Training Journal: Monday 9th March 2009

09 March 2009 | Tristan's Training Journal | Tags:

I’m back in the gym again after having a week off last week. I really enjoyed my week off from the point of view that it was nice to have a change to the routine, but by the end of the week I was itching to get back into the gym. I felt like all my hard work in the previous few months was going to waste and that my muscles were shrinking. Clearly this is just paranoia, as you won’t lose much mass in a few off, but that’s how I felt. Weird.

I’m also back on the creatine again this week. My plan is to follow an eight week on, one week off schedule, synchronising my workout cycle with my creatine cycle, and having a week off to let the body recover (mostly the joints). I think it will also help mentally, knowing that every eight weeks I’ve got a rest week in the diary.

Chest

I started off with a warmup, just three quick sets of incline dumbbell press, making each set heavier, here’s the weights and reps:

  • 16kg x 12 reps
  • 20kg x 10 reps
  • 24kg x 10 reps

After that, I moved onto the pec dec for my Heavy Duty sets. I love this exercise now that I’ve learnt how to do it properly, using the Heavy Duty principles. I find I get a really good chest workout from it, my chest feels properly pumped after doing pec dec. As I do this exercise Heavy Duty, trying to spend 9 seconds per rep, counting for 3 for each element of the rep (contraction, hold, relaxation), I find it difficult to count how many reps I do, so instead, I’ve just listed how much time I spent doing it, with an estimation of the number of reps.

  • 45kg for 1:15 (roughly 10 reps)
  • 45kg for 1:00 (roughly 8 reps)
  • 45kg for 1:10 (roughly 9 reps)

I take about 2-3 minutes rest between each set, to try and ensure that the muscles have recovered by the next set.

Affter pec dec, it’s onto the chest press machine, which simulates a bench press, but is seated and isolates the muscles more (you don’t improve the stability muscles though). For this exercise, I didn’t bother with Heavy Duty principles because I was running out of time and wanted to get my workout finished quickly. Next week I will be doing these heavy duty!

  • 60kg x 10 reps
  • 60kg x 7 reps
  • 60kg x 6 reps

To finish off my workout, I just did a some quick abdominal exercises:


Leave a Reply