Week 9 Day 5 - One Way Ticket To The Gun Show!

30/05/15 Day 61 – Arms

Today was a very short, simple and insanely effective gym session, with only 4 exercises in the entire session it was all about going heavy, hitting failure and pushing through my mental and physical barriers to complete every set.

Here is your ticket to the Gun Show:

Standing Over-Head Dumbbell Tricep Extension – 5 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10

SuperSet

Seated Dumbbell Curls – 5 Sets, 1 x 30,25,20,15,10

Decline Skull Crushers – 5 Sets, 1 x 10,15,20,25,30

SuperSet

Ez Bar Spider Curls – 5 Sets, 1 x 10,15,20,25,30

Cardio – Interval Training 15mins Total

As usual I started my session with a really solid warm up, made sure I worked my rotator cuffs and did a lot of warm up work on the triceps, as religiously when doing overhead tricep work I tighten up very quickly. So some explosive active stretching followed during my warm up sets, the hoodie came off and it was game time.

With the first superset, it was 100% about trying to hit complete failure on every single set, so for me I looked at the dumbbell rack and asked myself what would I usually lift for those reps, then moved a few kilos up so I knew I had to really work hard to finish off the sets, I found this worked really well in my favour as I actually managed to lift stupidly heavier then I perceived I would be able to. Two or three sets in to the first super set and my arms where feeling seriously swollen, with the weights getting heavier and heavier I really had to draw all my attention in to my contractions, with my spotter standing by for a comfort blanket I pushed myself to the limit. Very happy with my new personal best of 40kg overhead dumbbell extension, if I look a few years back it was something only I dreamt of and now I'm living it, just goes to show that hard work pays off! The dumbbell curls felt really good today as well, with my focus on this exercise to twist the little finger up towards the ceiling to engage the inner head of the biceps I found it encouraged the pump nicely.

With my arms well fatigued and blood surging through my triceps and biceps I moved on to the final two exercises. The Decline Skull Crushers felt really awesome today, by taking the arms further back, past eyeline it meant that I could keep constant tension through the triceps. Keeping the tension through the target muscles for as long and possible will help to promote the release of human growth hormone by the body, so if you are not using performance enhancing drugs like myself this is a brilliant way to build that awesome thickness that makes the body look a lot fuller. The opposing exercise (Ez Bar Spider Curls) really helped to isolate the outer head of my biceps, taking the close grip on the Ez bar meant I couldn't recruit much of the inner head, allowing me to work the entire bicep through the duration of the session. As I started to fatigue in the later sets due to the higher reps I made sure that I was pushing the ticeps into the preacher machine to stop the temptation of swinging the bar up but instead forcing the biceps to contract harder to lift the weight. Remember: If you are going to do something, do it right.

Happy Lifting,

Matt