As one of our new One-A-Day workouts, we focused on pressing exercises. On a 'pressing' day, we target our chest, shoulders and triceps (i.e. both horizontal and vertical planes of movement). As the chest is the largest muscle group, we will normally start our workouts targeting it, followed by an exercise targeting shoulders. Triceps assist in both chest and shoulder exercises, so we will rarely do a triceps-only exercise.
For this workout, we started with 8 bench press sets. We started out with a moderate weight and then increased it through each of the first five sets (consequently, our reps dropped as the weights increased). For the final three sets, we returned to our starting (moderate) weight (e.g. 225lbs for Alex). We finished the workout with 4 sets of alternating kettlebell presses. Thus, in total, we did 12 sets of presses.
Demonstration video 1 - Alternating Kettlebell Presses
Demonstration video 2 - Alternating Kettlebell Presses
This workout had a very different feel from our previous 'pushups' workout (which also targeted chest, shoulders and triceps). With pushups, our muscular endurance was really challenged. After a month of not doing any bench presses, the exercise was a struggle (e.g. Alex found 315lbs challenging, whereas before he had worked up to 345lbs).
The bench press was a great muscular strength challenge. The alternating dumbbell presses were also challenging, although perhaps that is because they were situated at the end of the workout. As we continue with this new program, we look forward to getting back into building strength and seeing some solid improvement!
- Tannys & Alex
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