Day 40:Shoulders & Abs

We have to finish the week as strong as we began, and now I’m going to smash out shoulders. Today I’m feeling DOMS. As I mentioned earlier, this stands for delayed onset muscle soreness. Sometimes you feel this the next day after a hardcore training session, but sometimes DOMS peaks 36–48 hours after a workout. That’s what I’m feeling today—my DOMS from my Wednesday (DAY 38) workout.

I’ve taken all the necessary steps for recovery, yet I’m still feeling sore and lethargic. The good news is that I’ll be training a body part that isn’t sore, and then I have the weekend to recover. It’s important to push through these lethargic moments so long as you’re taking care of your recovery through nutrition, supplementation, lifestyle choices, and the other techniques I’ve recommended.

Today’s workout begins with cable rear delt flyes to target this hard-to-build muscle. Don’t go too heavy. Make certain that you choose the weights that allow you to perform all the reps and sets. Because you’re following DTP, you’ll perform 30 reps for the first set, dropping 5 reps per set as you increase weight.

You’ll follow that with cable bilateral raises. The third exercise is front raises on an incline bench with a plate to emphasize the contraction at the top of the movement. Start with the plate at the bottom of the movement, and raise it to your eyeline without swinging it. Hold the plate in the neutral position (palms facing each other). Pause at the top of the movement to emphasize the contraction, and then lower the weight with control, emphasizing the stretch in your anterior (front) delts.

The rest period is always short after higher reps, but you can extend that to up to about 3 minutes as the weights get heavier, even for these smaller muscle groups.

Today we added traps to our shoulder workout. Sometimes this muscle group is trained with back. I chose barbell shrugs, starting with heavier weights for 10 reps and then dropping weight as I increased reps. Always consider performing a warm-up set when you begin with heavier weights for fewer reps. For moves where you perform 25–30 reps as your first set, that should suffice as both your warm-up and first working set.

The last exercise of this week is leg raises, which you can perform on a flat or incline bench. The incline bench provides added resistance on the lower abs. I went to failure for 5 sets, resting for only about 40 seconds between sets.

Do whatever you can to lower your cortisol levels after this workout. Get away from your phone and computer, and get a good night’s sleep. Remember we’ll be eating higher fats over the weekend and doing double cardio both days.

Cable rear delt flye Sets: 5 Reps: 30, 25, 20, 15, 10 Strategy: DTP
Cable bilateral raise Sets: 5 Reps: 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 Strategy: DTP
Incline front plate raise Sets: 5 Reps: 30, 25, 20, 15, 10 Strategy: DTP
Barbell shrug Sets: 5 Reps: 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 Strategy: DTP
Incline leg raise Sets: 5 Reps: Failure Strategy: Regular
HIIT Sets: 1 Reps: 3 Strategy: 4 minutes easy/1 minute full intensity for a total of 15 minutes

TIP

Prioritize your health over your muscle mass. Make sure your foods are clean. Stay away from GMO foods and those with pesticides, heavy-metal contaminants, and synthetics that increase inflammation. This is true of your supplements as well. Embrace your health. When you eat an avocado, you know it’s an avocado. When you look after your heart health, reducing your inflammatory response, you’ll be able to put on muscle mass. I’ve been able to add muscle mass every year over the past 10 years, and I am no spring chicken. The takeaway is that the best way to build muscle mass is to focus on health, and muscle growth will follow.