No Holding Back

Hey ladies,

Hope all is well in your world of fitness!

I’m having a fairly good week so far. This week I have looked at myself and started to realize that I’m getting noticeably leaner now. It always seems like I’m plodding along with my prep and then out of nowhere -- BOOM -- hello veins! So, I’ll tell you about my workouts over the last few weeks, which quite honestly have left me wrecked! Today, I will talk to you about my back training. Seems like as good a bodypart to talk about as any, right?!

Before commencing my workout, I completed a couple of warm-up sets. Normally, I warm up with the exercise I’m about to start with ... although sometimes I mix it up. I did a couple of light sets on the lat pulldown, and then one light set of bent-over rows.

My first working exercise was a bent-over rows. My first working set was with a moderate weight, which, for me, was 10 kg on either side of the bar. Between my sets I am opting for no rest, so instead of resting for 20-30 seconds, I do a set of crunches in between. That way my back gets a rest, whilst my heart rate remains elevated from doing crunches. My 2/3/4 sets all adopt slightly heavier weights, but the intention is to keep the reps as high as I can manage.

Moving on to the second exercise, I opted for a plate loaded wide to narrow row. For this exercise, I commenced my first set with a wide grip, again using a moderately heavy weight. But rather than just completing a straight forward set, I opted for a set of 10 wide reps, followed by a 5-second rest, then continuing the set with another 10 reps using a narrow grip. So, this results in 20 reps total. I opted for a 20/30 second rest in between sets, and then I added additional weight and commenced my next set.

My next exercise was the lat pulldown. I find this to be the most popular back exercise in gyms, but it’s far from being my favourite back exercise. Anyway, as usual I opted for a fairly heavy weight (I guess something whereby I can complete about 10 reps comfortably). I decided to complete a few standard sets of 10-15 reps before moving on to a dropset. The way I decided to perform my dropset was to start at a weight I could manage for 10 reps, before lowering the weight slightly for another 10 reps. In total, I completed about 30 reps. By which time, my back felt smashed!

Following my back workout, I completed two exercises for my rear delts. I tend to train these with my back and it works well for me. I chose to do bent-over dumbbell lateral raises and cable reverse flyes. Whilst my back was fairly tired out, I just chose to do 3 sets of each exercise of around 15-20 reps with a low rest period. That was enough for me!

So that was my back workout finished. My workouts are so varied, and I’m very intuitive about my training. I don’t tend to keep to a rigid plan, although I always have a goal in mind of what I would like to achieve from my workout ... helps me stay focused!

Catch you all in my next blog!

Lou x