After Wednesday off as a rest day following a killer leg session on the Tuesday, Ped was raring to go for his upper body session on Thursday.
Instead of our normal location of NKD Ambition studio, we decided to train at FitnessFirst TCR. and make the most of some of the machines available that we don’t usually have access to.
I had a pretty simple session of major compound movements planned, but with the aim of making the most of the kit available, instead of overhead press and inverted row, we switched in the hammer strength machines and assisted pull-ups. As expected, Ped found these tough, but equally as expected, he rose to the challenge and worked as hard as he could.
Unfortunately the sometimes unreliable London Underground had me waiting in a tunnel a few times on the Piccadilly Line so I was running late (not acceptable from a Royal Marines point of view!). Anyway, I texted ahead and told Ped to jump on the treadmill for a warm-up prior to my arrival. I had planned on introducing Tabata Sprint openers to some of our sessions at some point and running late seemed like the perfect prompt to get Ped warmed-up for a go at it.
On my arrival, we did:
- Tabata sprints (8 x 20secs on, 10secs off) at 15kph at 1.5% gradient.
- Dumbbell chest press 16kg 12reps, 11reps, 10reps drop 12kg for 4reps, 8kg 6reps.
- Assisted pull-ups 40kg 10reps, 7reps, 6reps.
- Assisted dips 33kg 6reps, 40kg 7reps, 47kg 7reps
- Lat pull down 40kg 12reps, 12reps, 42.5kg 10reps, then dropsets: 42.5kg 10reps, 33kg 6reps, 26kg 10reps.
- Shoulder Press Hammer strength 10kg 12, 16.5kg 10reps, 9reps, 8reps into dropsets 10kg 4reps, 5kg 4reps.
Another great effort from Ped. The sprints at the beginning raised his heart rate and temperature as expected and meant that he started the session more physically fatigued than usual. This didn’t deter him however as he pushed through the upperbody session, not only combating completely new exercises well, but getting some pretty good numbers considering he only started doing resistance exercise 4 weeks ago.
I suspect Ped will be feeling the full effects of that session this weekend with the chest, lats, shoulders and arms all getting a thrashing. No rest for the wicked though, as we were back in the gym the following day (Friday) for Ped’s third and final Men’s Fitness Transformation session of the week. Session outline and blog post to come tomorrow…