Week 6 Day 2 - Failure Is Just Another Lesson

05/05/15 Day 37 – Shoulders & Triceps

Following on with the HIT style of training, made famous by Dorian Yates, we worked on some slightly smaller muscle groups today as we had such an intense Leg session yesterday. Following a small muscle group after a bigger one simply allows the muscle to repair better, rather than putting stress through the big muscles group every day we are splitting it, one day big group one day small group.

With the pre-workout pumping through my veins and my training partners standing by we got started on our warm ups. After we felt amply ready we got ourselves mentally prepared and ready for the workout. Here it is:

Seated Military Press – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Side Lateral Raises – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Bent-Over Reverse Delt Raise – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Reverse Peck Deck Fly – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Shrugs – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Tricep Pushdown – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Ez Bar Skull Crushers – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

One Arm Tricep Extension – 2 Sets x 8-12 Reps

Cardio – Interval Training 15mins Total

Beginning the session with the biggest compound movements allowed us to really fatigue the larger muscles quickly, meaning more effort has to utilised through them to complete the sets throughout the entire session. With the Seated Military Press I enjoy taking the barbell behind the head as I feel the engagement of the deltoids more, this is not to say this is the only way to do it, between sets my father was working with me and he found it better to take the bar in front of the body, so do what ever is more comfortable for yourself. Now with this style of High Intensity Training (HIT) your partner needs to be standing by to help you through your sets as your aim is to work to failure within your 8-12 rep ranges, so go heavy, go hard and make some noise because this is going to be tough!

With the shoulders amply pumped up it was time to move on to our first isolation exercise, today it was the Side Lateral Raises. With this exercise my aim was to work to complete failure before any help was given, to make it that little bit harder after the failure had set in, my partner would only give me a slight momentum boost at the bottom of the movement, as this is the hardest part of the exercise as you are completely stationary. Trying to work through failure was so difficult here, I really had to dig deep to draw out every bit of strength I had left, but with the positive encouragement of my partner I was able to put the pain aside and focus on the task at hand.

With the second isolation exercise Bent-Over Reverse Delt Raise the focus was to draw up from the elbow in order to engage the posterior delts. Normally the posterior delts are one of the hard muscles to engage, with not many exercises focusing on isolation them they do tend of be under developed on lots of people, so to get that full shoulder look try to add a few rear delt exercises in each session and you will be amazed at the difference.

After we beat up the read delts a bit it was time to move along to the 2^nd isolation exercise in the form of the Reverse Peck Deck Fly. I really began to struggle with this exercise, after fatiguing such a small muscle group its very hard to sustain such high weight exercises to failure, which means its very easy to fall in to a a comfortable weight zone and not demand more of yourself, this is where having a training partner also helps as they can tell you to stop being a wimp and pump up the weights!

To finish off the shoulder portion of the session we advanced onto the Barbell Shrugs. Now for my fathers sake we did this exercise on a smith machine, one as it is easier to spot/aid someone on a smith machine rather than a free weight, but was also a bit nicer on his back, with some pretty horrendous back injuries it is always imperative that we find an alternative when heavy amounts of lower back recruitment is needed. Drawing the shoulder up to the head to encourage a squeeze through the whole traps we also wanted the lowering of the bar to be under strict control as well, allowing us to get muscular strain through both portions of the movement.

With the shoulders all done and dusted we were feeling pretty good, with my other half (Amie) coming in to join for the Tricep portion of the workout we had an incredibly high level of comradeship and positive encouragement about us, giving us a pep up we moved onto the Tricep Pushdown. Keeping the elbows in tight to isolate the triceps it was proving difficult to get many reps out on the weight I had set for myself, this was probably due to the fatigue throughout the session, but with my partners there they aided me through my two sets with my forced reps past failure to really get that pump going.

After we had complete our cable work it was time to move on to the brutal exercise and a favourite of mine the Ez Bar Skull Crushers. Here I had incredibly over estimated how much strength I had left and needed help from around the 5^th rep of each set, so instead of letting my spotter do all the work I decided to use some negative reps to finish off my sets. The idea behind negative sets is that the spotter will lift the weight to the top portion of the exercise and then you will slowly lower the weight down, hitting the muscles in a different way, when you have reached the bottom they will raise it up once again and you continue to do this until every rep is completed. Brutal.

To round off the whole session we moved onto our separate benches and worked our way through our One Arm Tricep Extension. With the muscles pretty much unwilling to do anything we were having to aid ourselves to push the weight to the top portion of the movement and then performing negatives. This was very testing on the mind as I just wanted to keep giving up, but I knew deep down that giving up wasn't an option.

This was again an absolutely awesome session and really want to encourage people to try out this fantastic method of training. For me these first 6 weeks have been a massive learning curve, teaching me more about myself then I thought I could ever know on every scale possible, I am thankful for every day I can spend in the gym and I know this is something that will change me forever. I am ready.

Happy Lifting,

Matt