6Pack99 
"Muscle failure is the inability of your muscles to perform another rep, NOT your inability to take the pain!!!"
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Archive for January, 2008
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
Here’s another way to shock a lagging bodypart. I’ve done this for biceps with great success. Choose one exercise for the bodypart – in my example, standing barbell curls. Choose a weight that you can do 18-20 reps with.
Take a deck of cards, take the first card. Do a # of reps equal to the value of the card – if you get an Ace, you can rest for one minute. After completing the prescribed # of reps, choose another card and do your next set (you should be “resting” for no longer than 15 seconds, just enough time to choose the card and start your next set). Try to get through as many cards in the deck as you can! It may sound easy, but trust me, IT’S NOT!
The first time I did this, I got thru approximately 20 cards, the 2nd time, approximately 30 cards, and the 3rd time I got totally psyched that I was going to get thru the whole deck and I did – could barely bend my arms for the next couple of days!
As always, remember, with any shock training method such as this, don’t do it too often or you’ll overtrain and limit your results. Just use this every now and then to shock a lagging bodypart into growth.
Posted in Training
Monday, January 14th, 2008
I decided to get my bodyfat tested over the weekend as I hadn’t had it tested in a while. Last time I had it tested, the trainer used the calipers and my bodyfat came out to 7%, about 3 weeks before my competition. Wasn’t sure how I’ve been doing lately, so wanted to get it measured to find out…
They no longer use the calipers at my gym, so the only test available was the bodyfat scale, which I’ve found to be very unreliable in the past. But, as it was the only option I had the test done anyway. Got on the scale, my weight reading was accurate, and then the bodyfat reading came up as “LO”. The trainer said to me, “you should be hospitalized”!!! LOL!!! She said my bodyfat was too low for the scale to measure it. She looked it up in her manual and it said that a reading of “LO” indicates a bodyfat of between 2 and 4%. I HIGHLY DOUBT that I am anywhere near to being that low, but thought it was pretty funny anyway!
Posted in Training
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
Want a great way to shock a lagging bodypart and fight your way past a plateau? Try this… do your usual workout for the bodypart, either in the morning or midday, then, a few hours later, go back to the gym and work the same bodypart again!
Do the 2nd workout in one of 2 ways:
1) Lower weight, high rep sets.
2) Medium weight, very slow reps.
The bodypart your workout will get a big shock out of this, trust me, I’ve done it. You may find that the particular bodypart rarely gets sore anymore, well, it WILL be sore the next day!
Note of caution: be careful not to do this too often or you will be overtraining, which is of course counter-productive. Just do this every now and then when you need a boost.
Try it out and let me know how it goes…
Posted in Training
Monday, January 7th, 2008
Another thing that has worked very well for me in my back training is the following:
Isometric holds on the assisted pullup machine. What I do is, set the weight to a weight that I could normally do around 10 very good clean reps for, then pull myself all the way up, and hold for as long as I can, usually for about 45 secs to a minute. It’s a great way to finish your back workout, working the muscle in a different way than normal positive/negative reps. As always, try different grips. I like to do these isometric holds with my palms facing away from me, then my palms facing me, and finally 2 sets with a mixed grip - i.e. one palm facing me and one palm facing away.
Posted in Training
Friday, January 4th, 2008
 
I’ve been told that my back is my best bodypart. Tough to say for sure as I rarely get to see it, but I have seen pictures of it and I guess it looks aight. Sooooooooooo, I’m probably doing something right when it comes to back training.
Here are my tips on training back: #1, when training back it’s verrrrry important to focus on working your back muscles and not your arm/biceps. It’s very easy to have your biceps do most of the work, but you need to really focus and concentrate on pulling the weight using your back instead. I used to make the mistake of using mostly arms on my back exercises, so I could do really heavy weights. Believe it or not, I made that mistake for almost 20 years!!! When I finally made the adjustment to use my back more, my back really started developing! #2, you’re going to hear this a lot from me…do the exercises slowly, working the muscle you intend to work rather than using momentum and the rest of your body to do the exercise! So many times I see people doing their pulldowns or row waaay too fast with too much weight, swinging their whole body to get the weight moving. All this is doing is working the lower back more and working the lats less. Keep it slow and work those lats!
#3, hit your back from multiple angles and use multiple grips! I generally do 2 pulldown exercises and 2 rowing exercises per back workout, and I change these 4 exercises every month or so. You can use an overhand grip, underhand grip, close grip, wide grip, etc, but keep changing it to work all of the areas of your lats!
Posted in Training
Friday, January 4th, 2008
Don’t expect to beat your previous by a lot, just by very little. Especially if you’re someone who’s been lifting for a while, you’re not going to make fast gains, it’s going to be very gradual. For your heaviest set on a particular exercise, you may just beat your previous by 1 rep. The key is to keep increasing the weight and reps as much as possible, but understanding that it’s gradual.
For example, let’s say you’re doing dumbell presses for chest, and you normally do 3 working sets of 6 reps, 8 reps, and then 10 reps (excluding warmup). Your previous workout (baseline), you did 60 pounds for 6 reps, then 55 for 8, and then 50 for 10. Next workout, start with 65 pounds. You may only get 4 reps, but that’s ok. Do your 65 for 4 let’s say, then 60 for 7, and 55 for 9. In your 3rd workout, you should be close to achieving your 6/8/10 rep targets, thus allowing you to once again increase the weight in your 4th workout. It’s really not much of an increase, should be pretty doable. At the very least, make sure you EQUAL your previous, and then beat it next time.
Don’t be someone who does the same exact weight for the same exact # of reps workout after workout after workout. 3 sets of 10 reps with the same weight over and over and over won’t keep your muscles growing, gradually increasing reps and weight will!
Posted in Training
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
Do you keep track of your workouts, i.e. sets, reps, weights? I strongly recommend it!
What I do is keep a sheet of paper for every bodypart, with a list of all of the exercises that I’m doing for that bodypart, then I write down every set indicating the weight I used and the # of reps. Then, when I do the next workout, I do everything I can to beat my previous workout, either by increasing the weight or the # of reps that I get. At the very least I make sure to match the previous, but it’s very rare where I don’t beat it. It’s a great way to see your progress and to keep motivating yourself every set.
Yes, I probably look like a total dork walking around the gym with my pen and paper, writing down every set that I do, but……….I look like a total dork who’s in pretty good shape! 
Posted in Training
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