The 30 Minute Physique Experiment Day 11

The 30 Minute Physique Experiment Day 11

08/21/2025 Training Log. Push (EMOM)

Warm up: rear delt flyes; kettlebell pullover dead bugs

All sets were done in Every Minute on the Minute (EMOM) fashion.

Ex 1: single arm kettlebell overhead press-6/6, 6/6, 5/5, 5/5 (alternating between left and right arm each minute. 4 sets of each, 8 sets/minutes total)

Ex 2: feet elevated pushups (on perfect pushup handles)-12,8,6,6,6

Ex 3: dumbbell skull crushers-6,6,6,6,6,6

Ex 4: seated dumbbell lateral raise-12,10,10,10,10

Total Time = 25 minutes

Awesome backyard session out in the sun.

Ridiculous pump.

The feet elevated pushups on perfect pushup handles really surprised me with the EMOM fashion. I love pushups but often find them biting as a main movement in training because I feel like I need to do so many reps to get close to failure. I learned long ago that EMOM training works great for bodyweight exercises like pushups and pullups.

By decreasing your rest periods you can do more traditional moderate reps and find yourself fighting gravity, eventually even losing to gravity.

But doing every minute on the minute sets of pushups with my feet elevated on a 14 inch box and using "perfect pushup handles" was outrageous. 

In a good way. 

They were soooo challenging and humbling. 

When using perfect pushup handles, I like to start with my hands pronated (palms facing my hips in pushup position) and as I begin pressing up, I rotate my hands so that I finish the reps in a supinated (palms facing in front of my body) hand position. I noticed this technique watching calisthenic trainees perform pushups on gymnastics rings. I find this rotational movement in the hands lights up my chest and also forces me to slow down my reps. I should add that I always try to take around 3 seconds during the lowering phase of each pushup.

But man oh man alive. I wasn't not expecting to be failing on rep 6 for the last 3 sets. It was nothing less dramatic than a miracle that my arms were able to lock out my last rep on the 5th and final set. I was positive gravity was going to curb stomp my face on my patio. That would have given my dentist and I something to chat about at my upcoming appointment in a couple weeks. Somehow, I overcame gravity – despite my trembling arms and pecs – just enough to lock out the rep and get my feet back down on the earth.

That led to my skull crushers being much more humbling than expected, though, which was also a good thing. 

I did 6 sets of skull crushers because after the first set I realized I was going to need to drop the weight 5 pounds per hand.

Finishing out with 5 sets of seated dumbbell lateral raises every minute on the minute was juicy. I love finishing push sessions with some side delt pump.

For those interested, by the way, the math came out to around 15-25 seconds of exercise each minute, and 35-45 seconds of rest each minute. Basically Vince Gironda's cumulative fatigue training suggestions.

20 total sets in just 25 minutes. Phew. I'll chalk this up to high volume density training for the win.

I usually have reserved EMOM training for high intensity interval conditioning workouts, but I've been wanting to dive deeper into experimenting with EMOMs for hypertrophy. I've done it with 1 or 2 exercises in a session in the past – usually if I have pushups planned I do them EMOM style and sometimes I enjoy training pullups with more volume, less reps per set in EMOM fashion. But this was the first time I did all exercises in a Push session EMOM.

I'm going to experiment with this some more and keep you all posted. 

Edit

So I often don't post the training logs until a day or so after. Today is the day after and, as my clients sometimes whine, "everything hurts." 😂

Holy moly I'm sore. My shoulders, chest, triceps, and my serratus anterior (the latter is something that always gets oddly sore from high intensity pushup variations) are crazy sore. Arguably too sore, because I'm taking a rest day today and postponing my leg workout until tomorrow (Saturday). 

I'd be remiss if I didn't also add the fact that I only slept 5 hours last night (shocker: preparing to sell 2 houses and move across the country again is a time consuming affair). So my recovery this week isn't ideal. 

But, yeah, that EMOM session shocked my body in a dramatic way. Good stuff. 

Like I said, I'll experiment a bit more on and off with these EMOM workouts, but I'll remember to take my recovery more seriously afterwards. Turns out, high volume with very short rest and a lot of quality work completed in a short time frame (ie, density training) is seriously tough work!

I recommend weening into these EMOM muscle building workouts so the aftermath doesn't sneak up on you.