hi guys Mike Thurston here I hope you've all recovered from leg day - today it's
day two and we'll work out shoulders and chest. for me I find that my chest
is probably one of my strongest points, I also found my shoulders again it's quite
a strong point so what I tend to do is I'll combine both of them together into
one workout so that means I can then focus on my weaker areas and hit them
twice a week. first exercise we did flat dumbbell bench press and this one I was
keeping the negative reasonably slow so from top to the bottom of the movement
it was three seconds slight pause at the bottom stretch the pecs
and then pressing the dumbbells back to the top I won't press as heavy as I
possibly can, if I do it just means that my shoulders, particularly my front
delts do the majority of work and I can't really get that squeeze compared
to if I was doing a lighter weight so I keep the weight in which I can keep the
tension throughout the entire set so if I'm doing ten reps I want to make sure
that I can place the tension on my chest for those ten reps
we're doing 8 - 10 reps and four sets
with dumbbells I find that the range of motion is greater so I can get much
lower and when I bring the dumbbells back to the top it allows me to really
bring my elbows together and shorten the pec
next exercise we did a superset that was dumbbell lateral raises superset it with
a plate front raise. with dumbbell lateral raise trying to place the
tension on the mid point in my delt so I'm thinking about keeping my little
fingers higher than all my other fingers and making sure that I'm maybe leaning
forward ever so slightly and making sure that my torso is static throughout the
movement. the superset went on to the front raises with the plate you know
I'll mix up sometimes I'll do dumbbells today we did the plate was 20 kilograms
again just bringing it up to about eye level maybe a little bit higher slowly
on the way down I'm not going all the way down to the bottom and resting
because I will release the tension on my front delt I'm trying to keep time with
tension throughout this entire set so I'll bring it down nice and slowly and a
couple of inches before bringing it all the way down to my thighs I'm then going
to bring the weight back up again
sets and reps I did ten to twelve reps on lateral raises and then ten reps on
the plate front raise
next exercise was the upright cable press again superset it with cable
fly. now the reason why I've used a bench in this one is to ensure that I
keep my torso as upright as possible and to reduce any swinging backwards and
forwards creating any momentum with the press, I'm having the cable attachments
about shoulder height keeping my elbows high and when I'm pressing I'm pushing
my chest out as much as possible and having a little bit of an arch in my
lower back this again is to try and prevent my
shoulders from coming forward as I press so when I press I'm not thinking about
pushing the hand my hands out in front of me I'm thinking about bringing my
elbows together at the top of the movement so as I do this I bring my
elbows together and squeezing my pecs as much as possible so I'm going to go for
10 reps on that and then I'm going to lower the weight by a couple of pins again to
a weight which I can maintain tension across my chest and reduce my shoulders
from coming forwards and I'm going to go into a fly movement at the bottom of the
fly movement I'm going to bend my elbows slightly stretch my pecs and then I'm
going to push forward bring my elbows together and squeeze as much as possible
for another 10 reps
next exercise was a alternating overhead press so what I was doing with this one
i was pressing one dumbbell up at a time
the reason i'm doing this is because I'm maximizing the time under tension
throughout the sets instead of pressing both up, i'm actually pressing up one at a
time so therefore almost doubling the amount
of time my muscles are working so when you're doing this you're not going to be
able to press as heavy as you would do by pressing both for muscles at the same
time but it's still very effective nonetheless so again I'm going to keep
my hands and always be above my elbows in amount at what point in the press I'm
at so one up bring it all the way down as soon as I brought one arm all the way
down I'm going to bring the other one up so the arm that is not necessarily
resting but in the bottom position doesn't move your delt is constantly
under tension whilst the other one is being pressed up so we're going to go
for 20 reps on that so it's basically ten on each arm
so the next exercise went into another chest one superset with a closed grip
dumbbell press superset it with press ups. the close grip dumbbell press I'm
going to do this on a slight incline so I can place a little bit more tension
on upper chest and as I'm holding these dumbbells I'm constantly pushing them
together as hard as I possibly can so the harder you push your hands
together the greater the tension is going to be a cross the chest, and bear in
mind when you're doing this exercise you want to try and keep your shoulders back
throughout so go for a lighter weight and just remember the harder you push
together - the better. once you've done that we're then going to go on to press
ups or just basic press ups with very strict form so I'm making sure hands
about just wider than shoulder width apart my whole body is straight and
aligned at the top I'm going to do a slight squeeze and then back down to the
bottom again we'll go to ten reps and during the the last set maybe the
second to last set we'll go to failure
the last one was a standing cable fly the reason why I like to do this one is
because the forces are acting slightly different when compared to doing just a
standard dumbbell fly, the hardest point in the movement is when the cable
is at 90 degrees to your arm so it's actually gonna be in this position so
you're just hitting the strength curve with an angle keep your chest out
shoulders back torso straight then we know the swinging backwards and forwards
to try and get the weight up you know bring it up slowly slight pause at the
top and then slow negative three two one and then back up we're going to go for
fifteen reps on that one so because it's a it's the last exercise I'll do a bit
more finisher and maybe on the last set I'll do 15 reps to drop the weight
probably another 10 reps and then probably hit maybe ten partial reps
where I'm just going halfway up and just bouncing up and down
that was day two guys come back tomorrow and make sure check out my back workout