Chutz & Del's Training Log

My left knee has been playing up since moving on to heavy squats. As a result we've dropped deadlifts for the week and will be moving on to higher reps with squats whilst dropping the weight by 20kg.

Today's chest workout, however, was one of the best yet. We both hit personal bests in terms of time under tension at optimal loading. The felxibility of the current training split allowed us the option of focusing solely on bench press today - at varying inclines- and we ended up with 8 excellent sets.

The arms are responding well to the "Winning the Arms Race Programme" - I'm up to 14" biceps (from 13) and Chutz is up to 15-8.

The 6-8 rep protocol seems to be still reaping benefits for upper body but legs may have to return to 8-12 reps whilst the knee recovers.

Chutz & Del's Training Log

Finally the effects of the virus have passed. The intensity of the German Body Comp routine was impossible to maintain during the illness and so we switched temporarily back to a four day split routine for mixed strength and hypertrophy. The results have been quite encouraging and the workouts more enjoyable as there is a degree of flexibility. Generally, though, we have been sticking to a 6-8 rep range. The chest workout has involved 4-6 sets of bench press at varying inclines. Squats have been, for us, heavy (80-90kg) and deadlifts are between 90 and 100kg. We have continued with the second phase of the "Winning the Arms Race" workout but have had to replace overhead pressess in the power rack for triceps pressdowns due to a lack of safety pins. The good news is, however, that the pins have now been manufactured and should be with us this week.

Freestyle Training

Due to this infernal bug I've been unable to train for nearly a week. Today, however, as I have started to recover, I decided to go to the studio and deviate from the current programme and do something I've been dying to do for months - an old-style chest-blasting workout.

I simply decided upon a rough rep-range (6-8) and based the exercises on feel (one set of incline bench; reduce the incline by a notch for two more sets, and then two sets of flat bench. This was followed by two sets of flyes super-setted with cable crossovers. Finally I did a giant set comrpised of dips, flyes, crossovers and press-ups).

For good measure I threw in a few sets of parallel grip chins at the end.

This is by far my favourite approach to working out but it needs to be used sparingly, otherwise essential work may be neglected in favour of more enjoyable work.