ATHLEAN-X™

Pick your program here - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workouts Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW One armed dumbell rows are one of the most commonly performed exercises in the gym. Given their minimal equipment requirement of just a single dumbbell and an optional bench, they are actually a great exercise for home workouts too since you can do them with your hand supported on a piece of furniture. The problem is, the one armed dumbbell row is also one of the most abused and misperformed exercises which can quickly ruin your back up and down your spine if you don’t fix how you’re doing them. In this video, I’m going to show you how to perform a dumbbell row safely so you can build your muscles without wrecking your back. The problem with the one armed row starts with the position of your feet during the exercise. If you let your feet get too close to your arm planted on the bench you will be forced to row too high which will take the focus of the exercise away from your lats. Instead, you will build up your upper back with the dumbbell row far more than your lats and lose out on the benefits of the exercise for building a bigger wider back. To fix this, take a step back with your foot that stays on the ground and slide the knee that is on the bench further back on it. Then, reach forward more with your hand that is supported by the bench. Not only will this help you to put the lat more on stretch and get it involved in the movement more but it will help you to start fixing the second and much more serious problem we commonly see and that is the bad positioning of the thoracic spine. When you row, either with a dumbbell or standing with a barbell for that matter, you must be able to stick your chest out and get into thoracic extension. If you cannot, then by virtue of the fact that your spine is one continuous unit, will find that your lumbar spine has a harder time getting into the proper position which can leave you at risk for a lower back strain. The two tips you want to visualize to ensure that you can get your back into the right alignment to perform the row is first you want to raise your butt up towards the ceiling. The second is that you want to stick your chest out as far as you can. If you can do both of these then you will not only get more from the exercise but you will be doing it as it was intended. If you cannot get into this position not all hope is lost. You can actually do the mobility drill I show you here as well as foam roll the thoracic spine prior to your back workout. The one armed row is not a bad exercise. It just happens to be one of the most common exercises that is performed in the wrong way quite often. If you are knowingly doing this wrong then it will be easy for you to fix this after just watching the correct form. If you are struggling to do it right I would advise you to use the mobility techniques a few times to allow your mobility to improve enough to do the exercise more safely. In the meantime, if you are looking for a complete training program that will not only train you to make the best muscle gains and fat losses than at any other point in your training without compromising your joints in the process, head to http://athleanx.com and get one of our ATHLEAN-X Training Programs. For more videos on how to do bench dips, how to bench press and how to build muscle without ruining your joints, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Love handles are the most common storage area of fat on a man’s body. They are also one of the most stubborn areas to drop body fat from. The good news is, you don’t have to be perfect right now to get this area to look better especially if you follow the strategies laid out in this video. First of all, regardless of where your body fat levels are now you must be truthful about the state of your nutrition. Are you really eating as well as you should or are you indulging in far too many sweets and drinks to ever get your body fat levels down to a level that is required to see the greatest muscle definition. As I mentioned earlier, the body fat storage here is very stubborn in men. You have to get pretty precise if you want to get an absolutely shredded waistline. That said, you don’t have to be perfect. To start, as you are getting yourself more committed to your nutrition improvement you can start working immediately on the status of your lat development. That’s right. Your lats. If you can completely develop your lats (from origin to insertion) then you will have a great weapon in your arsenal for creating an illusion of a greater differential between the width of your back and the width of your hips. In order to fully develop the lats you have to learn how to contract the lat fully. Most of us stop at the half way point of a contraction in an effort to try and hoist as much weight as possible. That is actually not just holding back the way your lats look but it’s making an already large waistline look even larger by comparison. If you could start getting your elbow back behind your body when doing your lat exercises you would start to develop a more impressive sweep in the area of the lats that is actually closest to the problem area love handles. Remember, the greater the differential here the smaller your waistline is going to look right away. Next, as you continue to work on getting your body fat levels down you want to be sure you are regularly working on your abs. Say you are at a ten or twelve percent body fat level at this point. It is here that you are a prime candidate to see the benefits of regular but short ab training and exercises. The upper abs should be clearly visible especially in the right light at this body fat level. This creates a midline distraction of the actual width of the love handles and gives you and whoever else is looking, something better to look at! Finally, with both the lat training and ab exercises locked in you want to do what others will tell you not to if you want to get rid of your love handles and that is, work your obliques! Believe me, do not listen to anyone that says to not work your obliques as it will thicken your waistline. The obliques, when developed, are going to be the muscle that creates the v taper in your waist that will always give you the impression of having a lean tapered torso. If you follow the fibers and train along the direction of the internal and external obliques, you are going to be able to see the maximum development of these muscles and get them looking their best. I give you two band versions of exercises you can do for your obliques that will help you get those love handles obliterated once and for all as that nutrition puts the final dagger in your single digit body fat. If you are looking for a complete meal plan to get your shredded without having to rely on deprivation diets and crazy restrictive eating, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the MAX SHRED program from ATHLEAN-X. You will get the meal plan included to give you the step by step diet plan for getting abs and gettin

Workout research and science is one of the most important requirements of helping us to advance our knowledge of training and ultimately the gains we make in the gym. That said, if published literature is the only place that you are turning to as your source for what is working and what is not, then you are definitely going to want to watch this video. New research is published every single day by some very smart researchers in the field of strength and conditioning. Being able to discern what from the published studies actually holds up in the gym across thousands of real world trainees with differing body types, genetics, etc is what ultimately determines the success of that study. Even then, relying on the research alone is full of problems as well. Did you know, most people read the abstracts of the published research and draw their conclusions from that. Abstracts by nature are supposed to be brief and must convey the definitive summary of what the researcher believes was determined by the study. Much of the potential alternatives and explanations for what could also be going on is confined to the discussion section of the fully published article. Only when the entire study is read would one be able to discern those details which could be very very important. The next thing that you have to understand about research is that much of it is conducted in the university setting with college aged subjects that are participating on Summer break or for extra credit in their curriculum. While the greatest of efforts and the highest of standards could be met in order to make sure that valid research is collected DURING the testing time, there is very little control for what happens the minute the test subject leaves the lab. This can have an enormous impact on the state of the subject when they return to the lab/gym for a subsequent follow up test. If one was out partying or drinking heavily the night before a crucial retest, their performance could be significantly impacted. Without disclosing that to the researcher however, this could go unnoted and the data could be swayed. More so, even when someone looks at the data that is published and draws the same conclusions as those of the researcher it doesn’t automatically mean that all other previous research is rendered useless or defunct. If high reps are effective at building muscle for instance, does that mean that they are best for building muscle? There could be other means that are just as effective or even more effective that would not have been accounted for in the study. There’s a common mistake that we make to jump to conclusions on limited information. If I like cars and I like the color blue, making the conclusion that I like blue cars would be a mistake. The bottom line is this, research in the field of strength and conditioning is critical to advancing our understanding of how best to train our bodies moving forward. This channel was created with the goal of doing just that. Just as were the training programs available at http://athleanx.com that are specific to many individual goals. If you are looking to put the science back in strength and want to put in the hard work to put the science to work for you, then it’s time to start training like an athlete with ATHLEAN-X today. For more videos on how to build muscle the fastest and the best way to lose fat in your belly, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24 for the latest science backed training advice you can get without the bs.

Pick your program here - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workouts Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Bench dips are one of the most commonly performed exercises in the gym. Given their ease of setup, they are actually a great exercise for home workouts too since you can do them on the back of a couch or chair. The problem is, the bench dip is also one of the most abused and misperformed exercises which can quickly ruin your shoulders if you don’t fix how you’re doing them. In this video, I’m going to show you how to perform a bench dip safely so you can build your muscles without wrecking your shoulders. The problem with the bench dip starts with the position of your shoulders during the exercise. The two things you want to avoid is letting your shoulders migrate forward as you do them, or upwards as you go down into the rep. Either one of these mistakes will wind up putting your shoulder in a compromising position that could create an impingement on the rotator cuff tendons, bursa or both. The shoulders tend to protrude forward when doing the bench dip mostly because of the initial positioning of the hands on the bench. If you have your thumbs facing your body, you are automatically internally rotating the shoulder and making it virtually impossible that you’ll be able to perform the exercise properly without risk of injury. To correct this you want to start by rotating your hands outward so that your thumbs are pointing toward the front at the very least if not a little bit more. From here, you want to consciously make sure that you open your chest and keep your shoulders back rather than letting them lazily fall forward as you start the exercise. This becomes much easier to do when you don’t allow your shoulders to shrug up or collapse on your body as you descend into every rep. Actively depress your shoulder blades and keep your shoulders unshrugged throughout the exercise to ensure that you are keeping the proper position during the bench dip. When you get both of these correct you will automatically notice two things. The first is that your shoulders feel much better and do not feel any pinching pain or grinding. The second is that you are feeling way more work being done by your triceps than at any time before making these changes. When you make these tweaks you place more of the stress on the working muscles and you wind up getting much more out of the exercise. Regarding the difficulty of the exercise, the closer your keep your feet during the movement the easier it becomes. If you want more of a challenge, you would keep your feet far away from your body and even progress to performing it on your heels. Beginners might need to keep their feet in close to their body and flat on the floor to make sure they are doing the exercise right. It is far more important to get it right first and then progress the difficulty than the other way around. If you are looking for a complete training program that will not only train you to make the best muscle gains and fat losses than at any other point in your training without compromising your joints in the process, head to http://athleanx.com and get on of our ATHLEAN-X Training Programs. For more videos on how to squat, how to bench press and how to gain muscle without ruining your joints, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Pick your program here - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workouts Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW The key to getting visibly defined abs is to be able to willfully contract your abdominal muscles as strong as possible at a moments notice and definitely when you train them. In this video, I’m going to show you two fast techniques that you can use in your ab workouts that will allow you to increase the strength of your ab contraction more than you have ever felt before. By doing this in the ab exercises that allow for it or even as a simple activation drill before your ab workouts, you’ll start to see much sharper ab muscles in no time. Of course, as with any ab focused technique the success of whether it is working for you is going to hinge on your ability to get your nutrition in check as well. Because this is a “feel” tip, you will be able to feel the difference between what it is like to get this right and wrong. However, in order to be able to see the differences in your abs, you’ll definitely have to strip down those body fat levels to about 10 percent or less to really reap the rewards. That is ok though, I’m happy to show you how to do that as well. Back to the ab contraction technique however, the root of the effectiveness of this technique is that it strengthens the mind muscle connection between you and your abs. If you cannot connect with a muscle you simply cannot develop it to its maximum potential. This is particularly common in the abs. Many of us can’t get a strong enough contraction to get the ab muscles to respond to our training efforts. I have used a quick test in the past. I asked you to flex your stomach area and see if you could contract it so hard that it actually became uncomfortable. If you are not able to do that, then you definitely need this advice. Beyond that however, it always helps to have a feedback mechanism for even the most advanced lifters so we could be sure that we were getting it right every time. With just two drills and a mirror, you will see how easy it is to be sure that you are not just getting the strong contraction but you are maintaining it. The first thing you want to do is be sure that you are able to activate the transverse abdominis muscle. Seems weird that we would be focusing on a muscle other than our abs to increase the strength of contraction in our abs right? Not really. The essence of the success of this is that a muscle that pulls on a common bone is going to be able to do so more strongly if the other muscles that are attached are tense and holding that bone more stable. The transverse is a muscle that wraps around your midsection like a corset. When it is tightened, the pelvis is more stable and you can contract the rectus much more strongly because of this. The sequence of the contraction is important as well. Start by flattening out the lower abs with the contraction of the transverse. From here, you can now contract the abs. You should feel a much stronger contraction than ever before. Be sure to build up to the transverse contraction slowly, ideally over 5 seconds or so. The feeling should be as if you just entered into a pool of unexpectedly freezing cold water. The next thing you can try is even cooler and easier to make a connection to. This time we are going to initiate the strength of the contraction from below. Cross your legs and squeeze your knees together to activate the adductor muscles in your legs. These muscles act to stabilize the pelvis from the bottom up. Once squeezed, you can now contract your abs again and you will totally feel the increase in the strength of the contraction on your abdominals. If you want to get really fancy, you can try to combine these two tips into one powerful

Choose your program here - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workouts Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Form definitely matters when working out, but are you getting too hung up on perfect form all while missing out on gains you could be seeing by not looking at it in isolation. In this video, I’m going to show you how what some might interpret as bad form, could be exactly what is needed in your workout. Let me explain. The form police are out in full force these days, particularly online, and they are there to make sure you do every single exercise perfectly. What is perfect form though? Is it when you do the exercise through a full range of motion exactly as it was originally drawn up? I can tell you this, range of motion is not really a major criteria for judging form. I’m not saying that you should not perform an exercise through its full range of motion if you are able to, but when not able, you should not be abandoning the exercise either. For instance, there are two scenarios where lifting in an abbreviated range of motion is not just good but what is needed in order to resume what all would consider proper form. If you have a short term injury that is making the performance of an exercise difficult but not impossible at the moment, sometimes the best thing you could do is not abandon the exercise but shorten the range of motion on it that you can perform pain free. By continuing to keep the joints moving and working within the pattern that you can do, with good form, you will find that your pain free range increases over time. Likewise, a more chronic injury like elbow spurs can dramatically shorten the range of motion that you can do. That doesn’t mean that you should abandon all elbow extension movements. When CT Fletcher and I did our triceps gauntlet workout, some were saying that CT wasn’t using good form. What they were pointing out was that he wasn’t fully extending his elbows. That does not equate to bad form. That is an abbreviated version of the rep for the purpose of working within the available range. On the other hand, abbreviating your range of motion for the purposes of inflating your ego and lifting weights that you simply cannot handle is not a good idea and is not productive. You are much better off taking a weight that you can handle and taking the exercise through its complete range of motion without compensation. That is the key. Without compensation. If moving the heavier weights comes at a cost of calling on muscles that should not be involved in the exercise in the first place, you are not doing yourself any favors. Finally, depending on the goals of your training and the purpose of a particular exercise, you might confuse something for bad form when it is actually perfect for what you are trying to accomplish. A cheat curl for your biceps is not about executing perfect concentric form on the lift! The portion of the lift that is being stressed here is the eccentric or lowering phase. You can cheat the weight to the top using some momentum but you must lower the weight under control. Bottom line, if you want to be part of the form police you have to be sure you understand the laws. Viewing form as an isolated element that lives in a vaccuum is a mistake. You have to consider all elements before determining what the right form is. With the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems, form is prioritized. As a physical therapist it is critical for keeping those lifting with my programs healthy. Sometimes however, variations to form are exactly what would be needed to accomplish that goal. Head to http://athleanx.com and get one of our programs to start seeing gains without compromising your health. Watch the bench press form video that I referenced at https://

Pick your program here - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workouts Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW The key to getting bigger biceps is to be able to willfully contract your bicep muscle as strong as possible. In this video, I’m going to show you a technique that you can use in your biceps workout that will allow you to increase the strength of your biceps contraction more than you have ever felt before. By doing this in every biceps exercise every time you train your arms, you’ll start to see much more size gains in your bicep muscles. The root of the effectiveness of this technique is that it strengthens the mind muscle connection between you and your biceps. If you cannot connect with a muscle you simply cannot develop it to its maximum potential. This is particularly common in the biceps. Many of us can’t get a strong enough contraction to get the biceps to respond to our training efforts. I have used a quick test in the past. I asked you to make a muscle with your arm and see if you could contract it so hard that it actually became uncomfortable. If you are not able to do that, then you definitely need this advice. Beyond that however, it always helps to have a feedback mechanism for even the most advanced lifters so we could be sure that we were getting it right every time. With just one dumbbell and a band, you will see how easy it is to be sure that you are not just getting the strong contraction but you are maintaining it. Take a resistance band and anchor it to a low point that is sturdy. With a dumbbell in your hand, grab the band as well and curl both at the same time. The strength curves of the dumbbell and the band overlap and create a greater overall challenge for your biceps. With the dumbbell, you are going to have the most tension in the midrange of the curl. With the band, you are going to have the most tension at the end of the movement. Given that you are supposed to be contracting the arm as hard as possible at the top, the band will give you that little extra feedback that allows you to feel that happening. But here is where it gets even better. Before lowering the weight back down, step backwards to increase the tension on the band even more. You should be able to feel an increased contraction and one like never before. Be sure not to let the dumbbell drop down at all while doing this. This will guarantee that you are maintaining the strength of the contraction that we are after in the first place. This tip takes just seconds to do and it will go a long way towards ensuring that you get the strength of contraction necessary to see maximum biceps gains every time you train them. If you are looking for a program that puts the science back in strength and shows you the best ways to get the most out of all of your workouts, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more bicep workouts and exercises for your biceps, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Have abs year round - http://athleanx.com/x/year-round Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Are you ready for an ab workout challenge that is suitable for everyone from beginner to advanced? In this video, I’m going to show you a single ab workout routine that you can do for the next 22 days straight that is going to help to carve up that midsection of yours and give you a jump start on getting your abs to pop year round. There are just 6 exercises in this ab workout, each one hitting the abs from one of their primary functions. No equipment is required to perform this ab workout routine. Because of this fact, there are no excuses either. You will be able to do this workout for your abs in just minutes and you won’t need any elaborate setup to get it done. It can be done in the comfort of your own home or in the gym if you so choose. The key to this ab workout plan is that you perform it for 22 days straight. There are two reasons for this time period. First, it gives you an opportunity to start seeing noticeable changes in your abs particularly if you pair this with a dedicated effort to improve your nutrition. You will never be able to see your abs if they are covered in fat. You need to start getting serious about your diet and eating if you want to strip away the fat and show the results of your hard work and effort. The second reason for doing this for 22 days is to help this become part of your lifestyle. They say it takes 22 days of doing something for it to become a habit. We are going to try and create a positive habit here by getting you used to training your abs. Don’t worry. The abs are a resilient postural muscle group that is built for high volume and frequent training sessions. The exercises in this ab workout follow a specific sequence. They start with those that target the lower abs using bottom up movements. These are where the top of the body from the waist up stays rather stationary while the bottom does the movement. This can be seen in the heels to the heavens exercise. Next you perform a bottom up rotation movement. This one is going to be filled by the step through planks. Here you want to try and keep your upper torso still again while you create rotation from the bottom using your legs to step through and across your body. You will be able to feel this burn almost from the first few reps. Keep going until you reach the extinction time as described in the video. Move on next to the midrange movement known as the “X” man crunch. This is a great way to bring both the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top. Aim for completing the 12 reps that are suggested for extinction on this ab exercise and move onto the final three exercises. These will hit the obliques, top down movements and top down with rotation. You will see that this is not going to take very long. The benefit and power of this ab workout is that it is hitting the abs and obliques from every angle and in each of the 6 primary ways of hitting them. If you find that this is just a little too tough for you as a beginner you can always check out my alternative workout that is more suitable for beginners here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qVd7_O5ifY For a complete workout plan that programs ab training each time you train in a way that will get you your six pack faster than any other program, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and see first hand how much faster you can start seeing results by training your body the way it was meant to be trained all along. For more ab workout videos and workouts for abs at home, be sure you subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.

Hardgainers become gainers here - http://athleanx.com/x/gain-muscle Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW A back workout for hardgainers must do more than just advise you to train heavy. Heavy lifting is important for hardgainers to begin to build muscle mass and size, however it isn’t the only key element of back and lats training. In this video, I’m going to show you how important it is to learn how to lift lighter on certain exercises and how to lift heavier on the right back exercises, if you want to start adding serious size fast and width to your lats and upper back. Before even getting started however, one of the most effective back workout tips I could give anyone (not just a skinny guy looking to add muscle) is to train shirtless. Now of course, this advice is best followed if you are training in the comfort of your own home gym! That said, many hardgainers find themselves in this exact situation because they feel self conscious about going to the gym and training in front of the much larger and more muscular guys. When you train without a shirt, you not only face your insecurities but you allow yourself a chance to watch your muscles as they work and use the visual feedback to more accurately focus your effort on the muscles you are actually trying to build. Let’s face it, if you are a beginner lifter or are not carrying large amounts of muscle you are likely not mastering the mind muscle connection with the muscles you are trying to develop. You don’t have the “feel” of what the muscle is supposed to feel like that you are training. Training shirtless allows you to watch the muscle contract and therefore tweak your form to enable a stronger contraction in the target muscles. When you do this, you will be surprised just how much quicker you can get that muscle to respond. Next, you will want to start with a few back exercise activation tips to help you build a bigger back. The most important thing you can learn how to do is to feel a lat pulldown and perform it with all different grip widths, hand placements and torso positions. By varying the way you perform this movement you will be able to feel the different muscles in your back with each change. Want more of the width to your back then work on the teres major which spreads out under your armpit and gives the illusion of more v taper. Want the upper back to pop more, then lean back and get the bar traveling more towards your sternum. You will then head to the one armed row exercises where you will have to overcome the number one compensation hardgainers make when training their back (or all other pulling exercises for that matter). The big mistake is getting too much activation of the biceps when the goal is to shift the load to the lats. Stop hammer curling the weights up when you perform this exercise and instead focus on stopping the elbow bend at ninety degrees. From here, move the elbow back behind your body into extension to ensure that the lats are doing the work and the biceps are minimized. Next you want to see what it’s like to train through failure and not just too failure. The best way to do it is by performing the classic back workout movement the pullup. Use an assistive band to help you get more reps but only after you’ve performed as many unassisted pullups as you can to failure. Some fear that if they can only do a couple reps that it will look embarrassing so they opt for assisted reps from the start. Don’t do this. Go full first and overload with the band. Finally, heavy weight lifting is important for overloading the muscles of a hardgainer to build more muscle size and strength. We can do that with the barbell dead row exercise shown in the video. Watch how to utilize this compound

Get jacked like Zac - http://athleanx.com/x/key-to-size Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Zac Efron has been the focus of fitness for his Baywatch body transformation. In this video, I’m going to show you his exact chest workout as well as the shoulders and triceps exercises he does as part of push day. Instead of simply regurgitating what has been published in Men’s Fitness Magazine as his official workout, I thought you would get more out of this if I broke down the chest workout exercise by exercise and gave my commentary of what I feel is good and what could be improved. To start, it is obvious to see that Zac trained in a push, pull, leg format. The benefit to this type of workout scheme is that it allows you to train muscles that prefer to work together on the same day while allowing for more recovery time of those muscles on off days. The problem comes when the exercise selection isn’t optimal since you don’t get an opportunity to accumulate much volume over the course of a week or training cycle. As you can see in this particular push workout, the triceps are greatly undertrained. There is only one direct tricep exercise performed in the entire workout. Even more, the one that is chosen to work the triceps is not the best exercise you can do for developing the back of your arms. There is also an unexplained biceps exercise in this workout as well. I’ll show you what belongs here instead. Beyond that, I make twelve observations about the particular chest exercises chosen and the sequence in which they are performed. Some of them are done in superset fashion with another chest exercise while others are done with a shoulder exercise. When pushups are the choice and they follow a bench press variation, I actually think that is ideal. The pushup gives you a natural mechanical dropset option that lets you take a muscle that has been trained to failure, through failure to increase the intensity even more. Zac does this in many of his exercise pairings including using the very explosive BOSU plyo pushup on the tail end of one of his chest pressing combos. That said, there are certain chest exercises that are probably best left out of this workout for reasons I explain in depth. The bottom line is, there is no denying that Zac has built a very impressive chest. I did an entire video in the past where I discussed the aspects of his training and diet that are very recognizable as ATHLEAN-X in nature. I also addressed the major gripe of his critics that this transformation was somehow unobtainable without assistance. Whatever your feelings on that, there is no denying that with the right sequence of chest exercises and a commitment to high effort, it is possible to dramatically change your physique. The ATHLEAN-X program is a workout that is designed to get you training like an athlete to build your body as quickly as naturally possible while respecting the health of your joints and muscles in the process. As a physical therapist, I take great pride in getting results for top athletes that you now can achieve as well. You can get the program at http://athleanx.com and start training like an athlete today. For more videos on Zac Efron’s diet and workout as well as the truth behind Zac Efron’s transformation, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Unlock your true size - http://athleanx.com/x/true-size Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Leg day has the reputation of being the most anabolic of any day in the workout schedule. In this video, we’re going to dive deep into the “bro-science” to see if this long held belief has any truth to it as it relates to raising your testosterone and turning you into an all out man! To start you have to understand the science behind the statement. Is leg day the most anabolic of all training days and is skipping leg day a mortal sin? The answer is strongly supported. First of all, you need to know that resistance training is capable of increasing your testosterone during your workout. Second, if the training is intense the testosterone output is higher than if it is of a lower intensity. Thirdly, the more of a metabolic demand your workout places on your system (ie. more lactic acid is produced at the same high intensity) then your increase in testosterone will be highest. Finally, the more muscles the lifts you perform call on, the more intense and hormone stimulating they are. All signs point to leg day being the holy grail of training. Why? Because when you consider the squat versus the bicep preacher curl for example, you can see the obvious tipping of the balance in favor of the squat. It is obvious to anyone who has ever touched a weight that the squat is a much more demanding (and unpleasant!) exercise than the preacher curl. This is because it demands that half of your body be called into action to complete it. The curl on the other hand is a safe, metabolically limited exercise that can be performed with much less effort and focus than the squat. Approach a curl with low intensity or focus and you have a bad set. Do the same with a set of squats and you can get seriously injured. The risk is greater but the reward is much much higher. That said, there is much more to the exercise that makes it so productive. Besides the very fact that the exercise alone is more intense it offers the additional benefit of allowing you to load up with heavy weights that instantly makes it more demanding and capable of sparking testosterone release. Throw in the element of training with a challenging weight but doing rest pause reps and getting into the higher rep ranges that make you burn like crazy and feel like you want to throw up, and you’ve just tapped out the metabolic mastery that the squat provides for. The beauty of leg day is that no matter what exercise you do, you are always training much larger muscle groups than say the biceps, triceps or even the chest for that matter. These will always be more demanding exercises and therefore will have a greater impact on the testosterone that your body can produce during a leg workout versus any other workout. The key benefit here is that you must remember that the increased testosterone is not only impacting the muscles that were being trained that day, in this case the legs. No, the increased hormone production is also going to have a major impact on the other muscles that you may have trained yesterday or the day before that are still very much in recovery mode. The exposure to the increased testosterone does great things towards improving the protein synthesis and growth in those areas as well. So all the way around, leg day is an anabolic winner. For a complete step by step program that never skips leg day and actually gets you leg gains much faster by training your lower body much more athletically, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. See how the right exercises done more explosively and in the right sequence can turn on the testosterone and get you growing like never before. For more vid

Unlock your true size - http://athleanx.com/x/key-to-size Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW If you want to know how to get bigger shoulders, you better get ready to leave your ego at the door. In this video, I’m going to show you how to make your fastest shoulder growth gains ever by opting for lighter weights rather than the heavy ones that you might be heaving around right now. Of course, heavy training should remain a part of your shoulder workout routine, but choosing to exclude what you might feel are very light weights, is what is likely holding back the size of your delts right now. Let me explain. The delts are one of those muscle groups that get a tremendous amount of assistance from other muscles in the upper body during their lifts. Take the push press or overhead press for example. Here you are not just training your deltoids but the triceps, chest, core and even legs. In an effort to move as much weight as possible, you likely use a large amount of momentum to move the weight as well. While this is an effective way to build your overall functional strength, it tends to not work so well when you move along to other (less compound) movements like the side lateral raise for instance. But even here, we usually opt for the heaviest weight that we can move from point a to point b and feel that we are working our shoulders properly. That is, until you do a rep as I show you here and realize for the first time in your life perhaps that all along you may never have been training your delt specifically. In order to place all of the work onto the shoulders, you need to eliminate the momentum generating muscles like the arms, traps and lower back. These muscle groups want so badly to kick in to generate the lift especially during the first few degrees of the movement. This is just like the front delts desire to take over the first part of the biceps curl that I covered in depth in another video. You can’t allow it to happen. If you want to get bigger shoulders you have to figure out how you are going to be able to make the deltoids do virtually all of the work during any ancillary shoulder exercise like the side delt raise. Once you get the dumbbells half way up you are going to pause. This demands that you are in control of the weights and that they are not controlling you! From here, reinitiate the lift and squeeze the shoulders as hard as you can to get the dumbbell to the top with your arm parallel to the ground. Now, lower the dumbbell half way down and repeat one more contraction to the top. Your shoulders will be on fire and you will instantly see how difficult it can be if you let your shoulders do the work rather than letting all the other muscles help as they normally do. This can be humbling but the gains in muscularity are phenomenal. Use this technique every time you train your shoulders and you not only will see better shoulder development but your top end strength on your bigger compound shoulder exercises like the push press are going to improve as well. Increase the strength on the component muscles that make up the muscles relied upon in the compound lift and that lift will go up as well. For a complete workout program that puts the science back in strength and shows you the most effective ways to maximize your gains and get the most out every single workout you do, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more workouts on how to get bigger shoulders and the best exercises to do to build big delts, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Build muscle without imbalances here - http://athleanx.com/x/no-imbalance Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Hamstring stretching is something that almost everyone is either told to do or we instinctively do when the hamstrings are tight. In this video, I’m going to show you why you don’t always want to stretch when you feel tightness in the hamstrings and why you may want to do the exact opposite of this in order to fix the problem long term. To start, you will have to determine whether you should be stretching your hamstrings or not and that begins by assessing the position of your pelvis. Most of us are either too far anterior or posterior. If you have an anterior pelvic tilt you will not be stretching your hamstrings out. If you have a posterior pelvic tilt you will want to do hamstring stretches (especially the one I show you here). The easiest way to determine whether you have an anterior pelvic tilt or a posterior pelvic tilt is to look at your pelvis in the mirror from a side angle. The angle of your waistline should be ever so slightly downward. With APT, you will notice that your butt sticks out, you have a big arch in your back and the waistline is pointing downward quite a bit. On the other hand, if you have a posterior tilt you will notice that you have a very caved in butt, your upper back will likely round and your waistline will either be level or pointed downward in the back a bit. In the case of the posterior pelvic tilt you will need to recognize that the tightness that you feel in the hamstrings is actually the cause of your pelvic malpositioning. So in order to counteract this you need to stretch your hamstrings. The most effective way to do this is by performing the stretch that I show. Place your foot in front of you and up onto an elevated surface (to put your ankle in slight dorsiflexion). Drop your other leg behind you and lock out the knee on the leg in front of you. From here, lean forward while making sure to tilt your pelvis into an anterior tilt. Hold this stretch for 30 seconds and then intensify it by leaning forward a bit while reaching your arms above your body in front of you. This secondary move will help to keep your thoracic spine in extension which is something that you lose when you get a significant posterior tilt of the pelvis. Slowly lean into the stretch and see if you can hold it on each leg for at least 30-45 seconds without letting go of the anterior position of the pelvis. Again, if you are feeling tightness in the hamstrings but notice that you have an anterior pelvic tilt, understand that the tilt is not caused by the hamstrings but that the tightness in the hammies is a consequence of the pulling of the pelvis by the hip flexors on the opposite side of the joint. I hope you find this small but hugely important distinction to be a key to you finally getting rid of your tight hamstrings once and for all. For a complete program that puts the science back in strength and trains you to correct muscle imbalance, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more videos on how to stretch tight hamstrings and the best stretches for your lower body and upper body, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Reprogram your body here - http://athleanx.com/x/body-reset Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW If you want to know how to fix scapular winging you first have to know how to assess it. In this video, I give you a step by step approach for fixing scapular winging and show you the exact stretches and exercises that will help you the fastest to do this. The scapulae (or shoulder blades) are good indicators of the health of your shoulder since they are directly part of the socket joint of the shoulder. If you have a movement dysfunction in your shoulder blades then you can be assured of the fact that your shoulder itself will not operate properly. The first thing you want to do is look at how your shoulder blades move as you raise your arms up overhead and straight out in front of you. Have somebody video you so you can watch for the flaws after the fact. Look for a slight head nod to either side, a slightly elevated shoulder on one side, or a protrusion of one or both shoulder blades as you raise or lower the arms back down. Here, Jesse is demonstrating all of these. You might also see a bunching up of the shoulder blades as you raise up which could be an indicator of tight rhomboids. If any of these is present you will want to perform the stretches shown for 45-60 seconds. Stretches for the levator scapula and rhomboids are shown and would need to be done for each of the sides that is affected. The key, as with any stretch, is the consistency with which you perform it. Aim for at least 4-5 times per week of 3-5 reps at a time on the sides that are affected. The next thing to do is assess what your posture looks like in standing from both sides as well as the front. Again, you can either have someone take a picture of you in each position or just stand in front of a mirror and look for yourself. What you are looking for here is a pronounced rounding of one shoulder or both as well as a shoulder that seems to droop down more than the other. Tightness in the internal rotators of the shoulder (particularly subscapularis) as well as the lats and pec minor can be major causes of this. Here are videos in which I show you how to stretch each of these areas in depth. How to Stretch Your Chest (AND HOW NOT TO!) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV7l1sfEmO0 Rotator Cuff Stretches (The Ones You REALLY Need!) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL3cIDFUafU How to Stretch Your Lats (BEST STRETCH EVER!) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V5tSn9oEJg The key is that when these muscles are tight, impingement of the long thoracic nerve can become more probable. When this happens, the muscles that it attaches to (the serratus anterior) can become weak and cause the scapular winging to occur. Here, no matter how much strength training and exercises you do for the serratus, you will not fix the problem until the tight muscles are stretched and the compression is relieved. Finally, you will have a series of serratus anterior exercises that you can perform to start strengthening this muscle and correcting the position of the shoulder blades when moving your arms overhead. Don’t try and do all of the exercises shown. Instead, choose 2-4 of the them and aim to work them into a small routine 3 times per week in addition to your regular workouts to start correcting the imbalance. Remember, the focus should be on quality reps and not quantity. Aim to complete 20 sets of 1 rather than 1 set of 20. In time, you will see that you not only will fix your scapular winging dysfunction but will start realizing more pain free gains in your shoulders once again. For a complete workout program that puts the science back in strength and realizes that there are no unimportant muscles, be

Get jacked without weights - http://athleanx.com/x/absolutely-jacked Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Arm workouts can be incredibly effective at building bigger biceps and triceps, even when you don’t have access to weights. In this video, I’m going to show you an arm workout without weights that you can use to build bigger arms with nothing more than your own bodyweight as the resistance. This quick circuit workout will overload your biceps and triceps in just minutes. To begin this arm workout, all you will need is a pullup bar and somewhere to do inverted chin curls and bodyweight triceps extensions. If you don’t have a bar as I show you here, simply use a counter overhang in your house which works just as well. The key is that you need to stop making excuses and start putting in the hard work that can be incredibly rewarding when it comes to building bigger arms. The first part of this arm workout focuses on building big biceps. Start by getting into the top position of a chin up. With an underhand grip, pull your chin over the bar and then back your body away a bit to ensure that your elbows are bent approximately ninety degrees to maximize the effect on the biceps. Here, aim to suspend yourself in this position for a full 45 seconds without letting yourself succumb to the negative overload of the hang. As soon as you complete your time on the pullup bar, drop down and immediately go into the inverted chin curl static hold. Lie on your back under a bar or counter overhand the grab hold of the bar or counter with an underhand grip. Pull your body up to the bar and keep your elbows at ninety degrees once again. Aim to squeeze your biceps as hard as you possibly can for a full 45 seconds without allowing your body to drop to the floor. As soon as you are done, head back to the chinup hold for 30 seconds, and repeat until you finish with a 20 second hold on each exercise. Next, move onto the triceps portion of this arm workout without weights. Here you will need to grab the bar with an overhand grip and back your feet as far away from the bar as possible to get your body straight. Bend your elbows slightly to increase the tension on the triceps and hold here for 45 seconds. The long head of the triceps should definitely feel the burn as you fight to resist. Once done, immediately drop down to the floor to perform the modified L sit. This triceps exercise presents an intense contraction on the back of your arms. Hold for 45 seconds here and head back to the bar where you will perform a 30 second and 20 second hold of each to finish up this arm workout. You don’t have to use weights to build big arms. All you need to do is learn how to overload your biceps and triceps using your own bodyweight and the gains can be limitless. If you are looking for a workout program that uses no weights at all and is capable of packing on serious muscle in just six weeks, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN XERO program. For more bodyweight workouts and exercises to build big arms without weights, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24