My "endurance" chest and back workout

If you've been following my fitness updates here and previously on my personal blog, you would know I do two chest and back workouts a week. One is my regular workout, which I sometimes refer to as my "endurance" chest and back workout because of the high bodyweight reps. The other is my "heavy" workout with 6-10 rep sets. Today, I'd like to share my regular chest and back workout.

I usually start by warming up my joints. You know, arm circles, moving through the range of motion. I also warm up my neck by doing circles and twists. I've been warming up my neck ever since a neck injury doing a shoulder workout in college. Don't want that to happen again. I live on the third floor, so if I'm home, I try not to do anything loud like jumping jacks or running in place. When I'm all warmed up, I do the following four supersets. I follow each superset with an ab workout then repeat the set three times before moving to the next superset. Rest is only after the ab work for about 60 seconds.

Superset 1
Pushups
Australian pullups (you can do this with a barbell set low enough so you can grab from below; I use the Perfect Pullup)
1 set of ab work

Superset 2
Wide pushups
Wide Australian pullups
1 set of ab work

Superset 3
Dumbbell chest fly
Bent over rear lat raise
1 set of ab work

Superset 4
Dumbbell chest press
Bent over dumbbell rows
1 set of ab work

Finishers
Dumbbell deadlifts
Ab twists (7.5 lb dumbbell)
Calf raises
Ab leans (7.5 lb dumbbell)


Again, I aim for endurance with this workout, so I usually do high reps. My numbers now for my body weight exercises are 18 pushups, 18 Australian rows, 13 wide pushups, 13 wide Australian rows. For my dumbbell exercises, I'm at 13 reps with 30-lb dumbbells. I was on a 8-15 rep cycle where I would start a new weight at 8 reps and slowly increase to 15 reps before adding more weight. But I think I'm pretty good at 30-lbs for my endurance workout. I'll just keep adding one rep per week for as long as I can go. I have to take it easy anyway as I do three sets of this workout. My main focus anyway is to increase the weights for my heavy workout.

So that's pretty much it for my first chest and back workout. I'm always reviewing my workout and adding/changing parts of it, but this is the current version. I know some people do a bulk-up/cut-down cycle, but I don't like the idea that I'm either bulking or cutting at any one moment. I feel I should be preparing myself for whatever I might find myself doing. So I do a somewhat endurance workout then a heavy workout for strength. Besides, I find that this confuses my body a bit and it can't really adapt completely to one workout. I find that by the time I recover from my heavy workout, my body struggles with the last few reps in my endurance workout for the following week. I like how my body struggles. It means I'm challenging it.

Now, I'm not knocking the people who do the bulk/cut cycles. That's just not for me. I've written before that I want to develop a body that's ready for anything, not just being able to push 300 lbs off my chest or squat 500 lbs. I need to know that I can carry a child out of a building or run a decent mile or hike long distances out of a forest for help. I want a practical body.

There was a great article in Men's Health...or was it Men's Fitness...whatever. There's a guy that teaches this crazy fitness lifestyle. Barely a weight or gym to be seen. Instead, you might pick up a heavy rock and throw it at each other in a circle, sometimes unannounced. Or you would carry a log down a beach with your buddies. Or you would run this crazy course through the trees and climb them with no gear. One workout was to grab a buddy and fireman-carry them down the beach. Crazy stuff, but guess what, the instructor was insanely lean, strong, and fit. That's what I want to be.