I made my way into the gym at 9:40 am to warm up and get ready for my triceps training session with Ofer Samra at 10 am. Ofer was featured together with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie True Lies. To my surprise Ofer was standing there with our photographer Bill.
When I approached them I found out that it was in fact 10:40 am because daylight saving had just begun. Neither myself nor Bill had realized this (especially because I am from Australia) so of course we had to reschedule the training session until the afternoon at 3 pm.
In the mean time Ofer did a brief assessment of my physique. He felt the areas I needed to focus on were my upper chest, back, hamstrings and calves. We said goodbye because Ofer had to head off and train a client at 11 am. Afterwards I was introduced to Tito Raymond and he also had a quick look at my physique. Tito thought I had a great back but need to work on the separation between my upper chest and front delts. He also said I had good calves. It is interesting how different trainers can have opinions that are similar in some ways and yet completely different in other ways. These are the top trainers at Gold’s gym, so you can imagine that it would be the same with the judges at physique competitions, whether it is bodybuilding or the new Men’s Physique division. It is a very subjective sport.
Since I usually train my whole arm in one go on Mondays and we were training triceps in the afternoon I took the chance to train my biceps first in the morning. I mainly stuck to what I know works well for my arms with a bit of variation thrown in at the end in the form of a machine curl and then some incline curls. The machine curl is a pin loaded piece of equipment and it is much like a preacher curl except that the arm rest pad was horizontal and at shoulder level instead of tapering down to the front. It feels very much like a spider curl with a strong peak contraction happening at the end of the movement. The machine is really putting you in a very similar position to that of a spider curl.
Workout 1:
Biceps
Straight barbell curls – 2 light warm up sets, 115 x 12, 120 x 9, 125 x 7, 130 x 5, 135 x 5
Standing alternate dumb bell curls – 50 x 10, 55 x 8, 60 x 6
Standing alternate hammer curls – 45 x 12, 50 x 10, 55 x 8
Machine Curl – 100 x 12, 110 x 10, 120 x 8, 130 x 8
Incline alternate dumb bell curls – 35 x 10, 35 x 10, 40 x 6, 40 x 6
Abs and Lower Back
Decline crunches – BW + 10 x 35, BW + 10 x 30 (twisting crunches), BW + 10 x 30
Hyperextensions – BW + 25 x 30
Post-workout Meal
Shake – Whey isolate, carbs, creatine
140 grams tuna, 2 slices organic whole wheat bread, 1 banana, 1 glass apple juice
After a short break, I went back to the gym a little early to warm up before training with Ofer at 3 pm. Unfortunately Ofer couldn’t make it and our training was rescheduled for Wednesday. I of course still trained my triceps on my own. I included a few heavy compound style lifts to keep building mass and thickness into the triceps. The first of these were lying triceps extensions with a straight bar (I personally only include these every 3rd week because I find if I do them too often it causes triceps tendonitis. I believe this is because it is stressing the musculo-tendinous unit in a lengthened position with heavy resistance). The second was close grip bench presses on the smith machine which I think is a great mass builder without all that stress on the elbow joints. I also changed up the attachment I used for cable pushdowns this week to a straight bar, again a pretty good mass builder with the simultaneous potential to focus on a really good contraction. Moving on to the outer head of the triceps I did one hand reverse grip cable extensions instead of rope pushdowns just for a different feel. For a change I did one hand overhead extensions to target the long head of the triceps with a dumbbell instead of with a cable.
Workout 2:
Triceps
Lying triceps extensions – 115 x 13, 120 x 10, 125 x 8, 130 x 7
Close grip smith machine bench press – 235 x 12, 245 x 10, 255 x 7, 265 x 6
Cable pushdowns with straight bar – 90 x 12, 100 x 9, 110 x 6, 120 x 5
One hand reverse cable extensions – 60 x 12, 65 x 10, 70 x 8, 75 x 6
One hand overhead dumbbell extensions – 25 x 10, 25 x 10, 30 x 8, 30 x 8
Post-workout Meal
Shake – Whey isolate, carbs
1 angus patty, 8 ounces egg whites, 3 multigrain pancakes at the Firehouse Restaurant
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