First session back after illness/injury.
12:51Last week I managed to somehow injure my forearm and my calf on the same day, whilst also contracting a cold/man flu the day after. It gave my arm and leg time to recover, but left me with absolutely no energy at all. So bed rest was my only remedy (along with many cold/flu tablets).
During the time I found it very hard to eat without feeling quite sick, but I knew I had to keep my calories up to minimise the chance of any muscle loss. I tried to do this by eating soup and drinking protein shakes. I was still hitting roughly 2600 calories per day, whilst getting plenty of sleep to help aid my recovery.
Three days later and I'm feeling a lot better, so decided it was time to hit the gym. I was a bit skeptical about how well I would be able to lift, but thought I would go anyway.
Chest is what I always hit first during my workout week.
My workout consisted of the following with 30-50 seconds between sets.
Olympic Bar weight approx 22kg unloaded.
3 sets of 25 reps of Olympic Barbell chest press (flat bench) with no weight as a warm up.
Flat bench
1 set of 16 reps Chest press with 10kg on the olympic bar.
1 set of 10 reps Chest press with 30kg on the olympic bar.
1 set of 6 reps Chest press with 40kg on the olympic bar.
Incline bench
1 set of 12 reps Chest press with 10kg on the olympic bar.
1 set of 8 reps Chest press with 30kg on the olympic bar.
1 set of 6 reps Chest press with 40kg on the olympic bar.
1 set of 10 reps Chest press with 30kg on the olympic bar.
1 set of 8 reps Chest press with 40kg on the olympic bar.
Superset
Close grip unloaded olympic bar chest press.
Approx workout time 50mins.
I'm pretty happy as my lifts have actually gone up in weight and I felt a lot more focussed than I normally do. Perhaps it was the lack of being able to go to the gym for about 5 days and just dying to get back in, or the fact that I wanted to make sure I hadn't lost any strength.
Please note that I only pushed myself too do a this much after illness as I had a spotter to make sure I wouldn't injure myself. I would not recommend aiming so highly after an illness or injury if I was myself.
I'd love to hear from anyone reading these posts what they do for their chest sessions and perhaps give me any advice on exercises I could add in to vary mine.
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