Barbell Club May – June

Fully instructed group classes begin on 17th May.

If you have been nervous about coming back to the gym then now is a good time, and Barbell Club is an ideal place to start.

The exercises are fully instructed, you can work through the program at your own pace and there is no cardio. This gives you time and energy to focus on technique. Every exercise can be scaled to suit your level of experience and the coaches are more than happy to help with this.

Barbell Club program 17th May – 13th June – pdf

For those with more experience, some notes on this month’s program:

For the compound A1 exercise we will be doing drop sets. There are many ways of doing these but the aim is to achieve greater hypertrophy by increasing the time under tension on the slow-twitch fibres. That said, we are going to edge towards a strength as well as hypertrophy goal by using low reps at the start of the sets.

For each set, perform 4 reps with a challenging weight and then remove 10-30% of the weight, perform 6 reps, remove another 10-30%, perform 8 reps. The only rest between the drops is the time it takes you to remove the weight i.e. a maximum of 20 secs. The amount you drop will depend on how much training you have managed to keep up over lockdown. Those still lifting heavy loads will drop a higher percentage. Those lifting a lesser load will drop a smaller percentage.

At the end of workout 2 we do a different style of drop set for the biceps curls. This is a mechanical drop set where the difficulty of the movement ‘drops’ rather than the load. I’m mentioning this here because some of these movements require a bench and due to previous covid restrictions you may not be comfortable sharing. If this is the case there are other options available…

If you do not have a bench you can hinge over (like for a bent-over row) to do the biceps curl with the elbows in front (rest your bum on the wall or the rig for balance if you need to). Alternatively, you could use the GHR to do a Scott curl. For the elbows behind biceps curl, you can lean your upper back against the rig and position your feet in front of you to create an incline so that you can hang your arms behind you.

If you need any other tips on movements or set-up do feel free to contact me ([email protected]) or ask one of your coaches.

Barbell Club program 17th May – 13th June – excel (for recording weights)