Road to Victory

I don’t know if anyone else has read the Weider books, but I recently decided I was going to try and expand my ribcage in an effort to make my chest cavity bigger. According to the book, a good way to do this is to superset breathing squats with breathing pullovers. 25 reps per set.

Honestly, the book even tells you to use a light weight, no more than bodyweight, but in all honesty I think my legs are still too weak to do that, because the instructions are thus:

1. Get in starting position with the weight for breathing squats.

2. Take three deep breaths, making sure to completely fill and empty your lungs.

3. Hold the third breath and descend, only exhaling when you are halfway erect.

4. Repeat the procedure up to rep #10, then switch to four breaths up to rep 20. Switch to five breaths up to rep 25.

5. Take advantage of how breathless you are and take a shoulder width grip on a light barbell (only 25-30 lbs, but that’s still too much for me) and inhale deeply and slowly as you slowly do your first rep. Only exhale when you complete the rep. Do this 25 times.

I guess the problem I was having was that I was probably doing too much weight to even attempt the breathing squats, though the pullovers were no problem. Apparently even 145 lbs. is too much for me so next time I’m doing it with 95 lbs. in an effort to see if 1) my arms won’t numb out before rep 10, and 2) if I can actually follow through to 25 reps.

Anyone else tried this technique? If so, what was your opinion on its effectiveness?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.