This was the first time we had met up and so we were a little nervous for the first few minutes. We just went with the flow and enjoyed it. Great training and it’s always good meeting great people. Cheers Christie!
This has been in the making for 4 years or so. Me and Paz have been friends for some time and we met through gaming. We have met up a few times in the past for other reasons such as gaming conventions etc, but we have always talked about training together. This time we decided to meet up at Temple Gym and finally train together on a casual, yet serious leg session.
Me and Paz trained legs whilst my wife recorded us training. We had plenty of giggles whilst training and even more after training. We took it serious, but only to the point where we didn’t lose the fun element.
Paz has focused his fitness on cycling over the last year. I think he said this was the first time he had trained legs with weights this year, as he has been working his muscles more for endurance cycling.
Whilst we were in Temple Gym for the weekend, Paz took a fair few pictures that will be up on his blog/facebook very soon. Keep an eye out for a link that I will post up on here at some point so you can get to see more of Temple Gym.
Here’s some snippets of how it went…
This is the first time I have had a moment to actually sit down and think about the last 5 days. It has been an incredible experience and a honour to be helping out DY Nutrition at BodyPower 2014. Where do I start…
Thursday 15th May we set out to Temple Gym to get there for the evening and have a look around before taking the children to my parents and heading to the hotel before the start of 3 days at BodyPower helping out the people we love. It was chaotic, but organised for the whole three days. We had an incredible time helping out alongside Dorian Yates, Gal Yates, Rad, Nicola, Peter, Carla, Heather (My Wife) and the awesome little super star Tahnee.
Wrap up
Here’s some pictures that were took at BodyPower…
Agata Dowding
Robby Anchant
Rad and Carla… (This chap is solid)
Zak Pallikaros
PT Welsh
Michael James
Sas Heirati
DY Nutrition Team
Nat (Dr Zaks)
Zak and Dorian
Kris Gethin
Marika Johansson – Gethin
Dana Linn Bailey
Phil Heath and Andrew Coulson
Me and my boy at Temple Gym
Andy Torres
The Terrible Twins
Carla Curva
Sergi Constance
‘Rhinoskin’
Jason Corrick
Scott Herman
Mark Felix
Steve Davies
Shawn Rhoden
Dusty Hanshaw
Dinner
Dorian Yates
Temple Gym
Pizza Hut after an epic busy weekend!
Signed DVDs
Sunday night (just before midnight) me and Andrew Torres decided to plan a training session at Temple Gym. We met up on the Monday morning and headed off to The Dungeon for a bit off a mess about training and to get some pictures before going home. We have been looking forward to training with Andy for a long time and we are happy that Temple Gym was the place that got us together to train. Here’s a long video showing most of the training and more importantly we wanted to record this video all the way through for our own personal viewing. We will put it out there for others to watch, but we genuinely don’t think others will understand how much of a brilliant experience it was!
There are so many other things that I could ramble about for hours, I just feel that most of it I can keep in my head and heart without needing to bore anyone else to death with it.
(The post about aims and what I would love to do)
I need to thank everyone that was part of this weekend! Everyone I met at the stand were amazing! I have learnt a lot from this experience and I will show what I have learnt on a daily basis. Being surrounded by the people I love is simple incredible. I don’t have words for what happened just yet, but I have emotions. I know there are so many people I have to thank and typing this is a poor way of doing it I know. THANK YOU to everyone for a dream that I/we will never forget!!!
Note to self
Chest
Decline bench press smith machine (Slow, focused, squeeze)
Flat bench
Seated press
Incline dumbbell press
Seated flies
Biceps
Lever machine
EZ bar
Hammer curls drop set from 15kg.
**Repeat next week as this has been a successful routine!**
Diet (rough idea only)
Lots of water!!!
Supplements
Waiting for more BlackBombs to arrive…
Weight – 12st9lb
Body fat – 14% (Boots)
Strength is very good so far, fat is going slowly, cardio is 2 x half hour sessions per day. 15min walk then 15min spinner without a break. Speed determined by mood and energy.
Today was a day that I won’t forget in a hurry. After doing leg extensions I went onto the leg press. The gaffa came over just before I started and gave me a PT session for the remainder of my quad session.
Julian gave me some great tips with feet position, tension on the muscle and rest pause techniques to make sure I get the best results whilst in the gym.
Whilst on the leg press, I felt like I coped ok during the sets and reps as my quads were quite strong due to it being the second exercise. By the end of leg press though, I had a lot of muscular pain from the lactic acid build up and a lot less strength.
Moving onto hack squats (this is the exercise I feel works great for me, even though I hate the pain it puts me in. I just have to do it down to my discipline and I want to better myself) we did one set which was comfortable with 20kg and then I decided that 10kg extra per side would be adequate as I have tried 40kg per side before and it was way too heavy at the time. Coming up to my last couple of reps I could hear Julian telling me to do more. I did do more, I felt determined and wanted to push myself as hard as I could. I did it to complete failure and it left me feeling sick and my legs were like stone at that point. Heavy and hard to move is another way to say it.
We then did front squats on the machine. Again, Julian was behind me and I felt like I needed to give it my all despite feeling sick and my legs in agony. I did my first set with 120kg and did as many as I could do. After a minute Julian got me back under it and told me to just keep going. I kept the tension on the muscle throughout all the reps apart from the last few where I did rest pause as the lactic acid build up created and excruciating pain and I had no choice but to rest pause. I was in so much pain that I stood up to finish the set. I heard Julian shout one more. Within a split second I found my body going for another rep, I know it was a partial rep if even much of a rep at all, and then he shouted one more again. I went for another and probably got down an inch or two.
I got of the machine and I could hear Julian talking to me. Without sounding like sound ignorant chap that doesn’t love the advice, all I heard was some other language. I just wanted to get as close to the door as fast as I could as I could feel myself about to be sick. The next 10 minutes was spent trying to stand up, going to the toilet trying to be sick and just in excruciating pain in my legs.
Let me try to explain the feeling… Imagine sitting on the bottom step of some stairs. Then imagine getting a long bolt and putting it through your knee, down through your leg, through your foot and into the floor. Now tighten that bolt just enough to make sure it is pressed solid against the floor. Now try moving that leg, you can’t! (This is just an example of how heavy and painful my legs felt)
The question is, will I do that again? The answer is simply yes! I didn’t enjoy a second of the pain, but I know what I am up against now if I want to eventually compete. I won’t try to be brave and will admit that it scares me knowing how difficult it is training at this level. Half hour after finishing legs, I felt fine and all day I have been so happy, proud and more understanding of how to train harder. If every time I went through that pain and then felt better half hour after, full of energy and knowing I did my very best, I would seriously look forward to it and do that in every session. It’s very hard to be prepared for that level of pain though, but I hope that over time I will have a much better idea of what to do when I feel sick and how to deal with the pain.
I know I may come across as a cry baby moaning about the pain etc, but it’s pain I haven’t experienced before. I’m certainly not moaning about it, I’m just documenting it on here to remind myself of what it was like.
Here’s a video I made once I composed myself a bit…
And shortly after that…
I still managed to get my hours walking cardio done just now. I will also update my weight progress tomorrow…
I’m bound to have forgot a few major details, so I will update this tomorrow as I’m just shattered now…
Shoulders
Legs
Abs
Shoulders
We started off with a warm up/stretch and then moved onto some seated dumbbell presses. We did 4 sets in total as we started on a very light 10kg set to rep a few out and get the blood flowing.
Shoulder press machine was next. 2 sets in total, one to feel the weight and a second with maximum weight at around 4-8 reps.
Iso Lateral was next for the lateral delts.
Rear delts were next on the peck deck.
Legs
After warming up we did three sets of leg extensions, starting light and increasing the weight.
45 degree leg press was second and this was for 2 sets.
Barbell squat for 2 sets.
Front squat machine was next (Not a pic from today)
Leg curls were next, again for two sets.
Stiff leg deadlift for 2 sets.
Standing calf raise for 2 sets.
Seated Calf Raise for 1 set.
Leg raises 2 sets around 15-25 reps.
Ab Crunches 2 sets max reps. (first time I tried this and loved it) this is also very comfy with my lower back despite the video o looking a little uncomfortable.
This is today’s workout with pictures for my reference, All these pictures were taken during my first set of each exercise and therefore the warm-up set or feeler set.
Narrow grip reverse pulldowns, 12 x 50kg, 10 x 70kg x 10 (approx)
Pull overs 40kg x 10, 80kg x 8
Hammer Strength Pull Downs, 80kg x 10, 100kg x 8 (approx)
Rows, 40kg x 12, 60kg x 8 (approx)
One Arm Rows, 40kg x 10, 70kg x 10
T Bar Rows, 40kg x 10, 70kg x 8
Dumbbell Shrugs, 30kg x 15, 40kg x 15, 45kg x 10
Dip Machine, 70kg x 10, 100kg x 10. (I prefer dips with the belt on the dip station, although this is much easier on my wrist at the moment)
Tricep Machine, 2 sets, not sure of the weight
Dumbbell Tricep Extension, 10kg x 10, 15kg x 6
Everything went well today and a lot of effort was put into it. After my second exercise on the pull overs, I could really feel it in my back. The only thing we didn’t do today was dead lifting and posterior delts. We will do stiff leg deadlifts on leg day and rear delts on shoulder day. My back simply can’t take deadlifts on a Wednesday and Squats on a Friday, I will work around this somehow, but for now I will go by how I feel on the day.
In all, today went great and we were very focused and really did aim to get that extra rep.
Where do I start with this one?
Let’s fast forward to arriving at Temple Gym…
We got to Temple Gym at roughly half twelve today (11/09/2013) where we would wait for Gal Yates to arrive so that the wife could have her very first gym experience training with her. Andrew Coulson turned up before Gal and he introduced us too a very lovely lady named Emma who is working for him at present. We all had a little chat and then Dorian and Andrew asked me to train with them. Nervously, but eager, I went ahead and trained with them.
As they were training back and Wednesday is the day I prefer to train back, I was happy to join in. We started off (Hold on, I need to note this here)
Ok, the lats are a much stronger muscle than what is required to make them work. What I mean by that is everything you train your lats with has to be worked through your arms. Your lats will be much stronger than your grip and therefore this is the idea…
Isolate your lats and work them to fatigue as much as possible. We did this by doing some reverse grip (palms out, slightly wider than shoulder width) pull downs to warm up. Then we moved on to three sets of pullovers using the Nautilus machine. This machine really isolates the lats and therefore pre exhausting the lats.
We then went onto hammer strength pull downs and really concentrated on the negative rep as well as perfect form. After pre- exhausting the lats on the Nautilus machine, we can then use our biceps and other muscles to fully fatigue the lats. The reason for this is due to the biceps naturally being weaker than the lats, meaning the biceps will give up before the lats. This is not what we want to happen and so we should isolate the lat muscles and hit them as directly as possible.
Straight from that we went onto one arm dumbbell rows, again everything we did was form related. The difference between concentrating on the movement with mind to muscle connection is (in my opinion) 90% more effective than swinging the weight on the positive and dropping the weight on the negative.
We then went onto seated cable rows. Medium size bar, just wider than shoulder with grip. (Unless you are Dorian or Andrew, then it’s just narrow of shoulder width apart)
We finished the back off with some isolated posterior delt contractions. The machine is similar to the ones you have in your local gym, this was just more hardcore. Imagine sitting down with your arms both held straight in front of you and then pull both arms apart. I will use bent over dumbbell raises to mimic this machine (I was going to link my video here of bent over raise, but I need to redo it as it’s not good form) A good example of my blog and recording myself here as I can see my faults and correct them!
After training we went for a meal in Birmingham city centre. It was a serious honour to be eating with the DY gang and listening to some very funny stories being passed around the table, as well as some really educating talks about general bodybuilding.
This was a truly special experience that we will NEVER forget and I urge anyone that has a passion for bodybuilding or wants to train with Dorian to not worry or feel intimidated by him. The whole team are absolutely superb and if you don’t go ahead and do it, you will most certainly regret not taking that moment!
The DY family are the most humble and kindest people you will ever meet. Trust me, behind those big muscles and clever mind of Dorian Yates and also beautiful perfect Gal there is a heart of gold in every one of them. I can’t thank them all enough for what they’ve done.
I will miss a large portion from what happened due to that fact that I want to keep some memories between me, the wife and the DY team.
Dorian and Gal, such a great couple!
Andrew, Emma, Dean, Deans Friend,My wife, Me, Dorian, Lewis.
Collage of pictures
Signed by Dorian to me and the wife
Signed to us all
Me, Dorian and Andrew… You just do it, trust me! haha
Great pic of Dorian showing exactly how to contract the lats.
This video goes on a lot, but it’s only a tiny bit of what I would love to say.
Some people say I’m lucky, I just say that I am passionate!
Living the dream…
Chest
Bench Press
Incline dumbbell press
Cable flyes
Biceps
Hammer Curls
Cables
Health and HIT 
