After a good leg session the day before, Ped was raring to go for an upper body session. He’s had a good rest in terms of upperbody with the weekend and the cover shoot on Monday and leg sessions sandwiching that break. The session was pretty simple: intervals to start as is now the norm then supersets of push and pull (or pull and push) aiming for 8-12 reps per exercises. Rests were kept to 60-75 seconds and tempo 2010 – slow and controlled throughout.

We opted for the watt bike over the rower for intervals as I think the rower could be niggling at Ped’s hip less than the bike. They both work him hard, and as I always say; “Variation is key” so it’s good to change it up anyway.

The session looked like:

Warm-up/mobility

1. Watt bike sprints Tabata sprints: 20sec sprint, 10sec slow x 8
2. Supersets:
   1. Incline DB press 16kg 12reps x 4
   2. Inverted row underhand 12, 10, 10, 8
3. Supersets
   1. Cable row 46kg 10, 12, 12, 12
   2. DB chest press 18kg 10, 12, 12, 12
4. Supersets
   1. Shoulder/push press 25kg 8/4, 7/3, 5/5, 20kg 9/3
   2. Lat pull down 52kg 10, 48kg 12, 12, 10

I was really pleased with Ped’s performance: 18kg dumbbell chest press is literally a 10kg increase per hand from where he started 7 weeks ago. When we began, Ped was a complete newcomer to this exercise. His synergists did not have the strength and he did not have the co-ordination to lift anymore than 8kg. Both 10kg and 12kg were milestones, however, seeing Ped now managing sets of 12 with 18kg was excellent. We will see how he does with 20kg in our next session.