Strength Makes You Feel Good! – Your Next Level Fitness

Dowsy is a popular player down at Hessle RUFC.

He’s been captain, inspired many – and He recently asked me if I could help inspire him to get to the strength levels he had before.

Read his story below!

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I have played rugby for a number of years and after a recent injury I payed John a visit. I have known John for a number of years as he has been associated with the Rugby club , fulfilling roles such as the club Personal Trainer.

I asked John what I could do to keep myself active as I could not play rugby because of my injury.

He asked me questions such as “What do I want to achieve”, “what are my goals”.

After taking a few minutes to think about this. I explained to John that I am going to the gym and working hard 5 times per week, but I wasn’t really seeing any results and I felt weak when lifting weights.

John asked me what I was doing at the Gym I explained that I was doing best lift.

Please see below.

Monday -chest. Flat bench press
Warm up
-2/3 of maximum weight 10 reps.
Maximum weight 2 reps
3rd and 4th set 3/4 maximum weight 6-8 reps
(Then repeated on incline and decline bench press)

Followed by a burn out set using light weights which are lifted until you can not lift any more.

John explain that I was not seeing the results I wanted because I was fatiguing my muscles every day and not giving them time to rest and recuperate. He then developed a strengthening plan for me.

John then went on to explain about making sure my vertical pushing and pulling was balanced with horizontal pushing and pulling . He also said I should be doing just 5 reps at a time.

I then started this on the Monday.

I found this hard. But….

I went back to John to tell him this.

I showed John what I was doing.

He showed me a technique that instead of moving the weights up and down I should find a steady weight that I could do 5 sets of 5 reps with. An example of how I started this is:

Bench press (horizontal push)
5×5 reps 82.5kg

When I did achieve this – the next time I then did chest (this was 4 days later)
I then increased the weight by 2.5kg. In between each set I added the pull exercise (pull-ups).
But because I couldn’t complete the full 5×5 rep set I made sure that I was doing 25 reps in total.

2 sets of 3 reps
8 sets of 2 reps
3 sets of 1 rep.

The Results?
I have stuck at it and after 6 weeks I have bench pressed 5×5 reps of 112.5kg. I was more impressed with my first set of 5 reps and pull ups. I plan to continue and hope to get a personal best lift of one rep of 132.5kg. I am also hoping to start using weights on a belt for my pull ups. I will post again my progress.

Dowsy’s Benching this for 3 reps………

I would like to thank John for re-lighting my motivation of working out again and showing me it’s not amount the quantity it is about the quality.

Andy Dows

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Dowsy has done really well the past several weeks….and the improvement can be seen by many.

It wasn’t that Dowsy wasn’t working hard before – it’s just that it wasn’t focussed on strength ……..or improving. It was focussed on pain, “the burn” and how pumped he felt afterwards.

Dowsy is reaping the benefits and I hope you all get something from reading about his progress here !