Coach Aaron Burgess

My current upper body day.

If you have any questions about volume or exercise selection shoot me a DM!

My current focus is arms (trained first) and back (trained next and highest volume) switching from an arms & chest focus for the past few blocks.

I’ve just started running upper/lower/rest/push/pull/legs/rest schedule so chest and shoulders get more volume later in the week.

Exercise selection is below ⬇️⬇️

-> Cable Tricep Extension
Trains all heads of the tricep, using a b-strap so takes out any grip limitations. Not the most optimal version of this exercise but I enjoy it and continue to progress.

-> Cable Bicep Curls
Facing away with the cable set low to make the exercise harder towards the bottom where the bicep have the best leverage.

-> Wide Grip Lat Pulldowns
Frontal plane shoulder adduction or in other words what the lats do. Gives the mid-lower lat regions the best leverage and activation.

-> Upper Back Row
Chest supported, 80ish degrees of shoulder abduction to eliminate the lats as much as possible plus getting high levels of rear delt activation. Focusing on protracting and retracting the shoulder blades (traps)!

-> Kelso Shrugs
New addition with the focus on back growth. Still feels a bit ugly on form. Pure protraction and retraction of the shoulder blades and at this angle of machine there is some elevation at the top too.

-> Chest Press Machine
Simple, stable, easily progressed. Horizontal shoulder adduction so trains all parts of the pec.

-> Single Arm Lat Row or Pulldown
Whatever you want to call it, they are the same thing. It’s a sagittal plane pull which forces shoulder extension, the lats other main function. Biasing the upper region slightly.

-> Chest Supported DB Lateral Raise
Stable, simple. Enjoyable. Trains middle delt.

Comment or DM me ‘Stuck’ and take my plateau quiz so you can get you the results you deserve.

What do you think? 👇🏼

Endless variety isn’t advanced training.

You are just avoiding doing the boring work of getting really good and really strong at a handful of exercises.

Repetition is where progress really happens.

This is why ⬇️

Lifting weights in the gym are a skill.

When learning any other skill you wouldn’t just practice it for 4 weeks and then change it completely. So why do it in the gym?

Instead of looking for reasons to change exercises out how about look for reasons to keep them in.

The more reps you do, the better you get at the exercise, the better you are able to recruit more muscle fibres and train the target muscle to task failure.

If you are still making progress your program is probably working so why change it?

I hate wasting time.

Exercise redundancy is the biggest time wasting thing I see in the gym.

People challenging the muscle in the same way over and over again in the one workout. Literally getting no new stimulus.

For most people the easiest fix is just to focus on 1-2 exercises per muscle.

That means no more 8+ exercises chest or arm days 🤦🏻‍♂️

1-2 exercises done pushed hard for a few solid sets a couple times a week is the secret to serious muscle building.

And when you get stuck, stop progressing, or advance to where a blanket 1-2 doesn’t work anymore shoot me a DM and let’s put together an even better plan 👌🏼