Week 8 Day 1 - Baby Got Back!

18/05/15 Day 50 – Back & Ab

Here I am 8 weeks into this awesome and gruelling 12 week muscle gainer programme, feeling very confident with the massive progress I have in the past 8 weeks I can only imagine what another 4 weeks are going to do for me!

Week 8 marks the 2^nd week of this wicked form of DTP Training, if you haven't check out what DTP is all about check my blogs from last week. So this week will have another huge emphasis on volume, on fatigue and on massive pumps that will swell my muscles and make me grow.

Today we hit back and abs, lets check it out:

Chin Ups – 5 Sets, 1 x 20,15,10,10,5

Reverse Grip Lat Pulldown – 5 Sets, 1 x 5,10,10,15,20

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

Leverage Isolated Row – 5 Sets, 1 x 20,15,10,10,5

SuperSet

Laying Cable Crunches – 5 Sets, 1 x 20,15,10,10,5

Seated Cable Row– 5 Sets, 1 x 5,10,10,15,20

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

Cable Crunches – 5 Sets, 1 x 5,10,10,15,20

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

Bent-Over Wide Grip Barbell Row – 5 Sets, 1 x 20,15,10,10,5

SuperSet

Seated Knee Tucks – 5 Sets x To Failure

Reverse Grip Bent-Over Barbell Row– 5 Sets, 1 x 5,10,10,15,20

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

Cardio – Interval Training 15min Total

If you have read any of last weeks sessions you may notice that this session the reps are not quite as high, working between 5 and 20 means that the focus can be more around lifting heavy now, rather than having to factor in large amount of fatigue that would otherwise burn the muscles out.

Beginning the session with Chin Ups was nice, I haven't performed standard chin ups in quite a while and was shocked when I found out I could perform a lot my reps than I have previously done, this I put down to the large amount of lean muscle tissue I have gained throughout this programme. Starting with a big compound movement allows the whole body to start working, gets the bloody pushing around all the muscles and is a fantastic way to start a session. With the volume aspect you may find you can only just get the last few sets out, don't worry you can always hope on an assisted machine or get a spotted to help you. You maybe also find the final 5 reps are too easy, in which case I would suggesting stacking a weight belt and test yourself on how heavy you can go.

Moving on to the first DTP exercise of the day Reverse Grip Lat Pulldown looked to isolate the lat slightly more, although there is a tendency for the biceps to creep into the equation some times. Remember: Try to draw the elbows down, rather than pulling down from the hands, the shorter leaver system works the muscle more effectively and also triggers the contraction better too. The last few sets were a real struggle to perform, not just because the muscles were incredibly pumped, but also due to the forearms being fatigued on the chin ups, this meant gripping the bar was much tougher than usual.

With the first superset of Leverage Isolated Row & Laying Cable Crunches the idea was to fatigue the core muscles needed in the next DTP exercise. So when you are lowering the reps you need to up the weight, this is what will allow your muscles to breakdown more effectively (which strangely is exactly what we want). With the leverage row you isolate more the muscles in the upper back (traps, rhomboids etc) as suppose to the chin ups which are more lat focused.

From there we moved onto the DTP portion of the exercises, where we took those pre fatigued from the last exercise and worked them to the point of failure, the first exercise was the Seated Cable Row. Here you may find some bicep recruitment sneak in, so I always try to draw the elbows back and try to switch the focus into the back muscles. Trying to squeeze the reps at the top of the motion to get a better contraction became relatively hard, quick, so when this happened I made the conscious effort to draw the elbows as far back as possible to make it worth while. With the second exercise:Cable Crunches, the idea is to hold the rope attachment aside of the head, draw the abdominals down and try to focus the elbows towards the knees. That movement alone will make the abs contract, to get an even better contraction I like to hold and squeeze the abs at the bottom of the movement to make it slightly more challenging.

Then came the penultimate exercises: Bent-Over Wide Grip Barbell Row & Seated Knee Tucks. These two exercise allowed work of most muscles in the entire torso, which I really loved, the wide grip rows put more of a focus on the upper back once again. With the barbell being pulled to the chest rather than the naval it means the lower back is having to work increasingly hard to stabilise the movement, so expect to feel a little uncomfortable! The ab work to failure was a real kick in the teeth as will no rest you are moving from once massively draining exercise to another. I did have a tendency to want to give up, it was hard and i'll admit I was struggling slightly, but I made sure I gritted my teeth and just kept forcing the reps out until I had nothing left.

To finish off the session we performed the Reverse Grip Bent-Over Barbell Row, but in the DTP fashion. With this exercise the lower back was taking a bit of strain as it had been worked pretty hard before, but to compensate there was some bicep recruitment to even the playing field, all in all it was a really difficult exercise to finish. A few times I had to strip the bar down to try and get all the reps out, but by the hammer of Thor I did it, and I feel pretty good for it now.

I am looking forward to another week of awesome training, with awesome people! What are you guys and girls training today!?

Happy Lifting,

Matt