kinkoshinkai’s BodyBlog

So, illness/fatigue killed me yesterday and I missed my shoulder training.  But a good night’s sleep and a fairly free day, obligation-wise, and like the idiot I am, I decided to do shoulders AND bi’s/tri’s today!! 

I’m going back to more of a standard set mode for my training, after a couple cylces of intensity boosting methods.  So, 4 sets per exercise, increase weight/decrease reps (15 rep first set after warm-ups, then 12, then 10, then 8 to failure).   Side laterals superset with rear laterals (I really like this to pre-fatigue and get the blod flow).  Then on to dumbbell presses.  Then to the cable stack shoulder press with drop sets on the 3rd set (total 7 sets, three straight plus 4 drops on the third).  Last was shrugs.  For some reason I caught a nice second wind at that point to take me on to my arm training.

Arms started with bar curls, same set/rep scheme, superset with one arm overhead dumbbell tri’s.  Then preacher dumbbell, ’cause I wanted to focus on the twist at the top for the peak, superset with seated overhead french press with the rope.  Then concentration curls, (final peak burn) w/ close bench on the cable stack.  I was at the gym much longer than is my norm, but the nice second wind carried me through.  I weighed in at 217.5 and still 16.5 on the BF, so I’m gaining, and feeling good about it!!!!!

So, if you have a lagging body-part, or one that you feel is overshadowing another, how do you make up the difference? Do you maintain your body-part rotation, i.e. Chest Monday, Leg Tuesday, etc., and just hit the lagging part a little harder? Or do you skip or go lighter on the strong part? Throw in a second training day for the weak one? Are you an “intuitive” lifter, which I’ve always taken to mean that you don’t keep records for progress and just wing it?  Or are you, like me a “book lifter”.  Yesterday, I discovered one tiny danger involved in being a book guy.

It’s how much you LOOK like you can lift.  That’s one of Chicerillo’s favorites, and I love it.  While on the one hand, you have to lift heavy to get big, on the other hand we’re told that form is more important than poundage.  So, ideally, if we want to get big, we lift huge weight with great form! 

I get tired of seeing skinnies and chubbies alike swing and sling weights or dink around with a few reps but never push it.  But that’s their problem, not mine.  I’ve even seen PRO videos talk about good form, only to see the pro hurl, jerk and swing the weight.  I can only figure they’ve mastered the mind/muscle connection to the point that they can feel the proper muscle contraction regardless of their form.  I ain’t that skilled yet.

I’ve also seen lots of folks, at my gym and in instructional video stress controlled form so much that their range of motion is limited. 

So, all that said, for yesterday’s leg workout I made a conscious choice to use full range of motion, pause in every stretched position (i.e. the bottom of a squat or leg press) for a moment, then contract up rather than push or huff the weight up, and in the case of leg extensions, squeeze a couple seconds at the top before returning.  Now, I’ve been trying to use good form anyway, so I didn’t have to back the weight down TOO much, but WOW it kicked my ass (literally in a couple cases). 

The other change was that instead of only going to parallel on squats, I did full squats.  On the one hand, parallel is all that’s needed for quad development, the flip side is that full range of motion=full development, partial range of mtion=partial development.  In the same way that I don’t just short pump my barbell or concentration curls, a short stroke on leg presses or squats is similarly less effective for complete development. (Instructional credit to Milos Sarcev for this concept).  It’s not that the muscle isn’t working if you just short pump, but it isn’t working FULLY, and therefor isn’t going to develop FULLY.   Which takes me back to my initial observation.  I hear people say "I squat X" or "I put X number of plates on the leg sled".  Then I see them go down 3 inches on the squat or pump the leg press 6 inches, and I’m not imressed.  My 73 year old dad told me during a call to him for his birthday a couple weeks ago that he was working out regularly again, and had leg pressed 800 lbs.  OK, I’m impressed, but I’d like to see the range of motion, too.  I’m proud he’s working out, but the numbers don’t mean anything.  The form menas everything first, THEN the poundage.

So, I’ll continue to lift "light-weight", (280 lb leg extension with full range of motion and 2 second squeeze at the top for 6 reps, 275 lb full squat paused at the bottom and squeezed up for 12 reps without bouncing) and see what I can get in results.