Thursday, March 12, 2009

Hardcore Workouts

Had a great workout yesterday. I did...

1) Bench Press
2) Clean
3A) Dumbell Incline Press
3B) Dumbbell Row
3C) Back Extensions

I thought I was one tough dude after doing that...
 
But last night, I flew down to Newark, NJ, and met up with legendary strength coach, Zach Even-Esh. We're doing a seminar on Thursday and Friday.

Zach took a look at my workout and said, "Bro, you can make that even tougher."

And then he suggested this...

REAL Man Workout # 1
 
1A) bench 4 x 3 - 6 reps (pyramid each set)
1B) clean 4 x 3 - 6 reps (pyramid each set)
 
** no rest between A & B, rest 1 min. after B

2A) db incline 3 x 6 - 10 (pyramid each set) - medium, heavy, heavier
2B) 1 arm db row 3 x 10 - 15 (1 medium set, 2 heavy sets)

(Zach rows 130 for 20 + reps and 150 for 10+ reps, no wimpy weights! I was only using 110 for 10 reps!)

3) back extension or KB swings 2 x 15 - 20 reps ==> superset with an ab exercise for same rep range
 
OR, Zach said to place a time limit on each superset, say 5 minutes and hit max rounds in 5 minutes, reps on bench and clean would be sets of 5, reps on incline and 1 arm row would be 10 each
 
It gets brutal with supersets for time!
 
Whew! That's tough just thinking about it.
 
If you want to train hard to the core...
 
 
Tomorrow, Zach shares with us how to "toughen up" a bodyweight workout.

Stay strong,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
 
PS - Zach has a special gift waiting for you here:
 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool Craig - can you define the goals around "tougher"? Is this designed for strength? Hypertrophy? Definition? I'm guessing strength, but the short/tiny rest periods make me wonder...

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

130lbs or kgs??**???!!