Wednesday 27 May 2015

Week 9 Day 3 - Delts

27/05/15 Day 59 – Shoulders & Abs

Once again apologies for the lack of blog yesterday, very busy and simply didn't have time.

Today was day 59 of the 12 week muscle builder and today I hit delts, I hit them hard! Working with purely supersets today kept the work intensity high, the volume high and really gave me that insane pump I was craving after. Here is what my session looked like today:

Dumbbell Lateral Raise – 5 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10
SuperSet
Weighted Plate Front Raise – 5 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10
Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press – 5 Sets, 1 x 10,15,20,25,30
SuperSet
Dumbbell Incline Bench Lying Front Raise – 5 Sets, 1 x 10,15,20,25,30
Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise – 5 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10
SuperSet
Weighted Sit Ups – 5 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10
Reverse Peck Deck Fly – 5 Sets, 1 x 10,15,20,25,30
SuperSet
Bent Knee Hip Raises – 5 Sets, 1 x 10,15,20,25,30

Cardio- Interval Training 15mins Total

I started the session with a solid rotator cuff warm up, as I feel the rotator cuff is a bit of a weak point for me I wanted to make sure that during the workout they wouldn't hold me back. So with some mobility work and some light sets under my belt to oil up the joints and grease up the engine I was ready to get stuck in.

Working through the first superset of Dumbbell Lateral Raise & Weighted Plate Front Raises allowed me to target the lateral and anterior heads of my deltoids , giving the impression of a fuller deltoid. With a big frame having some large, full delts are imperative. With my Dumbbell Lateral Raises I like to keep the weight on the outside of my hand and draw up from the elbow, I feel this gives me a much stronger contractions on the lateral head of my delt, but what works for me may not work for you so make sure that you experiment a bit with some lighter weights and see what works for you. The Weighted Plate Front Raises started out quite easy with the lighter sets but I found as the plates only go up in increments of 5kg some times there was a big jump in the weights for the rep range I was working in, to get around this I used the same weight for a few sets before moving up, so I was in a range I could actually work in (rather than rest pausing every repetition).

With the delts feeling incredibly full already after those first two exercises I wanted to keep up the pump and hunt for that pump, so I quickly moved onto the next set of exercises, these were: Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press followed by the Dumbbell Incline Bench Lying Front Raises. With the press I wanted to make sure I was in a solid and stable position before each set as leaning back to far when overhead pressing can cause mass stress to the spine and I wanted to avoid that completely. The press was a powerful movement, making sure I didn't fully lock out in order to keep more tension within the delts and put them through me TUT (time under tension). The Dumbbell Incline Bench Lying Front Raises were a new one for me, trying them out I quickly found there is a huge tendency to swing a lot, this defeats the whole object of being in a isolative position such as this one. I made sure I was keeping the dumbbells under control the whole time, which did mean lowering the weights but I am not ego lifting but simply putting my muscles under strain. Remember: Your brain doesn't know how much you are lifting, it only knows that it is under stress and will thus increase the contraction intensity to combat this, so don't worry about going heavy all the time, because quite frankly your brain doesn't care.

Then I moved onto the penultimate superset of the session, this came in the form of the Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise combined with the Weighted Sit Ups. On the Rear Delt Raise I wanted to make sure my back was completely flat so as to not put tension through the spine but also to focus my mind muscle connection on the read delts, I made sure that with every rep I was squeezing them to start off the contraction, this helps me build the neuromuscular pathways and thus gives me a better result. Super setting the raises with Weighted Sit Ups really took it our of me, starting only with an Olympic bar on a decline bench I found my abs really burnt out quickly on this exercise, I don't know if it was due to me working so hard on the other exercises but I found this especially tough today!

By this point my shoulders were pumped, my abs were burning and I the end of the session was in plain view, the only thing in my way was Reverse Peck Deck Flyes with the Bent Knee Hip Raises to follow. The flyes were great today, I surprised myself in the first few set with the strength I have managed to gain in these small muscles, but when moving up the the longer sets of 25/30 reps I began to flag quite a lot, I think the muscles had burnt out and I really did have to rest pause the last 10 or so reps to finish of the sets. Luckily the Bent Knee Hip Raises didn't need any help from the delts which meant I could blast through these sets a bit easier, not saying it was easy those last few higher rep set had my abs on fire!

Tomorrow will be a rest day for me and if you are following this programme then it is for you too!

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Happy Lifting,


Matt

 

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