Gvt

[IronFist]

Tonight was the first night of German Volume Training (10 sets of 10) in my workout schedule that I posted a few days ago. I decided to do it for bench.

First of all, you totally can't have an ego when you're using low enough weights to bench for 10 sets of 10. This is especially true if you're like me, and end up having to take off weight as you go to below 50% of your 1RM because you can't even complete 10 reps. It was like this:

10 reps
10 reps
10 reps
8 reps
less weight
8 reps
less weight
8 reps
wtf less weight
10 reps
10 reps
10 reps <--- about 47% of 1RM

And bench press ****es me off in general because my shoulders decide that they should take over for my chest and my triceps. It drives me nuts. I see a huge pump in my front deltoids and a little pump in my chest and nothing in my triceps and I get ****ed off. "hey, maybe my shoulders can get even bigger," I think. "Then I'd be even more out of proportion!"

Maybe I should do it with decline bench press instead. That's supposed to take your delts out of the equation even more.

Oh yeah, as I was saying, 10 sets of 10 is nuts. I didn't even get 10 reps in each set, as you can see above. It sucks because you're lifting this pansy-ass weight (relative to what you normally lift) and it starts to burn like hell. After doing low rep high weight stuff, the only thing I was thinking was "there's no way this is making me stronger." It's worse for me because my endurance is like non-existant to start with. Oh well. Maybe I'll get some endurance out of it.

I can't wait to do it for squats tomorrow!

IronFist

[Cheese Dog]

Hey Ironfist, how much rest do you get between sets on GVT? If it's short it should give you some strength-endurance.

Decline presses would use less front delts, although I've read that doing them too much can give you "bottom heavy" pecs. (Man-boobs!)
I wouldn't worry about that unless you did them alot, though.

[abobo]

The man boobs thing is surely a myth.

[rubthebuddha]

aye, for similar reasons to the argument of "upper" and "lower" abs.

regardless, who wants to risk having he-hooters? :p

[Serpent]

Hey Iron - try a Matrix Set. Here's one for arm curls that had me in agony for about three days. Seriously, I couldn't straighten my arms without crying out loud!

Take three exercises for a body part - as I said, I'll lay one out for arm curls for an agonising biceps burn.

Exercises:

1. Dumbell curls
2. Barbell Curls
3. Barbell preacher curls

First round:

(You need to do a split set on this exercise which = 5 reps bottom half of the exercise (low to 90 degrees/halfway), then 5 reps upper half (high to 90 degrees/halfway) then 5 full reps. We'll call this method 15's.)

OK, so it goes like this - this is one set with only 20 seconds between each exercise:

Exercise 1. - 15's
Exercise 2. - 10reps
Exercise 3. - 10 reps

Ex. 1. - 10 reps
Ex. 2. - 15's
Ex. 3. - 10 reps

Ex. 1. - 10 reps
Ex. 2. - 10 reps
Ex. 3. - 15's

OK, now if you can make it through one set of that with anything close to 50% 1RM then you're seriously working it. This gave me DOMS like I never knew it was possible to have and I was using something like 7 kilo dumbells and a 12 kilo bar!

If you're needing a plateau busting exercise, this is it!

[Ford Prefect]

Cheese Dog,

generally between 30-90 seconds is used to rest during GVT sets. 90 seconds would be for prime movers like squats.

IronFist,

That's why I liked the OVT approach. You do two supersets like:

Superset - 5x5 Bench and 5x5 Flies
then
Superset - 5x5 Decline Press and 5x5 Incline Flies

Anyway, two other things I like to do to rock my chest at the end of a workout is to:

1) Hit the Hammer-strength Bench machine. I'll through on a couple 45's on each side and have a couple 25's and 10's on standby. I'll fail with the couple 45's and take one off and put on a 25, fail with that, take it off, and add a 10, fail with that take it off, etc etc down to when I only have a 10 on each side. (ie a strip set) Do 2 of these or 1 on the flat and one on the incline.

2) Doing Dumbell Presses and doing flies negatives during the yielding portion, and then press it in the overcoming portion.

[IronFist]

) Doing Dumbell Presses and doing flies negatives during the yielding portion, and then press it in the overcoming portion.

You know what, I was thinking about that the other day. Now that I've heard you confirm that it might be a good exercise I might just give it a shot.

Superset - 5x5 Bench and 5x5 Flies
then
Superset - 5x5 Decline Press and 5x5 Incline Flies

Hmmm. No. I don't do any incline work at all. To me, incline pressing is exactly the same as overhead pressing. It's all shoulder and no pecs. Even flat benching for me has the muscle recruitment of an incline press for a normal person. But I might try that, too. Who know?

Thanks for the input.

IronFist

[IronFist]

I did squats tonight. I got all 10 reps for each set so I was happy. I did the first 7 sets as box squats, but I didn't think I'd be able to get the last 3 with the box, so I did them regularly.

I think I felt it in my lower back more than in my quads. Is that normal for box squat? I assume lower back is part of the "posterior chain." But the hamstring involvement felt to be about the same as with regular squats. I guess I'll be able to tell tomorrow when I'm sore.

I had to lower the weight twice. After the 5th set, and again after the 6th set. I guess I started with too high of a weight again.

It was pretty tough, though. I was definately sweating, and after the 8th set or so my pulse was 156. I rested for 60-90 seconds between sets, with it being closer to 60 in the beginning and closer to 90, and a few times a little bit more toward the end.

I tell you, regular squats feel so much lighter than box squats! That probably means that box squats are awesome for you.

Once I was done with all that, my triceps were not sore at all despite GVT for bench yesterday (my pecs were sore, though, and of course my front delts), so I did some skull crushers with a dumbell in each hand (much harder than skull crushers with the curlbar) and had an awesome triceps workout afterward.

IronFist

[fa_jing]

"I guess I'll be able to tell tomorrow when I'm sore."

Very true. I find that different muscles become sore at different times based on different kinds of workouts.

For example, when I practice weighted pistols I feel it in my quads the most a few hours later. Then I'll go to sleep, and when I wake up, the quads feel fine. But progressing towards the afternoon, I will feel a tremendous soreness in my spinal erector and glutes.
If I do hamstring work, soreness usually peaks in 2 days. If I do pec or calf work, I usually feel it the most the following day.

My shoulders are never sore. A little tired maybe.

Also, there are different kinds of soreness you can feel - hi rep/endurance work causes a certain kind of soreness - like your muscles are on fire - low rep strength work produces more of a dull, deep ache.