Week 7 Day 4 - Carnage

14/05/15 Day 46 – Shoulders

Coming to the end of Week 7 marks yet another muscle group I am currently loving to train, which is Shoulders. Still working on the style of DTP (Drastic Transformation Protocol) I have to say that I really really had to push hard throughout today's session. With this style of training my muscles are constantly screaming at me and due to its high volume nature you will probably find (if you try it) you will feel very drained, or at least this is what I have found. Here is what this brutal session looked like:

Seated Military Press – 6 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10,5

SuperSet

Cable Lateral Raises – 6 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10,5

Seated Military Reverse Press – 6 Sets, 1 x 5,10,15,20,25,30

(For each rep performed 1 sec rest is awarded, 5 reps = 5 sec rest)

Bent-Over Lateral Raise – 6 Sets, 1 x 5,10,15,20,25,30

(For each rep performed 1 sec rest is awarded, 5 reps = 5 sec rest)

Barbell Shrugs – 6 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10,5

SuperSet

Wide Grip Upright Rows – 6 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10,5

Barbell Behind The Back Shrugs – 3 Sets, 1 x 30, 20, 10

(For each rep performed 1 sec rest is awarded, 5 reps = 5 sec rest)

Close Grip Upright Rows – 3 Sets, 1 x 30, 20, 10

(For each rep performed 1 sec rest is awarded, 5 reps = 5 sec rest)

Cardio – Interval Training 15mins Total

With the emphasis of today's session purely focused on Deltoids I knew that I was going to have a pretty tough time, even when I opened my training book last night and saw the session I thought, “this isn't going to be a walk in the park”. So with a brisk walk on the treadmill, a few rotator cuff exercises and some reps under the belt I was ready to start the session.

Beginning the session with a Super set of Seated Military Press & Cable Lateral Raises was a recipe for fatigue. With the Military press I took the smith machine bar behind the head, I just feel more comfortable doing it this way and feel it actually puts less pressure through my shoulders, but everyone is different so try it out for yourself. With the ascending weight I found that I was not able to lift anywhere near as much as I normally would, which also went for the cable raises too, I found myself stuck on a pretty low weight for a few rounds. Because the volume is rather high with this style of training your muscles tend to fatigue quite quick, so then you add the increased weight to the equation and you are depleting store of both long term and short term based muscle fibres, so you break down the muscle at an astonishing rate.

With the DTP portion on the Seated Military Reverse Press I found that I was really having the strip the bar down very quickly, I had never really performed this exercise before which obviously made it that much harder. Targeting mainly the front head of the delts means that they will also fatigue a lot quicker, so as you can imagine it was pretty damn hard to say the least. With the next DTP exercise (Bent-Over Lateral Raise) the focus was on contracting the posterior delts, so the range of movement was slightly reduces but once again the joys of hitting such a small muscle group means that you will fatigue very quickly. So if you have to much like I did, take rest/pause breaks during the set, that doesn't mean give up it just means take a few seconds between reps to replenish some energy and then turn on that inner beast a power through the remaining reps.

With a nice break from the DTP I moved onto the 2^nd lot of Super sets, which this time was the Barbell Shrugs and the Wide Grip Upright Rows. With these two exercises the main groups being targeted were in the upper back, with both exercises being in the same muscle group there was obviously a cross over, so I knew that I would not be going as heavy as normal with the upright rows as the traps had already been fatigued, none the less I pushed myself really hard through these two exercises.

Then came the last portion of DTP, which perfectly finished off the session, this was in the form of Barbell Behind The Back Shrugs & Close Grip Upright Rows. These exercises were not in a superset but instead were worked in a DTP fashion only through the reps: 10,20,30 subsequently the rest periods were shorter so the frequency of work was actually increased. The behind the back shrugs target the upper traps and rhomboids more where as the close grip upright rows will be hitting more of the shoulder girdle, so this coupling works well as the fatigue from one exercise doesn't really carry across to the other.

All in all today's session was incredibly challenging both mentally and physically, I loved every minute and have found that I simply thrive to find testing workouts like these now. I adore working out and couldn't be happier with where I am right now, so thanks to all of you guys that have helped me out so far, simply by sharing these blogs, commenting and just being so damn accepting of what I am doing!

So thanks.

Happy Lifting,

Matt