Body And Fitness Blog

Friday - legs and triceps

Legs

Today I decided to go for three heavy sets (the heaviest the leg press machine will go) of leg press, to failure, followed by my usual quad extensions and hamstring curls. I did a quick hill walk at 6.5kph for five minutes followed by a couple of warm up sets at 100kg, and 130 kg for 15 reps then went into my leg press sets, doing the following weights and reps:

• 190kg for 10 reps to failure
• 190kg for 8 reps to failure
• 190kg for 7 reps to failure

After each set, I took a good two - three minute rest, just sat on the machine, breathed deeply and tried to get the muscles to recove as quick as they could for the next set. During this time, I decided that I need to make a big decision on my training fairly soon - should I continue trying to build my muscles or should I focus on fitness?

The thing is, if I decide I want to focus on building muscle, then I am soon going to need to move to a gym that has heavier machines. If I decide I want to focus on my fitness, then I can stay at my current gym, and just alter my routines, doing more cardio work than weight training. It’s not just legs that I’m running out of weight on, my back routine is maxed out on the cable machine, and not that far off on the lat machine. I suppose I should be grateful that I can still build on my chest, shoulders, triceps and biceps for now…

To finish off my legs workout, I did three sets of quad extensions, the weights and reps are as follows:

• 55kg for 10 reps (fairly easy)
• 55kg for 10 reps (still easy)
• 55kg for 10 reps (think I need to go heavier next time)

After quad extensions it was hamstring curls, which are possibly my least favourite exercise. I don’t like this exercise because I feel like all the tendons, bone and cartilage in the knee joint is being mangled up and put under stresses that it wouldn’t normally have to deal with. It’s odd, because I love bicep curls - which are the equivalent arm movement - but just don’t get on with hamstring curls. Here’s the weight and reps I did:

• 55kg x 8 reps - failed before I got to 10
• 55kg x 10 reps - somehow recovered a bit
• 55kg x 8 reps - back to being a weed again

I think I will leave my hams at this weight for a few more weeks, try and get up to doing three good sets of 12 reps at each weight before moving on. At least that way I shouldn’t be at any risk of injuring the delicate tendons and stuff at the back of the leg.

Triceps

I love working triceps now I’ve found an exercise that I like. I used to do triceps with a barbell, lying on a bench, extending the weight upwards, in a similar movement to a barbell curl on the biceps, but found it really hurt my elbows. Now I do tricep extensions using the cable machine and don’t have any issues at all with my elbows.

For today’s workout, I decided I wanted to do two drop down sets of three sets to failure. I started at a weight I figured I go get 8 reps out of, and worked my way down the stack in five kilogram decrements. Here’s the weights and reps:

First drop set:

• 30kg for 10 reps and failure
• 25kg for 8 reps and failure
• 20kg for 6 reps and failure

Second drop set:

• 30kg for 7 reps and failure
• 25kg for 3 reps and failure
• 20kg for 4 reps and failure

By the end of that my triceps were bulging through my Man Utd shirt - yes I know, I’m scum, but I’m actually from Manchester - just a shame that my love handles were too!