Hey Gunz Crew,
Hope everyone has started off to an interesting January. Whether you’re aiming to lose weight, get swole, develop better as a musician, artist, employee, employer and what have you, I hope all is coming along somehow.
Having said that, this is part 3.1 of the fitness journey that I’ve been chronicling for some time now. Part 1 was all about how I got into weightlifting, how I got into exercising altogether and part 2 dealt with how I developed myself in regards to nutrition to further my goals. Part 3.1 is about my favorite routine to start a workout week — The Big 6.
Usually I like to give myself an overall feel of where am I physically overall if I’m starting the week. While a lot of people celebrate International Chest Monday, I like to work on what I call The Big 6. The Big 6 consists of Bench Press, Squats, Deadlifts, Shoulder Press, Pull-ups and Dips. What’s awesome about doing these for a workout session is that it sounds the alarm to your body to wake up and grow! If I start off with the Bench, I’ll go to Dips afterwards and lastly Shoulder Press before I swing ahead to Deadlifts, Squats and Pull-ups.
I usually like to arrange it based on which parts I wanna tear down first. Personally, due to the nature of my delivery work involving lifting, pushing and pulling a lot of appliances, I like to zero in on Deadlifts first. There is, though, a rule of thumb I have in respect to Deadlifts and Pull-ups. If I do underhand grip on Deadlifts, I’ll do regular Pull-ups but if I do over hand, I’ll resort to chin ups. The reason behind this is because when I do underhand grip, I find my biceps being activated just a little bit.
As far as sets and reps, it varies on my goals — whether it’s endurance, functional or explosive.
If I’m aiming to boost my endurance, I’ll start off with 30% of my bodyweight and do a pyramid (slightly increasing the weight after each set) of 15 reps. Once I get to that last set that I can barely do 15 repetitions on, I go into drop set mode (slightly decreasing the weight after each set) and do repetitions until failure instead of just 15 reps. I do this with the intent of working the muscle until it is thoroughly spent.
If I am aiming for overall functional strength, where I need to get some power thrown in but just enough to move things along (like when need to push heavy objects through a few times just to get it in place), my pyramid will consist of a starting point of 40% of my bodyweight with that half of the routine aiming for 3-5 repetitions (3 when I’m definitely in the grind, 5 if I am still feeling it out). Rep until failure on the way down folks.
Finally, when I’m itching to see what my explosive power is like and what I may be capable of (definitely helps when it comes to days of shoulder strapping aplliances up flights of stairs or maneuvering them around for delivery), I start at 50% bodyweight and do 1 rep per set when doing the pyramid half. It will, at first, feel silly as shaking hands with a lollypop but once you start dialing up further towards your last one, you’ll realize what a monster you have sleeping inside you. For the drop set, rep until failure as always.
