Week 3 Day 3 - Trap City

15/04/15 Day 17- Shoulders & Abs

The chest DOMS are starting to set in now, getting a nice ache in the legs too. Its funny how I used to fear the feeling of being sore, yet now its all I want to feel, shows the true power of self development.

Talking of development, I have just got back from the gym, the shoulders are swollen, my focus is airtight and I'm ready for the day. Lots of work to do for my online clients, so today was all about smashing this session and getting home, so the intensity was up, the heart rate was up, and I pushed my body to complete failure. Mission successful captain.

I suggest you check out last weeks Shoulder session, to get an idea of how each week is completely different, but incredibly well adapted to build your muscles, week in, week out.

So here is the session:

Dumbbell Shoulder Press – 3 Sets x 20-25 Reps

Giant Set

Side Lateral Raises – 3 Sets x 20-25 Reps

Giant Set

Front Dumbbell Raises – 3 Sets x 20-25 Reps

Seated Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise – 4 Sets x 20-25 Reps

SuperSet

Side Laterals to Front Raise – 4 Sets x 20-25 Reps

Dumbbell Shrugs– 3 Sets x 20-25 Reps

Dumbbell Weighted Sit Ups– 3 Sets x 15-20 Reps

Cardio - Interval Training 15mins Total

Just looking at that session tires me out all over again.

So starting at the deep end, I jumped into a Giant Set to start, after a solid warm up and active stretch session, obviously. For those of you not familiar with a Giant Set, it quite simply is a Super Set, but contains more than 2 exercises back to back. So when you put Dumbbell Shoulder Press, Side Lateral Raises, Front Dumbbell Raises back to back, you will, guaranteed to have an insane pump. Because you aren't letting these muscles rest, and starting each set by pre fatiguing the whole deltoid, its going to be a bit of a struggle, expect to be lifting a lot lighter today than previous sessions, as you are dealing with some seriously high reps. 75 Reps in 1 set, no wonder I'm starting to hurt already.

Moving from a Giant Set to a Super Set on the 2^nd round of exercises, it isn't much of a compensation, but I took it. On this set I wanted to work really hard on my Seated Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise, as for myself, I feel as though my rear deltoids let my shoulder down, so I pushed out every rep here, even if it meant stopping for a few seconds, or even squeezing out ½ reps, you want to flood your targeted muscle with blood as much as possible. Due to me working on those rear delt raises, my Side Laterals to Front Raise took a bit of a punishing, trying to pull those dumbbells back from the front raise was killer! Be, like me, prepared to drop/alter your weights a few times though these exercises, as we are working already battered muscles as well as isolating a small muscle group.

Now comes to my favourite exercise of the day: Dumbbell Shrugs. Today I tried something different with these, and you should too! Firstly with the starting position, I tilted forward ever so slightly, so the dumbbells were in front of my body, the reasoning behind this is, that the traps don't just contract by lifting the shoulders up, but also from pull the shoulder blades together. So I changed the movement from straight up and down, to up and back, the difference was unreal. Secondly, I held the contraction at the top of the squeeze for about 2 seconds, the idea behind this is once again trying to flood those smaller muscle groups with as much blood as possible to allow them to grow, and this guys and girls is how you get traps like Tom Hardy in Warrior.

To round off the session I smashed out some heavy Dumbbell Weighted Sit Ups, here I didn't come all the way up, to make sure I was keeping a nice level of tension through those abdominal, try it, nothing will tighten that stomach like this!

Hope you are all enjoying the weather where ever you are.

Have a wonderful Wednesday,

Happy Lifting.

Matt