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If you want to get six pack abs you may think that you have to spend hours a day trying to get them. That is not the case at all. If you are able to commit to a consistent but short effort you will be amazed at how much better your abs could look in a short period of time when combined with a focused attention to what you are eating as well.In this video, I have a short 6 minute lower ab workout for you to do along with me. As you will see and feel, an ab workout does not have to be long to be effective. As a matter of fact, I would probably say that the longer the ab workout goes, the less effective it becomes. The key to this working is that it is short enough to allow you to do it consistently without having to fight to schedule it into your normal routine.Remember, the key to getting six pack abs is consistency. Now, don’t think that just because you might be doing the same set of exercises that it is becoming less effective. It is not. The choice of ab exercises in this workout is broad enough so as to cover the major functions of the lower abs. There are bottom up movements that better are better able to influence lower ab muscle fiber recruitment while still including rotation which will train the core as it is meant to be.The point of this video is to give you a follow along lower ab workout that you can do anywhere. There are no special pieces of equipment needed to do this. All you need is your body and some space on the floor. You might actually need a bit more than that, and that would be a heavy dose of determination to try and resist the burn of these exercises as you do them. Remember, the pain from ab training is usually only temporary. As soon as finish the exercise and the lactic acid starts to clear the abdominal muscles, you feel normal again.See if you can follow the entire lower ab workout along with me, resting when I do. If you need extra rest for some reason, don’t be bashful - take it. Maybe you can only do 45 seconds of one of the 60 second exercises. That’s ok, do what you can and rest for the remainder of that exercise. As you get stronger on these you will be able to do the whole thing without extra rest. Here is the ab workout as follows:Figure this 8’s x 30 secondsHands Back Raises x 60 secondsTwisting Pistons x 60 secondsRest 30 secondsSeated Ab Circles CW x 60 secondsSeated Ab Circles CCW x 60 secondsScissor V Ups x 30 seconds21 Crunch x 30 secondsSo there is a lower ab workout you can do at home with no equipment that will get you started on getting that six pack you’ve always wanted. If you want to speed up the process you will want to make sure your diet is in place as well. If you want a step by step meal plan to get you ripped fast, head to http:/athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System.For more ab workout videos that you can follow for a six pack, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24 and be sure to turn on notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s posted.

If you squat you have likely been told to never let your knees go past your toes. If you do, you will likely damage your knees, tendons and integrity of your joints. In this video, I’m going to tell you the truth about squatting knees over toes and break down the biomechanics of the squat exercise to help you better understand this controversial opinion on this popular leg exercise.To start, it’s helpful to understand that the squat is performed with coordinated movement between the hips, ankles and knees. When there is a limitation at one of the joints in the kinetic chain there will be compensations that occur that alter the biomechanics of the squat exercise and can lead to breakdown and issues down the line.When we squat too much with our knees, you see the characteristic forward movement of the knees over the toes without much hinging going on at the hips. This is incredibly stressful on the anterior knee joint and actually takes out of the exercise one of the largest and strongest muscle groups that should be contributing to the lift - your glutes. This can also be seen readily on an exercise like the Sissy Squat - which should be avoided at all costs and is demonstrated in the video.The second way to squat is to hinge properly at the hips when you perform the movement but to be careful not to allow the knees to travel past the toes at any point during the squat. This creates a tendency to keep your center of mass back a bit and away from the proper midpoint of the foot. When this occurs, the anterior stress on the knees is diminished but so is the proper transfer of forces throughout the lower extremity kinetic chain as you’ll see in a minute.The final way to squat would be to let the hips travel backwards as far as they can go while allowing the knees to travel forward as far as they can go. This would result in a bottom position on the squat that placed the knees significantly ahead of the toes but the hips and center of mass properly distributed above the mid foot. Now, getting into this position is actually harder than it looks because of tightness that often exists in the ankle joint.Limited range of motion into ankle dorsiflexion is one of the main reasons we can’t get forward tibial travel during the descent of a squat. This can either come from muscle tightnesses in the calf and achilles or from bony impingement that occurs in the ankle joint. Either way, limited dorsiflexion is causing the buildup of force that is created by the quads and glutes to be stalled in the knee joint rather than flow through to the ankle along the kinetic chain.In order to have pain free squatting in your knees you must figure out a way to allow the tibia to move anteriorly during the squat. You can do this by being conscious of the desired movement and trying to figure out a way to facilitate the motion. The best way I know how to do this is to stop trying to lock your big toe down into the floor when you squat. Instead, you want to pin the inner and outer portion of your foot to the ground, but along the mid foot and not the toes.Push down through the heel, outside and inside of the foot but allow the toes to remain free. In fact, if you want to really assist the tibia in getting into the proper position during the exercise you want to try and pull your big toe up slightly into extension as you drop down into the squat. This will help to assist the movement of the knees over toes while staying in balance with the hips that are moving posteriorly through a proper hinge.When done right, you will have a bottomed out position of the squat that places your knees over your toes but results in no knee pain and a stronger, more biomechanically sound squat. If you have a history of knee pain when squatting, you w

If you are wondering how to lose fat then you are going to want to watch this video. It doesn’t matter which diet plan you are following right now to lose weight, the key to your long term permanent success lies much deeper. Even science based diet plans that claim to prove the fastest way to lose body fat won’t stand the test of time if you are unable to do the most important thing when it comes to nutrition, and that is stay consistent with your approach.In this video, I show you the number one truth about nutrition and losing weight. Without consistency, your chance of keeping off the weight you lost is almost zero. The most important thing you can do is not turn to the latest pubmed studies to supposedly prove how you should be eating but rather determine if the way you decide to eat is going to be something you can do forever.I’m actually not one to demonize one way of eating over another. Instead, I encourage everyone to adopt the nutrition plan that is most conducive to their lifestyle and is going to be something that they can do for the foreseeable future. This often revolves around a much deeper ideology and one important unavoidable truth.And that is, getting ripped and losing fat is going to take commitment. Period. It is going to take a long term permanent commitment to either spending a bit more time than you are right now or money to get where you want to be. This can be boiled down to a simple three words and how they interplay together to formulate these requirements. These are fast, cheap and good. When it comes to nutrition and eating you can get fast, cheap and good but you can’t get all three. In fact, you can only choose two of these three options. In only one world is it possible to get fast, cheap and good nutrition and that is if you are living at home with your parents and they are spending the time, money and effort to prepare your foods for you but even in this example, someone is still sacrificing something - it’s just not you.More realistically, you are going to have to choose from these other options. In fact, there are only two viable options to diet success since the fast and cheap option is usually one that isn’t conducive to what you’re trying to achieve with your body goals. When you go this route you are left with foods that are likely not healthy or good. This is a quick road to disaster and not one that is recommended.This leaves the other two options. If you go the fast and good route then you are likely going to have to take advantage of pre-cooked foods in your local Whole Foods or even start using a meal prep company to provide your meals for you. Both of these are going to require a financial commitment that you may or may not be able or ready to make. On the other hand, if you would prefer to save a good bit of money you can purchase these foods yourself in their raw, natural states and then cook them yourself. This of course if going to take much more time and is going to require that you are willing to make the time commitment to getting this done consistently. Even if you do a full day meal prep or choose to prepare your meals daily.The fact is, you can’t escape nutrition commitment when you want to get your diet right and lose weight. Losing body fat is one of the hardest things you can do because it takes a 24/7 commitment that many people can’t make. Anyone can get themselves to go to the gym for an hour a few times a week but it takes a lot more effort to be conscientious of what you’re eating for the remaining 23 hours. Don’t get fooled by quick fixes. There is no such thing when it comes to getting ripped.If you’re looking for daily guidance on how to make this process much more automatic for you, then I think I can really hel

If you ever wondered whether you could cut it as an NFL player, you first have to see if you can make it through an NFL football workout. In this video, I take former Green Bay Packers Super Bowl Champion Greg Jennings through a dynamic leg workout to help him build explosive strength and athleticism. See if you can keep up as you follow along this complete leg workout.To start, we have to make sure we warmup. Most of the time, people turn their warmups into workouts by making them too long. The only goal of your warmup should be to prepare your body to be capable of performing the exercises of the workout without form compromise or injury. The leg swings and hurdle unders are two of the fastest ways to mobilize the hips and muscles of the legs to prepare you for the work to come.First exercise up is the banded box squat. As part of a lower body dynamic workout, the goal for this training is not strength. Instead, you want to focus on speed of movement and overall athleticism and power. This means that the overall system load you want to subject yourself to is about 60 to 75 percent of your 1RM in combined resistance (from both bands and the weight on the bar). Ideally, you will put about 20-30% of this in the form of bands. Realize, in the case of this example, Greg is being represented as a 300 pound squatter. Sixty percent of this would be 180lbs. With one hundred and thirty five pounds on the bar and fifty pounds in band resistance, we are able to reach the goal system weight total. Keep in mind, this resistance is only realized at the top of the movement where the bands are fully stretched. At lower depths, the bands are more slack and there is less tension being contributed to the bar.This does help to match up the strength curve of the added resistance to the natural resistance of the squat as an exercise however. Next, we perform a combination of a front side loaded bulgarian front squat with a backside loaded version. The difference is simply the position of the body in space. When standing upright, the load is going to be borne by the quads primarily. When leaning forward, the hamstrings and glutes will take the lion’s share of the workload. The key in either environment is not to place your front foot up on a box if your back foot stays on the floor. This either limits range of motion of the working leg or completely eliminates the tension on this leg at the top of the rep.To finish up the workout, you have to add more to this banded exercises and unilateral leg exercise. It’s important to include a dynamic jumping or sprinting exercise. In both cases, you can either do a straight vertical exercise, horizontal exercise or change of direction movement. Here we do twisting box jumps for that athletic change of direction.The reps should be kept precise and at high energy. If you find that you are fatiguing and that the quality of the jump is declining then you need to stop your set and regroup before continuing. Finally, the hip hinge is a critical component that needs to be trained. We choose the cable pull through as a great option to get this done. Just like the upper body equivalent, the face pull, it is key that you fire up the right muscles here to perform this exercise correctly. Make sure that the often underactive glutes are what does the work here by keying on their firing and sequencing on every rep you perform.This is just a sample of one type of lower body workout that an NFL player might do. Of course, you want to be sure that you are working on your max effort strength levels as well. For a complete program that works all of these training methods into one step by step program, be sure to head to athleanx.com at the link below and check out the Monster Maker program.

If you had to choose between free weight exercises or bodyweight exercises for building muscle and strength, which would you pick? In this video, I’m going to break down the most popular back exercises to show you the differences between equivalent movements as they relate to the motions performed in the exercises. Beyond that, you’ll see which versions hold certain advantages over the other as well as which exercise you should be swapping in when you only have access to either the bodyweight or free weight version.We start today by looking at the back exercises. This series will eventually cover all of the major muscle groups in the body and arm you with the ability to make smart exercise selections regardless of what environment you’re training in.When you do your back workouts it is helpful to think of the different planes of motion that the back can be trained in to make sure you overlook none of them in your training. First, we look at the the vertical pulling movements. Right away, the bodyweight back exercise that should stand out to you here is the pullup or chinup. Depending on which direction your hands face on the bar will determine which of these you do, however mechanically they are very similar.If you wanted to transfer the pullup or chinup to a free weight exercise in the gym however, the obvious choice would be the lat pulldown. Again, here you can perform this with either an overhand or underhand grip. Keep in mind, when you perform either the chinup or the underhand pulldown, you are getting a heavy involvement of the biceps as well. While the pullup and the traditional pulldown are better at focusing the work on the lats.The biggest difference between the muscle activation of these two different exercise options is the involvement of the core muscles. When performing this back exercise as a free weight lat pulldown, your abs and core don’t work nearly as hard as they do when doing the bodyweight pullup. This is because of the activation of the hip flexors pressing up into the pad to lock yourself into the machine. When the body is suspended on the bar and free to rock and sway, it is the abs that have to contract hard to make sure this doesn’t happen.Next, we look at the horizontal pulling movements. On the free weight side is the classic barbell row. On the bodyweight side is the inverted row. Both of these work the back muscles in the same way in the same plane of movement. That said, there are some distinct differences that you want to be aware of when making your selection. First, the barbell row clearly provides an opportunity for more precise progressive overload and is therefore a much better strength option.That said, the inverted row can be modified to make it more difficult. You can simply straighten out your legs or even place them up on top of a box for a greater challenge if needed. Additionally, while the barbell row can be somewhat strenuous on the lower back if you are having back weakness or pain, the inverted row will place no such stress on this area.Finally, the straight arm pushdown is one of the best free weight exercises you can do for your back. This allows you to work on developing your straight arm scapular strength, an overlooked element of a complete back workout. If you don’t have access to a gym however, all is not lost. As promised in this series, I show you an alternative you can do with bodyweight. This is the inverted straight arm pushdown. By pushing down into the bar and initiating with the lats, you are working your back muscles in the same way and have an opportunity for great benefits as well.As you see, there are back exercise equivalents regardless of whether you are using bodyweight exercises or free weight exercises. The key is to understa

Hrithik Roshan is a famous Bollywood actor who has stirred up a buzz with his incredible body transformation where he went from fat to fit in just 2 months for his newest movie WAR. In this video, I am going to delve into what I believe is the truth behind his transformation and what you can learn from it. The first thing to note about Hrithik Roshan’s transformation is that in his before & pictures, there is not much difference in size in his arms and shoulders, as well as an outline of abs. The biggest difference isn’t the amount of muscle that he put on, but more about shedding the fat. By getting much leaner, Hrithik’s transformation appears a lot more drastic than it really is.The next thing that we need to look at with this body transformation is that there is a possibility that Hrithik’s transformation did not actually take place over the course of 60 days. In an interview with Aamir Khan, he clarified that his personal transformation for Dengal took place over the course of several years to build muscle and that the shedding of fat is what occurred in 5 months. Thus, it is likely that Hrithik Roshan’s transformation is being misconstrued.The next and possibly the most important thing is that when looking at body transformations, such as Hrithik or Aamir’s, is to look at the default state of the individual prior to the transformation. Hrithik Roshan is known as the Greek God of Bollywood, and for good reason. Before his fat state, he was known for being in incredible shape and taking great care of his body. It is much easier, especially in your 40s and 50s, to get fit if you have had some sort of training base in the past. To make a 60 day transformation such as Hrithik’s, it would be incredibly difficult to achieve those results if he had not been in as great shape prior to his weight gain.Hrithik Roshan’s transformation also involved an alteration to his training. Suffering from disc problems, he had to make sure that his training was safe but effective and did so by using what he called “Zero Momentum Reps” - a training style that I have been a proponent of in the past, especially when dealing with injuries. You should also take note that it is important to change your training styles when you start to notice your progress stalling. You can’t rely on progressive overload forever, so you need to change the style with which you change, just as Hrithik did.Lastly, it is important to understand that nobody can make a transformation like Hrithik Roshan did in just 60 days unless they have their nutrition in check. To lose that amount of fat and to become as lean as he is, he had to make sure that he was eating the right foods. However, that’s not the end of it; Hrithik has said himself that he found it much easier when he discovered the healthy foods that he enjoyed eating. If you can find foods that you enjoy eating, your diet will be sustainable and become a part of your lifestyle.So, when looking at body transformations, such as Hirthik Roshan’s transformation or Aamir Khan’s transformation, it is important that we don’t just look at the start and end points, but that we look at how they made that transformation. In Hrithik’s case, it was having a default state that was lean and muscular, his muscle building took course over many years prior, he adapted his training, and he found sustainable eating habits. If you are looking to make your own body transformation with a science based, step-by-step workout and nutrition plan that will help you achieve the body that you’ve always wanted, click the link below and check out the ATHLEAN-X Training System that is best suited for your goals.For more videos on how to make your very own transformation using free training tips, nutrition a

The fastest way to get a wider v-taper back is to focus your attention on the muscles in the back that contribute the most to width. In this video, I’m going to show you the best back exercises you can do to build up your lats, teres major and teres minor in order to get the widest back possible. We are breaking out the science here to get you the best results you can from your workouts.First, it always helps to look a bit at the anatomy of the muscles you are trying to develop. In the case of back width, the three that have the greatest impact are the latissimus dorsi, teres major and teres minor. Odds are, you may have been focusing a pretty good amount of attention at developing your lats but have you ever stopped to think what you should be doing for those other two muscles.The truth is, if you want to build a great v-taper back then you need to look at the best ways to train all of these muscles. The good news is, all it takes a few small tweaks to exercises you may already be doing to shift the focus of the workload onto either of these three muscles. When you see just how easy this is to do you won’t feel overwhelmed at all and will be excited to go try some of these small exercise tweaks right away.First, let’s talk about the lat pulldown machine. Actually, this machine is a little misnamed since you can preferentially train more than just the lats here. That said, if you want to hit the lats the most you want to be sure to perform an underhand pulldown or a rocking pulldown. The key here is that you want to get the elbows out in front of your body as far as possible to place a greater stretch on the lats. Also, as you pull down, each of these exercises will give you the best chance to keep your arm tightly adducted to your side to maximally activate the lats.If you wanted to shift the focus to the teres major all you have to do is take a much wider, overhand grip on the bar and do a pulldown. This takes away some of the lat favorability of the exercise and shifts the load more to the muscle you are trying to develop. By attaching a rope to the pulldown machine you can incorporate external rotation at the shoulder and do a better job of recruiting the teres minor (a rotator cuff muscle) to perform the exercise. The name of this exercise is the face pulldown, and it’s a fantastic exercise for building up the complete va taper of your back.Keep in mind, all of these variations can help you develop a wider back and all of them can be performed on a pullup bar if you don’t have access to a lat pulldown machine.Additionally, you can target the teres major with a landmine setup as shown in the video. Once again, remember to keep your elbow out wide away from your torso and position yourself perpendicular to the landmine olympic bar setup. Want more lats? Just step to the side of the bar and pull it up parallel and tight to your body and you’ll shift the focus instantly.Finally, the one arm hi pulley row is a great way to place the lats on tremendous stretch and take them through their full range of motion. This may be one of my favorite ways to build a wider back. Shift the attachment to a rope handle and perform the tried and true face pulls and you’ve just added another exercise to your teres minor building arsenal. The key to building a wider back is to understand which muscles you want to focus your efforts on and which back exercises to the best job at getting the job done. Here I’ve just shown you quite a few options to do that. If you’re looking for a complete program that will help you to put the science back in all of your workouts, be sure to head to the link below and check out the athlean-x training system best suited to your current goals.For more back worko

If you want to build wider shoulders fast you need to narrow your shoulder exercise selection and broaden the weight selection you use when performing them. In this video, I show you how a simple side lateral shoulder raise can do everything you need it to do to create extra width in your delts. You just need to be willing to perform the shoulder exercise with both heavy and light weights.First, let’s start with a little shoulder anatomy. The middle head of the delt is the one that is most visible when looked at from the front. It is the one that is going to create the most lateral width in the delts. That said, both the front delt and rear delt has overlap anatomically with the middle delt and doing exercises to improve them will only benefit the way your shoulders look from any angle.That said, when it comes to building up the middle head of the delts your best exercise option is the side lateral raise with a dumbbell. First of all, it is a good idea to do these only one arm at a time instead of two arms at the same time. This will give you a better chance to concentrate on doing the exercise correctly and limiting the amount of muscle substitution that occurs when you do your lateral raises.The second benefit here is that when you have to lift two dumbbells at once, you are asking that your core be able to stabilize the combined weight of the dumbbells. This is twice as hard than if you were to introduce just a single dumbbell at a time, thereby putting the focus more on the delts than on the core and helping you to get more from it.When you are ready to perform the exercise you have two major options; both of which need to be performed if you want to maximally build up your shoulders. The first is to grab a light dumbbell and do the lateral raise with a focus more on muscle recruitment and metabolic overload. The light dumbbell should give you a chance to isolate the middle delt as much as possible and make it do the lion’s share of the work.The increased workload will go a long way towards improving your muscle growth while helping you to establish a better mind muscle connection with a muscle that often times sorely lacks this. When performed with the lighter weights, you are able to crank out more repetitions and get a metabolic stress reaction. The accumulation of both lactic acid and hydrogen ions in the muscle (the things that cause your muscle to burn when you are performing the exercise) provides a chemical stimulus for growth that cannot and should not be ignored.That said, lifting light weights alone would rob you of a chance to provide muscle growth and width in the shoulders from an alternative stimulus - heavy weights and progressive overload. This is where the cheat lateral raise comes in. Here you want to swap out the light dumbbell for a heavy one. The initiation of the movement is less about isolated muscle contraction and more about getting more weight to the top of the exercise.From here, you do your best to eccentrically contract the middle delts to slowly lower the dumbbells back to the starting position. The acceleration of the weight on the concentric part of the lift takes advantage of another growth stimulus - compensatory acceleration - that helps to recruit more type II muscle fibers which are more capable of growing faster than slow twitch fibers.Either way, my best recommendation for getting wider shoulders fast is that you not only be sure that you lift both heavy and light weights when you perform you shoulder lateral raises but that you immediately start prioritizing whichever you aren’t doing enough of right now. For example, if you lift mostly heavy weights for your shoulders then introducing the lighter dumbbells is going to have a fast impact on the response you see from t

If you have ever wondered how to get a bigger, stronger butt, you might find that you were missing something in your training. In this video, I am going to explain the benefits of having strong, larger glutes from both a strength coach and a physical therapist’s perspectives, as well as the one exercise that will help you to get a nicer butt.As a strength coach, the importance of building bigger, stronger glutes comes from how much strength and explosive power comes from these muscles. The muscles in your backside play an essential part in balance, change of direction, running, and jumping. By increasing the strength of the gluteus muscles, your butt will not just look better, but they will help you to perform better overall as an athlete.Another benefit of building a nice butt comes from the physical therapist perspective. Having weak glutes can lead to pain and injuries throughout the body. Those with weak glutes are prone to lower back pain, hip tightness, and hamstring injuries because these muscles are taking on the brunt of the load that is supposed to be supported by the muscles in the butt. Having stronger glutes will help to alleviate some of these issues as they will be able to take on the load that they were meant too.When it comes to training benefits, having a nice butt with a strong gluteus muscles will directly carry over to other compound lifts, such as the squat and deadlift. By keeping the glutes strong, you will be able to handle weight more efficiently and generate more force through those muscles to support the lift. When it comes to the squat, when there is a major weakness in the muscles in your backside, it can lead to a desegmentation of moving parts in the lift. With the chest and hips meant to move together in unison, having weak butt muscles can lead to the lower back taking over too much and the result is lifting the bar with your back (which can lead to injury in the lumbar region of the spine).To help develop a nicer, stronger butt; I recommend that you include the Pullthrough into your training. Start by setting the cable at a low anchor point, grabbing the rope between your legs and stepping out from the machine. Without moving your arms, hip hinge back and allowing the weight to pull your hands back towards the machine. Leaning forward slightly to counterbalance the weight pulling you back, squeeze your glutes to stand straight up. Don’t allow your torso to move backwards at all. If you look from the side, it will look just like you are standing up from a squat. Your shoulders should not move from a vertical line, just like proper bar path. You can also perform this exercise with a band, if a cable machine is not available. By including the Pullthrough into your training, you will notice improved carryover strength to other lifts.Getting a better butt is not just about aesthetics, but there are athletic, training, and health benefits from building stronger glute muscles. To do so, start including the Pullthrough into your leg training right away and start noticing the benefits almost immediately. Remember, all muscles matter and by putting the science back in strength, we can learn how to train them the right way. If you are looking for a program that overlooks nothing in your training and gives you not just the how, but the WHY behind exercise selection, get the ATHLEAN-X Training System by clicking the link below.For more videos on building bigger muscles and avoiding pain and injury, make sure to subscribe to our channel here on YouTube. Click the link below and be sure to turn on your notifications that you never miss a new video when it’s released.Build Muscle in 90 Days — http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to This Channel — http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

It is possible to build a bigger chest with a push-up only workout, but you better pick the right variations of pushups and know how to construct your workout properly. In this video, I’m going to show you the perfect push up workout that you can do anywhere and regardless of what ability level you are at now. I’ll show you a beginner, intermediate and advanced push-up workout that will take you to your limit and get your chest growing with no equipment required.To start however, we have to look at some of the limitations we encounter with other push-up workouts. First of all, any that starts with a rep prescription is inherently flawed. It is far too difficult to recommend a workout that is driven off of a rep goal on push variations that doesn’t account for the different levels of strength of those performing the exercises.Next, the choice of exercises is critical in a properly developed push up workout. If you fail to account for the fact that you will need adduction of the shoulder to get a complete chest contraction and only pick exercises that keep your hands separated apart, you will not get an optimal chest workout. Here I cover three versions of a pushup that will create relative adduction of the arm that will activate your pec muscles better than ever.As for the specific exercises, it’s important that you take each one of them to failure as noted above. We simply cannot define how many reps are supposed to challenge every single person in a certain variation of a push-up. Instead, by programming reps to failure you can be sure that the effort level is going to be what is necessary to spark new changes in strength and muscle growth from doing the workout.Beyond that however it is important to point out that just because your workout may only consist of pushups it does not mean that you are unable to target your upper, middle and lower chest. This is simply not true. With a careful selection of variations that position your arm higher than horizontal, at chest height and lower than horizontal we can do exactly that. We can hit the different fibers of the pecs more preferentially and therefore create a perfect chest workout.Throw in the fact that it is important to speed up what you slow down and therefore should include at least one explosive pushup variation in your workout and you will have a pushup sequence that is second to none in effectiveness. Try this out and see if you can progress your way up to the point that you are completing all of the advanced level exercises without having to take extra time to complete.If you are looking for more perfect workouts that you can do for your chest, back, total body, shoulders, biceps and triceps, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and turn on your notifications via the link below to be sure you never miss a new video when it’s published.For a complete step by step workout program that will help you to build ripped athletic muscle in just 90 days, be sure to head to athleanx.com at the link below and start training like an athlete today. See how much faster you can get results when you put the science of strength back into your training routines.Get Jacked in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

When it comes to ab training, you would be making mistake if you did not include dumbbell exercises into your workouts. In this video, I’m going to show you the best dumbbell exercises for abs, each based on a different training criteria. I’m going to cover the categories of strength, power, hypertrophy, metabolic training, total body, corrective exercise and a miscellaneous movement that needs to find it’s way into your routine.We start with strength. Here it is worth noting that often times, any lower ab exercise (or movement that requires you to lift your legs) is going to be challenging enough and create overload. This is because the weight of the legs provides enough external resistance to bring down the rep counts and ramp up the intensity. That said, there is a big difference in our ab strength levels when moving from the top down and bottom up. For that reason I included two different weighted ab exercises to cover each.The first is the single arm Otis-Up. This is a no-momentum movement that requires you get your back off the floor without the assistance of your legs or feet pushing into the ground. Get to a high sitting position and slowly lower yourself back to the ground. From the opposite end of the kinetic chain we can do the weighted Dragon Thrust. This involves placing a dumbbell between your feet and lifting the pelvis off the ground to engage the lower abs. This may be too difficult for some beginners but it does provide an option for those that are ready for it.Next, we move onto power. This involves not just moving a weight but being able to do so quickly and explosively. The best movement for this is the dumbbell twisting toe taps. This upper and lower body timed movement allows for you to preload the abs by placing them on a rotational stretch on every repetition. The kick of the leg on the opposite side gets the body to move in it’s preferred cross pattern and allows the stored elastic energy of the core to do it’s job on resisting and creating rotation.For hypertrophy we want to be sure to include an ab exercise that allows for a stretch to be placed on the abdominal muscles. Given that most ab exercises are done on the floor, the ability to extend beyond neutral is something that isn’t possible. That’s why the introduction of a physioball as shown here is so valuable. You can stretch the abs over the ball and get an eccentric overload when performed with a dumbbell in hand. Slowly crunch up on each rep to ensure a good, purposeful contraction and optimal ab development.Next is the metabolic training category. While some have concerns about accumulating a lot of reps or time flexing and extending the spine (I am actually not one of them if the abs are trained properly and the stability of the supporting core musculature is maintained), this would allow for both without worry. The Rock the Boat and the Hollow Rock are isometric challenges for the core and involve maintaining stability rather than dynamic contraction. Less strain but still maintain all the benefits of the burn inducing metabolic overload that has been shown beneficial to development.Other categories covered here are the total body ab exercise, corrective ab exercise and a miscellaneous option that hits the neighboring muscles of the abdominal region especially well. All of these exercises are going to be effective for their intended purpose and make for a super effective dumbbell workout routine for abs if you choose to do them together.If you are looking for a complete ab workout that guides you through every day in just minutes of training, be sure to check out the Google Play Store and App Store for the “6 Pack Promise” app by ATHLEAN-X. If you are looking for a complete training program that trains all of the muscle

If you have skinny legs and can’t seem to get them to grow, I have good news for you. In this video, I am going to give you a simple tip that you can implement into your leg training immediately that will help to finally grow those chicken legs. I’m bringing Jesse in to show how incorporating this change to his squat has helped him to get bigger legs.First off, if you want to build big legs, you need to be squatting. It’s called the king of leg exercises for a reason! One major problem that many people have during the squat, however, is that they fail to actually load the quads. It’s been repeated ad nauseam that you need to break parallel when you hit the hit the bottom of the squat. Why? Because the femur are perpendicular to the force of gravity, the quads are receiving maximum tension. By stopping the rep short of parallel, you are sacrificing the potential to overload the muscles, which is necessary if you want you’re quads to grow. Remember, if you want to build big legs, you need to be squatting to the proper depth!Continuing with the idea of loading the quads…for a number of reasons, people often believe that you should be squatting with an extra wide stance. The problem with this method is that with the knees so far out, the adductors are doing the most work instead of the quads. As I mentioned previously, to get bigger legs, you need to load the quads with maximum tension. Jesse shows the difference between an extra wide stance versus a stance that is just outside shoulder width. With that wide stance, Jesse, like many others, felt a great amount of strain on his adductors when coming out of the hole on the squat. When he narrowed his stance, he noticed an immediate difference in the amount of tension placed in his quads as compared to the adductors. Narrow up your stance and load those quads if you plan on building bigger legs.Next, introducing a box can make all the difference in the world when it comes to squatting. You will want to make sure that you find a box that is the right height for you to be reaching parallel when you hit the bottom of the squat. Don’t worry if the box is too short, you can add a plate on top of it to make sure you are hitting a comfortable depth at or below parallel. This will not only give you a good target of how deep you need to squat, but it also provides a sort of safety net. If there is fear of not being able to get up out of the hole, the box allows for a reassurance that you will not come crashing down to the ground.Lastly, when you squat down, don’t sit on the box. You want to just barely reach the surface, almost “kissing” the box with your butt. The rep doesn’t stop there, though. I have talked about the importance of pause squats before when it comes to building strength and size of the legs and it doesn’t change here. Once you reach that target, hold the rep (with maximum tension on the quads) for 2-3 seconds before ascending. By pausing the rep, you are trying to “convince your quads” to do the work necessary to get you up and complete the repetition. By utilizing these simple steps the next time you squat, you will be on your way to growing bigger legs. If Jesse could grow his quads in a relatively short amount of time by doing making these changes, then you can build big legs by doing the same. Remember, it’s not just what exercises we do, but it’s how we do them that matters. If you want to build bigger legs along with the rest of your body, be sure to click the link below and use the program selector to help you find the program that matches your current training goals. By putting the science back in strength, I’m going to help you achieve your best results ever over the next 90 days.For more videos that breakdown popular exercises in order to give you the

If you are going to do a home chest workout to build a bigger chest then you better make sure it’s as close to perfect as possible. In this video, I’m going to show you the perfect home chest workout to work your entire chest from top to bottom, putting the latest in sports training science behind the exercise selections. Make no mistake, training at home does not have to be a compromise. I’ll show you how to build bigger pecs regardless of whether you have a gym membership or not.To start, you have to cover a bit of the anatomy of the chest to better understand your workout attack plan. The chest has two distinct portions with separate nerve innervation. These are the upper or clavicular area and the lower or sternal area. The lower portion is actually comprised of two distinct zones as well that can be influenced a bit further by the direction that you move the arms in space and the fibers that get placed at a better mechanical advantage. The bottom most portion of the chest, the abdominal head, is something that therefore can be hit better with some chest exercises than others and will be considered in this perfect chest workout. We start with the first exercise combination of an archer pushup supersetted with a banded crossover horizontal to midline. The key to most bodyweight exercises done at home is to make sure that you are training them with enough intensity to cause muscle growth. The best way to ensure this is to take these both to failure. Too often, when people prescribe rep counts on bodyweight exercises they fail to take into consideration the dramatically different strength levels different people may have. By prescribing the exercise to failure, we equalize these discrepancies and ensure max effort.Next, we want to do a second middle chest exercise, this time it’s the banded pushup. The difference between the two exercises is that the archer pushup has a strength curve that places the majority of the tension overload on the chest in the bottom most position of the rep (like the bottom of a bench press) while the banded pushup flips the strength curve to be most difficult at the top with the added tension of the band. Here again, you want to superset that first exercise with another banded crossover done horizontally to get the workout started. In each case you would want to do 3-4 sets of the combos in the first two chest exercises in this workout.We move onto the third exercise in the perfect chest workout and this time we want to hit the upper chest. To do this we actually want to place our body on a decline, as with the decline wall pushups, in order to change the orientation of the arms in relation to the body. By doing this, we get an arm that is relatively higher than our torso (as it would be doing an incline bench press if we had one) and this will recruit the clavicular fibers the best). Superset this again with a crossover but this time take the band in a low to high path to really target the upper chest the most.Next, we have to hit the abdominal head or lower chest fibers. The best way to do this is by switching rooms in the house for this home chest workout and find a corner of your kitchen counter to do dips. Now you may not have this as an option but that doesn’t mean that you are out of options. Instead, you can do the incline pushup off a bed and choose either the easier plyo clap version or the behind the back version which requires more strength. Once again you want to take this to failure and then superset it with a crossover with a band - this time high to low.Finally, we end the workout with an alternating twisting pushup. This is a killer finisher and helps to create relative adduction of the arms across the chest by twisting the torso into the arm rather than bringing the arm a

If you want to build bigger biceps peaks that look like mountains sitting on your arms, then I’m going to ask you to include this one dumbbell curl variation into your biceps training. All you’ll need is a single dumbbell and proper technique to build bicep peaks that rival Mount Vesuvius. In this video, I am going to show you how this one exercise will not only help to increase the height of your biceps peaks, but I’m bringing in Jesse to show off the results he got from adding this exercise to his training over the last 30 days.I’ve told this story a number of times, but when I was younger and wanted big arms like the action heroes I saw in movies, my brother gave me access to a single dumbbell. For someone wanting to build big biceps, a single dumbbell doesn’t sound like much to build big biceps, let alone tall biceps. However, having seen a professional bodybuilder claim to build his giant biceps using the exercise I show you in this video (one that requires just one single dumbbell), it became my go-to exercise until I was able to gain access to more equipment and ultimately it went on the back-burner.When Jesse asked me what he could do to help increase the height of his biceps peaks, I immediately thought back to this exercise and told him to include it into his training and to report back in 30 days to see if there were any noticeable results. Full-disclosure, Jesse didn’t do this exercise for 30 consecutive days; it was over a 30 day period in his current training split. That averaged 9-12 times in that period that he made use of this biceps peaks curl.I told Jesse that for the next 30 days, that whenever his programming called for him to do traditional dumbbell or barbell curls, that he should swap them out for this waiter curl variation to increase the height of his biceps. Now, he still included rows and weighted chins in his training, so not all bicep work was removed for this exercise; just the standard curls. At the end of the 30 days, Jesse noticed that the height of the bicep peaks were increasing and that his biceps stood noticeably taller.This exercise is awesome for building bicep peaks because it targets the long head of the biceps and not only that, but to perform the movement correctly, it requires the use of the biceps master tip - taking the wrists out of the movement. Turn the dumbbell on its side and grab the underside of the top of the dumbbell, holding the dumbbell as far down as your arms will allow, making sure the very top of dumbbell is parallel to the ground. Curl the weight up, making sure to get peak contraction of the long head off the biceps. The key here, however, is to make sure that the top of the dumbbell stays parallel to the floor (taking the wrists completely out of the equation as the master tip instructs). Return the weight back to its starting position, but again, take the wrists out and keep the dumbbell’s ends parallel to the floor.So, next time you are looking build the peaks of your biceps and increase the height at which they stand; I want you to incorporate this variation of the waiter curl into your training. I want you to remember the key aspect of the technique on this exercise which comes from removing the wrists contribution to the movement. Regardless of what exercises you do, whether to build your bicep peak or not, I want you to remember that it’s not just what exercises you do, but how you do them. By putting the science back in strength, I want to make sure that you are getting the most out of everything you do so that you can see the absolute best results.If you are looking for a science based step-by-step workout plan that helps you to build muscle by getting the most out of every exercise you do, head to the link below and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. See how

The ab rollout wheel is an incredibly useful tool to help build strong abdominal muscles, IF you perform the exercise correctly! In this video, I am going to show you the 5 biggest mistakes that people perform when doing ab rollouts and what you can do to fix them. By making these small tweaks, you’ll be fixing those mistakes that you might not have even known you were making.The first mistake that we need to address when using an ab roller is the positioning of the arms; more specifically, the elbows. Without even realizing it, we often bend our elbows when performing the ab rollout - a compensation that our body is making without us even realizing that it’s happening. By not having straight arms, we take a good portion of the load (all of which is supposed to be directed to the abdominal muscles) and offload that tension to the triceps. This compensation makes the exercise a heck of a lot easier to perform than if you were to keep your arms locked out through each repetition. Keep your arms straight to make sure that you are getting the full benefits of this exercise.Speaking of arms, the second ab rollout mistake is using your arms to pull the ab roller back in instead of using the abs. It is not uncommon to see someone pull the ab rollout wheel at least half way using their arms before engaging their core to finish the rep. Remember, it’s called an ab rollout, not an arm rollout! Make sure that each repetition has the abs engaged throughout the movement and leave the arms out of it. They are simply there to hold on to the wheel.The third ab rollout mistake that you commonly see being performed has to do with the hips. This might be one of the biggest issues I’ve seen with this exercise being performed and it is flexing them after they’ve been set. Typically, this mistake rears its ugly head in the form of the butt breaking past the imaginary line that is formed at the knees. Imagine that there is a wall that is going straight up from your knees and it is there to block your rear end from crossing that plane. This will make the exercise more difficult, but it is the proper way to perform it. Just because there is an easier way to perform the exercise, doesn’t mean you are getting the full benefits from it!Next, we have the issue of the pelvis dropping into anterior pelvic tilt throughout the exercise (especially when we roll all the way out). The problem with this is the amount of strain on the lumbar spine. The way to fix this mistake when using the ab roller wheel is to keep in mind that the pelvis should be at least neutral to a posterior pelvic tilt. By making sure to keep the pelvis out of anterior tilt throughout the repetition, you are also making sure that the abs are taking the brunt of the work performed in the exercise. You will also notice that any low back pain that you were having when doing this exercise, will disappear.Lastly, the 5th ab rollout mistake is always rolling straight forward. While we know the abdominals work in the sagittal plane, we mustn’t forget that another function of the core is to counter rotation of the trunk. In order to train this movement pattern, rolling the ab wheel straight out is not going to cut it; you will have to roll out at angles outside of center. Now, this doesn’t mean taking a drastic angle to each side, because that will shorten the distance that needs to be traveled by a significant amount - this makes the exercise easier and less effective. So make sure to add in some slight outward angles the next time you perform the ab wheel rollout.By keeping these 5 ab rollout mistakes in mind, you will be able to get the most out of the exercise. As I have said previously, the ab rollout wheel is one of my favorite pieces of equipment when it comes to training my abs and I believe t