Tuesday, February 3, 2009

No bowling balls here

Sorry about the slow posting rate over the last couple of days.  I have been in an all out battle with a virus on my laptop, a battle that hopefully I have won.

But that has not stopped me from having some very productive workouts over the last couple of days!

On Monday I had a chance to make it down to the school gym and use some more useful equipment for training my shoulders.

Due to my very long arms and short muscle bellies in my arms and shoulders, I have found it very tough getting my shoulder muscles to fill-out really pop!

Coupled with several shoulder dislocations and wear and tear from my short lived baseball career (which I am sure Canadutch can attest to) my shoulders have been somewhat of a disaster area.

But they are feeling good now, and it's time to see what they are made of!

Hopefully not Jell-O

The shoulder is a very tricky joint and one that demands stimulation from a multitude of angles as well as different set and rep schemes to hit all three heads (front, side and rear delts)and muscle types.

In order to put some bulk into my heads, I have added some more power movements to my routine after reading some excellent shoulder training advice from Got Built?

This weeks routine started off with some standing lateral raises, which actually got surprisingly heavy: 3 Sets (30 lbs x 20; 35 lbs x 20; 40 lbs x 12)

Then into the real meat and potato exercises:

Some Standing Overhead Push Presses (With barbell. Push meaning I used a little leg umph! when got tired to lift a little more weight): 3 sets (95 lbs x 12; 115 lbs x 12; 135 lbs x 8)

Seated dumbbell presses: 3 sets (50 lbs x 12; 60 lbs 12; 65 lbs x 8)

Hang Power Cleans (These Really made my forearms sore the next day!): 3 sets of 12 reps with 135 lbs. Really gassed at this point, almost cramping!

My training partner and I decided to see how many one arm chin-ups we could do (with the weight assisted machine). I got a few reps with 80 lbs of assistance.  Not bad considering I weigh 190 lbs now. Not really a shoulder exercise per say, but was tiring none the less.

We then finished it off with some barbells shrugs (3 sets of 20 or so with 225 lbs) and some reverse peck deck flyes.

If that doesn't put some bowling balls on my shoulders I don't know what will!

1 comment:

LB 44 said...

Shoulders are finally healthy? Time to get back out on the mound!
Let me tell people who have never seen you throw what it was like. You'd rear back, and then in one tornadic-painful sounding-slinging motion would deliver a pitch where ever it felt like going. But hey, you did have pretty damn good velocity.