MuscleAddicts' Road To Victory

[MuscleAddict83]

Only doing a 4 day week because of the holiday. Here's this week's split:

Chest, Calves
Back, Traps/Rear Delts, Biceps
Hams, Calves, Quads
Shoulders, Rear Delts, Triceps, Abs

I rediscovered this weekend the benefit of reverse grip flat bench press versus incline bench press and its effect on the upper chest while reading the newest Flex magazine. In it, they republished a summary of a study that was released last year. In the study, the researchers measured the effects of upper chest muscle fiber activation using the incline bench and reverse grip flat bench. They compared these readings to regular grip flat bench press. When everything was said and done they discovered that inclines activated only 5% more upper chest fibers while reverse grip activated 30% more upper chest muscle fibers when compared to normal grip flat bench press. This makes it a far superior exercise. It takes some practice to get the feel and form down, but I used it quite a bit about a year ago and got great benefits from it. Just doing it again today I could really feel it in my upper chest. Another added benefit is that you can use much heavier weights, today on my last set I did 255 for 8 reps whereas if I had done inclines it would have been somewhere between 205 and 225 for 8 reps. That extra weight really makes a difference.

On a side note, I finally got my timing and number of exercises/sets right. Here's how today went:

9.07 Chest Calves

Reverse Grip Bench
135x10, 185x10, 225x8, 245x8, 255x8

Incline Fly
45x12, 60x8

Dips
BWx12x3

(7) Low Cable Crossover
110x10,8, 80x12,12,10,8,12(4 force reps)

Seated Calf Raises (2 up, 4 down, pause at bottom, toes on platform)
70x12, 120x12, 170x6, 6d120x5d70x8

I did something a little different with calves today. I was very strict on making sure that just my toes were on the platform as opposed to the ball of my foot. I had to lighten the weight a bit to compensate, but the contractions and stretches were more exaggerated and the pump was ridiculous!

Well, tomorrow's back day... row row row your back to get some thicker lats!