What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
It's another bodyweight Wednesday video.
That means it's time for me to help you get more out of your bodyweight training.
Now, don’t tell me you're not training with your own bodyweight.
I don’t care if you're a huge iron addict.
You'd better make sure you're carving out at least a little piece for bodyweight training
because there's nothing that can replicate the command of your own body and space.
As a matter of fact, we're going to up that command right here, today by including an
overlooked element of your training.
That is isometrics.
Now, I've talked about isometrics here on this channel before, but I think people overlook
their importance.
They think of isometrics as 'easy things', right?
I'm not contracting, or I'm not shortening a muscle, I'm not lengthening a muscle; I'm
just hanging out.
It doesn't have to be that easy.
As a matter of fact, where and how you incorporate your isometrics – especially in the bodyweight
training – can make all the difference.
So here's what I'm suggesting: take a look here at a standard pushup exercise.
Now, we've talked about before how a push up may not be the most challenging exercise
for your chest for somebody that's capable of bench pressing and lifting a lot of weight.
However, you can make it much harder by inserting isometric holds into the normal set that you're
doing.
So I can decide to pause here after a few regular repetitions in the bottom portion
of the rep, or the middle portion of the rep, or as I'm demonstrating even on the top portion
of a rep.
what I'm doing here, though, is not just hanging out.
I'm actively engaging as many muscles as I can to hold this position.
So what you might not be able to see here is I'm actually squeezing and dragging my
hands together, like this, on the floor to try to engage more activation of my chest.
And believe me, I can feel it, but I don’t just stop there.
Then I try to resume my normal repetitions.
If you haven't tried this technique before, you're in for a rude awakening because you
may not be able to get that many more regular repetitions.
Remember, who cares?
Because we're not counting.
All we're doing is measuring the other and the ultimate effect that this will have on
you and your body in this set.
Taking it to failure, taking it beyond failure, making sure you get enough out of it.
The same thing here applies to other exercises.
I can go up on a pull up bar – which is already a difficult exercise for some – but
for those that don’t find it difficult enough and that don't have access to any weight to
put on their body for an overload; try the isometric holds intermittently.
Again, try them in the bottom, try them at the top, and try them in the middle; wherever
you try them, try to then resume normal reps after it.
Like I said, it's a much different effect.
It will dramatically shorten the length of your set if you're used
to doing rep after rep after rep, but with the ultimate goal of getting you more from
that set.
We can even take it to the extreme with a more difficult exercise.
A handstand pushup.
Again, look what happens even here.
I'm still doing the same idea of pulling my hands together when I'm in the low, isometric
hold, but on top of that, you can even see muscles in my back that wouldn't necessarily
have a chance to activate, become activated because their role as stable items becomes
that much more important when I slow down the rep.
So when I get it in here and I actually want to stop and hold, now, all of a sudden, their
job becomes that much more imperative to kick in and allow me to maintain my stabilization
in this position.
It's not easy, but guess what?
The ultimate effect on my entire back and my shoulder girdle is enhanced.
Finally, we're going to actually hit our abs here in a new exercise to wrap up this whole
video and also drive home this concept.
It's a modified L-sit.
Really, just a suspended sit.
But here's the cool part.
It's difficult enough to hold an L-sit.
It's still difficult to hold this bent-knee sit.
But it's even more difficult to hold it in either reposition; the bottom or the top.
We're going to do just that.
We're going to provide our body with this elevated hip tuck.
That's the dynamic portion, but at any point in time we've got to be able to stop and hold
it and maintain our four or five second hold.
Then come, what do we do?
We resume the reps.
You're not going to be able to go for that much longer, but as I said earlier, it doesn't
matter how long you last.
What matters is how much you make it count.
That's what makes muscles grow.
That's what makes all the difference when you're trying to get more form your bodyweight
training.
If you've found this video helpful, guys, make sure to leave your comments and thumbs
up below.
If you're looking for a complete bodyweight training program that utilizes no equipment
at all, not even the benches that I showed here, not even the pull up bar that I was
on and trains your entire body with the main goal of helping you to build muscle by incorporating
advanced techniques like I just showed you here; head to ATHLEANX.com to get our ATHLEAN0
program.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again in just a couple days.
See you!