TeenBodybuilding.com - Alton Hare - Building A Champion 11.

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Did you know?
'There is nothing more to peaking biceps than just curling.' - Arnold

There's a fine line between endurance training and power training.

Training Journals: Main Page

My Training Journal
Entries: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

What can I say? The lifts keep climbing, the second week of this article is full of gains over the 1st week and the week before it. Be sure to compare!

Monday, chest/tris, April 1st

Bench Press: 290x6. 290x6, 290x5, 290x4 plus 1 forced
DB Press: 115sx6, 5, 5 plus a 10 second negative
Dips w/ a 45#: 10,9,8
skullcrushers: 115x6, 105x6, 95x6 (I dunno my triceps
just weren't havin' it today, they felt strong up
until the fifth rep then they just...stopped. Oh
well it happens)
Cable Pressdowns: 70x10, 70x7, 60x8
Push-ups: like 16

Tuesday, back and biceps

Today my dad came to visit all the way from Kentucky, so I trained with him. He was doing legs and biceps though, so we had to go at it separately.

Barbell Row: 225x7 (new PR) I was only gonna do 6 like my plan calls for, but then my dad said, "Bet you can't do 7" so of course I had to do 7
225x5 plus 1 forced
225x5
225x4

DB Row: 115sx8, 7, 7r 6L

Straight bar, palms facing each other pulldowns: 115x8, 110x9, 105x8
Seated CG Rows: I'm not exactly sure what I did on here, weight was 105-115 and reps were 8-10
barbell curls: 75x10, 85x8, 95x6 (biceps already burnt from heavy back training)
dumbbell curls: 25sxfailure

Wednesday, legs

Deep Squat: 395x3, 345x6
Leg Press: 18 platesx6, 16 platesx8, 16 platesx8
Superset leg extensions and leg curls, went up a plate on the extensions

Thursday, incline chest/shoulders

Incline Press:235x6, 225x7, 225x5 (WAY up from last Thursday, check it out)
DB Incline: 90sx9, 8, 6 (Also up from last week)
Incline flyes superset w/ cable crossovers, 45s on flyes then 40s for last 2 sets, all 8-12
Rear lateral raises: 15s for all three sets of 8-12, last set dropped to 12s for another 6 reps.
Standing lateral raises: the usual, drop from 30s to 25s to 20s, probably start doing regular sets next week because these strip sets are getting old.
Dumbbell presses: 50sx12, 11 go to 55s next week

Friday, iso back/biceps

I had to work early today so I didn't have much time, turned into just a bicep day, minus hammer curls and a set of cable curls. My elbow joints were hurting anyway and I wasn't sure if they could take much more hammering on more pulldown motions. Took a much needed off day for back, and trained biceps with only half the volume.

Barbell curls: 115x6, 105x7, 95x8
Cable curls: 70x10, 9

That was it, bicep strength was good, though they were slightly sore, and my tendon in my elbow hurt like crazy. I have the weekend to let it rest.

Monday, heavy chest/tris

Elbows feel much better today, pain free even after all four sets of heavy failure benches.

Bench Press: 295x6,6,5,4 (Exact same reps as last week but with 5 extra pounds, that's a lot of increase in one week)
DB Press: 115sx7, 6, 6 (these 115s are starting to feel so much lighter, I have to do them in perfect form to stay in a lower rep range. Coming out wide now and getting a nice contraction, stretch at bottom.

When I first started doing them I had to really "muscle" it up on every rep, now I don't start grunting it up until rep 5 or 6. I'd really like to push it and go heavier but my gym doesn't have any heavier dumbbells, and there's not another gym in my area).

Dips w/ #45: 12, 10, 9 (too light, time to go with a 55 lb. Dumbbell)
Dumbbell flyes; 50sx8, 7, 45sx8
Skullcrushers: 115x7, 105x8 (good to see these back where their supposed to be, I also decided to cut it back to only two sets since that was working well earlier for triceps. It makes sense because triceps get SO much assistance work in all my pressing movements)
Cable Pressdowns: 75x8, 70x9
push ups: 17

Tuesday, heavy back/biceps

Barbell row: 230x6, 225x6, 225x5, 225x4 (barely got the 230 for six, so i decided it would be a good idea to decrease the weight slightly to stay in my 4-6 range, I was right).
DB Row: 115sx8, 8r 7L, 9R 6L (same way on rows as on presses, I go with perfect form on the first two sets, going for feel, tension, squeeze/stretch etc., but on the last set I decided to grunt it out and power it up, and got an extra rep. All sets were still to failure, just the last set was in different style, if I had some 120s or 125s to start out with then drop to the 115s I'd be alright...oh well)
Straight bar palms facing pulldowns: 120x8, 115x8, behind the neck 125x6
Seated CG Cable Rows: 120x8, 115x8, 110x9
Barbell curls: 75 pounds for 21's (read BC8 or BC9 and you will see I started with 55 pounds on 21's, quite an impressive gain in bicep strength) and that was it for that day.

Wednesday, legs

Went to a math competition in Wilmington today, and it was hot and humid the whole hour and a half ride there, and the whole ride back. Besides that I couldn't sleep at all last night, I haven't slept very well since I came back from spring break. I didn't regulate my sleep patterns like I should have and I'm paying for it. So, by the time I walked into the gym today I really felt horrible. I mean no life, no energy, nothing. What's worse today was going to be my first parallel squat day to see how much I've gained from doing deep squats. Previously 405x3 was my best, so I went for 410 today, because I wasn't going to let a bad day ruin my workout.

410x3, 365x6 (365x6 shouldn't have been hard but it was, I dug really deep and felt faint and dizzy after I finished, next week when I feel better I'm gonna go for 415x3 and 365x8)
Leg Press: 18 platesx4, 16 platesx7
I stopped here because beyond this point I was just tearing my body down further, plus my weights sucked.
I looked on the bright side, I did increase my parallel squat even on a shitty day, and went home.

Thursday, incline chest/shoulders

Feeling quite a bit better today, was sure to go to bed early and drink lots of water through the day. Not quite at 100%, but I maintained my strength gains from last week.

Incline press: 235x6, 225x7, 225x5
Incline DB press: 90sx8, 8, 7
Superset flyes and cable crossovers, stayed with 45s on all 3 sets for the flyes
Rear Lateral raises: 15sx12, 10, 9 drop to 12sx6
Standing lateral raises: 30sx6, 25sx9, 25sx8 (regular sets this time)
Front DB Presses: 55sx10, 9 (started out doing these with 45s)

Friday, iso back/heavy biceps

Preacher Curls: 85x9, 7, 75x8

After these sets I noticed something disturbing, my right bicep has grown out of proportion with my left bicep. Its apparent when I hit a front double bicep, my right one is peaked a little more and my left one is more flat. I took a minute to decide exactly how to take care of this problem, here is my solution:

DB Curls: 30sx11 immediately grab a 25 and do isolation curls with left arm only to failure
25sx10 same but grabbed 20s for the left arm
25sx8 same

Cable Curls: 50x10, immediately do one arm cable curls with my left arm to failure
50x9, then the same
55x6 then the same

A few hours after my workout, when my pump was gone, I measured each arm to see how much difference there is, my right arm is about 17 and one eighth, and my left is 16.75, so quite a bit. .This is the first time I measured my left arm, I will be sure to do it regularly in the future. Anyway, I'm going to continue in this manner, after each set of biceps immediately doing an isolation exercise for just the left arm to add more volume to it. On Saturday my left arm was a little sore, proving I worked it harder, since my biceps almost never get sore.

My elbows began to bother me again towards the end of this week, I'm debating on whether to take next week off or not. It might benefit me, but at this point taking a whole week off from training is almost scary.

I just don't want to stop, I'm gaining so fast and I don't want to lose momentum. But then I might lose momentum anyway from overtraining. Plus if something happens to my elbows then I could lose a lot more than just a week. I am feeling less focused and motivated during my workouts, but I think that's because of my less than optimal sleeping patterns lately. I think if I get plenty of sleep this weekend I can come back Monday fully charged. I will wait and see how I feel Monday and go from there.

- Alton

beautifuldisaster420@yahoo.com