Chest

Of course, trying something new. I've been reading Building the Perfect Beast...Naturally by Author L. Rea and Eric R. Broser. It looks like a good, steroid-free but effective and intense program. The first part of the process, though, is to find out the one repetition maximum (1RM) for each of the major muscle groups. This is done by choosing a weight that you can lift 10 times or less in a reasonably isolated exercise. There are several regression models that will calculate your 1RM based on the weight and reps. To see what kind of variance in calculation techniques are out there, the Online 1RM Calculator is maintained by a French powerlifting group and documents at least 24 different calculation systems (all drawn from exercise and physiology literature, so we can assume that they are at least more resembling of science than religion.)

After calculating the 1RM for each muscle group, you can then go back to that muscle group and see how many times you can lift 85% of your 1RM until fatigue. The number of repetitions (within a range) will indicate the dominant muscle fiber type in that muscle group. Knowing this allows you to set appropriate weight and reps-to-failure goals in creating routines. Since the goal is to take the muscles to failure, and the greatest gains are achieved by microtearing the greatest number of fibers, it makes sense to choose the combinations that will hit the dominant fiber type.

Instead of including them in the daily workout lists, I'll save them up until we've gone through the list and made the calculations. Stay tuned!

Today's numbers:

Monday, February 18, 2008 - Chest

Exercise	Cory	Matt
Decline bench (F)	175 x 10 : 185 x 10	155 x 10 : 135 x 10
Incline DB press - 45º (F)	60 x 10 x 2	50 x 10 x 2
Flat fly	35 x 10 x 2	30 x 14 : 30 x 13
Incline fly - 60º (F)	40 x 15 : 40 x 10	30 x 15 : 30 x 13
Decline press (M)	180 x 12 x 2	180 x 11 : 180 x 9