BASE - 1 Day Gym Workout

Warm up with just the bar until you feel the lactic build up in your quads.

First set of 12 should be a tad lighter than the last three sets. The idea is that you should be really warmed up before tackling this compound movement.

All reps needs to be controlled so do not drop the barbell down. It’s almost a slow motion movement when you begin the descent - hips and knees should break at the same time and you should feel a stretch along the glutes and quads as you reach the bottom. Do not rest and sit pretty at the bottom but drive your feet into the ground and use those stretched glutes and quads to bring the weight up.

Treat these lunges as a tough warm-up. The idea here is to warm up the the glutes for the deadlifts next. Really feel that stretch along those muscles and remember how these feel when you engage them for the deadlifts.

Now that your glutes are warmed up, rack the barbell up with an appropriate weight for 10 reps.

Key points here are to brace properly for each rep (ie breath in through nose and fill the diaphragm, hold that breath and feel the tension around the core protect your posterior chain). Your nervous system will be fairly fatigued especially after squats so this is very important to avoid injury.

Focus on maximising the chest contraction with each rep. Tempo should be a controlled pace - not too fast, not too slow - a leisurely walking pace. To increase the time under tension, do not rest once the bar hits the chest but maintain the contraction in your chest and push bar into the sky. Try and flex the chest muscles at the top.

Last set is as many reps as possible. After this, strip a majority of the weight off (or just use the bar itself) and then another AMRAP set to exhaust the chest.

Use overhand grip. To find the optimal starting position, I sometimes deadlift the bar all the way up and then descend halfway - my spine is neutral, core braced and grip is tight.

At this position, I imagine someone pulling the back of my elbows up to start the movement. When the barbell reaches your chest, you should feel your whole upper back engaged - I hold this position for a second and then control the barbell back down.

I prefer this over the barbell for this specific workout as the number of compound movements executed up to this point is borderline excessive (remember this is your only workout for the week!) so smith machine takes the neurological stress out somewhat so you can focus solely on the shoulders.

Find the right hand placement to maximise shoulder contraction.