- Good, I'm ready to rock and roll. (laughs)
- [Mark Voiceover] This is Mark Ottobre here.
Going to be reviewing this workout
that I did with Anna McManamey
who is a WBFF pro bikini athlete.
She is one hell of an athlete, trains very very hard,
great movement patterns.
In the A1 A2 series, basically what we are doing here
is a seated neutral grip shoulder press.
Movement is pretty good, she moves very well.
I really do enjoy training Anna because she trains hard
and she's got good body awareness.
A little bit more extension through the thoracic
possibly with the dumbbell press
and in straightening her arms a little bit
which I'm trying to get her to do when we're doing this.
Mostly it's good.
With the lat pulldown, what I'm doing is
I've used a neutral grip narrow handle
and getting her to retract.
Neutral grip you can use a lot more weights.
You can see that she's not retracting as hard
and as good as I would've liked.
She can and the latest is I get her retracting more.
But she's a little bit trap-y in this
so I'm trying to get her to use her lats a bit more,
trying to get her to retract, pull through her rhomboids.
But, she's a little bit trap-y
and that's why I've put my hand on her shoulders.
Just trying to get her to pull everything down.
We have a bit of a bicep-off, always fun
to have a bicep-off with bikini athletes
because yours a lot bigger, ha, ha.
Anyway, round two.
We look at this here and see how she's moving.
She's retracting, she's pulling down
a lot better on this set here.
You can see that, she's a lot less trap-y.
Obviously for bikini competitors,
we don't wanna develop the traps, that's for sure.
At the start of the workout, the A1, A2
really getting her use her lats and overload the lats.
We did go fairly heavy.
We worked up to a fairly maximal weight.
She's smiling there on the lat pulldown.
Just overload, really wanted to overload the lats
and overload the back.
She came in with a little bit of shoulder issues
as you can see in the video here, she was complaining.
So we did some accessory work what we call the big three.
Here we're doing the exercises now, the big three.
Big three again was an exercise taught to me by Andrew Ox.
You do 10 sets, oh sorry, not 10 sets.
10 reps over T raise and then you do 10 reps
of a hands-by-side shoulder flexion pronated
and then shoulder flexion supinated.
That really does fire up the shoulders, fires up the back,
gets you recruiting the right muscles in the right order
so you're activating correctly.
That's what we're really after here.
We do a few sets of those, that really works.
The way I normally advise to do this is
normally if I was do it at number one,
one thing I should say is I instruct the client
when they're on the floor,
"Imagine that you're on the Rialto Tower
"and the Rialto Tower is made out of thin glass
"so when you come down, don't crash down.
"If you crash down, the glass breaks and you die
"and you fall to your death.
"We don't wanna fall to our death.
"We wanna bring the dumbbells down slowly and carefully."
That's super, super important.
I like to do three sets at either the start of the workout
or at the end of the workout.
I do use this as an activation for the shoulders.
You might be saying, "What do you mean activation?
"Aren't the shoulders were already activated?"
Well, no, not really.
The thing is people come out,
it's the whole thing of warm-up.
The brain needs to engage with the body parts.
So part of this is helping people find what you mean
by staying tight through the shoulders
and activating those muscles.
So when you go back to a shoulder press overhead press,
all the stabilizing muscles are switched on
and they're nice and stable.
Part of that is also the triceps
so usually shen she says,
"Oh my tricep is flexing up in this."
Yeah, absolutely.
The tricep also helps stabilize the shoulder
which is something that a lot of people
don't really pay attention to or think about.
I've got a good therapist friend, Phil,
and he actually taught me that what a shoulder should be.
It can actually come from the tricep or the bicep.
In shoulder stability, I always look at
the tricep, bicep tendons, for example,
to make sure the shoulder help is good.
I don't know what I'm explaining there
but let's just roll with it.
Now I'm explaining that Anna has got a winged scap.
Her scap is quite winged.
This is a quick test I get people to do
see whether the scap is winged or not.
Her scap is winged
which means she's got poor scapular control.
Don't worry, Anna, I do too.
The more you train, the more your imbalances come on.
She wanted to get her bench press up
which obviously she's a bikini competitor
so why the hell would she want her bench press up
is beyond me, but if she did,
we need to get that shoulder more control.
The scap isn't stable, it does flair out
when she puts her hand behind her back
which is a very simple test you use for scapular control.
Serratus anterior is often responsible for that
so strengthen the serratus anterior
because that's where the, I don't remember the muscle,
but that's where it inserts to so the scapi is controlled.
You need the serratus anterior to be strong
to control the scapula.
Now we head back into the workout.
We have a giant set that's coming up.
It's four exercises and we're doing Annie presses.
So where we do Annie presses
as I've just rearranged Anna's hands,
is I put the dumbbells straight in front of her face
and then she's up and straight over the head.
If you look at her right arm,
she's not extending the elbow as much as I would've liked.
I would've liked that a little bit more straight.
I am quite a stickler for form.
I'm not one of these people who just load, load, load,
although obviously you need heavy weights,
but it's heavy weights moved well to reduce injuries.
The elbow is the shot shoulder particularly,
it's coming from the tricep for Anna.
It's giving a little bit of grief.
That's why she's probably not extending
as good as I would've liked.
She's not straight up over head.
You can see she's stopping short on those movements.
But that's the only one, it's not gonna stop her.
This is funny because I got her the mag grip handle.
It's the maximum advantage grip.
I really love the maximum advantage grip handles
for bikini competitors
because that way it cuts out any real grip issues
but also makes the scap works super hard.
I've got the super wide one for her in this workout.
The reason why I did that is I really wanted to hit the lats
and wants her to hit the lats hard.
We'll get some different camera angles of this
and you'll see her lats working from behind.
She just gets wider and wider and wider during this workout.
You can see that beautiful V shape from behind.
Everything is working, lats are working nice.
Getting her to do another 12 or 15 reps here.
Annie presses, we did 10, 12 reps.
We did 15 reps here.
We move into this, I love this thing.
I just came up with, just because I'm a bastard I suppose,
but I came up with this, a mermaid press.
Lots of people do mermaid presses
but I kind of got the idea from the mermaid press.
Mermaid lat raises, so I got her to do mermaid lat raises.
She's sitting on the floor, can't use any legs.
A lot of people love to bounce with the lat raise.
This is really making her work those doubts.
What I've just done there is
I've pulled her back from the side
so she really has to use the lateral head of the doubts.
Doubts are really firing now.
I could rotate her elbows just a little bit more
but it's working.
You can see those doubts working,
just keep it from the side.
And if she does comes too far forward, you can see
how I'm pushing her back to make sure it's just side doubt.
Really what I want her is I want her shoulders to grow.
I'm just thinking about side doubts.
Get the side doubts to grow.
When she stands up on stage, pop, those doubts come out,
it enhances her figure, the bigger her shoulders are,
the smaller her waist will look,
the tighter her tummy will look
and the better she aesthetically will portray.
Stand up, she does as many as she can sitting down
then we stand up and she does the same thing.
I push forward, get her to engage the abs.
I get her to roll the hips forward
and she has to angle with my hands.
Everybody wants to come a little bit
too far forward on this.
Make them come so they have to use the side there.
You can see there she is really using the side down there.
She's too far forward, no side doubts.
That's what I'm watching for.
It's not just random putting my hands here or doing this.
Everything I do in a workout
has a specific purpose and reason.
She could be a little bit tighter.
She's bouncing a little bit but that's okay.
She's getting quite tired here
so getting her to cheat a little bit to get the reps up.
But everything has a very, very specific purpose
when we do it, it's not random.
Then straight back into this would be a B5.
This is a narrow maximum advantage grip.
She's leaning a little bit too far back.
Want her to really use her scapula.
Keep her hips still, keep her knees still.
You can see my hand on her knees just to get her knees
not moving because I don't want her to bend her knees.
As you can see, she's doing a little bit.
She's bending and breaking at the knees.
I don't want that.
I want her knees to stay exactly still,
her hips to stay still.
My instruction there is, "Crush my fists with your scap."
As I get her to come back, that's what my cuing is.
Now I've got her knee in the air back to really help her.
Keep up talk because I don't want her to lean back.
If she leans back, she's gonna start using lower back.
I want the lever point, as you can see here,
now she's really having to work for it
because she can't sway back.
When people sway back,
they're offsetting the load into the lower back.
That's not what I want.
I want the load directly.
This is an awesome one, not my bicep,
but my bicep is pretty awesome, come on folks.
This is one that I do for the redoubts.
It's a cool one.
She was pretty fried at this point
so it probably wasn't the most effective thing to do.
But you can see her redoubts are activating
helping her out a bit.
Got super wide grip pulled down, super wide grip.
It's not all the way up.
It's just basically get some reps, get some activation,
get the lats firing, get the redoubts firing
because they do fire when you do a wide-grip.
I'm getting her to do a wide grip without any retraction.
She looks great.
She actually came in a little flat.
Then after this workout, wow, she just popped up.
Shoulder's looking tremendous.
Everything just really came in,
filled out amazingly during this workout.
I was pretty happy the way this workout went.
What we're doing here is a redoubt combination
that I really like.
Again, just instructing her to keep it forward.
I don't want that to come behind,
it needs to be in the redoubt.
A lot of people will start using the rhomboids and lats
and rotating so I'm really just instructing her
to keep super, super tight and keeping the redoubt.
You can see it, you can see it in the video here
the redoubts are working, I'm keeping the arm in front
of her body, the elbow in line with the ear.
That's what I'm looking for, and no rotation.
A lot of the time, we gotta go a lot lighter than you think.
I'm also using this as a neutral grip.
A lot of people will approach a redoubt
and they will use the grip their palm facing.
What I get people to do is a neutral grip.
You can see she's rotating a little bit here.
So this set's pretty much over.
We change arms.
You see that redoubt working.
It's not a huge motion.
You can see I get her to stop short.
A lot of people come all the way in which is really,
I suppose, the back is taking over if you do that.
You can see in the behind, there's not a lot of weight.
We've used one brick.
You can see how much she struggles because again,
the redoubt, it's not a big muscle, folks.
If you're using it correctly and redoubt activating it,
it's not a big muscle so you gotta lock it in.
Anna, I think we had a great workout.
I know I had a lot of fun, think Anna had a lot of fun.
That was round one.
We did four rounds of basically...
What we did was four rounds of A1 and A2
which was a shoulder press and the lat pulldown.
That was the narrow lat pulldown.
Then we did B1, B2, B3, B4, B5.
We did four rounds of that.
Then we did three rounds of redoubts.
Then we finished off with this which was a Y raise.
It's a 45 degree Y raise, I really love this one.
This is great for posture, thoracic exten...
It really shouldn't be thoracic extension
if you've got good thoracic extension which Anna does.
You can kind of cheat the movement.
As the French would say, you wanna be using your trap three
on this or kind of more traditionally
in westernized strength circles
you can really just look at it as rhomboids.
Really activating.
What I'm doing there is getting her to flex her abs
because if she doesn't flex her abs,
she switches her abs off
and she uses thoracis extension to get up.
I don't want thoracic extension.
I want her coming straight up
and I want the tension to be in her upper back.
I'm just assisting, helping the brain figure out
where the end range is.
What I'm looking at here is I want her bicep
always to be over her ear, always to be over her ear.
Again folks, I'm not just training her randomly
like getting in a whole bunch of exercises
for the hell of it, everything has a purpose.
You can see here extending above her ear
getting her to hold.
Actually I'm getting her to pause for four seconds.
I'm counting four, three, two, one.
Always checking in.
Always poking people making sure that the abs are on.
You can see that she's working very, very hard.
What she did there was beautiful, she flexed her abs,
she flexed her dumb, she kept tight, and then extended up.
But that's the way to do it.
If you wanna train WBFF pros,
if you wanna train any professional athlete,
you gotta be on it, you gotta be on it, folks,
you gotta be on it.
With me there's no chance,
it's everything is done and done for a reason.
There has to be a reason behind the programming.
She's losing her dumb a little bit there.
I would like her flexing the bum harder.
You just gotta keep on her.
I'm just gonna show her this, this was for the video,
but this is shoulder extension.
It's a movement that is hardly ever done.
I learned this from Christoper Sommers
from the gymnastics body circle.
It really implemented into the physique coaching world.
Not a whole lot of physique coaches
or bikini competitor coaches
that would be doing this movement
but I think it's amazing, I really do.
There's not a whole lot of people who can do it
and we wanna do it with caution.
As you can see is I'm talking through it.
Flex your bum, flex your abs,
and then you're extending up through the shoulder.
The better the flexibility you have,
the closer your hands can come.
That's just a stick, but a 1.25 kilo one.
My biceps are flexing up, triceps are flexing up,
chest is flexing up and just using shoulder extension.
Again, shoulder extension is just a movement
that isn't done but if you want that extra bit of detail
in your upper back and muscles
where most people don't have muscles,
shoulder extension, it's what it's about.
Anna grabs it with a reverse grip.
You want backward there
which is what we call supinated grip.
It's supinated grip
and out for the correct shoulder extension.
She does it perfectly, she does it really well.
Over time, she's got her abs on, that's fantastic.
Those hands will come in closer, there's no doubt.
But you see a lot of gymnasts do this movement.
You won't see a lot of bikini competitors do this movement.
I think it's a real shame, I think it's a real shame.
You'll see mine, people who I work with,
you'll see them do shoulder extension because it's great.
It's really a great movement.
Shoulder health stabilizing, you can see that.
You can see her redoubts working.
You can see everything flexing up.
That's just the detail that she's gonna have on stage
that other competitors won't.
She burns out pretty fast
because, again, she's not used to this movement.
You can see, she's done,
fried completely from that movement.
It is a great one.
So this is it.
Anna and I, we have a lot of fun in our workouts.
Hope you enjoyed that.
If you have any questions on working out
or wanna see me take someone else
through a different workout, drop us a line here.
You can shoot it at info@enterprisefitness.com.au
from the email, but who emails these days?
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and let us know what you think of the video.
Post your comments below.
Hope you enjoyed.
My name is Mark Ottobre,
owner and director of Enterprise Fitness.
I take training seriously.
Til I speak to you next time,
try hard, supplement smart and eat well.