantastic week! I am now on a 7 day count down to my 21^st Birthday, which seems to be encroaching incredibly quickly!

Happy Lifting,

Matt