Texans strength and conditioning coach **Dan Riley** writes his popular Fitness Corner column for HoustonTexans.com.
Riley and assistant strength and conditioning coach **Ray Wright** will continue to post selected answers to your questions throughout the year.
Join in by shooting over an e-mail to **fitness@houstontexans.com**.
Here's Dan...
This is our first video installment of the Fitness Corner. We have twelve different upper body routines. Three of those routines incorporate dumbbells to perform all of the pushing movements. The Dumbbell 10 – 8 Routine, the Free Weight Combo Platter, and the Dumbbell Elevator. In today's installment of the Fitness Corner you can watch Seth Payne complete our Dumbbell Elevator Routine by clicking here.
During this routine Seth performs all pushing movements on our zero to ninety multi-purpose benches. There are six different angle adjustments on these benches. We do not use the sixth adjustment (90 degrees).
We call each of the five different angles we use, "Floors. On the player's computer sheet the first exercise (supine dumbbell bench) is listed as First Floor. Seth will attempt to perform ten reps on each of the five floors. The angle of the bench increases with each floor. He will progress from the First Floor (supine or flat back bench press) to the Fifth Floor (seated overhead press).
Our players named this routine the Dumbbell Elevator because it starts on the first floor and goes up to the fifth floor. We tell our players once the door closes it is time to leave the "comfort zone."
The exercise sequence and rest interval is listed below:
- 1st Floor (10 reps) – rest 90 seconds
- Nitro Rear Delt (12 reps) followed immediately by the Nitro Seated Row – rest (10 – 12 reps) – rest 90 seconds.
- Nitro Pec Fly (12 reps) – rest 90 seconds.
- 2nd Floor (10 reps) – rest 90 seconds.
- Hammer Rear Delt (12 reps) followed immediately by the Xpload lat pulldown – rest 90 seconds.
- 3rd Floor (10 reps) - rest 90 seconds.
- Avenger Lateral Raise – rest 90 seconds.
- 4th Floor (10 reps) – rest 90 seconds.
- Dumbbell Front Raise (10 reps) rest 90 seconds
- 5th Floor.
- Manual Diagonal Raises (8 – 10 reps).
It is difficult to effectively describe in writing the techniques our players use to perform most exercises. Seth is one of the most disciplined athletes I have trained in my thirty-two year career as a strength coach. Hopefully he has given you some better insight to our training techniques. We thank him for his contribution to the Fitness Corner. Hopefully it will not be his last.
