ATHLEAN-X™

Train & Recover Here - http://athleanx.com/x/train-hard-gain-harder ATHLEAN-X on Instagram Here - http://instagram.com/athleanx One of the most common workout questions is what to do on non-workout or off days. In this video, I’m going to show you a few exercise options you have if you absolutely must do something on those days when you aren’t scheduled to be in the gym. Keep in mind, your time away from the gym is paramount to the success you will see in it. Muscle recovery is one of the most important things you can prioritize in your training. That said, if you are going to look for something to do on your off days you first have to identify your goal. If you are a hardgainer or skinny guy that is struggling to put on muscle mass you will want to do everything in your power to focus mostly on eating and resting on your off days. Doing extra cardio is not the prescription for adding muscle if you are already struggling to do so. If you are looking for an activity to do, you will want to focus on those things that prioritize explosive or athletic actions without the long duration component. So think about how you can be explosive without lifting heavy weights or those that have a high eccentric component. Things like a sled push or battle ropes can be great ways to get your heart rate up quickly without turning your workout into too much of an aerobic one. Along those same lines you can choose to do ball slams. This exercise does not have a heavy eccentric overload component and makes for an activity that you will not have a hard time recovering from. If you do this in a repetitive fashion (30 to 40 slams as quickly as you can with minimal breaks or rest), then you are going to gain the benefits of the conditioning of this without overloading the muscles beyond their ability to recover. If on the other hand your goal is fat loss and you need to lose excessive weight, then your “off” day could provide you with a great opportunity to accumulate some additional volume that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get in your 5 days of training. Here is where something like a steady state cardio option (running, walking, biking, etc) is going to work best since the intensity will be much lower than during a preferential HIIT session which will allow you to build up some extra minutes burning calories. Regardless of your path you will always want to prioritize your recovery and do so with the help of good nutrition and supplementation. Here is where you can excel if you already have not dialed this area in. The ATHLEAN-Rx supplement lineup has Reconstruxion as it’s primary muscle recovery supplement. This is the choice of professional athletes who must be able to recover between games to maximize consistency of performance throughout the season. Watch your workouts and your results improve by visiting http://athleanrx.com and try the exact same edge the pros are using. For more videos on how to recover from your workouts and which supplements are best for muscle recovery be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

All gains, no pain, one program - http://athleanx.com/x/the-plan Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Years back I threw the upright row exercise into my 5 worst exercises of all time, and buried it in my iron graveyard. Today, I’m revisiting the upright row and all its variations to see if it needs to be dug up or buried even deeper as I cover my “World’s Most Dangerous Exercises”, continuing right here at the shoulder joint. When I included this originally, I gave my reasons for doing so. Remember, there is no personal axe to grind for me against any particular exercise or movement. I start out with a blank slate with them all and unless given a reason to dislike them…love them all! As a physical therapist, I am trained to look at an exercise on its own merit and determine whether it is something that is safe first and foremost and capable of producing results. In the case of the upright row, this shoulder exercise is one that needs to remain six feet under. Here’s why. The anatomy of the shoulder joint is such that there is a limited amount of space above the ball (in the ball and socket) for the bone itself as well as the other many important structures such as the rotator cuff tendons, bursa, and biceps tendon. When the shoulder joint is internally rotated (as you do with the upright row) you are rotating the greater tuberosity on the humerus directly into the joint, leaving less room for all of these structures. If on the other hand you externally rotated your upper arm at the shoulder joint, you would do the exact opposite. External rotation at the shoulder joint creates extra room for the ball to move within the socket and still leave room for the other structures mentioned before. When performing the upright row exercise however, you are forcing your shoulder joint not only into internal rotation but you are combining it with elevation. This simply does not anatomically sit well or rank as a safe motion (especially when you consider the repetitive nature in which you do it from set to set, workout to workout. Changing the hand position to be wider and using an ez curl bar, while slight improvements, do not come close to fixing the problem. The only way to overcome the inadequacy of the upright row is to stop using barbells and instead use dumbbells and perform something called the high pull. The high pull allows you to get your hands up and back behind your body when you lift them. This is due to the external rotation that can be obtained at the shoulder joint rather than the negatively impacting internal rotation. Because the dumbbells are not fixed in place or connected via a bar that cannot pass through your body, you can maneuver them this way to get the relief the shoulder joint is looking for to make this exercise safe. Mobility doesn’t solve the issue either. Increasing shoulder mobility at the expense of stability in a different part of the shoulder is not solving the problem. The bottom line is, this exercise is a bad exercise that deserves to stay buried in the iron graveyard. There are many other options for developing the delts and certainly the traps. For a complete workout plan that puts the science back in strength to give you your greatest muscle gains without unnecessary joint pain, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more videos on the 5 worst exercises as well as the best shoulder exercises for a shoulder injury, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Get more from every workout - http://athleanx.com/x/activate Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW The dumbbell bench press is one of the most classic chest exercises you can do to build a bigger chest. That said, it is not the chest alone that powers the dumbbells up on every rep. The shoulders and triceps are very much involved in assisting with the exercise as well. This can be a problem however when either one of these ancillary muscle groups starts to take over the movement and takes away from the contribution of the chest muscles. In this video, I am going to show you how to influence the amount of work that is being done by the chest during the exercise with just a few simple tweaks to your hands. By simply adjusting the way that you hold the dumbbells and how you move your hands through space as you press the dumbbells, you can greatly impact the muscle group that takes on the brunt of the work during this popular chest building exercise. In order to hit the chest more during the db bench press you are going to want to lead with your thumbs during the press. What does that mean? It means that as you press the dumbbells up over your chest you are going to want to tilt them ever so slightly so as your thumbs are pointing up towards the ceiling and your pinkies are tilting downward. This will have the effect of letting the inner half of the dumbbell raise higher than the outer half. It is important to point out that you are going to want to do this from a position of your hands facing forward during the press, not towards each other. The reason why this alteration in the position of your hands has such a profound effect on the muscles in your chest is because of what it does to the upper arms when pressing. By having your thumbs ride upwards as you press the dumbbells up, you are getting your biceps to get closer to each other during the ascent. This has the effect of increasing horizontal adduction at the shoulder which is a key component of chest activation. On the other side of this however is that fact that if you do the same exact movement with your thumbs but out of a neutral (or palms facing each other) grip, you would be doing the opposite of what you are trying to do. Here you would be activating your front deltoid muscle substantially more. For most of us, this is the exact thing we are trying to avoid during the dumbbell bench press. If you feel most of the work being done by your shoulders during a bench press you will definitely want to avoid the neutral grip position as well as the changes and cheats to your wrist placement during the press. Finally, if you have a bad shoulder and you feel too much pain in the joint during the bench press you can try the variation that I show here last. In this case you want to lead with your pinkies instead of your thumbs. This will take a lot of the strain off of the shoulder and shoulder capsule and instead let the triceps help out the chest to perform the movement. As I said, this is really useful if you don’t want to have to give up dumbbell bench pressing entirely because of shoulder pain. If you found this tip helpful and wish you could train with a complete program that has these tips and more built into it to help you get much more out of your training, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more videos on how to get a bigger chest and the best home chest exercises for mass, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Get Jeff Cavaliere caliber arms here (using his system!) http://athleanx.com/x/cavaliere-caliber-arms Want to know how to get bigger arms in under 3 minutes? Watch this video and I show you one of the most effective workout methods for getting big biceps by performing the stretch reflex the right way! The technique shown here allows you to not only get a stronger contraction of the biceps on your incline curls but also how to create more muscle damage from which you can expect to add more significant size to your arms. During a biceps incline curl, you want to actively contract the triceps muscle so you reciprocally inhibit the biceps muscle. This allows you to enhance the degree of stretch placed on the bicep. From here you contract your biceps and complete the rep of the curl. This improved stretch will create more micro tears of the muscle fibers and also lead to a more forceful contraction. The mistake that most people make when doing their arm workouts and exercises is overlooking these set methods. Adding even just a few of these arm building techniques will greatly improve your chances of getting big arms (both biceps and triceps) while still keeping your workouts short. This is because you are trading workout length for intensity which is almost always a surefire way to answer the how to get big biceps question. Those wanting to know how to get bigger arms will definitely want to try using this technique in their next biceps workout. Now, we know that big arms aren't created solely by targeting the biceps so you'll want to be sure that you also hit those triceps with some high intensity sets as well. If you want a complete system of advanced training tips as well as day by day athletes to get you looking like a pro athlete (by training like one) then head to http://athleanx.com and get your ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more arm workouts and exercises for bigger arms, as well as nutrition and supplementation videos, be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

The complete program here - http://athleanx.com/x/complete Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Add up to an inch to your arms in one quick workout. Take out the tape measure and get ready to do some work. This biceps and triceps workout is going to push you to your max and see if you can last all the way to the end. If you want to build bigger arms then you are going to have to be willing to work hard. See if you can add an inch to your arms with one single pump. To perform this arm workout you will need access to a rack of dumbbells. Ideally, you will be able to do this at the gym but if you have multiple sets of dumbbells in your home gym or a set of adjustable dumbbells you will be able to do it there as well. Begin by selecting a weight that is your 5 rep max for dumbbell curls. Perform 5 reps with this and then immediately drop down to the ground and do a set of 5 cobra or rolling pushups. Keep your elbows close to your sides and focus on keeping the movement limited to the front one third of the pushup to maximize the focus on the triceps. Stand up and grab the next lightest set of dumbbells and once again perform 5 reps and then 5 reps of the tricep pushups. Keep dropping down five pounds at a time and performing 5 reps of each until you have reached one half of the weight that you started with. Here you will want to increase your reps by one on both the curl and the triceps cobra pushups. Continue dropping weight and adding a rep each time until you no longer have any dumbbells remaining. At this point, do exactly what you just did and work your way in reverse back to where you started. When you finish this biceps and triceps massacre you will have an incredible arm pump, unlike ever before. Take out the tape measure again and see just how much of a pump size increase you were able to manage. Did you get the entire 1 inch? There is no doubt that this is a difficult workout to achieve all the way to the end. If at any point you are unable to perform the triceps pushups from your toes you may drop down to your knees to keep it going. If you cannot curl however then you should call it a workout and try again at a later point. The pump is not a prerequisite for muscle growth, however the effort required by this workout to elicit this pump is certainly a requirement. Push yourself to the max and see if you can make it all the way down and back up this rack and roll arm workout to stretch those shirt sleeves by up to an inch. Using hardgainer Jesse in this video to prove that even the most inexperienced or leanest can get results from it. Time for you to take the challenge yourself and see how far you can get to the magic one inch gains. For a complete program that helps you to build bigger arms while training you more like an athlete, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System or the Ultimate Arms program. Build incredible arms while getting a ripped body from head to toe by training with the same system used by today’s top pro athletes and celebrities. For more videos on how to get bigger arms and how to add inches to your arms with the best arm workouts, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Day by day meal plans here - http://athleanx.com/x/how-to-eat Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Vascularity is the term used to describe the amount of visible veins that show through the skin. This is common to bodybuilders, athletes and anyone with low enough body fat levels to be able to see them. In this video, I’m going to show you how to eat for more vascularity and I’m going to dish up the truth about how to do it in the process. No shortcuts or gimmicks tolerated here. Just plain old science and a “say it like it is” approach to make sure you can get more veins safely if this is what you’re after. To start, I am going to require that you immediately recognize that there is one thing that must be locked in if you want to get more visible veins and that is your nutrition. I don’t care how you are training or what supplement you are taking. You will not be able to see your veins unless you are at a low enough body fat to make it possible. The rough benchmark number we use is 10 percent body fat. At this level, everyone will be able to see at least some vascularity when looking in the mirror. It may appear to be more visible on one person than another at the same body fat level which can be due to temporary hydration levels, skin thickness, etc. The bottom line though is, getting down to this level is a great goal and starting point for anyone looking to be able to see more veins popping out of their muscles. Every single percent that you drop your body fat from here can have noticeable and significant increases in the amount of vascularity that you can see. For example, if you were to get to 8 percent body fat you will likely be able to see veins in your chest and shoulders and not just your forearms. Get even lower and you will be seeing veins in your abs. How low you want to go is up to your individual goals however it is advisable that you do not drop any lower than 5% body fat at absolute max if you want to remain healthy at the same time. The strategy for getting to these lower body fat levels are always going to revolve around nutrition first. Things like supplementation and cardio, etc are all adjuncts that rely on the presence of a sound nutrition plan before you can even start talking seriously about them. The eating strategy has to be able to put you in a slight hypocaloric state. I say slight because while getting veins to show by being in severely depleted hypocaloric state is possible, it certainly isn’t healthy. Your goal should be to be very slightly hypocaloric, in the range of just a couple hundred calories a day. You should have a long term time goal as well. Getting ripped and vascular the right way should never be about short term gains and crash diets to get you there. You should know by now that this channel is not about shortcuts but science. Getting you to your goals, whatever they may be, the right way and the safe way is always the priority here as it not sacrificing your performance in the gym or on the field in the process. Once your nutrition is in place you can look towards increasing the intake of foods that either contain more niacin or some plant based nitrates. Both of these will have the end effect of either increasing peripheral blood flow or the vasodilation of the vessels perfusing your muscles. The same can be accomplished with supplementation. Ingredients like agmatine, citrulline malate and arginine are all popular and common supplement ingredients for helping you to increase the pump and vascularity. That said, all of this is extraneous unless you are committed to improving your nutrition first and foremost. For a complete meal plan that lays out exactly how I and the many other ripped, high performing athletes on team

Build bigger more vascular arms here - http://athleanx.com/x/arms Subscribe to this channel now - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW If you want to get bigger more vascular arms then you have to get a few things right or it simply won’t happen. To start, you better plan on getting your nutrition in check. You see, big arms are great but you won’t see any vascularity if your arms are covered in layers of fat. In order to get those veins popping through your forearms and biceps you better get yourself down to less than ten percent body fat. Are you still with me? Good, because there is more you can do to improve your ability to get vascularity as well. One thing we know is that change in tissue temperature will make someone appear more or less vascular. In the winter when the ambient temperature is cold, your body will have a tendency to look less vascular. This is because your veins will sink further from the surface to stay closer to your warmer core temperature. When it’s hot out in the Summer, your veins will actually migrate closer to the surface to allow your body to transfer away some of the accumulated heat to better regulate your body’s temperature and prevent overheating. That said, contrast baths are an incredible way for training the ability of your veins to respond to things like increases in tissue temperature (whether it be ambient or from direct increase in the tissue itself). When you train with weights, the increased blood flow will temporarily increase the temperature of the muscles you are working. As the blood flows into the working muscle, the heat and redness (and vascularity) will increase. The degree to which this happens (and the length or sustainability of this long after training has ended) are mostly determined by the condition of the smooth muscle lining of the vessels and their ability to respond to the conditions. For instance, if your vessels are not as responsive as they could be you will never experience as big a pump as you should nor have the vascularity at low body fat levels that you should. This ability can be improved however by including some very high rep training into your arm workouts to ensure that you are challenging the ability of the vessels to expand and respond to your demands. If you never include super high rep training for your arms then you will want to start. I show you a 400 rep sequence using just a bar that hits your biceps and forearms in one killer sequence. This is scaleable for beginners and intermediate as well by performing 40 or 70 reps respectively of each of the exercises in this bigger more vascular arms circuit. Remember, the more frequently you include this type of training and the more dedicated you are to your nutrition the faster you will see the benefits of greater arm vascularity from this. For a complete workout program that takes your arm size and vascularity to all new levels, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the Ultimate Arms program. This workout is not just an arm workout routine but a complete body program that helps you to build more than just your biceps and triceps…it takes your entire body to an all new level. Remember to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24 for more arm workout videos for big arms and exercises to build biceps size and vascularity.

All gains, no pain, one program - http://athleanx.com/x/the-plan Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Years back I threw the behind the neck shoulder press into my 5 worst exercises of all time, and buried it in my iron graveyard. Today, I’m revisiting this overhead press exercise variation to see if it needs to be dug up or buried even deeper as I cover my “World’s Most Dangerous Exercises”, starting right here at the shoulder joint. When I included this originally, I gave my reasons for doing so. Remember, there is no personal axe to grind for me against any particular exercise or movement. I start out with a blank slate with them all and unless given a reason to dislike them…love them all! As a physical therapist, I am trained to look at an exercise on its own merit and determine whether it is something that is safe first and foremost and capable of producing results. In the case of the behind the neck shoulder press, this shoulder exercise is one that needs to remain six feet under. Here’s why. The anatomy of the shoulder joint is such that the ball and socket need to remain in maximum congruency if it is to operate properly without causing injury to the many surrounding structures and muscles of the joint. The socket (glenoid) is actually angled forward at 30 to 40 degrees from the midline of your torso. In other words, if you were to put your arm straight out to your sides to start, you would move them forward 30 to 40 degree in front of your body to get the correct angle. When performing this shoulder exercise however, you are forcing your elbows behind your body and your arms many degrees away from this anatomically favorable position. This is a fight you will not win in the long term. If you want to avoid shoulder rotator cuff injuries and joint injury you need to fix the way you press by getting those elbows out in front of the body ever so slightly. Those that object will say that they have been doing the exercise for a long time and never gotten injured. That may be true but realize that most all shoulder injuries are a result of a slow chronic breakdown not a single bad rep. They may also say that lightening the weight and sticking to higher reps is better. That doesn’t even make sense. This has nothing to do with a question of load but rather mechanics. Doing this with even no weight at all would be worse if you were to increase the number of times that you did it. Mobility doesn’t solve the issue either. Increasing shoulder mobility at the expense of stability in a different part of the shoulder is not solving the problem. The bottom line is, this exercise is a bad exercise that deserves to stay buried in the iron graveyard. Press overhead all you want. Press heavy. Press hard. But get those elbows in front of your body 30 to 40 degrees to press for a long tie to come. For a complete workout plan that puts the science back in strength to give you your greatest muscle gains without unnecessary joint pain, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more videos on shoulder rotator cuff exercises and how to recover from a shoulder injury, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Train harder and smarter - http://athleanx.com/x/train-like-an-athlete Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Lifting cues can be some of the most helpful techniques and lifting tips or some of the least helpful, depending on the cue. For example, you may have been told that you have to keep your shoulders back during a bench press. If the cue has been to pinch your shoulder blades or even to retract your scapula, then you likely aren’t getting it right. Pinching your blades alone is not going to fix the all important thoracic extension lack that is making the rounded shoulders more prevalent. In this video, I’m covering not just the right cue for that situation but the seven best for virtually every lift to hope you get more out of them. Going back to this situation the better cue would be to lift your sternum or chest bone. If you imagine the top of your sternum as the rim of a glass of water you would want to make sure that your glass didn’t tip forward and spill out the water. If you lift your sternum to level off the glass and avoid tipping, you won’t just fix your shoulder posture but you will get your shoulder blades to sit back and down against your rib cage rather than artificially pinched. The next best cue you can use when lifting is to pull with your elbows when doing any pulling exercise for your back. For example, if you are doing a lat pulldown or even a pullup, the best way to initiate the movement is by concentrating on the movement of the elbows. They should be the driver of the lift rather than the hands. This is easier said however as we tend to focus on the hands and what we are holding when we move our arms. This sets up the likelihood that you will pull too much with your forearms and too little with the muscles you are trying to work. For the lower body, particularly with squats and deadlifts where people encounter pain in their knees hips and back from having flat feet, you will want to push out with your ankles. This is a great way to dynamically fix your arch and create a better alignment of the lower leg during the descent. Since this is one big kinetic chain, a better alignment here will put the knees, hips and lower back in a better position to operate safely. Moving on, two other issues in the lower body are to squeeze your cheeks to finish hip extension and to hide your hands when trying to establish a proper hip hinge on your lifts. Each of these is crucial to mastering the mechanics of the pelvis and lumbar region when lowering your body to the floor in any leg movement or even thruster. Finally, learn to squeeze the bar or dumbbells when lifting. This is often something that is overlooked and it is costing you energy that could be directed through your hands and into your arms for more upper body stabilizer activity. Experiment with this in your very next set of any upper body exercise and you will feel the difference on your very first rep. If you are looking for a complete training program that puts the science back in strength to help you get more out of every exercise in every workout, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and get much more from your sweat and hard earned efforts in the gym. For more videos on the best dumbbell exercises as well as the best tips for building muscle from your workouts, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Sculpt a chiseled chest here - http://athleanx.com/x/sculpted Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW If you are the type that does not get sore from your chest workout, then you need to see this. The sore in 6 minutes series continues with the chest workout edition. With just a few chest exercises and a single set of dumbbells, I’m going to show you how to train your chest hard enough to elicit post workout muscle soreness regardless of how difficult it is for you to do right now. As you will see, there is no substitute for hard work. This chest workout works by trading in workout length for intensity. The sooner you are able to convince yourself that your effort will determine the ultimate size of your pecs the faster you will be able to get that to happen. That said, it’s time to describe exactly what you need to do in this workout for your chest. Select a pair of dumbbells that is approximately half of what you would use for an 8RM set of dumbbell bench press. This should be slightly heavier than what you would use to perform your normal sets of dumbbell flys. Once selected, lay down on the floor on your back and hoist the dumbbells overhead. You are going to begin with a floor fly. This version of the fly is a far superior one for two reasons. First, you are going to protect the integrity and health of your shoulder joint and chest while being able to overload the exerise more than normal. The second benefit is that you can use a weight that is heavier than what you would normally use for dumbbell flyes. By repositioning the elbows at the bottom of the lift to cheat your dumbbells back to the top, you can overload the eccentric or negative portion of the rep without jeopardizing your shoulders. This is essential for getting the chest soreness that we are after from this pec workout in the first place. Perform this for a minute and immediately proceed to the next exercise. Next up is the upper chest dumbbell pullover. This back exercise can be tweaked to target the upper chest much more by focusing on keeping the elbows much closer together and by initiating the contraction and pullover with the adduction of the upper chest. Perform it in one and a half rep style to increase the time under tension and get more from the exerise. Perform this for a minute and move right into the third exercise in our mechanical drop set for your chest which is the squeeze press. Here you want to squeeze the ends of a single dumbbell as if you are trying to get them to disintegrate in your hands! Rep out as fast as you can here and see if you can last the entire minute. Don’t stop squeezing if you want to maximize the focus on the chest rather than the triceps. Take a one minute break and get right back to the one and a half rep dumbbell chest pullovers for a minute, and another minute of the floor flys. Finish the workout with the twisting spiderman pushup. Don’t worry if you can’t do the knee up version of this. The key is to rotate your torso away from the side of the pecs that you want to eccentrically overload. Continue alternating each side for the final minute, making sure to elongate the time that you are in the lowering phase to keep the tension at its highest. For a complete program that hits not just your chest but every muscle in your body while training you like an athlete, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start putting science behind the strength and trade in workout length for intensity (and results) with the same program used by today’s top pro athletes. For more chest workouts and exercises for your chest that you can do at home or at the gym, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdc

Train harder and smarter - http://athleanx.com/x/train-like-an-athlete Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW If you could only do one stretch before you work out, then the one I’m showing you in this video is it. There is a reason for this and that is because almost every single one of us is lacking good thoracic extension, rotation and overall mobility. The fact that we are limited here makes it difficult to perform virtually every single upper body or lower body exercise we do. The thoracic spine is the area of the spine that is in the middle of the neck or cervical spine and the lower back or lumbar spine. This happens to also be the largest area of the spine. Because of the fact that our bodies tend lose out to gravity and bend forward more and more over time, this process of decreased thoracic extension is magnified. The repercussions of this are numerous. When you don’t stretch out your thoracic spine you will find that you limit the motion of your entire back and shoulder girdle. For instance, it is impossible to lift your arm fully over your head when your middle back is hunched over. This is because you are biomechanically locking up the shoulder joint by impacting the ability of the shoulder blade to move on your ribcage as you lift your arm up. The same can be said about your lower back. Because the spine is one continuous unit, an overflexion in the middle portion of the back is going to make it difficult to extend in the lower portion of the back. In order to have proper mechanics on the squat or deadlift for example, it is obvious to see that you are going to need to have normal biomechanics in your spine. So, that is where this stretch comes in. Start by laying face down on the floor with a light bar or wooden dowel in your hands with your arms stretched up overhead. Use one end to post up into the floor and begin to lift and rotate your body in the same direction as that hand. Be sure to keep your trailing knee down in contact with the floor to increase the differential between your shoulders and hips. When this occurs you are getting thoracic extension with rotation. This is the exact combination of movements that you are trying to maximize and restore prior to lifting. Perform two to three repetitions to each side just prior to training. This is the one stretch you would want to do before your workout, especially if you were short on time and wanted to have an impact on what you were going to do that day. For a complete training program that is more prescriptive in telling you what to do rather than random exercises thrown together with no real plan, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. See how much faster you can make gains by training like an athlete and by taking your workouts seriously. For more videos on stretching and the best stretches for working out, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Put the science back in strength - http://athleanx.com/x/science Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Weak glutes and an underactive gluteus maximus muscle are one of the fastest ways to experience low back pain. The reason is simple, when your glutes are weak your lumbar extensors are being asked to perform too much of a job that they should be sharing responsibilities with the glutes for. This leads to an overactivation of the lower back muscles and an eventual breakdown and injury. In this video, I’m going to show you one of the quickest and simplest things you can do to fix the issue by incorporating a simple tweak into the exercises that you are already doing. The problem is not that we aren’t doing enough glute extension exercises, but rather that we aren’t fully extending during the exercises that we are already doing. For instance during a deadlift, when you get to the top of the lift you may feel is if you have completed the necessary range of motion. Check your form in the mirror, or better yet squeeze your glutes consciously together and if you find that you have additional range of motion of the hips then you were not at the top of the movement. You simply did not contract your glutes hard enough at the top and that is causing you to come up just shy of neutral in hip extension on the deadlift. The same can be said about the squat as well. Most of us worry about getting back up to a standing or vertical position without every really focusing on what is going on at the hips. Likely, you would see that when you perform the squat you never get all the way back up into neutral hip extension at the top of the rep. When this happens, your body looks for the extension in other places in an effort to get your head level and your chest upright. The first place your body is going to go knocking is at the lumbar spine. This is almost always true of any injured or weak area. When you look at the part that is injured you should very rarely look to blame this muscle group or area for its own troubles. Instead, you should look either immediately above or below the site of the pain and in the case of the lower back you should be looking at either the thoracic spine or the hips. When the hips are either not strong enough or are just not consciously being contracted into extension, your body will smartly look to find a compensation somewhere else. This leads to an excessive extension being performed by the lumber spine. Over time, this can lead to breakdown and wear and tear on the discs in your lower back with eventual injury. Instead, if you just focused on finishing the reps that you are already performing you would be amazed at just how significant of an improvement you could see in a relatively short period of time. Remember, the hips do not really travel far into extension in the first place. With only 10-15 degrees of concentrated hip extension movement available at the hip joint, it’s not this that will unlock your gains. It’s the fact that you haven’t done anything to address getting your hips back to neutral instead of keeping them in that semi-flexed position on your major exercises. Things like these may seem little because we are not talking about huge discrepancies in the way it looks to do this correctly and when you are doing it improperly. That said, the results speak for themselves and the gains are hard to contain. If you are looking for a complete training system that overlooks nothing and gets you in the best shape of your life, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more videos on how to fix lower back pain and the best exercises for strengthening weak glutes and a bad back, be sure to subscribe to our channel h

Put the science back in strength - http://athleanx.com/x/science Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Bulking and cutting is one of the most popular methods of adding muscle fast, but does it work the way you hope it would? In this video, I’m going to show you how you can actually build muscle and burn fat at the same time and significantly change the look of your body by doing so. I will also cover some of the potential pitfalls on the way to the perfect bulk and cut that could be undercutting your end result. To start, it helps to discuss what the theory behind bulking and cutting is for putting on muscle. That discussion needs to start with a determination of what you ultimately want to look like at the end of your bulk and cut. If your goal is to wind up with nothing but pure lean muscle gain then you will have to identify that and understand that your cut is going to have to be precise and must be able to last for the duration. In other words, you will have to cut until every bit of excess body fat that you put on is no longer there, while making sure not to compromise any of the lean muscle mass you added in the process. If on the other hand you simply want to add “size”, for lack of a better term (meaning pack on partial amounts of lean muscle and body fat) then your goals and the practicality of the process would become much simpler to adhere to. For the purposes of this video and channel however, we are assuming that the end product of your bulk and cut would be to add pure lean muscle gains without body fat hiding what you have done. With this said, I argue that this whole process does not have to be segmented into a bulking phase and a cutting phase but rather can be achieved at once (with a significant impact on how you look and feel at the end). By being hypo caloric and maintaining a positive nitrogen balance you can definitely add muscle and burn fat at the same time, albeit at a slightly slower but much more consistent and maintainable rate. When the longevity of your appearance and gains is what is paramount, the alternative of spending half the year fat and a few months comfortable enough with your physique to take off your shirt is not an option. When you bulk and cut at the same time you can walk around 365 days a year looking your best while steadily accruing lean muscle year over year. The risk of bulking and then cutting is often that the adaptation to going into a sustainable hypo caloric diet becomes daunting and as soon as it cannot be maintained, the results are lost. Many people will enter into a bulk and never fully come out of it. There are many a gym filled with guys spending hours each week on cardio trying to reverse the effects of a long ago bulk gone wrong. If instead you focused on staying slightly hypocaloric while increasing your protein intake to support positive nitrogen balance needed to keep a net protein synthesis, you would find that you could add pure lean muscle more consistently. Now, this process will be a slightly slower one than trying to force your body to grow more quickly but the end result will be more sustainable and consistent. For a complete program that walks you through the process of eating foods you love while allowing you to lose fat if you desire while adding pure lean muscle, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Learn to eat and train like an athlete and get gains that you can keep and proudly show off three hundred and sixty five days a year. For more videos on bulking and cutting, diet and how to get ripped and build muscle at the same time, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Get a bigger chest with one program http://athleanx.com/x/no-more-stubborn-pecs Having chest muscles that don’t respond to normal training and resist growth is actually pretty common. The reason for this however can be boiled down more to the way you perform your chest exercises in your chest workouts than it can on your genetics, and that’s a good thing. In this video, I’m going to show you one of the most common mistakes made in chest workouts that is limiting the response of your pecs to the exercises you are doing for them. To illustrate this, literally, I am breaking out the muscle markers to show you why this occurs. When you look at the anatomy of the chest you quickly realize just how close in proximity and function the front deltoid is to that of the pectoralis muscle. Because of this close relationship, there is a tendency of the deltoids to want to dominate the movements that are supposed to be performed primarily by the chest. Look no further than the classic bench press exercise. When you lie either in the flat bench or incline bench position, the setup of your shoulders in relation to the chest is key. You have likely heard that you need to keep your shoulder blades pinched together and your shoulders down and back. This doesn’t just apply to the beginning of the movement but throughout the movement. This is critical because doing this provides not just stability to the shoulder joint but it allows the pecs to be the main drivers of the exercise. I demonstrate this with the use of the markers and by drawing out both the front deltoid muscle and the upper pec fibers. When you press up, if you allow your shoulders to protract forward during the press you will see that the deltoid moves into a more prominent or forward position in relation to the pecs. This is a mistake. When placed in this up front position, they are more equipped to take on the load of the chest exerise that you are performing and the delts will quickly dominate the movement. While this is good for the hypertrophy of the shoulders it is taking away from the development you are seeking in your chest. Instead, you must make sure that the first line of defense in any movement is the chest. You can assure you are doing this by keeping those shoulders down and back, but more importantly, lifting your sternum up and sticking your chest out at the same time. If you can always keep your chest more proud of your shoulders, then you will be assuring yourself that the chest is taking on the brunt of the chest exercise while the shoulders are relegated to the more supporting role they should have. I show you how this applies to not just the bench press and incline bench press exercises but virtually all of the major chest exercises. In the bodyweight equivalent, the pushup, the same thing applies. Most of us tend to push up and allow our chests to sink back as the arms press away from our body and the shoulders drift in front of the chest. Do it instead the way I’m showing you here and while you may find that you can do fewer pushups, you will be getting much more out of them in the process. Same thing goes for dips as well. On this exercise however, not only are you going to get more activation of the non-responder chest muscles but you are going to be putting your shoulder in a much safer position. Doing dips while allowing your shoulders to round forward is a recipe for shoulder disaster that you want to avoid at all costs. So you can see, before you start blaming your genetics for why you can’t build a bigger chest first look to your form and see if you aren’t doing what I am showing you here. Fix it quickly and then look to take your results to the next level by applying the same critical evaluation of everything

Get high definition abs fast - http://athleanx.com/x/get-shredded Subscribe to this channel here - http://bit.ly/2b0coMW Ab training and ab workouts are a bit of a mislabeled term. You should never just focus on your abdominals if you want your core to look as good and as shredded as it can. Instead, you need to focus on what I call the “holy trinity” of ab training. In this video, I show you a sequence of 3 exercises that you can do that will hit not just the six pack abs, but also the obliques and all important serratus anterior muscles as well. The reason you need to start focusing on these three muscles together is, most importantly, that they like to work in concert with each other. Very rarely will you find just one of these muscles working in isolation and at the exclusion of the other two muscles. Because of this, we want to see if we can select exercises for our ab workouts that help us train them all together or at least within the same series of movements. We start off with the easy one, the abdominals. At least, we think they are the easiest core muscle to target. That is, if we perform our ab exercises the right way. The first thing you want to consider regardless which ab movement you are performing is that one of the functions of the abs dynamically is to flex the spine. That means, unless you are getting flexion of the lumbar spine, you will not be accomplishing this in your ab exercises. The visual cue you should be thinking about in order to achieve this on every rep of your ab exercises in which you are raising the bottom half of your body towards your upper half (as in any hanging ab raise or lower ab exercise) is to show your butt to someone standing in front of you. If you simply lift your knees up without focusing on the trunk curl you will never activate your lower abs nearly as much as you can be. Instead, you will be focusing too much of your effort on your hip flexors. Do the lower ab raise or seated knee tuck as shown here for much better activation. Next, you want to hit those all important obliques. I have gone on record many times stating the importance of hitting the obliques hard if you want to really get a well developed and shredded looking midsection (provided your nutrition is on point of course). The very orientation of the fibers themselves allows for a well developed set of obliques to taper and visually narrow your waistline. You can do this with the twisting leg raise variation that I show you here. Make sure to work both sides of your obliques to ensure balance and a complete ab workout. Finally, the often overlooked serratus anterior muscles. These help in protraction of the arm away from the body, as in a pushup plus exercise. We can actually accomplish this by changing the orientation of our body while pushing away in one smooth and incredibly effective move. We call this one a slight tweak on our gymnast abs movement. Push up and away with your body and then tuck your pelvis up high to further tilt your body out over your hands. This will put your serratus on overdrive and help you to feel the difference it makes to recruit this dormant muscle into your ab training. This is just a glimpse of what it looks and feels like to train like an athlete. If you want to get those abs showing like never before and you don’t want to wait years for it to happen, head to http://athleanx.com and get the complete ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and stop overlooking the little things in your training and workouts. You’ll be amazed at just how big those things become in the big picture of carving out your new body. For more ab workouts and ab exercises for a six pack, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://yout