Rest Day

One of the hardest things for me to do is stay away from the gym but apparently it's essential for success.  Today's my day off so I'll blog about the gym instead.  Leg day was yesterday and believe me when I say I'm paying for it today!  I really should have went with lighter weights yesterday but I'm too stubborn to do less than I'm accustomed to so I guess I'll suffer the muscle pain for the next two days.  I won't lie I kind of like the pain.

Tomorrow, I'm back at the gym for one of my favourite workouts - chest and back day!  Some call this the "old push and pull" routine since that's essentially what it really is.  For your chest you basically employ a bunch of pushing exercises (i.e., bench presses, dumbbell presses, push ups, etc.,) and for your back, you guessed it, a bunch of pulling exercises (Seated rows, Pull ups, Lat Pulldowns, etc.,).

Since I'm attempting to gain muscle mass I'll be going with a routine that's a little old school.  The routine is sometimes referred to as the "5 x 5" routine.  The "5 x 5" is a basic as it sounds.  It's 5 heavy sets of 5 reps of each exercise.  I think I'll only be doing 4 chest exercises tomorrow and 5 back exercises.  My chest workout is going to go something like this:

1.) Incline Bench Press (barbell) 
2.) Flat Bench Press 
3.) Decline Bench Press or maybe dips 
4.) Incline Flyes


For my back workout I'll do:

1.) Pull Ups (Starting with bodyweight only as a warm up and then increasing weight until I'm only able to achieve 5 reps).  Pull ups are really tough so if you're just starting out don't get discouraged. As I did, you can simply start on the assisted pull up machine where you're able to incrementally displace some of your body weight.  As one of my best training partners once said "the only way to be able to do chin-ups or pull-ups is to simply do them."
2.) Wide grip seated row
3.) Bent over Row
4.) Barbell Shrugs
5.) Back Extensions


I'm sure some of these exercises probably sound a little foreign to some but for proper examples of each you can simply visit the best workout site that I've found to-date www.bodybuilding.com.  Also, please feel free to contact me via email or comment on this blog if you have any questions or suggestions.  I'll do my best to respond as quickly as possible and I'm always looking to make improvements to the site!