Change the pace, switch your rep range, your cadence, trick your muscles. All ways to stay away from plateaus!
Tonight is chest and tris, and it's a focus night. As in, focus directly and make a mental connection with the muscles you're working.
Flat bench- light 2 set warmup. Then, MUCH lighter weight than you're used to for flat bench. I used a mere 135lbs. The goal here isn't to do a lot of weight, it's to recruit a lot of muscle fibers, fill them with blood, stretch them, and repeat.
Concentrate on form here. Arch your back on the bench. Bring your shoulder blades together before starting. Stay in the "loaded range", which means to never fully extend your arms, always keep a tension on your chest. Do slow, 3/1/3/0 timing reps. 3 seconds to lower the weight, one second pause at the bottom, 3 seconds to raise the weight, and 0 seconds at the top- to keep tension on the chest, again. The number of reps you do doesn't matter. Focus on your first working set, and go until complete failure. You should be able to do a few more reps after you think you feel you are failing, due to the lighter weight than normal.
Do only two sets of this. Alllllllll your power should be spent in the first set, so the second set should be much shorter, due to muscle exhaustion. This is the way we will do all of our exercises tonight.
Next, is flat bench flys. Again, go lighter than normal, my working sets were done using 20 pound dumbbells. Here, focus on arching your back, keeping your elbows pointing to the floor, and really get a good chest stretch (and hold it!). Never let the weights touch, and you probably don't ever want to have them even as close as a foot apart, again, keeping tension on the chest. The timing of these reps is 3,3,3,0.... 3 second spread, 3 second hold while stretched out, 3 seconds to bring them back together, and a 0 second hold at the top, so you go straight into the next rep....keeping the chest engaged the whole time. Really focus on your chest muscles here. You should be twitching and failing before you drop the weights. Again, only two sets, so REALLY kill the first set. :45 seconds rest, then the next set.
On to incline DB presses. Use the incline setting that is slightly more angled than a flat bench, don't sit up too straight. Same form, arched back, shoulder blades together, really focusing on your upper chest here. As you press the DB's up, they should move in a straight line from the starting position to the finishing position at the top. Again, do a "short stroke" on the exercise to ensure that you keep the muscles engaged and never rest weight on your bones. The timing here is 3,0,3,1. 3 seconds to raise the weight, 0 rest at top, 3 seconds to lower, and 1 second to stabilize at the bottom and refocus. Do two sets, absolutely killing the first.
I used 50# db's here. Again, lighter than normal, your reps are slow, and you're not counting them even. Just go till it kills.
Triceps! Barbell skullcrushers. This one is good to have a partner. I used much less weight than normal, a 55# barbell. I lower it to my forehead slowly, and my partner resists the raising portion with both hands, pretty forcefully, just enough so I'm moving it back up, but struggling. After 9 reps, I had him let go and did one more slow rep. On my second set, I only got to 6 before he had to stop resisting me, and I did one more slow, painful rep.
To finish the day, we did some cable tricep extensions with 3 different grips. Focused on really flexing the triceps at the bottom of each pushdown, and short stroking the movement at the top to keep tension on the tris.
Your chest and tris should be shot. Sleep well! (it's important for recovery and muscle building!)
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