On Tuesday was chest day.
Now, when i returned to training last year, i was brought crashing back to Earth with just how much my strength had diminished. I was completely disheartened at the time & it felt a very long journey ahead of me.
Well, when you're in that situation you have 2 options.
1) Quit & take your sorry arse home feeling sorry for yourself or
2) Knuckle down & fight.
I'll be brutally honest, i flirted with the idea of just throwing in the towel & giving up on all the goals i'd set myself, blindly thinking that i'd find it easy to achieve them.
But when the dust settled, i put the work in & it's fair to say i'm glad i did, 'cos i feel great for it.
I'm now at a stage where i've outgrown the dumbbells available to me at the gym. Granted they may only go up to 88 lbs, but when you're doing sets of 15 reps +, you really want to move on to bigger things. This being the case i'm hoping to utilise a second gym a couple of times a week, basically for access to bigger weights.
Instead of the 'fitness orientated' place i currently use, this is a NHB, spit & sawdust gym, with posters of Dorian Yates on the wall & dumbbells the size of medium sized people on the rack!!
Just the fact i'm needing to look elsewhere its such a motivational boost for me, as at times i felt unsure whether i had it in me to really push on.
But i have invested serious sweat equity into myself over the past few weeks & i'm in a position to move on to the next level. By no means am i at my full capacity. I've been bigger, stronger & fitter in the past & right now i'm a little hampered by my current back problem (more on that later..) but it is getting better & the foundation is in place to be where i want to be, in a realistic time scale, maybe even ahead of schedule.
So back to Tuesday & Chest Day!
As i have problems with my right rotator cuff (right to left kink in upper vertabrae) my right side will fail before my left. This is not due to the pectoral failing, but more the shoulder joint as a whole.
However, it does get progressivly stronger too, so i keep at it. This also means i like to throroughly warm up before i start.
So after at least 4 sets of light dumbbell presses, machine presses & a couple of sets of light cable flys i was ready to hit exercise 1, which is always Incline Dumbbell Presses.
I performed 4 sets, with the last set also 'benefitting from a 'pre-exhaust' set of flys. I like to use a higher angle on my incline presses, around 45-50-degrees. However, i also keep my elbows relatively low, with my grip turned in slightly. I suppose you could say that it is the way dumbbell presses were performed by the greats such as Arnie, Yates etc. I just find that i am able to squeeze the chest harder during the movement. I also find it takes more of the front delt out of the movement, making it more an upper chest exercise.
From there i moved on to Dumbbell Flys, moving the bench down a little to a 35-degree angle. Again, i perform this slightly differently to other people, in that i like to twist my wrists on the upper portion, bringing the dumbbells just short of one another with my palms facing me & my thumbs pointing outwards. I find i am able to really squeeze the inner chest doing this, with the outer chest stretched at the bottom of the movement.
Again, 4 sets, with the last set an all pump-a-thon. Not entirely sure how many reps on the last set, maybe around 30, but the pump at the end was nothing short of 'Kelly Brooke esque'.
Anyway, from there i moved to the rear delt/pec fly machine to really follow up on the pump i'd developed. I utilised a drop set method on this exercise moving from as heavy as i could manage for a good 6 reps, then straight on to a further 10 reps, followed by 16, & 25, moving the pin up the stack as i went.
2 sets of this really blasted the pecs, but it felt great.
I was ready to move onto a last exercise of dumbbell pullovers, but instead threw in a 3 set, dropset style multi-angle cable crossover stint, just because i felt great.
The sweat coming off me by the end was like a river though!
With the pulleys set at the highest point, i brought the handles together at the bottom, around waist height, squeezing the pecs as i did. Taking the handles back out, i brought them back together a little further up the body, maybe around belly button height. Each rep i moved further up, with the 4th rep straight out infront, always squeezing the pecs with each rep, before moving back down the body again. This was done on the heaviest weight i could manage, performing 16 reps. Then i moved the pulleys to the bottom, going through the exact same method, again 16 reps, before moving the pulley to the middle to do it all again.
That was set 1, but set 2 kicked off straight after, with the weight dropped slightly & the pulleys back up to the top, then to the bottom, then the middle.
Set 3, again weight dropped, back at the top.
I suppose you could say that it was just 1 huge drop set, with the only rest being from moving the pulleys & stack pin.
But the pump, if anything was bigger, with my skin literally feeling stetched to bursting point.
I finished off with 3 sets of dumbbell pullovers to really stretch out the thoracic, keeping my elbows slightly bent & my hips low to accentuate the stretch*.
Below is a run through of the exercises, weights used & reps, as well as my supplements.
*I also added in some very low, very light dumbbell flys on a flat bench, literally touching the floor with the weights as a final stretch to make the best use of the pump i had!
WORKOUT SHEET
SUPPLEMENTS
Pre Workout - 40mins prior to workout; 1 Scoop Cell NOX plus 5g Creatine Monohydrate
During Workout - 4 scoops Sci-Vation Xtend
Post Workout - Optimum Nutrition Platinum HydroWhey S'Berry - 50g, MyProtein Dextrose - 70g, MP Glutamine - 10g, MP Creatine Monohydrate - 5g. All the above was mixed in water immediately postworkout & drank straight away to avoid any degradation of the creatine in liquid, as well as to create the anti-catabolic insulin spike to feed the hungry worked muscles!
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