We were back at it today for bootcamp! Jodi took the week off for spring break, but also to move all her stuff into the new building! The building we were in didn’t have air conditioning and this new one does. Our group didn’t have a big problem with heat because our class is at 5:00 in the morning, but those gals that go to the 11:00am or noon class…yikes. I bet it was so hot in the summer!
We did trisets today which is one of my favorites. One of our sets this morning included curtsy lunges, push presses, and then jumping jacks with the battling ropes. Holy cow that one got my heart rate up! Each of those exercises alone gets my heart pumping, but putting them all back-to-back-to-back with minimal rest had me huffin’ and puffin’. I loved it!
Now this workout focuses on the chest and triceps. It includes one drop set, a couple supersets and then several just plain ol’ heavy sets. It had me very sore a few days after and I’m not going to lie, those push-ups to failure were down on my knees. My arms were honestly too unstable to try to do big-girl pushups. I was in the plank position for like 20 seconds trying to get myself to do a pushup but I didn’t trust myself not to face plant. I decided to kick my pride to the wayside and just accept that my dang arms were too tired!
I didn’t make this workout up on my own. I did some research last weekend to find some new lifting ideas since we had the week off. I knew I wanted to focus on certain body parts on certain days but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I found this workout on LeanItUp.com and it’s a keeper.
I didn’t change the workout at all. However, I did create that graphic so you can see the workout all in one shot. The website has pictures and descriptions of each exercise if you need some more info. Click here to find Lean It Up’s “Build Tank-Like Upper-Body Chiseled Chest-Triceps Workout”.
Let’s talk about drop sets. I’m not super familiar with them but I am going to try to incorporate them a little bit more to change things up. If you want to know more (and get more technical) about drop sets then check out this article written by Tom Venuto at BodyBuilding.com titled “Creative Drop Setting – A Dozen Ways to Use Them“. At the beginning, he explains what they are and what they do for your body.
Basically, drop sets are used to put on muscle mass (yes, these will help you have bigger muscles!). With a drop set, you do a straight set of a certain exercise until failure. For the drop set in this particular workout, it calls for 12 reps. You want to pick a weight that is heavy enough that 12 reps is all that you can physically do. So you do your 12 reps then immediately “drop” the weight down 15-20% and then do another 12 reps, “drop” the weight again 15-20% and do another 12 reps. That would be one set! To start this workout you do three sets of those drop sets. Are you seeing why I couldn’t do big-girl push-ups at the end?!?!
There are other ways to do drop sets as well including ascending and descending, meaning you decrease the weight so that you can increase the number of reps or vice versa. If you are interested in trying different techniques then check out that article by Tom Venturo. It taught me a lot!
Have you tried drop sets before?!
