Jesse: There's not a day that goes by where I don't hear,
5 11 , 130 pounds soaking wet. Strong? Give me a break.
I might have to disagree with that. Jeff:
But first of all, can we at least get those dimensions straight? Jesse's actually 5 10 ,
165 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. So, let's not cut him short and let's not make any
assumptions about Jesse's strength based simply on his body weight. As a matter of fact, this is
a clip of him right here doing a 550-pound PR on a deadlift. See if I take out my calculator here,
550 divided by that body weight of 165 pounds gives him a 3.3 times body weight deadlift.
Jesse: 3.3 repeating. Jeff: How do you do it?
Jesse: Well, let me explain. I know how to create leverages. I actually pull the bar into my shins
as opposed to pulling it straight up. That way when I pull straight up and back at the same time,
I can wedge myself under the bar. The other thing that I do, is I traded in volume for
intensity. Instead of doing reps of five, six or eight, I was doing heavy singles, doubles and
triples. To accommodate for that fact that I was using much heavier weight, I had to cut back my
deadlift sessions from twice a week to one time a week. And when I did, my gains soared. Pfff, Am I
suppose be impressed or something? Look at those long skinny arms. You're built for the deadlift,
bro. You can't even squat your own bodyweight, if I had to guess. As a matter of fact, I can squat.
Here's me squatting 430 pounds and for Canadians and Europeans out there, that's 195kg. But the
thing that made me squat so much was that once again, using my body to my advantage. And for me,
the two things that I focused on were my chest and my pelvis. And with the chest I went against the
grain a little bit. Some people will tell you, point your nipples at the floor. I decided to
do the opposite, I get my chest up and open and with my pelvis I made sure to move it at the same
time as my chest going down at the same time. And especially when I came up out of the squat,
they were moving at the same exact time. And the more in sync that I kept them,
the more success I had on the squat. Jeff: You sure did, Jesse. Because again,
at that 165-pound bodyweight, that 430 pound squat is 2.6 times your bodyweight. Again,
a really significant strength number. Jesse: And when it came to the squat,
unlike the deadlift, it was not as taxing on my body, so I was able to get more sessions in and I
didn't have to cut back on my volume. So, I did something called the 3 in 10, which is three squat
sessions every ten days. So, what I did was on my first session work up to a heavy single, which is
just one rep and my second session heavy double, and in the third session a heavy triple, which
again is three reps. And this turned out to be the perfect mix of volume and intensity for me. And by
doing this, my squat freaking blew up. Okay, well, you got a lot of type two fibers in your legs or
something like that, but you can't bench for shit. Well, you did get one thing right. I can't bench
and I think it has a lot to do with the discomfort that I have from this collarbone that I snapped in
half doing my best Shaun White impersonation, trying to snowboard like a maniac.
Jeff: Excuse me. Do you think that you snowboarding like this had anything to do with it?
Being a dumbass could actually result in dumbass accidents.
Jesse: I don't want to talk about it. Jeff: Just saying.
Jesse: Having said that, I didn't say that all bench pressing was uncomfortable, I meant the
Barbell Bench Press was uncomfortable. Oddly enough, the Dumbbell Bench Press was something
that actually did pretty well. And because I'm smart, Jeff, I decided to lean into my strengths
and work on this version of the exercise. So right off the bat, I switched over to the dumbbells,
and that freed up a lot of the shoulder discomfort because I was able to move the dumbbells freely in
space. However, I noticed a problem with my strength, and that was because the dumbbells
were drifting a little bit. What I did is, I took a tip from Jeff, and I took the inside edge of the
dumbbell and brought it down to the outer portion of my lower chest. And so, what this touch point
did was two things. First off, it was really damn comfortable on my shoulders, so I wasn't having
any pain or discomfort anymore. And the second thing was it allowed me to stack my elbows under
my wrist, under the dumbbell. This let me press more efficiently and ultimately more weight.
Now, something I used to do, which was a mistake, was bench with my feet on the
bench. So, I decided I was going to take one of the things that I learned on the Barbell
Bench Press and bring it over to my Dumbbell Bench Press and that was using leg drive.
By driving my feet into the ground and forward as if I was doing a leg extension,
but without my feet coming off the ground, I was able to slide back and up the bench.
Not only that, but I was taking the dumbbells and instead of pressing straight up and down,
I brought them through their natural arc of up and back. By doing this,
as well as the touch point tip that I gave earlier and putting in the hard work, I went from benching
50s for three all the way up to benching 100s for three. Okay, great achievements,
but what are you going to do next? Brag about your pullups. All skinny guys are good at pullups.
Well, I wouldn't say all of us are good at pullups, but I like to think I'm pretty good
at it myself. And the way I'm able to do quite a few unbroken pullups with full range of motion,
by the way, is by adding weight to the exercise. And in my case, I worked myself up to a 45-pound
plate. Not only did I get stronger on the pullups, but my back got bigger too. And when I took the
weight off and jumped back up to the bar, I was flying through those reps every single time.
This might piss off some purists, but bear with me because this actually works and it worked for
me. I was doing partial reps. Yes, partial reps. Every single time that I did a set of pullups,
I was going all the way up and all the way down to complete and total failure. But I said,
I'm not going to let my set end after that, I'm actually going to take it one step further to and
through failure, as Jeffrey likes to say. So, once I couldn't get that full range of motion,
I'd go three quarters away, halfway, quarter of the way, three inches Jeff That's a lot,
by the way you know, to the point where I couldn't even lift myself at all. And that's when I call it
quits on that set. And ever since I did that, not only did my back blow up, but so did my
pullups. Whatever, dude. I bet you don't even overhead press, that's the hardest of them all.
I do with my bodyweight. Dips? Weighted. Look at those puny arms. Do you even curl, bro?
Of course, they're for the girls. Push downs?
With the whole stack. Whatever, man. I bet you're not doing the Single Dumbbell
Overhead Pistol Squat, blindfolded, obviously. But only real man does that.
Surprised you mentioned that one, it's one of my favorites, actually. That's it. He's on roids.
I'm going to go follow someone natural. Jeff: Yikes. So if you are skinny and you're
looking for salvation, you have your answers right here in this video, you can get strong. Also,
if you're skinny but want to look jacked, that's possible, too. You want to make sure you check
out this video right here, Jesse's favorite exercises. If you're looking for a full program,
you can find them over at athleanx.com, Old School Iron, the exact program Jesse used to build his
strength up to what it is today. If you haven't done so, make sure you click Subscribe and turn on
your Notifications so you never miss a video when we put one out. All right, guys. See you soon.