Spartan Insider - Tenth Edition - Oxygen Health & Fitness

Welcome to the first February edition of the Spartan Insider VIP Newsletter. Spartan Program #1 enters it’s final week next week and the results so far have continued on the great progress made last year. Some exercises have seen a 30% increase in strength in only 5 weeks. The guys are building a solid foundation of power, athleticism and functional strength that should see them make leaps and bounds in the year ahead. Read on for all the latest…

Dave Lambert

Oxygen Health & Fitness

Incline Dumbbell Rows

The Bent-Over Barbell Row is a great exercise for the back. It not only builds the lats, but also the traps and the deep anterior and posterior spinal muscles. Unfortunately, a lot of people use too heavy a weight and perform them incorrectly. Once most people add too much weight, they start to round the back, which negates the primary focus of the movement. If they don’t round their back, they often use their legs to get the bar up. Overall it’s beneficial to substitute them for Incline Dumbbell Rows every now and then anyway to get a real feel for how we want you performing many upper back exercises.

Try this:

1. Lie face down on an Incline Bench with a dumbbell in each hand.

2. Initiate the movement by pulling through the elbows.

3. At the top of the movement, squeeze the shoulder blades together for a good 2 seconds.

4. Lower the dumbbells to the start position, making sure you get full extension.

Keys to the movement:

• Don’t let your chest come off the pad. That’s called cheating.

• If you can’t squeeze the shoulder blades together at the top of the movement, you’re using too much weight.

“Puff the chest out”

A lot of experienced gym-goers have heard to squeeze the shoulder blades together at the top of most of rowing type movements. Another way to explain that same technique is to concentrate on the front of the body and “puffing” the chest out as much as possible. You’ll engage the Rhomboid and Lat muscles around your shoulder blades in the back when you’re all puffed up in the front. They’re exactly the ones you need to be using to strengthen your back.

Goals and Targets continue to be smashed on the way towards completing the first 6 week Spartan Program of 2014. There’s been as much as a 30% increase in strength in exercises like Power Cleans which involve full body power, brute force as well as finely tuned athletic skill. Box Jumps are another athletic exercise that have improved out of sight with guys not only jumping higher, but landing much cleaner as well. There were some Spartans who 5 weeks ago couldn’t complete a full set of Chin Ups. Now they’re attaching extra weight to their bodies. Trap Bar Deadlifts have been shaking the foundations of the Kiama High School Gymnasium with as much as 150kg being dominated. With one week to go, any Strength Targets that haven’t been met are either going to be ticked off or given one hell of a shake.

Tracking your progress

It’s not rocket science tracking your progress, recording measurements or taking regular photos. It doesn’t feel like a massive achievement when you assess your progress and it shows a centremetre gain here or a loss there. Over time though those centremetres can add up to show significant progress. Nothing however, shows the progress like taking regular photos and that’s why we have this segment every week in the Spartan Insider VIP Newsletter. This photo shows the progress I have made since August last year through to January this year. I know I still have a long way to go towards where I ultimately want to be but it’s nice to actually see the positive changes that others have noticed.