Big Jim's Plateau Busting Routine

Dr Darden and fellow trainees,

Briefly touched upon this routine in another thread. Thought of it being useful whenever I miss the occasional workout, and only being able to train once that week (as can happen).

The following machine excercises were suggested, along with two additional finishers as needed:

LEG PRESS MACHINE
PULLOVER MACHINE
PULLDOWN MACHINE
DECLINE PRESS MACHINE
LATERAL RAISE MACHINE
BICEPS CURL MACHINE

My question is whether @Ellington_Darden would recommend other choice of machine excercises? I find it a bit odd to do pullovers followed by lat pulldown, considering the high degree of inroading (and no tricep excercise)? I’m also a bit anxious to overload on the lateral raise machine.

Let me know what you think! I believe @Once_again has tried it.

I’ve never used a pullover machine, but I know with Dumbbell pullovers, they fatigue the long head of the Tricep pretty aggressively.

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Pullover machines hit triceps pretty hard in that stretch position. Leistner said the pullover machines fatigued triceps so much that he would always have another pulling exercise like shrugs following the p/o in his full body workouts to give them a break before going into a pushing move.

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Keep your arms straighter, you’ll feel it in chest/back, depending how much your elbows flare out

I always feel it like crazy in my back. I’m not sure if anything gets my lats quite that sore, but it definitely fatigues my triceps too, which makes sense because moving in that direction is one of the functions of your triceps

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The machine pullover,pulldown combo hits just about every muscle of your torso to one degree
or anther so to speak. Your triceps are involved more than you think

AJ coined the name for the pullover as the upper body squat. He also wrote about the pullover/pulldown superset.

You have the decline press that will hit your triceps too.

Remember that routine is short and brutal by design.

If you read the whole article pushups and machine dips were used. So
that should cover the triceps

Jim says his goal with those last two exercises were to pump and finish his
triceps

But he also says with strong and advance athletes those last two exercise are not
necessary

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Thanks for corroborating that triceps issue! I brought that up before and everyone acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about and/or that I was doing them wrong. The BB or EZ bar version seems to do it a bit less, since the hands are more pronated.
P.S. Triceps are in there too on the Pullover Machine…even if you push with the elbows and not against the hand grips (which becomes a triceps extension static, if you’re not careful!).

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The Tricep ties right into the lats, and it gets very stretched from that position. I think this is actually a good thing for Arm development, but there is no true lat isolation movement. Straight arm Pulldowns are somewhat close but they heavily fatigue the abs and the triceps as well.

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I remember the Max Rep with 60-sec Neg, but the 50% part must have been added later!