DTP, Weights & Walking Sticks

Confession: I hate legs’ day. If you tell me that if I can avoid putting a bar behind my back and squat and I can still grow massive legs, I will never do it. And apparently, Dorian Yates believes that is so. But I’m a man who believes in stats and data and they are telling me that squat is an exercise that is inevitable.

Luckily for our DTP session this time doesn’t involve squats. Despite that, it didn’t make me hate legs’ days any less. So yes, DTP legs involve working entirely on a leg press machine and in the past, that how I did them too:

But this time as I was warming up on the treadmill, I didn’t feel quite right with my right knee. So I mixed it up a little, as usual.

Like chest and backs day, I did supersets of isolation exercise for quads and hamstrings with leg extensions and seated leg curls. Oh God why? Halfway through the workout, I absolutely regretted that choice. But what’s gonna be done has to be done so no bitchin’!

OK, so the first set was 50 reps of leg extensions, supersetting with 50 reps of seated leg curls. I hate high repetitions on legs, especially on quads. It burns so badly that I already started to think it was a bad idea to approach this workout in such fashion.

Anyway, I continued to 40, 30, 20 then 10. By the time I reached the 6^th set, the second heaviest set, my legs were so pumped up that I couldn’t even stand properly. Endured it all the way till the 9^th set and shit happened. My calves almost cramped up between the 30^th-40^th rep, somewhere there so I had to stop. Why? Yeah, my toes were pointing straight, causing immense stress on my calves. Idiot me. And by that time, I was feeling a little sick so I knew I couldn’t go on anymore. This must have been the effect of me taking too long of a break. My cardio was definitely down and I couldn’t breathe well.

So I stopped during the 9^th set and the workout couldn’t be finished. But two days later, when the DOMS set in, it was still killing me and it lasted quite a few days actually.

So, what did get from this failed session? I am never gonna skip cardio again. Well, I’ll try not to skip. A lotta people think that when it comes to bodybuilding, cardio is unnecessary and as a matter a fact, some even think that doing cardio actually causes a hindrance towards their muscle growth. But the thing is that everybody misunderstood the function of cardio exercise here. And that, we can discuss about it in a whole new post. Yes, I have a lotta posts to be created for discussion and I have A LOT of catching up to do. As for now, adios! 

DTP Arms Attack

So we took a day off and then continued our DTP journey with an arms day. As usual, take a look at the video below to see how it is supposedly done as designed by Big Kris:

For this arms workout session, Hector wasn’t around so I was all alone to suffer. The session was almost like it shown in the video above. The first 5 supersets were on cables, straight bar biceps curls supersetting with triceps pushdown with rope extension. The choice for pushdowns over overhead extensions is because I injured my infraspinatus a couple years back so picking up the weight and place it over my head. Yeah, I know, it sucks. Anyway, so then the next 5 sets were straight barbell biceps curls supersetting with straight barbell skull crushers.

There isn’t much to talk about an arms workout actually. Just the fact that a DTP arms session is absolutely tormenting. And honestly, I really don’t know what more to write about.

Then, I went on to do some calves. I haven’t found anything for calves on DTP but come on, it’s calves we are talking about. So yes, nothing much. I just did calves raises on a leg press machine supersetting with plyometric standing calves raises, ending with burn-out reps. For those who do not know what burn-out reps are, it is basically short burst of a certain movement and you just keep doing it until it burns so badly that you can’t stand it anymore then you stop. It does sound like our normal reps and just reach failure but there’s a slight difference. We’ll talk about it next time in another post to describe the different kinds of sets and reps. If anyone out there has some suggestions and wanna know more about a certain kind of workout set and techniques regarding repetitions, please comment below so I know what I have to write the next time.

As usual, last but not least, I finished up with my abs with three tri-sets of crunches, raised-legged crunches and double crunches. So for now, ciao!

Pulverizing Shoulders with DTP

The past week had been hectic. Work was overloading me and I was suffocating, metaphorically of course. Having said that, despite the hectic schedule, we made no excuse to skip our workout sessions. When it's crunch time, it's crunch time.

So since the last update, I have worked on every other body parts. And since I haven't really introduce how the other body parts work on DTP, we shall break it down into different posts. Let's start of with shoulders.

In my last post, I said that the following day was supposed to be arms day, well, it wasn't. Due to the backs session on the day before, my biceps and forearm were cooked so arms were off the list. Instead, I went on to do delts. Let's see how Big Kris work on his delts DTP style:

What my partner, Hector and I did was exactly how this looks like. Trust me, it was brutal. One thing we have to very cautious about this is that the weights used in this training principle cannot be too heavy and especially when it comes to shoulders, loading too many plates may result to much higher exposure towards injuries on your supraspinatous fossa, very dangerous. But seriously, with this kind of workout that starts of with such high amount of repetitions, you really think anybody can go heavy? If there is one who can then he is either bullshitting you or he is on anabolic steroids.

So then 6 days later, it was the end of a full cycle and it was shoulders again. Since it is shoulders again, why am I mentioning it again? Wouldn't it be the same? Well, those who know me, I always like to change things up. I never liked sticking to the exact program of a training principle. There are many reasons why I do that and I shall talk about it next time in a separate post.

Anyway, so the second session of DTP shoulders started of the same as before. We did 5 sets of behind-the-back barbell military press on a smith machine. The choice of smith machine is because our triceps were still on DOMS from the pecs and backs workout the previous day. We didn't want to sacrifice the load and intensity so smith machine was the way to go. And it was clear that by isolating delts out using smith machine, the load was slightly but substantially higher than the previous workout and it definitely sucked the oxygen outta us.

For the later portion, we wanted to go on with dumbbell military presses but as soon as we picked up the weights, we realized that our strength has decreased for more than 30%, especially mine. I had no idea why but I just couldn't pick the weights up. Disheartened yet still determined to push through the session, we decided to sacrifice on the compound movement and went on with side lateral raises.

Sounds easy right? But as we slowly approach the final 2 sets, we had the fear of picking up the weights even when on the last set, it was only two 10 lbs dumbbells. Seriously, only 10 lbs. We literally had to slap each other on the back to get the other to pick up the dumbbells. It was so crazy that we had at least 2 rest-pause during the last set.

And finally, like the previous session and as shown in the video above, we finish our delts with upright rows. I went on to do 3 sets of dumbbell shrugs while Hector chickened out. Boo! Last but not least, we did abs. As usual, I did three tri-sets of crunches, raised-legged crunches and double crunches.

And that's about it! Stay tuned for the next post on our subsequent body part on DTP. Once we finish through all the body parts, I'll give everyone a recap and overview on how it has been fairing for me. So ciao for now!