Week 4 Day 1 - Sun's Out Guns

20/04/15 Day 22 – Chest & Triceps

Ladies and gents, boys and girls Y3T is officially over! A new week dawns which means a new training variation is upon us. This week I will be using the training method that has created legends like 3 x 212 Olympian “Flex” Lewis as well as 4 x Mr Olympia Jay Cuttler, I'm talking of course about FST-7. This stands for Fascia Stretch Training-7 the number seven represents the 7 sets you perform on the isolation exercise at the end of your session.

The Fascia is a huge webbing that surrounds your muscles, so when we use the FST-7 training we are trying to stretch and manipulate this fascia so we allow our muscles to grow out even more! This gives the bigger and thicker look to the muscles.

So here is what the 1^st FST-7 training session looked like:

Incline Dumbbell Bench Press - 4 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Flat Dumbbell Bench Press - 3 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Decline Dumbbell Bench Press - 3 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Peck Fly - 7 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Supinated Tricep Pushdown - 4 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Close Grip Bench Press - 3 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Overhead Dumbbell Extension - 3 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Rope Tricep Extension - 7 Sets x 8-10 Reps

Cardio - Interval Training 15mins Total

When working through the sets before the final 7 set on each group you are meant to take up to a 2 min rest period, this means you are able to go pretty damn heavy on these sets. You look to be using around the same weight as used in Week 1 of the Y3T training, hopefully you can lift a bit heavier now.

So I blasted quite happily through the Incline Dumbbell Bench Press, making sure I worked really slowly and controlled on the way down from the top of the motion, remember we are going for work on both the concentric (upward phase) and eccentric (downward phase), so after I blasted out the first 4 Sets I was feeling pretty damn good, my form was on point, my weight was nice and strong and I was starting to swell quite nicely. Between each set on every exercise I tensed my chest for just over 10 seconds, remember we are trying to manipulate the fascia as much as possible, so we want to fill the muscles with blood to over stretch it. You can chose to either stretch during you rest period, or tense, I suggest a combination of the two as that is what was recommend to me.

After the incline press I moved on to the Flat Dumbbell Bench Press, I punches up the weights and made sure I was getting a really good squeeze out of every single rep, I didn't lock out at the top or the bottom, this allows me to increase my TUT (Time Under Tension), which is also going to allow me get more blood into those pecks and help even more to stretching my fascia.

Ok, at this point, I was feeling seriously swollen, the tensing between sets had pumped so much blood into the muscles I was struggling to feel the contraction between my sets, so feeling pretty confident and sticking with the same weight from my flat press I hoped on the decline bench and got started on my Decline Dumbbell Bench Press. I wanted the emphasis to be the squeeze at the top, bringing the dumbbells together ever so slightly and tensing the pecks, a lot like the top of a peck fly. As I don't normally work on the decline bench that much this was some what of a new experience to me and I have to say I actually really felt it.

Then came the final exercise on chest, the Peck Fly, I did this on the Peck Deck machine at my gym, but again if you don't have one, dumbbells are a perfectly suitable substitute. With these final 7 Sets the aim of the game is to keep the rest period short, we're talking 30 seconds maximum, and try as hard as possible to flush as much blood into these muscles as physically possible. This was not easy, lots of mental focus had to push me through the final 2-3 sets, my pecks felt like they were constantly on fire, which was awesome for what I wanted to achieve, but painful none the less.

After I blitzed the chest it was time for the Triceps to get a good pounding. Starting the proceedings off on the Supinated Tricep Pushdown, I have to use a flat bar here as my wrists can't take it otherwise. I felt like it was a breeze going through the Close Grip Bench Press & Overhead Dumbbell Extension, as I like training triceps in this manor it didn't feel too bad, that is, until I got to the last exercise. Rope Tricep Extension was going to be the final hurdle, the last thing standing between me and my sweet, sweet new protein sitting in my locker and boy was it a big hurdle to jump. I like to use 2 ropes and attach them both to the pulley, using the full length of both rope attachments I feel like I can get a really good, long solid contraction through the Tricep. The first 3 sets didn't seem too bad, but then the muscles just wouldn't want to respond, the momentum came into play and I told myself that there was no point, so I simply dropped the weight so I was able to hit my rep range, kept the recovery really really short and made sure I got out every rep. Needless to say, the pump was unreal.

On reflection I absolutely LOVED my first day on the FST-7 Training and cannot wait for the rest of the week, check in tomorrow for: Legs.

Happy Lifting,

Matt