Body And Fitness Blog

Monday - back

I’ve taken to coming over to my brother’s gym (where he trains rather than a gym he owns) on a Monday now to make use of the free weights and heavier cable machines they have. I’m currently looking into a new gym to join, most likely will be the Train Station Gym, which seem to be a proper body building gym rather than a leisure centre.

Dead lift

After my first deadlift workout for at least a decade last Monday, I found that my lower back was in pain for a good three days afterwards. Nonetheless, I decided to do them again today, hoping that my lower back would have recovered and be a bit stronger for today’s workout. I did three warmup sets before going into my working sets.

• Olympic bar (20kg) x 12 reps
• 60kg x 12 reps
• 80kg x 12 reps
• 100kg x 8 reps
• 100kg x 10 reps
• 100kg x 10 reps

That was an improvement on last week, for next week I’ll aim to do three sets of 12 reps then move up the weight the following week.

Seated rowing

Three working sets of seated cable rowing today, decided to go for three sets of 12 reps at the same weight as last week, didn’t quite achieve that in the last set unfortunately.

• 135lbs x 12 reps
• 135lbs x 12 reps
• 135lbs x 9 reps

Next week I’ll aim for the same weight but three sets of twelve, with the last set to failure.

Wide grip pulldowns

Speaking to my bro who noticed something on my wide grip pulldowns last week was that width of my grip, he recommended I grip it a little wider, so I tried this today. Didn’t make any difference to my ability to pull the weight, but I could feel it a little more in the shoulders. Last week I started at 90lbs, 100lbs and finally 110lbs, this week I aimed to do three sets of 10 on 110lbs.

• 110lbs x 10 reps
• 110lbs x 10 reps
• 110lbs x 10 reps

Close grip pulldowns

This is my favourite back exercise for sheer weight, it’s the exercise I feel most comfortable going heavy on due to the way you can grip the bar (underhand). It’s also a good compound exercise bringing the biceps and rear deltoids into the movement as well as hitting the back. It’s a great exercise for building the strength (and size) needed to be able to do pull ups.

My aim is to try and get to the end of the stack on this weight (210lbs) by the end of April, then I should be able to do a set of pull ups for 10 reps by then (I currently weigh about 90kg, which is 198lbs). Once I’ve acheived that, I’ll be doing pull ups for my back workout, with a dipping belt round my waist loaded up with extra plates to increase the resistance.

• 140lbs x 10 reps
• 170lbs x 8 reps
• 180lbs x 6 reps
• 140 lbs x 7 reps

Shoulder shrugs

To finish off my back workout I did a couple of sets of shoulder shrugs with a barbell to work the traps.

• 60kg x 15 reps
• 60kg x 10 reps

Next time I’ll try and do three sets, but today I was ruined after the work I’d already done.