Body Beast: Tempo Chest/Triceps

Another way to weight train heavy, courtesy of Sagi and the Body Beast set. This workout is not quite slow and heavy, but Sagi does slow down and mix up the tempo from his standard 2-2 count in the Build and Bulk workouts to work your muscles in a new way.

Sagi leads but mostly talks, counts and instructs in this workout. Scotty (Sagi calls him "Too Hottie Scotty" at one point, teehee) and baseball-cap-wearing Nick are the backgrounders. The set is the usual stripped-down gym setting. You'll need dumbbells and a bench (aerobic step with risers works fine); one exercise uses an EZ bar/barbell but you can do the workout with only dumbbells if you want to. Nick, the designated modifier, uses only dumbbells plus a stability ball in place of the bench. Music is the Beast background metal/rock, never on the beat, just so you don't have dead silence.

The workout is 52.5 minutes long, consisting of a 2.5-minute warmup (the usual high knees, arm circles, walk-into-plank and pushup variations), 48 minutes of weights and a 2-minute stretch.

This workout has three different chest exercises, which you complete before moving on to the three triceps exercises. There are three sets of each exercise: 15 reps at light weight, 12 reps at medium weight and then 8 reps at your heavy weight. After the 8-rep set is an ab/core exercise for 10 reps. The ab exercises are done slower and stick with the weights tempo: crunches are 3 counts up and 3 down, anything with a hold is a 6-count hold.

What makes this workout different from Build and Bulk is the tempo. The 15-rep set is the slowest, done at a pace of 6 counts down and 6 up. The 12-rep set is either 6 down/3 up or 3 down/6 up, depending on whether Sagi is slowing down the contraction or extension part of the exercise. The 8-rep set is a 3/3 count. Sagi tells you to use increase weights as you go down in reps but he's not always going super-heavy, and for the triceps kickbacks he tells you to keep the same weight for all three sets. For my first time through I did my light and medium sets one dumbbell lighter than I use for Build and Bulk (15s instead of 20s; 20s instead of 25s) but was able to use my regular heaviest weight for the final 8-rep set. I will want to experiment with different weights on this workout.

The exercises are:

- Chest press

- "Figure 4" crunch (crunch with knees bent, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, 10 each side)

- Incline press

- "Cricket" crunch (somewhere between a reverse crunch and a knee in-and-out)

-Incline fly

-Tempo plank (hold plank for 6 counts, go down to forearm plank for 6 counts, repeat until you've done 10 holds in each position)

-Skullcrusher

-EZ bar crunch (crunch holding barbell over shoulders, lifting upper body slightly)

-Superset of triceps kickbacks (the only exercise where all 3 sets use a 3/3 count) followed by dips (6 down, 6 up, TOUGH)

-Plank twist-twist (get into plank, bend one knee and bring it in towards opposite shoulder, hold for 6 counts, switch knees/legs, repeat until you've done 10 holds for each leg)

I'm always up for a variation on heavy weight training and the idea of varying the tempo between sets is interesting. What lets this workout down is the counting. Sagi's counting is all over the place - he'll count 1-2-3-4-5-6 fast, slow or somewhere in between, and he doesn't count for you the whole set. The backgrounders mumble their own counts, which are sometimes picked up by the mike. And the music is NO help, not providing a consistent beat at all. You are on your own; I ended up counting out loud and missed most of Sagi's talk because of it. If there were great form pointers in there, I will have missed them.