Overall Update and Hamstrings

Had a really great week of training this week being back from the Arnold. I do have a few trips that I need to make over the next few months but other than that I am just going to be aiming to stay home as much as I can as I work my way to the stage this year. I just cant replicate this environment on the road no matter how hard I try in terms of all factors. Equipments, training partners, sleep, hydration, food ect.

My weight is sitting a bit lower now still post Arnold around 250-253. I am still eating a lot but I would say the only change is that I am not force feeding the meals. I found when I was it was just equating to more water and heavier breathing during training.

That being said I am still hitting a minimum of 100g carbs per meal, during training I have actually added in peptopro not that I think its magic (EAA are just fine) but I simply added it in for the extra calories as well as 10g EAA, 140g of vitargo and a large banana on the way to the gym. I break the Shake into two drinks aiming to get a third of the full mix in pre training.

Hamstrings – With Matt York and Joe Binley

Lying Leg Curl
(we did this two different ways, with our machine as is you cannot get full hip extension so the first set we did as the machine lays and did out best to drive hips into the pad taking it to failure + 2 forced reps. Second set we set ourselves up on our hands pushing the upper body up away from the pad so that we could actually get full hip extension. This is going to shorten the range a bit but its full hamstring load and no supporting cast associated with it.)

Fully Locked in Set
130 x 8 (1 forced)

Hip Extension set
100 x 9 reps trying to drive each rep through the sticking point which you will find about mid way through the range due to the shortened range.

Barbell RDL
455 x 6
405 x 8

Inverse curl
(I really dont have a plan on this machine other than to get in as much work as I can. This machine is probably the only hamstring exercise other than a GHR where you can get a true load throughout the full eccentric and you just cannot mimic that on any other machine so its hard to correlate it to anything else. As long as you keep tension on your hamstrings you literally are getting double to triple the work you would be getting on a leg curl per rep.)
Set 1 – 180 lbs of load added
Set 2 – 135 lbs of load added
Set 3 – 180 lbs of load added

With each set we take through a full range of motion emphasizing the eccentric until we hit failure and then do another eccentric rep and try to fire as many stretched partials out of the bottom until we need to be picked up.

Wide Stance Leg Press

Our natural tendency is to press with our quads, we were really trying to eccentric load the hamstrings all the way down and then keep the hams engaged through doing bottom half half reps until we felt like we were going to get stuck…then doing a full press resetting and going back into another slow eccentric load then full press until failure.

We followed this format and worked up to 8 plates per side

Walking Lunges
BW x 40 yards
50 lbs x 40 yards
90 lbs x 40 yards

I can really get my left vastis stretched doing these so i will be doing them twice a week moving forward on both quad and hamstrings day