ATHLEAN-X™

If your hips feel tight when you squat, and you’ve tried every stretch to try and loosen them up and it isn’t working, then you need to watch this video. Here I’m going to show you the real reason why your hips feel tight and what you can do to make your squat better. I will take you through a step by step process for identifying the real root cause of your hip tightness and how to fix the problem without ever having to stretch your hip flexors.We start with an evaluation that can be done at home just laying on the ground. You want to test your range of motion of each hip into flexion, internal rotation and external rotation. While this is easier if you have a therapist to do it for you it isn’t necessary to get the information that you need to move forward. Once you find the restriction in your range you can start to address the issue. In Jesse’s case he has tightness into external rotation of his left hip.This is actually quite a common problem. Hip internal rotation restrictions are also common but more often when the issues are driven by arthritic changes in the hip or from an acetabular impingement that would likely cause a good amount of pain with the testing. If you are looking for things that you can fix more easily however, you will likely find that external rotation is limited.This is especially important when you realize that it is often coupled with a limitation in flexion. The combination of flexion and external rotation is something that is critical to performing a properly executed squat. The first thing you can do is skeletally make some changes to ease the demands on your body. You would want to rotate your legs outward (not just your feet) and take a somewhat wider stance. These will allow the bones in your hip to clear into flexion without experiencing a natural anatomical block.If this improves your range but you still feel issues and tightness in your hips then you want to move to the next level and look at the hip capsule. Here is where most of the restrictions will lie. Try the combo hip external rotation and flexion mobilization shown here and assess how you feel in the squat once again. If you see complete correction then you know you need to work on this more. If you see some improvement but not all then you need to keep going to the point of evaluating the muscles around the hips.The hip has many muscles that cross it or influence its motion. It’s not just the flexibility of these muscles that matters however. You also want to evaluate their strength and their stability. If the hips are tight they are likely getting called to do a job they aren’t supposed to be by a stabile joint that isn’t doing it’s job. The hip tightness is being recruited as a compensation for instability elsewhere, often in the low back. Watch as this unfolds and how to correct this.Finally, you want to check for the intrinsic strength of the hip rotators. You will likely be shocked at just how weak your hips are. With the right strengthening exercises, you will be able to quickly address your weaknesses and get your hips feeling right again every time you squat.If you find this video helpful and think you could benefit from a step by step program that puts the science back into strength, head to the link below and get one of the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems. Start approaching your training seriously like a pro athlete would and you will start seeing the benefits of doing so.If you want more videos to help you correct other hip related issues like anterior pelvic tilt or tight hamstrings, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/m

When it comes to doing abs, people every day are making some big ab workout mistakes that are making it take longer to see results. In this video, I’m going to show you the biggest ab training problems that I see and help you to fix how you do your ab exercises to get much more out of them. The best part is, the issues shown here can apply to almost every single ab exercise that you do, instantly making them work when you include them into your workouts.The first thing most people do wrong when it comes to training their abs is speeding through their reps. This is obviously something that people do on other lifts as well but it seems to be even more common on ab exercises. You get no points for finishing more reps of ab work. Instead, you get better results when the reps you do are high quality.This is something that we have mentioned many times before in our ab videos and that is, stop counting reps and instead make your reps count. Every rep should be initiated by the muscles of your core that you are trying to train instead of using momentum and assistance from every muscle but the one you want to develop.The next thing people mess up is the tendency to cut the range of motion short on all ab exercises. All you have to do is look at a standard floor crunch to see this in action. Most lift their shoulders off the ground at the very start of the exercise and then never put them back down again until the set is over. That isn’t correct. Instead, take every rep through its full available range of motion (which is already short in most ab exercises) and you will get more out of every set you do.Next is the incorporation of an incorrect breathing pattern on every repetition. It is generally accepted that when you exert yourself on a rep of an exercise you should exhale and breathe out. That is good. The issue comes with what you allow your abdomen or belly to do when you do this. You want to exhale your breathe but pull down on your belly and cinch it tightly to your spine via the contraction of the transverse abdominus muscle. So think not about blowing your belly out as you blow the air out but tightening the waistline as you blow the air out and you will get this right every time on every ab exercise.Next up is the tendency of people to skip oblique training for fear that it will give them a blocky waistline. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, at higher body fat levels, the upper obliques are actually something that could still be visible and would contribute to a tapering effect of the torso. When the lower abdominal fat is lost over time, the development of the lower obliques is going to give you that much desired V taper that only comes from training the obliques.Finally, we can never talk about getting great looking abs without making sure you realize that your ab training begins outside the gym. Nutrition is and always will be the key to seeing your abs (or not). Start including some calf and jaw exercises into your workouts and I promise you’ll start to see the results of your ab exercises and workouts much sooner. Remember, no ab exercise by itself will ever hold the key to getting a ripped six pack. Only the right nutrition plan combined with smart training will.If you’re looking for a step by step meal plan to go along with your daily ab exercises, head to athleanx.com at the link below and start seeing what it’s like to train like an athlete. For more videos on how to get abs fast and the best exercises for a six pack, be sure to subscribe our channel here on youtube at the link below and turn on notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to th

People say that how much muscle you can build is entirely determined by your genes. Could that be true? While the shape of your muscles, and overall skeletal frame are heavily influenced by your parents and the genetic code they’ve passed on that doesn’t mean that you’re destined to a life of baggy shirt sleeves. In this video, I look at a few different formulas that just MIGHT give you a glimpse into your genetic potential for building muscle. One particular test is centered around your wrist circumference.Why the wrist?The wrist is a pretty good objective measurement of your overall skeletal structure. What’s more, the wrist doesn’t store a lot of body fat so even if you go up and down in weight your wrist circumference is likely to remain relatively unchanged.So what’s the test?You start by taking an accurate measurement of your wrist then add 10 to that number. That should give you the genetic potential for you upper arm. These formulas go even deeper into ‘predicting’ your maximum body weight. That’s right, there’s a formula that supposedly can predict your overall size potential. To get that you would simply take your height in centimeters and subtract 100. That gives you your max potential body weight at a 6% body fat. For those in the US, convert to pounds by simply multiply the number by 2.2What if you’re not at 6% body fat?There’s a formula for that too, just add 10lbs, or 4.5 kg, to that final number for every additional 2% of body fat that you’re storing.Tests like this are a lot of fun to do, especially when they prove to be accurate, but does that make scientific? At ATHLEAN-X we put the science back in strength, with that said, these type of formulas are fun but I wouldn’t put TOO much stock in the answer. Either way it shouldn’t make you feel deflated about your own potential. No matter what your genetic make up is, I’ve never met an athlete, soccer mom or average joe who wasn’t able to make their body look, feel and move a whole lot better with the proper training and nutrition. Does that mean anyone can be the next Arnold, Dwayne The Rock Johnson or Antonio Brown? Unfortunately no.If you’re 5’9 with tiny bone structure there’s no amount of training that’s going to turn you into one these iconic monsters, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make significant improvements to how you look. Growing up I knew I didn’t have the genetics to be the next Arnold, so although I admired his physique and work ethic I looked to others. Guys like Sylvester Stallone, Frank Zane, Jean Claude Van Damme and others all built iconic physiques on frames much more similar to my own. If you take away anything from this video I hope it is that anyone can improve their body, movement, and the way they feel. If you have a good work ethic, a good training program and a clear goal, anyone can make that change. I say it all the time, if you change your body, you’ll change your life! When you are ready to make that change and take your body to the next level, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com check out the ATHLEAN-X Training System. You can start building a ripped, athletic body regardless of what you feel is lacking right now.For more videos on how to look, feel and move like an athlete be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at the link below…Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

The 90’s were known for bodybuilders that rocked Zubaz pants, fanny packs and even sunglasses in the gym. Beyond that however, there were some ridiculous training programs, beliefs and practices that we all would love to forget in addition to the fashion. In this video, I’m going to cover the 8 things we don’t miss at all about nineties bodybuilding and what we can learn from these mistakes.We start with excessive spotting. It seems that no matter where you turned in Gold’s Gym, somebody was getting spotted through an exercise. Heck, even if you didn’t want one someone was always willing and ready to give you a lift no matter what you were doing. Whether it was curls, bench press, or even tricep pushdowns, someone was there to help you lift the weight and do at least fifty percent of the work for you. Today, your muscles are better off for your move to independence. Let’s keep it that way.Next, it only takes a brief skimming of one of the most popular bodybuilding magazines of the day - Ironman Magazine - to see how too many sets were being prescribed in every workout. They literally had us doing 29 sets for chest on a Tuesday and then coming back on a Friday to finish up with another 31. That is just pure insanity. Today we have learned how more is less when it comes to balancing out the quality of the training you do with the time it takes you to do it.It gets worse however when you look deeper into those marathon workouts. For shoulders for example, it was not uncommon to be asked to perform 7 different variations of side laterals alone. From standing side laterals to seated side laterals to even machine assisted. I’m not saying that there is anything particularly wrong with any of the variations, it’s just that we certainly didn’t need to include them all in the same workout.Moving on, the anabolic window is something that took an even longer time to fade away. In fact, to this day some still believe that the critical 30 minutes post workout is all you have to get your nutrients in or forever waste an opportunity to feed your starving muscles what they need to grow. This simply isn’t true, especially if you have eaten within a couple hours prior to training. The protein your body is still digesting from your meal prior to working out is still available and ready to help you after you’re done lifting.The next thing that had us a bit hesitant to jump on a treadmill and do anything but walk slowly was the fear of cardio eating up your muscles. Now, a fitness regimen consisting primarily of long endurance activities at the expense of heavy explosive lifting will definitely craft a body that is less impressive. That said, a little cardio here and there is not going to hinder your ability to pack on muscle and will actually help you to get to a level of leanness that will show off the results of your hard work even a little bit more.As for the local gym “pharmacist”, it seems that every gym had a creep like this. Even when you did your best to avoid him around the gym itself, he always seemed to appear when you were just trying to get changed and get home after another hard, unassisted workout. Turn down his offers and you might just get a first hand look at his drug induced rage.Finally, while I believe that functional training has gone way too far there was a time in the 90’s when bodybuilding did everything it could to be anything but functional. Every exercise was performed on a machine and the very thought of having to do something with your own bodyweight without being strapped to some contraption was nothing but inferior training. Thankfully times have changed.As you can see, there were quite a few pitfalls that you wanted to avoid if you trained through the 90’s bodybuilding era

If you want to build bigger rear delts, the first thing you need to do is stop doing reverse dumbbell flies with light weights. In this video, I’m going to show you the fastest way to bigger rear delts by properly overloading the muscles with a better exercise alternative. As a matter of fact, we are going to use a traditional back exercise to get the job done most effectively.First, you want to start by looking at the function of the rear delt. It is best activated by getting the upper arm into extension behind the body. Some take this to mean horizontal abduction (or the opposite of the horizontal adduction that happens with chest fly exercises). The issue is, if you anatomically move the arm back behind the body into horizontal extension with the elbow straight you actually limit the range of motion at the shoulder joint and therefore the activation of the rear delt.Instead, what you want to do is realize that by bending the elbow you are going to be able to extend the arm much further back behind the torso and therefore get better recruitment of the posterior delts. What this leads us to is the fact that the seated row is a much better way to build bigger rear delts. That is, if you perform it with some slight tweaks that I’m going to discuss here.The first thing you want to focus on is what attachment you are using to do the exercise. A lot of people will use the close handled v grip. This is a mistake when trying to build bigger rear delts, or even lats for that matter. The handle constrains your elbows to your side but more importantly limits the amount that you can get your humerus back behind your body.The handle will make contact with your stomach much sooner than it would if you had swapped to using even a straight bar as an alternative. The short straight bar however reveals the second limitation that needs to be considered. That is, because the hands cannot be spaced far out on the bar, the elbows will be forced to stay tight to the torso into adduction.This is one of the primary functions of the lats. If you keep the arms tight to your sides you are going to shift more of the workload to the lats rather than the posterior delts. We can fix this however by using a wide bar (like you would use on a lat pulldown) and spacing our hands far apart. The setup will demand that your elbows drift away from your sides and place more of the load on the rear delts in the process.Throw in the fact that the heavier loads capable of being used on a seated row are much more substantial than the light dumbbells being used in a rear fly and you can see how much easier it would be to progressively overload the rear delt and cause faster growth. The rear delt is always relegated to being the weakest of the three heads and somehow only able to handle light weights. This is simply not true. Just like the front delts and middle delts, heavier weights can be used for great benefits if you know how to use them safely to target the muscle you are trying to grow.If you are looking for a complete step by step program where you train like an athlete to start looking like one, head to the link below and start building ripped athletic muscle now. Stop taking a casual approach to your workouts and start training with the focus of a pro athlete. Great results await you.For more videos on how to build big rear delts and the best dumbbell shoulder exercises, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle Fast - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

It doesn’t take long to get “bigger” muscles if you know how to improve the muscularity of your physique. In this video, I’m going to show you 4 workout techniques that you should start implementing into your training right now to start seeing fast changes in the way your body looks. With Summer just around the corner, you are going to want to use these tips to get bigger muscles quickly.It starts with the realization that you don’t have to actually grow bigger muscles in order to have bigger looking muscles. This has to do with the key difference between muscle size and muscularity. This is good news however since making true muscle gains at any appreciable rate becomes much more challenging the more training experience that you have.Beyond that, ultimately your genetics are going to have something to say about the size that you can eventually become. No matter how hard Jesse trains he is never going to be a 300 pound beast unless he figures out a way to go back in time and choose different parents. That said, when you realize the advantage in training for muscularity you can quickly see new changes with not much having to change at all about your current workouts. It comes down to the following four workout strategies for building bigger looking muscles. Make sure that you apply these to your accessory lifts and not necessarily your big compound strength movements. Keep your foundational training the same and incorporate these as an adjunct to increase the rate of muscle gains and muscularity you see.First, you want to make sure that you limit the amount of momentum you use in your lifts and make your muscles do the work instead. This can easily be seen in the example of a side lateral or front shoulder raise. If you swing or bounce the weights at all you are likely to shut down the amount of work being done by the very muscles you are trying to hypertrophy. Drop the weight you are using and make sure that every rep is being initiated and controlled by the delts and not only will they be doing more of the work at the end of the day but you will see size gains because of it.Second, stop counting reps and start making reps count. You can do this by not worrying about just getting the weights from point A to point Z but by enjoying the journey from B to Y on every single rep you do. In the case of the crossover, you don’t just want to get your arm across your body to engage your chest but you want to appreciate the benefits that additional internal rotation below shoulder height and keeping the shoulders back can have on increasing the output and gains seen by the chest as a result.Thirdly, you want to learn how to squeeze every rep as if it’s the only one you are going to do. Don’t worry if you are going to have anything left in the tank for the 12th rep. Instead, focus on getting the most you can out of the rep you’re doing and let the rest take care of itself. I apply this to the lat pulldown and you can see even additional muscle fiber recruitment as you squeeze and hold from the first second to the last.Finally, in some cases the working muscles will actually do more work if you let the muscles around them help them to do so. In the case of the dumbbell curl, the activation of the abs is going to help stabilize the body and give the biceps more leverage from which to pull from. Likewise, the activation of the chest and lats is going to prevent the elbows from drifting and cheating the work the biceps are doing, therefore giving them more stimulus for faster muscle growth.If you find this video helpful, you will love the way our complete programs help your body to see fast muscle gains by training like an athlete. Start putting the science back in your strength and conditioning workouts by heading

I’ve been saying it for some time now, “You need to do your face pulls!?” and it’s still 100% true! Face Pulls are one of the best exercises to help offset your poor posture, shoulder dysfunction and a host of other issues you likely face. While the face pull is simple to perform I’ve seen a lot of examples of people doing it incorrectly which will diminish the results you could be getting.Because of the angle of the movement it’s important to use the proper equipment, I recommend a band or cable machine as the line of resistance can be better controlled. These implements also offer the proper strength curve which is important. One of the most common errors I’ve seen when performing the face pull is the placement of the anchor point of the band, or the area of origin in the case of a cable machine. In order to properly target our rotator cuff and not turn the movement into a bastardized row or shrug we need to ensure that the anchor is positioned above your head. Often I see people pulling from chin level or even worse, chest height. This positioning puts too much emphasis on the muscles of the upper back almost removing the rotator cuff from the movement. Another common error is grip. Athletes should use an underhand grip as opposed to overhand. While performing the face pull it’s also important to make sure that you are taking a strong, stable athletic stance and leading with your hands and not your elbows. You never wants to lean backwards as this allows the lower back to contribute. If you find yourself doing this fault it’s likely because you’re making another common error… using too much weight. The weight you use on the face pull should be enough to get meaningful contractions in the target muscles for building strength but not so much weight that you need extra momentum or backward lean in order to move the weight. This is NOT a power move or an opportunity to demonstrate your strength. If you’re finding it hard to put your hands first, check out the video for a great tip you can perform from the floor to ensure you’re doing it right. Once you’ve mastered the basic face pull you can start implementing some modifications to help make the exercise even better. One of my favorite modifications is to perform the hands up (think over head pressing movement) at the end of the pull. Performing your face pulls this way engages all the muscles we want but also brings the lower traps into the mix to get them some much needed attention.Wether you’re going to perform the standard face pull or a modified version it’s important to do them correctly so you can get the results you want.if you’ve been following me on YouTube I don’t need to tell you when to perform this exercises…the answer is simple….everyday. That’s correct. The face pull is so important and gives attention to such under used muscles that you can perform it every single day.While there are no magic bullets in the pursuit of fitness and athleticism the face pull is as close to one as we’re going to get. People who properly perform the movement have reported improved posture, elimination of neck, back and shoulder pain as well as a reduction in chronic headaches. Wether you’re training for size, strength or to look good on the beach you always want to stay healthy so throw in some face pulls at the end of your workout. For a complete training program that not only trains you with the right accessory exercises to take your gains to another level faster, be sure to click on the link below to head to http://athleanx.com where you can start training like an athlete today.For more videos on everything from strength and building muscle to fat loss and pain relief, be su

Even if you’ve been performing the best lifts and exercises for muscle growth, you may not be seeing all the gain you should be from your training. In this video, I’m going to show you the 6 best lifts you can add to your main foundational strength exercises to get much more from them. You have to remember, you are and always will be only as strong as your weakest link. The goal of this collection of movements is to show you how to strengthen those weak links once and for all.We start with the deadlift. One of the hardest parts of this exercise is the initial break of the bar off the ground. It is literally why this movement is called the deadlift since this requires that you are able to perform this from a dead stop without momentum. The ability to do this well is going to depend on your ability to drive force into the ground through your legs and to have strength and stability in your upper back when you pull.If you find that you are not able to drive through the ground with force, you will want to start incorporating heavy dumbbell lunges as an accessory movement in your leg training. The lunge forces you to have to push hard through the foot into the ground to not only drive the weights you are holding but your entire body back up to a standing position. You want to handle heavier weights than you are used to in order to get the most carryover to the deadlift.On the other hand, if you are able to generate good force through your feet but cannot maintain the stability of your upper back through the initial pull then you need to do something about this. I found that the chest supported barbell row was one of the most helpful accessory exercises I could do to improve this. By removing the legs from the equation, I learned how to be able to pull heavier weights with just the strength of my back, so that when the legs were added back in as during the deadlift, I was able to pull significantly more weight as a whole.The squat is another movement that can be aided with the right accessory lift. Here you want to figure out a way to strengthen your glutes since they need to be the main driver and initiator of the upward lift of the bar from the bottom of a squat. The weighted hyperextension is a great way to do this.To improve your ability to do the overhead shoulder press you want to consider just how much your body will rely on your feet and legs if you give it a chance. Even if you are not doing a push press and are trying to be more rigid with your form by performing a strict press, the ground reaction forces initiated during any standing variation of the press is going to incorporate the legs too much. In order to get stronger in the OHP you would want to sit down and perform a Z press as shown to isolate the strength of the shoulders.The video wraps up with discussions of how to improve scapular strength for the pullup by doing weighted scap pulls as well as the face pull for improving pretty much every lift you do. The main point is, there are big lifts that you should be including in your training in order to compliment the heavier compound foundational movements in your training. Doing them both will make your performance on the big lifts improve that much faster.For a complete training program that not only trains you with the big lifts but shows you the right accessory exercises to take your gains to another level faster, be sure to click on the link below to head to http://athleanx.com where you can start training like an athlete today.For more videos on how to get stronger and the best way to perform a deadlift, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube via the link below and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - htt

The demise of the bench press has been greatly exaggerated. In this video, I’m going to show you how the deficiencies of the bench press as an exercise are easily overcome and therefore are no reason to avoid the exercise all together. There have been many to say that when it comes to building muscle, bench pressing is inferior and incapable of doing a good job. I disagree and I’m breaking out the muscle markers to prove my point.That said, it begs to reason that we would start with a discussion of the main function of the chest at the shoulder. The movement called horizontal adduction is what the pecs are most responsible for. This is the act of bringing the upper arm from a position away from the midline of the body to a position closer to the midline of the body.This does not have to cross midline or even reach midline to be considered horizontal adduction in the same way that bending the elbow just a little bit during a curl is still elbow flexion (albeit not full flexion of the elbow). This brings us to the question of whether or not the bench press is training the key function of the chest at all. Many people that concentrate on only what the forearm is doing when the arm is moving will say that the arms are not horizontally abducted during the bench press and therefore not working the chest as well as it should (or at least not as much as the shoulders and triceps).That is false. If you look at the demonstration of the upper arms in both the bench press and the crossover you will see that the mechanics are very much the same. The only thing that is slightly different is the amount of range of motion that the upper arm is going through into adduction during the movements. There are other differences however that need to be considered. While the range of motion of shoulder adduction are less in the bench press than they are in the crossover, the amount of weight that can be loaded during the bench is superior. This means, that you are able to overload the chest more effectively with the bench despite its shortened range.That doesn’t have to be the end of the argument however. Since we know that full chest activation can be achieved by performing loaded horizontal adduction across midline, we can simply opt to compliment or accessorize the bench as the main lift with a few sets of crossovers for max chest recruitment. This is something we have covered here before by including some high to low or low to high crossovers after your main bench work for the day.Those that use the range limitations are selling this exercise short and not understanding the full picture. In much the same way, the deadlift is an exercise that we all will readily agree is capable of building a bigger, stronger back. However, if you look at the range of motion of the lats and other back muscles in the lift they are surely not being brought anywhere near the limits they are capable of by acting on the joints the muscles cross. This doesn’t hold back the movement from being a gains producer however.The bottom line is, you have to define your training goals. If hypertrophy is your main goal then you will want to find ways to make sure you leave no gaps in your training. Perform the complimentary exercises to fill in range gaps or strength curve gaps. If you are simply looking to build strength in the bench press, as a competitive powerlifter however, seeking ways to expand the range beyond what would be needed for the lift is unnecessary.If you’re looking for a program that will help you to build muscle and get ripped like an athlete, head to the link below and start training with the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems. Start seeing gains faster by training harder and smarter in the next 90 days.If you’re lo

The one thing every skinny guy trying to build muscle will tell you is, it’s not easy. In this video, Jesse from ATHLEAN-X is going to take you through some of the successes and failures during his muscle building transformation that have gotten him to where he is now and are setting him up for greater mass gains in the near future. If you are not aware of Jesse, you likely haven’t been watching the videos on this channel for very long. For those who are seeing him for the first time, it takes a glimpse back in time to appreciate just how far he has come with his body. Jesse started at just under 130 pounds of body weight. He was painfully skinny and very weak.Beyond that however, Jesse had a history of head trauma that prevented him from leading a normal life and certainly made it difficult to engage in physical activity without repercussions. As a youth lacrosse player, he suffered multiple concussions which left him with severe post concussion syndrome and he was forced to stop playing all together. The risk of another concussion was too high and it was feared that any additional head trauma could lead to permanent brain damage.As he began his quest to try and build muscle while still maintaining the athleticism and all around performance ability he had on the field, he was met with complications from exertion during lifting. Even the slightest amount of stress, strain, overtaxing of the body during a lift would leave him with a headache. Sometimes, he would even black out during a set which became an incredible risk to his health considering he would be doing this with weights in his hands or on his back.Doctors forced him to scale back his training greatly while they helped him to identify the exact causes and triggers of his issues and how to better prepare for them over time. He essentially had to rebuild from the ground up. Not to mention, along with the neurological issues, Jesse brought with him a host of postural imbalances and dysfunction that further contributed to his disability and made proper form lifting a challenge.Over the last couple years, he worked very hard on overcoming the postural imbalances that were holding him back. The fixing of his pelvic tilt, neck, rounded shoulders and thoracic extension limitations were key to getting him to function better everywhere, not just in the gym. In addition, while the body was being fixed the aggravation of his neurological symptoms was improving as well. Ultimately, in February of this year he was cleared to begin increasing the exertion of his training.In just the last few months, Jesse has added a considerable amount of weight to his lifts and is performing them with good form and solid control due to the removal of compensations from his movement patterns from his early restricted work. His legs have grown in size and he is noticeably bigger in all areas of his physique. As you will see, he still has some things that he is struggling with while building muscle. Namely, his love of endurance training and long distance running combined with a healthy eating plan that makes it difficult for him to consume enough calories to put on extra muscle.The bottom line however is, he is on the right track and continues to be a motivational figure for any skinny guy who ever struggled putting on muscle. The sky is the limit for him now that he is able to push himself in his training without restriction. I fully expect him to keep getting stronger, bigger and maintain his overall athleticism while continuing to be able to enjoy the athletic endeavors that have driven him to where he is today. We will all keep rooting for this skinny guy to keep overcoming the issues that have once held him back.For a complete plan where you too can make a step by step transfor

If you’ve been around any gym or online forum these days you’ve likely heard that training volume is the key to all muscle growth and gains. In fact, of every other element of your workouts, the amount of training volume you accrue over a single workout or multiple workouts is supposed to be the main driver of muscle growth and size. In this video, I’m going to debunk the value of volume. In fact, I’m going to show you how volume can be almost entirely negated in the absence of something far more important - training intensity.Much like functional training was the buzz word of the early 2000’s, volume has become the equivalent for 2019. We have been led to believe that simply adding more sets and time to our workouts is going to equate to faster and more significant muscle growth. This has led to an epidemic of people spending more time than ever in the gym, getting far less results than ever before.Not to mention, with all the additional volume being misdirected towards their joints and tendons there are more people gaining aches and pains from their training than they are hypertrophy. Why is this? Because accruing volume for the sake of volume is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your workouts. The best thing you can do is trade in some of that volume for intensity if you really want to see increased muscle mass and development.As it is, I believe that many people in the gym simply don’t train hard enough. The adoption of volume as the driver of gains and the focus of many people’s workouts is something that easily fits that narrative. Rather than work harder with less, all that is required to obtain more volume is time. If you have additional time to spare, you can add more sets to your workouts. That said, the only way you are going to add more intensity is with more effort. Effort is something that will not come easy. Effort is going to demand that you look for ways to intensify the state of your workouts. Adding paused repetitions, reducing rest time between sets, pushing to actual failure at least a few times during your workouts are all things that are going to require a higher level of output and effort than simply adding more time.If you want to see greater muscle growth from your workouts you are going to have to be willing to push harder. What winds up happening when you trade in workout length for intensity is that you see what science has shown and that is, even as little as 4-10 productive high effort sets is all it takes to elicit a muscle hypertrophy response from your training. There is no need to spend hours and hours in a gym trying to get results when far less time is capable of doing the same.If you are looking for a program that shows you how to train hard and not have to train long, then click on the link below and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System that best matches your goals. Start training like an athlete and get more out of your workouts every time you step into the gym.For more videos on how to build muscle fast and the right way to split your workouts for maximum muscle gains, be sure to subscribe to our channel at the link below and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Dumbbells do not have to be a sacrifice when it comes to building bigger triceps. In this video, I’m going to show you the best dumbbell exercises for triceps to fit any goal you may have with your training. If you’re just looking to build the strength of your triceps, want to make them more powerful and explosive or just build them bigger and add size I’m going to show you the best exercises you can do to accomplish each.We start as we have in this entire series with the strength exercise. Here we have a tie between two exercises, the close grip dumbbell bench press and the weighted upright dip. Different than in the swap between a barbell and dumbbells in the traditional chest bench press, the narrowing of the grip allows far less torque and resultant stability demand to be placed on the shoulder joint during the cgbp. This keeps the weight high enough to let you still pursue strength on the lift.Likewise, on the upright dip, we can simply swap out plates for a single heavy dumbbell as the resistance with little to no drop off. The ability to progressively overload this movement is easy and therefore very conducive to those looking to build strength in their triceps with nothing but dumbbells.If power if more your goal, then the JM Press is a great option. The ability to initiate the movement with your elbows driving your triceps into position rather then the triceps overcoming the inertia on every rep is a significant advantage. An object in motion will tend to stay in motion. Getting the dumbbells moving will allows the triceps to kick in and explosively keep them moving up to the top of the rep. No sacrifice of the weight used needs to be made here and the built-in additional acceleration makes this a great dumbbell power option.If hypertrophy and bigger triceps is the goal and you feel as if you have used up your newbie strength gains to drive this, you can always focus on an exercise that will eccentrically overload the muscle. This is where the lying dumbbell triceps extension with a forced negative only rep finisher is bet. The position of the arm back behind the head throughout this exercise allows for a greater stretch on the long head of the triceps and the best stimulation of the triceps eccentrically.There also can be gains made through the use of lighter dumbbells and a metabolic training effect. Here we showcase a bodyweight combination that is performed in descending ladder fashion that actually uses the dumbbells as props to keep the wrist in a healthy and neutral position. Alternate between reps of seated floor dips and close grip pushups for a great burn and an opportunity to resist it for tricep muscle gains.Total body options from the modified overhead extension thruster to correctives like the dumbbell devils are additional exercise selections that will hammer the triceps and help to achieve a secondary benefit as well. It depends on the goal of your training.Finally, in order to fully shorten the triceps muscle you must at some point load the triceps in a position behind your body with the elbow straightened. This is the only way to place the muscle in a maximally shortened position. Now, while you may not be able to handle very heavy weight here it does not mean that you should avoid it. In fact, you need to do this if you want to stimulate maximum triceps activation. The dumbbell kickback is the best dumbbell option here by far.If you are looking for a complete step by step workout program that will help you to put the science back in strength and already selects the best exercises for each muscle group of the body, be sure to click the link below and sign up today to start training like an athlete with any of our plans.For more videos on how to build big

Have you been told that strength is everything when it comes to seeing gains from your workouts? If so, you are making the biggest workout mistake you can be making and you’re definitely going to want to watch this video. Here I am going to address the big fat strength lie that is more rampant now than ever before. Now, don’t get me wrong. Strength training is and always will be the cornerstone and the focal point of your workouts. That said, doing this without focusing on the roots of that strength is going to lead you down a troubled path.So you may have been told that strength is the most important element you want to address in your training. Without it, everything else will suffer and therefore you need to make sure you are maximally strong at all costs. While being strong is crucial, building strength on a weak foundation is one of the biggest workout mistakes that you can make. The key to building true strength is to realize that just like a tree, you’re only as strong as your roots.In the world of training this means that if there is something that can be impaired that takes your strength away from you, then the strength is not the foundation. Much like a tree may look strong above the ground, if you examined below the surface and saw weak and dying roots that tree is not going to be standing for much longer - no matter how big and strong it may appear.So what you need to focus on is prefacing your strength progression with a solid base of full flexibility, mobility and stability. Now many people will look at this and say to themselves that they are getting it right because they are doing at least 30 minutes of mobility work and stretching before they work out. That is not necessarily even a good thing. Why? Because if you are just adding additional range of motion to a system that is not stable, then you are going to be even more likely to break down and commit this devastating workout mistake.Stability is not strength. It is a form of strength that is not measured by the contractile force of a muscle but rather the ability to control the contraction throughout the range of motion (and even at both extreme ends of it). In the example of a squat, a person that is incredibly stable will be able to perform the squat and pause at the bottom of the rep. Beyond that however, they need to be able to return to the top in one piece without desegmentation of the body on the way up. They need to be able to not have their knees drift in or out, or their hips waver side to side at any point.When one is maximally stable, they are maximally efficient in their bar path during the squat and have no wasted motion. Their rep speed is unhindered or unslowed throughout the entire range of motion. This may mean that you need to drop the weight that you are using a bit in order to realize this level of control. If so, then do so. The goal is not to simply chase numbers at the expense of your stability. Working on your mobility and flexibility as well are going to be vital to getting through a full range of motion and commanding the true strength you do have along the way. If and only if you do this will you ever realize your true strength without risk of incurring injuries like hip labral tears, low back blowouts and unnecessary hip joint and muscle pain.If you are looking for a program that overlooks nothing in the way the workouts are put together and puts the science back in strength from the first day to the last, then head to the link below and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System that is best matched to your current goals.For more videos on how to squat more weight and the best workout to improve strength, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and turn on your notifications so you never m

In today’s video we look at the best dumbbell exercises for biceps. We’re going to focus on several areas of training: from strength, to power as well as hypertrophy and a few others you’d expect along with the best way to train the brachialis muscle of the upper arm, which supports the size and appearance of the biceps.First we cover strength. The key, just like in our chest video, is that there are two non dumbbell exercises that fit perfectly here and that is the barbell curl and the weighted chinup. As we know from the dumbbell bench press however, there is a drop off in the amount of weight you can lift when you move from a barbell curl to individual dumbbells. That is, unless you split them up into alternating arms. Here your core doesn’t have to work as hard to stabilize the upward motion of the dumbbells and you can handle more weight for an easier progressive overload.That said, I don’t believe this is the only option when it comes to building the strength of the biceps. I would suggest you also do the weighted chinup. Unlike the barbell bench to dumbbell bench however, you don’t have to experience a drop off in the weight you use just because you switch from weight plates to a dumbbell. Just hook the dumbbell up the way I show you and you are all set and ready to perform the weighted chinup and load up the biceps for growth.Next we focus on power. The element of speed is critical to maximizing the effect of power training for our biceps. Here as well, you want to try and find a way that you can release the load during the repetition to realize true power development. The best way to do this is with the weighted plyometric chinup. The goal is to explode your body up and over the bar with a quick catch and release of the cross bar. If you cannot handle the additional weight around your waist, use the dumbbell as a step up to the bar.The goal, as with any power development training, is to stay sub maximal in your effort and focus on moving as much weight as you can control with an increased rep velocity. If you find that the weight you select is so heavy that you have to either cheat the form too much or you cannot maintain proper speed, lower the weight used and start again.For hypertrophy you want to explore eccentric muscle damage. The best way to do this is with the seated incline curl. Pick up a pair of dumbbells and curl them but don’t forget to actively contract the triceps at the bottom of every rep to enhance the stretch reflex and strength of contraction on the biceps. You can see me do this on every rep in the video demonstration. Once you reach failure, one of the most effective things you can do is take the reps beyond. You can do this with an eccentric only rep performed by sitting up at the end of the bench and then slowly lowering your body and the dumbbells back down.A slight variation on this is shown to achieve a metabolic stress as well. Here you want to establish a burn in the working muscle and try to keep it there for as long as possible. I use an additional position that allows me to get some drag curls in at the end of the combination to do this really well.We always want to keep an eye on the correctives on this channel as well. In the case of the biceps, we focus on maintaining health of the elbow. As anyone who has had issues with medial elbow pain while curling or doing any pull movements for that matter can tell you, it can hamper your ability to get results. Remember to load the dumbbell deep in the palm of your hand to avoid overstressing of the distal finger tendons. This can be achieved through either a dumbbell wrist curl if you can handle lighter weights only or a carry if you are up to the task of heavier weights.Included are a few other ex

The pushup is one of the most popular exercises in the world. Every day, hundreds of thousands of push-ups are done in gyms everywhere, and unfortunately many of those reps are wasted. In this video, I’m going to show you the biggest mistake people make when performing this popular chest exercise and how you can easily and instantly fix it for better results.What most people do when they perform pushups is they set a target number in their heads or at the very least, concentrate on counting the reps as they perform them. Different than most other exercises, this one becomes one that has the counting of the reps become the major motivator, and the more of them you do supposedly the more you get out of the exercise.This couldn’t be further from the truth. In an attempt to make the numbers go up, what often times happens is the range of motion used on the exercise becomes shorter and shorter. Even if this is just by an inch or two at the top and bottom of the exercise, the impact this has on the effectiveness of the exercise is significant. Not sure you believe me? Fair enough. Let’s try it out for yourself. Take whatever number you think you normally do on the pushup and use that as your benchmark. Now, do the exercise as I show you in the video. Take a nice steady cadence from rep one to the last. No slow down of the exercise is allowed at all. The second you notice a decrease in rep velocity it ends your set, as if you couldn’t complete the rep at all. Now, make sure at the bottom of the rep that you touch your chest firmly to the ground (without letting go of the tension completely) and fully extend your body back up to the top by locking out your elbows. You may notice that you only have an extra inch or two of motion at the top of the exercise to get you into full extension, but that is fine. Normally, this is not a large movemeent that needs to be made, however it is very impactful in terms of how much more it will take out of you to finish the set like this.It is not uncommon for you to see a 60 percent drop in your performance on a set of push-ups by just making these two simple switches. Don’t worry. It’s not about the number of reps that you can count up, it’s more important that you make the reps you do perform count. Stop focusing on just racking up junk rep after junk rep and worry about getting the ones you perform to work the muscles you’re trying to work as hard as possible.The pushup can be a great exercise for developing the chest, triceps and shoulders. It is something you can perform anywhere without any equipment at all, and as you’ll see, get much more out of it in a shorter period of time if you trade in the length for some intensity. I saw a humbling drop from about 100 reps of pushups to 40 just by implementing the changes I showed you here.If you’re looking for a complete step by step program that focuses on the details when they matter, knowing how much faster you can see results when you do, then head to the link below and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and see the difference it makes to the muscular body you can build when you do.For more videos on how to do pushups for a bigger chest and the best pushup variations for building a big chest, be sure to subscribe to our channel on youtube below and turn on your notifications so you never miss a video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24