Upper Body Day Walkthrough | Dubai Beach Day

All right guys, welcome back to the channel. Today we are doing a full upper body workout. When I'm in flow in my normal routine, I usually hit the gym 5 to 6 days per week, and that's usually legs, push, pull, legs, push, pull, or legs, push, pull, upper, lower. But when I'm traveling, I'm on holidays, I'm relaxing a little bit, I like to wind things back to a 4-day program and do upper, lower, upper, lower. And to be honest, these are some of my favorite sessions ever. You get a little bit more recovery, the pumps are insane, and you get a pump absolutely everywhere. So today is going to be a savage savage upper body workout in none other than TK MMA. I haven't been here in years. It's a rooftop gym in Dubai, absolutely crazy scenes. So we're getting a pump. We're in TK MMA, we're in Dubai, life is good. Let's hit a savage workout. So when it comes to warming up, personally— and now you won't hear personal trainers say this too often— I think it's slightly overrated. People are doing these 20, 30-minute warm-ups. It's like half your workout and it's unnecessary. If you have a certain injury or there's a certain area that you need to pay attention to, then for sure do it. But me personally, I do about 10 minutes of cardio on the treadmill just to kind of listen to music, get hyped up, and then specificity, specific training, specific warming up is all you need. So if you're doing some pressing movements, that's how you're starting your workout, just warm up with some lighter pressing movements. There's no need for all this crazy stuff unless you really have an area that needs a lot of work. So we're starting off with an incline dumbbell press. So I'll just grab something light. I'll just do some shoulder pressing movement like so. I'll do that until I feel a nice little pump, until I feel I'm ready for my first light set, and then I'll do 2 warm-up sets and then into the working set. When you're doing an upper body day, your shoulders are definitely a problem area for a lot of people, so I'll always do a few sets on that. Another good one to warm up your shoulders is actually some pull-ups and some dead hangs. First working set. By the way, I love these old-school weights. Like, I love a dirty rack of dumbbells. So let's see.

The thing is there's no pair of dumbbells.

I'm just like, these look similar. Are we setting it? Are we setting a PR? I don't know. Maybe. Is it even a warm-up set?

Oof. Oof.

Now, if you do have some shoulder pain, you want to bring the dumbbells down like this, almost like a hammer press. Kind of make a triangle. Keep your elbows down here. And then converge at the top to really squeeze that upper chest.

Doof. Doof. Doof.

People ask me, they're like, oh Rob, are you gonna be doing this forever? And I look at guys like Joe Rogan, he's like 54, Gary Vee, Jordan Peterson. Actually, all the guys I watch, all the podcasts, they're all guys in 40s and 50s because they have knowledge. I'm gonna be— I can guarantee you You're gonna— it's coming up to 10 years of me on YouTube. You're gonna see me for another 10 years, even if no one's watching. I'm gonna be here recording videos for myself because this is what I love to do, recording fitness videos. And the older I get— so it was my birthday about 2 weeks ago— the older I get, the more serious I take fitness. You have to, because it's easy to, you know, stay in shape when you're in your 20s, you don't have any injuries. But the older you get the more meticulous you have to be. And also the more reward you'll get. You know, it becomes rarer to have a great physique as you get older. So it's something I'm really going to focus on. So I ain't going nowhere. We got a little bit of a pump going on. We can do it now.

Alright. Whoa.

This is how we're looking about 4 or 5 days into the trip, maintaining things nicely, trying to cook a good bit of home cooking, you know, in the apartment, but also eating out and enjoying myself as well. In previous years when I would travel, I would restrict myself too much leading up to the trip, and I'd end up like binging pretty much when I got to the trip because I had this mindset. I'm like, oh, I'm on holidays, I'll just eat whatever I want. And I think it's a bit of maturity and just education that, you know, the longer you train for, the longer you learn about nutrition, you just become a little bit more flexible, and this is actually gonna help you in the long run. So now when I go on holidays, I'm like, I don't have this on and off mentality. I just keep up with the diet that I enjoy. So gonna be doing a lot of little tips on training nutrition in this video. If you go to failure on your first set, you're gonna fatigue yourself too much for the rest of the workout. So if you are really gonna floor it, and push yourself to failure. Either save it for your last set or save it for the end of your workout when you're doing pump stuff like isolations. Oh, that's exercise 1 done. Next up, we are going on to a horizontal rowing movement. For this, you could do a chest-supported dumbbell row, you could do a machine like this. It's really down to personal preference because when you think about it, it's just the same movement. You're just dragging your elbow horizontally. So whichever way you want to chop that up and do it is down to you. So for example, As well, you can do these seated right here, or you can also— some people find it more comfortable when they do the standing like this. I actually think that's how I'm going to do it. So play around with a few different ways, but basically there's only so many movements you can do for your back. There's a vertical row, a horizontal row, and you can also do a pullover movement. Pretty much those 3 movements are all you need for hitting back. So if it's a lat pulldown, weighted pull-up, whatever Just find your 3 specific movements, back movements that you really like to do on personal preference and progress with them and you're going to have a sick back. So today we're doing some chest supported row on this Hammer Strength machine. So let's find the grip we like as well. It's a low grip there, it's a higher grip here. So probably get a little bit more upper back, rear delt. I think I'm going to do a happy medium around here, nice and wide as well. Really lean over and stretch the back too. Oh yeah, yep, that's the one. With movements like your back— another example would be hamstrings— movements that you can't directly look at, you really need to focus on mind-muscle connection. It is easy to have a mind-muscle connection when you're staring at your bicep. What's difficult is having a mind-muscle connection on those movements that you cannot see. So that's when you really need to focus. Make sure you're hitting the muscle that you're targeting and get an epic squeeze. All right, here's where the grinders begin.

Put momentum.

Salut! And I'm alive, no injury. All right, so with the overhead press, this is a movement that a lot of people get wrong, and I also think it's an amazing movement. I call it the squat of the upper body because you're going to be hitting your upper chest, your delts of course, your traps, your triceps. Seeing as you're doing it standing, you're also going to be using your core and your legs a little bit as well. Essentially a full body movement. You get a lot of bang for your buck. Looks cool as hell too. So when you're doing this, what I like to do is get your grip right. Not too wide, just directly outside shoulder width a little bit, or even you can do more tucked grip. It's up to you, whatever feels most comfortable. And I really yank my elbows underneath to start off in a solid position. And my biggest tip for these is it's like a rectangle here, okay? And you're putting your head through the frame. So it's like this. So you don't want to have it up here, you want to bring the bar over your head and you need to put your head through. So you're like, you're giving the air a headbutt, okay? So like boom, and you can see, look at that power that generates. Boom, boom, like a pigeon clucking his head. And the bar ends up right above your head and then you bring it down to your upper chest. Next tip of the day: if you hit a plateau on overhead pressing, feel free to move to the push press. What is a push press? It's basically when you're using some leg drive to push the weight above your head. So this is gonna act like a spotter. You're essentially assisting yourself to go to a heavier weight. When you get that heavier weight, you can cut back on the leg drive so you get to the point where you're strict pressing just a heavier weight. So it's a form of progressive overload. It's kind of like spotting yourself, especially if you control the negative. And it's another way to overload on the overhead press. So next up, we are on to isolation movements. So there's going to be some lateral raises, cable chest flies, and some arms as well. Finish off some strength conditioning with isolations. It's not too important how you split them up. It's all just high rep pump work. For example, the cable fly is taken right now. It's okay to just go into curls straight away. I love curls. And what I do, so if I'm doing 8 on each arm, I'll do— I'll count down the numbers in my head. So I'll do 6, 6, 5, 5, like so. It's easier when you count down instead of count up. It's a little mental trick. Alright guys, so we are doing lateral raises. Similar to the rowing movement, you can split these up in a lot of different ways. You can do standing, so Some people like to start with the dumbbell right at their sides. Some people like to do a little bit of forward lean and kind of connect them over here. Some people like myself, they like to do them seated. And what I actually love to do, I bring them below my hamstrings like so and bend over a little bit. I just find that feels amazing for me. Then if you want to even hit your rear delts, you go down here. But for me, with ladder raises, I love doing them seated because it eliminates any swing and momentum you may use, even though that's all right sometimes. And it's a good cue to, I just bring them right here and explode up. So, I'll show you now. So just right down there, really deep.

Doof. Doof.

Just like so. Little squeeze at the top. Doh! We're gonna do some cable flies, then some triceps, and we're done. So with chest flies, you want to put it on a high pulley if you want to hit a kind of a decline movement. Put it on a low pulley if you want to hit that upper chest. And of course, middle, put it around here. And with these, a lot of people, they suggest doing a really strict form. Personally, I like using a little bit of aggression on these, especially towards the end of the workout, like so. I bend my elbows slightly. Some people say, you know, lock them out like this. I find that a little bit uncomfortable. Take a big step forward and like so. Oh my God, killer!

Oh fuck, let's get one more. Come on!

Now we're done.

Oh my God, whoa!

You're doing only one exercise per body part, is it enough to grow muscle? That is a great, great question. So people think to grow muscle you need to do 5 movements on one body part, and the typical bro day, you know, they'll go in, they'll hit 5 chest movements, they'll hit barbell bench press, dumbbell bench press, and they don't realize that it's just the same movement. You might as well just do more sets on one exercise, it's the same. This is known as junk volume, and it's completely unnecessary. The main thing with your workouts is if you are progressing— so more weight, more sets, more reps— there has to be some sort of progression. You can do all the different exercises you want, but if you're not progressing at your main compounds, it's going to be very little to no muscle built. Damn, that's a sick one. Any reason that you, you know, go down so low like that? Uh, it's comfortable for me. Yeah, yeah, I just like get a little like a nice wide stretch. It looks like you're doing a classic physique pose as well, you know.

It's like, yeah, yeah, definitely.

I'm going to try that out. Low center of gravity. Oh man, I'm liking that. Oh yeah, feel powerful, secure. Yeah, yeah. 3 more like that. All right guys, we're on to the last movement of the day, and there's going to be a tricep movement, and then we can go to the beach. All right guys, so last movement of the day is going to be an overhead tricep movement. I like to use these hex dumbbells because when you're using a plate-loaded dumbbell, whatever you want to call it, the grip is flat and it can put your wrist in a super awkward position. So I find these are much more comfortable and allows you to go much heavier. So we get that up and the cue for this, right? I don't know if anyone here played rugby. I know that's how I first got started in the gym, but imagine like I'm throwing a ball into the lineout. I actually played hooker and flanker as my position. So that's just a little cue that I use.

So like so.

And you're just throwing it over your head. 2 more sets of them, and now some strength and conditioning shit that looks cool. 3, 2, last one, come on.

Oh my God. Done!

Epic upper body workout in the books. Guys, try this one out. Tag me on IG. Sign up to The Game Plan for more workouts like this. Look how good I'm feeling afterwards. I'm beach ready, baby, after just one workout. So now, to keep the shreds alive, we're gonna do a little bit of cardio-based stuff. And also, it's gonna make a cool edit. Our hike shoot went amazingly well. Now we're at Twiggy. We've heard so much about this place and we literally got the best seats in the house. We are getting so lucky on this trip. It literally looks like the Maldives. And now we're going to chill out for a little bit, get some lunch, and show you guys what we get and if we recommend this place because it is very popular. Does it live up to the hype? Let's see. Look at this, we're seen. We just got the most perfect looking sushi ever. Tunes are good, the weather is amazing. Nice solid days of work in the books as well. You know how we do. I want you guys to experience this as well, so see what we're taste that.

That's hit.

That's a good life. Hit and diff. That's hit and diff.