Extremely busy day.
I had clients back to back from 7am-4pm (2 of which were half hour clients so 11 total today) and I managed to knock out a few chapters of my current ebook I'm writing (a big one) before that.
Then, tonight I had an amazing upper body session with a focus on military press and pullups.
(20 minute casual AMRAP)
A1: 2KB military press-8,6,6,6,6,6
A2: Ring Pullups-6,5,5,5,5,5
Then
B1: incline DB curls-10,8,7
B2: cable pushdown-15,11,10
C1: cable lateral raise-10/10, 10/10
Total Time = 42 minutes
This is a fun way to structure programs.
Basically, I'll pick 2 big compound exercises and alternate between those 2 exercises for 15-30 minutes.
I call this a "casual AMRAP" because while I'm technically doing as many rounds of those 2 exercises as possible, I'm not actually concerned with racing the clock.
During those 20 minutes, I did a set of military presses, rested 1-2 minutes, then did a set of pullups, rested 1-2 minutes, and repeated.
When working antagonist muscle groups back to back, I don't require as much rest between sets. I need to rest enough for my heart rate to come back down, but I don't need to rest long enough for fatigue to dissipate in the muscles I just trained because I'm working the opposite muscle groups/movement pattern.
In this example, I'm doing a military press – a vertical press (which targets the shoulders, triceps, and chest).
Usually I might need 2-3 minutes after a challenging set before doing another set of vertical presses.
But, my heart rate and lungs recover around 1-2 minutes, which means I'm ready to give a strong effort in another exercise so long as the second exercise does not train the same movement pattern or muscle group.
In today's case, I followed military presses with pullups – a vertical pull (which targets the back, biceps, and forearms).
I then rest 1-2 minutes for my heart rate to come back down before doing my next set of military presses, which results in around 3-5 minutes between each set of the same exercise.
Therefore, compounding antagonist movement patterns/muscle groups allows me to get nearly twice as much work done in the same time frame.
I like the 15-30 minute window because I'm able to auto regulate my volume of those 2 main, compound exercises for the day based on how many reps I do per set, how much weight I use, how closely to failure I take each set, and how much time I need to recover between sets.
It's refreshing to just set the clock and work through a couple exercises without any specific target of sets to do. I always find I sneak in more quality volume this way.
Today I got 6 sets of military press and pullups done in that time frame, and, while I didn't go super close to failure, I accumulated 38 total reps of military press and 31 total reps of ring pullups. That's more reps than I usually get in my compound exercises when doing 2-3 sets closer to failure, so I think that's something to consider.
It's a simple, stress-free form of density training and you can easily adjust it to be more conditioning focused or hypertrophy focused based on your long term goals.
After that 20 minutes is up, I knock out a few isolation exercises. Today that was a compound set of incline dumbbell curls and cable pushdowns (which benefit from the same antagonist superset theory as I mentioned above, allowing me to get more work done in less time).
I finished out with 2 sets of cable lateral raises. The cable lateral raise set up I have going, currently, feels amazing.
Comments