Weight Training | Training to Build Muscle and Lose Fat

I often talk about the importance of goal setting and the goals that I have set for myself. For today’s session I was really looking forward to achieving a strength goal that I have been working on for some time. The goal that I wanted to achieve is deadlifting 140kg with good form for no less than 4 reps.

Considering my bodyweight is only 82kg, I consider 140kg to be a more than reasonable lift. Given that I like functional strength, there are not to many things that I have to pick up in my everyday life that weight more than 140kg, so if I could achieve this goal I would be stoked.

So at 10:00pm I headed into my work gym for a session of Back and Biceps. As I have outlined on previous posts, I have set myself several strength goals, which I am aiming to achieve by the end of the 12 week program. I am placing these goals in brackets after the exercise that I am performing.

My Program for Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat

Pre-Workout Nutrition:
• About an hour before training I downed a Pre-workout shake.

Warm-up:
• 5 minutes on elliptical trainer.
• Dynamic Stretching
• Push-ups x 20

Workout:

• Bent Over Barbell Rows (Goal Weight: 120kg)
– Set 1: 8 reps x 80kg
– Set 2: 6 reps x 105kg
– Set 3: 6 reps x 105kg

• Deadlifts (Goal Weight: 140kg)
– Set 1: 8 reps x 100kg
– Set 2: 6 reps x 140kg
– Set 3: 6 reps x 140kg

• Close Grip Bench Press (Goal Weight: 90kg)
– Set 1: 10 reps x 10kg
– Set 2: 8 reps x 15kg
– Set 3: 5 reps x 25kg
– Set 4: 4 reps x 25kg

• Tricep Pushdowns (N/A Due to the fact that I am in so many different places and the machines all vary so much)
– Set 1: 8 reps x 11 pin
– Set 2: 6 reps x 15 pin
– Set 3: 6 reps x 15 pin

Finishers – My High Intensity Fat Burning Circuit

I am still incorporating finishers at the end of my weight training session. Today I alternated between Jump Squats and Explosive Push-ups. I started by doing 10 of each back to back, then 9 of each back to back and so on until I reach zero. The whole circuit is done without rest and took me only about 4mins to complete.

Warm Down:
• Static Stretching

The whole session including warm-up, the workout, finishers and warm down took me 48mins to complete burning about 400kcals with an average heart rate of 110BPM.

Post-Workout Nutrition:
• Straight after the session I downed a Post-workout shake.

Notes:
• All reps and sets are done with good form (no cheating or swinging the weight)
• Rest for exactly a minute between all sets except for the last 2 working sets where you rest for 2mins.
• During the workout sip on water.

Woo Hoo, not only did I achieve my goal of deadlifting 140kg for 4 reps, I managed to squeeze out 6 reps on both my working sets. I am over the moon. My next goal is to deadlift 160kg, which is almost double my body weight. Bring it on.