Ran through the last of the new cutting routines last night, a row oriented back, traps and biceps session.
I didn’t have time for a full run-through, partly due to a time crunch, and partly because my gym partner wants to move the chest session to Monday.
My solution was to run through the back routine last night and test the programming, with the view to repeating it again on Wednesday for real.
The routine as written breaks-down like this:
Cutting: Back, traps and biceps — rowing
A: Banded facepulls — 3 x 10
B: Meadows row — 4 x 8
C1: Seated DB shrugs — 4 x 10
C2: Towel landmine rows (t-bar) — 4 x 12
E: Chest supported row — 8 x 4
F: Barbell curls — 3 x 6
G: Dumbbell curls — 3 x 8
I ran through about 70% of the workout, hitting 2-3 sets of each movement, and it felt good. Rest intervals were short on this one, running to thirty seconds between sets on the single movements, and about the same on the supersets. Basically, there was very little time where I was not doing something, and even rest intervals were used to set-up the next movement.
Meadows row has been a staple of my workouts for some time now. It’s a unique exercise that hits both lats and upper back in a way that no other exercise does.
The seated shrug rows are a new thing I am playing with and felt a little odd, partly because I am still struggling with some shoulder discomfort from that fly session. Essentially, it’s a seated shrug, but instead of “shrugging” up, you sort of shrug and row, up and backward, at the same time. This is about thickening those traps on the backside.
The superset with towel t-bar rows re-targets that area pretty well, especially if you use longer towel lengths that afford deeper ROM on the movement and thus a better contraction.
The back work closes with chest supported rows, and I worked these through with just twenty seconds rest between sets of four reps at 150lb. It felt good, really solid pump.
A couple sets of barbell and dumbbell curls rounded out the session. Nothing fancy.
Overall, I liked this a lot. The challenge with all these density programs is that I end up feeling like I could do more. Peak intensity is there, but it’s a short, sharp workout. I feel like I would be happier if I doubled the number of sets, but I know that’s just not necessary and would limit recovery. We’ll see how it goes over a longer period of time.
That’s each of the individual cutting routines posted now.
I’ll make a full blog post one day this week that outlines the whole program, overall goals and links to each of the six workouts.