Today I took an LEP Fitness member through a brutal upper body workout. The workout was inspired by a post I read a couple of weeks ago by Jordan Peters. The session focuses on using a handful of the most bang for your buck exercises including: flat DB press, incline smith press, dips, wide chins, rack pulls and lateral raises. Rep ranges vary from 6-10 and 11-15 and time under tension is kept around 3:1 (3 seconds lowering phase, 1 second contraction lift).

I have 9 different workouts planned (3 upper and 3 lower body) and for the past 4 weeks I have been doing 2 days on, 1 day off and using the following training split:

• Monday: upper body workout (1)
• Tuesday: lower body workout (1)
• Wednesday: Rest
• Thursday: upper body (2)
• Friday: lower body (2)
• Saturday: REST
• Sunday: upper body (3)
• Monday: lower body (3)
• Tuesday: REST
• Wednesday: repeat above cycle, starting from upper body (1)

I am only performing the same exercise every 9 days. This allows my muscles to fully recover from a specific exercise. When you repeatedly perform the same exercise pattern your body very quickly adapts, joints get worn out and plateau’s occur, halting progress.  For example on upper body workout 1 my chosen chest exercise is the flat dumbbell press, I then rest 72hrs before hitting chest again but using a different exercise i.e. upper body workout 2 I use the incline DB press. This allows me to train my muscles frequently (training each muscle 3x per week), but recover quickly and keep my body guessing by changing the exercise selection and training the muscle in a different position. My training volume is low (3 sets per muscle group), so I can train heavy (Dorian Yates style!) and create a positive training adaptation (muscle growth).

I have chosen the most bang for your buck exercises:

• Chest: Flat DB press, Incline DB press, Decline barbell press
• Shoulders: Arnold press, standing military press, side lateral raises
• Biceps: Pull ups, Barbell curls
• Triceps: Dips, Skull crushers
• Back: pull ups, rack pull, deadlifts
• Quads: Front squat, back squat, leg press
• Hamstrings: DB banded Romanian deadlift, seated leg curl, glute bridge
• Calves: seated calf raise, smith standing calf raise

Here’s the Jordan Peters inspired workout me and Ollie completed today . . .