New York Workouts, Part 1, By: Hugo Rivera
As many of you already know, I went to New York a few weeks ago and did the photo shoots for the exercise descriptions of the upcoming Body Sculpting Bibles. Everything went great but it was alot of hard work! I left Tampa at 4:00pm on Friday, got to NY by 7:30pm, went to the gym and started shooting at 9pm on that night. We finished shooting at 3:30am on Saturday morning, had some Steak at that time, went to bed at 5:30am and was back at the gym shooting again at 12 noon. The second day of shooting lasted until 7pm and at that time we worked on legs. We really killed them too. We went out for some more steak that night, went to bed like at 5am again but slept until 1pm on Sunday. Trained upper body on Sunday afternoon, caught my plane at 7pm and came back to Tampa. Interesting weekend. However, what was most interesting (and impressive) was the fact that I found two guys that were actually able to keep up with me on the workouts without throwing up or passing out (they are also natural trainers like myself).
Like I already mentioned, Saturday we targeted Legs. After an eternity of planning, coordinating and photo shooting, me and my business partner (also co-author and great friend) James Villepigue had a lot of stress to relieve. It was around 7:30pm and we were picking up the mess that we left the gym in (we moved a lot of equipment during the shoot). It was Leg Day and for some reason we were dying to go and see who was going to be the lucky one that would not be able to finish the workout. Kenny, Jimmy's workout partner was also there. Jimmy and Kenny decide to warm-up playing basketball. If there is one thing that I am not good at is basketball so I passed on that type of warm-up. Besides, these guys idea of basketball, looks more like a mix of football and hokey. Anyway, as I was waiting for them to finish up I decide to start a warm up myself so I pack 3 plates on each side of the Leg Press machine and start doing One Legged Leg Presses. I did 30 reps with that weight for each leg. Without rest, I set the Seated Leg Curl Machine at 160 lbs and slam 12 easy reps. I got me a nice full pump out of that so I decide to repeat the sequence as I was waiting. After 3 sequences or so, I check on the guys and see that they are really into their game. I wasn't going to be the one to stop them as it was intense (or insane depending on your point of view). At this time, I decide to workout on my own. Basically, I said to myself: "What kind of routine should I do today?" The answer was simple. However, simple does not necessarily mean easy. I challenged myself to do as many sets as I possibly could of One Legged Leg Presses and Seated Leg Curls in 45 minutes. I figured that in order to accomplish the maximum amount of sets within this time frame, I would need then to eliminate any rest period in between sets whatsoever. In other words, I was looking at a super duper giant set that would only end once the clock hits that 45 minute mark. So I sank into the swing of things and I did set after set of One Legged Leg Presses and Seated Leg Curls. The fact that Leg Presses were performed one leg at a time plus the fact that they were followed by leg curls gave me sufficient amount of rest to perform all of the desired repetitions. Also, I am sure that the cardio that I have being doing for the past few months helped out as well. In any case, at the end of the 45 minutes, I did 25 sets according to my scribbled workout log. I felt great! Exhausted, but had a great sense of accomplishment. At this time, the guys come out of the basketball court, exhausted as well but ready to hit the weights, and ask me: "What are you doing? Ready to workout?" Now, just when I thought I only had enough energy to hit 15 minutes of calf raises, these guys want me to workout with them?! I told them that I just had gone through a very simple but brutal workout. Their reply was that so did they. As you can all imagine, they started teasing about me not wanting to workout, me being scared of their workout, me not being able to complete it, etc, etc, etc. Besides, according to them, since they had a brutal basketball session, their workout was going to be short. So by the time they were done with me, I was just ready to show them who was not going to complete the workout!
Jimmy, planned the workout while Kenny and I followed. It was simple: Four exercises performed for 5 sets each and absolutely no rest in between giant sets! So the routine looked like the one below:
Giant Set
1. Barbell Lunges 5 sets of 10 repetitions (Move to exercise #2)
2. Lying Leg Curls 5 sets of 10 repetitions (Move to exercise #3)
3. Leg Extensions 5 sets of 15 repetitions (Move to exercise #4)
4. Seated Calf Raises 5 sets of 25 repetitions (Move to exercise #1 until you have done five sets of everything)
Now, the rules of the game were the following:
- Once you choose a weight, you are not allowed to go down.
- You need to complete the repetitions no matter what.
So, thank God we all had similar strength levels. We all signed up for 70 lbs on the bar for lunges, 180lbs for Leg Curls, 200 lbs for Leg Extensions and 4 plates of 45lbs for the Seated Calf Machine. Jimmy started with me going after him and Kenny going last. Once we would start, there was no turning back. I am thinking, "there is no way that these guys can do this". Well, surprise, surprise but by the third cycle of this, I came to realize that nobody was going to give up. So five sets we all did for the amount of repetitions specified and no rest in between. What a killer workout! Honestly, I think that what took us through it was all of our egos combined with all of the stress that we had accumulated for the past 24 hours, mutual encouragement and inspiration and just pure determination to do it. After this, we all headed to a great restaurant and had some well-deserved steak, chicken and baked potatoes.
Next week I will discuss how the Upper Body Workout went the following day. Until then, take care and train hard!
