What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Whether you're walking through those doors for
the first time in a long time, or maybe it's the very first time you're here,
you're likely going to migrate to a lot of the popular exercises in
the gym. But I want to make sure you're doing them right, so I'm going to go over
those and show you exactly how to get the most out of every single one of them.
And you might find yourself starting right here at the Leg Extension Machine. Look,
I understand it's a popular exercise. It's just not one of my favorites, it's not one
that I do. That being said, I realized a lot of you are. So, what can we do? Well, first of all,
ask yourself one question for me: Are you doing the exercise because you're looking for
an isolation quad exercise? Or are you doing it because you're looking for an easier leg exercise?
Because if you are doing it for the latter, I want you to get to doing better exercises
like a Squat because you know they're going to be more rewarding for you in the long run.
This, though, if you're doing it for an isolation exercise does beg one more follow up question,
and that is: Are you best served doing isolation quad work? Because our quads get a lot of work.
I'd rather see you put your time into doing some additional hamstring or glute work, because I know
that almost everybody watching this, they probably got weak hams and glutes. If you're doing this and
you're finding that causing some knee discomfort and pain, I understand why it could be pre
inflammatory if you have patella tendinitis. Guys, if you want to do it, do it, but if you're looking
for a better exercise, I'll show you some. So, sticking with the legs, the next place you
might find yourself is on a Lying Hamstring Curl Machine. If you're going to do this exercise,
I think you should focus on a couple of things. Number one, stop driving your knees into the pad.
Because what that does is it encourages the hip flexors to drive the motion to help you to lift
the pad up. Well, we know the hip flexors are attached to our lumbar spine, so a lot
of times people can get low back pain doing this exercise. The way to fix that, start right here,
contract your glutes, and then pull up. By contracting the glutes, you're going to shut
off those hip flexors a little bit and allow the hamstrings to do more of the work without having
to get that overactivation on your lower back. Another thing you could do, though, is just get
off this machine because I like this Seated Hamstring Curl variation better. We avoid
all these issues of overactive hip flexors by simply changing the machine we use. And if you
don't have access to that and at least even try the Standing Leg Curl Machine,
they're both better than this one. But if you're going to do this, at least do it right.
So, if International Chest Day is the most popular day at the gym, then it stands to reason that the
Dumbbell Bench Press is the most popular exercise you probably be doing here. But you want to make
sure you're doing it right so you're not leaving any games on the table. The first thing you want
to do is not get confused by all the advice you may have heard already about the exercise. Like
get your shoulders down and back. That caused a lot of us to actually try to pinch our shoulder
blades backwards, which is the wrong cue. Instead, I say, un shrug your shoulders,
when you do this, it's going to take care of both of those cues in one shot. The second thing you've
got to make sure you're not forgetting to do is utilize your leg drive just like you would on
a regular barbell bench, your legs are going to help you to move some heavier weight.
So how you do that, you lay back, you get down into the bottom position here, and then my feet
here have to be able to push into the floor in this direction. If they can push that way, I
can drive these weights up. So, the same time I'm ready to push, I drive my feet up and I push up,
down, drive my feet up and push up. My feet are driving into the floor,
pushing my body up the bench that way. And again, what that does is it helps to assist your body
to move in the opposite direction, equal and opposite force, to push those weights up and
make the exercise a hell of a lot easier. I mean, who doesn't like a good Pec Deck,
except when you get it like this? Because how you enter the machine actually matters a lot.
A lot of people will reach back with both arms and they're putting so much unnecessary stress
on their shoulder for no reason. Just rotate towards one arm, get in, bring it all the
way to the center, rotate your whole body is a hell of a lot less stress. The other thing is
you can just adjust the starting point, you don't have to start so far back. Remember,
this machine oftentimes trains the rear delts, that's why it has the capability of going back
there. But to start the Chest Fly, you can start it from a lot further towards the front.
Now, when you do the exercise itself, one big thing you don't want to do, you don't want to
do the bear hug motion. I know Arnold talked about how important the bear hug is on a fly,
but not here. Because what happens is as you bear hug, you also protract your shoulders.
And as soon as your shoulders get out in front of your chest, your chest isn't doing any of the
work that it's supposed to. So, what I want you to think of instead is driving your body
and chest back as your arms come forward. Get the arms out all the way straight but drive the chest
backwards. It's actually two motions in one as the arms are going this way, my chest is
going back that way. That will keep the chest prominent, that will place more of the work on
the chest and do exactly what it is you're trying to do with this machine in the first place.
So, if you can train your triceps, you're likely going to try this exercise out. Except
I want you to change your target point. A lot of people will call and do these as Skull Crushers,
and they target their skull and then they go up to the top. The problem is the end position. And
when you do it with a skull as a target, what you re doing this ending here in the wrong position
every single time. Instead, shift the arms backwards. Now go from there. And when you end,
instead of bringing it all the way back over the top, stay back there. Because when you do that,
you're going to keep the tension on the triceps the entire time. Straighten the elbows out,
bring them down. You get a bigger stretch on the long had the triceps anyway. And because
that end position doesn't finish straight up overhead, you re going to get a lot more
tension on the triceps, on the whole exercise. Next exercise up is the Side Lateral Raise. This
is obviously an exercise that almost everybody performs to hit that middle delt. But there's
so much that can be done wrong here, the first of which is pouring the pitchers. You guys might
have heard this advice before that at the top, you want to have your pinky higher than your
thumb as if you're pouring a pitcher of water. But not when it comes to the health of your
shoulder. When we're up in this position here guys are getting internal rotation with elevation. When
I know that I can get the same results or better by not doing that, why would I bother? So instead,
what I do is just lean my torso a little bit more forward, I keep the thumb higher than the pinky
to alleviate any of those concerns. And I still hit that middle belt really, really hard directly
against that downward force of gravity. Now, what I don't want to see is a lot of
momentum in lifting up, because as soon as you lift up like this, you've changed that
angle. You just taken away that angle that I created by having you lean slightly forward.
Unless you're going to perform a cheat lateral raise, in which that case, it's acceptable. But
then the stimulation you're looking for there is an overloaded eccentric. It's a different
purpose. For most of us when we're doing the side lateral raise, you want to make sure that you're
doing it just like this, thumb higher than pinky and again, slight tilt forward to get the most
out of it without any of the negatives. If you find yourself on a Leg Press Machine,
I'd ask that you actually move to something different. Because there are so many better
leg exercises, and especially if you're trying to use this to let's say, work your posterior chain,
because it does not do that. Even if you put your feet high up on the plate, it doesn't become a
glute exercise because you're not getting any hip extension. In order to really work your glutes,
you've got to get that leg fully into extension, at least into neutral with the
rest of your body. That's not happening here. So instead of actually moving your legs high,
I would actually have you move your legs low. And that's for one other reason, because I don't want
to see that low back of yours round up off of the path. And the higher your legs are,
the more likely you're going to have a posterior tilt and roll that pelvis up. If you lower your
legs down, you'll get a little bit more focused on your quads, you'll have a better chance of
keeping your pelvis in place in an anterior tilt and you'll probably get more out of the exercise
at least more safely. But again, if you could do something else, I would highly recommend it.
Of course, everyone is going to do some variation of a Shoulder Press,
or at least you should. Except the seated press is not necessarily the best option,
because a lot of times when you do it, a couple of things go wrong that I want to point out. Are you
pushing yourself back into the bench in order to help drive the dumbbells up? Most notably,
if you got the back of your head pressing into the bench, you could easily strain your neck.
But you're also doing is disrupting the normal mechanics of the shoulder blades that are supposed
to rotate up and down smoothly, but it's hard to do if they're pushing into the bench.
The other thing I want to make sure you're not doing is pressing down into the floor. Because as
you push your feet, into the floor, you're going to drive your body back this direction anyway,
just reinforcing more of that back into the bench that we just talked about not being good.
So instead, try to lean a little bit away from the back of the pad, that's it, just straight
upright. You're going to demand more from your core to do it, but if you want to use your legs,
you want to make this better, just stand up and do some version of a Standing Press.
Everyone with access to a gym is going to do a Tricep Pushdown. But if you're going to do it,
which I advise that you do, at least make sure you're doing it right. The first thing I want to
make sure you don't do, come over here, is I don't want to see that head past the bar. As soon as the
head is over the bar in this direction, you're going to use way too much chest. You're going
to be basically doing a dip from the top. Don't do that. Isolate the triceps because that's what
the point is here. So, stay back and get the arms out a little bit more in front of your body. With
the arms out, now the idea is, what are you doing with your wrists? If you can keep your wrist bent
slightly back as the bar goes down, you're going to get better extension at the elbow,
right? You don't want to try to curl the bar down and overuse the forearms. Instead, let the elbows
get fully to extension because then we get full activation of the triceps. So, as you push down,
keep those wrist bent back just slightly and keep your head on this side of the bar to make sure the
triceps are doing the work and nothing else. So, everybody likes to train their abs and a lot
of times they run to the Captain's Chair to do it, and maybe it's because they can feel like they're
sitting now while they're doing it. But I will tell you this, you can't do what Jesse's doing
right now. You have to make sure that whoever's in front of you, like you can actually see his butt
when he comes up and does the rep. In other words, you have to be rolling your butt off of the back
pad, not keeping it there and just simply lifting your knees up and down. The other thing you want
to do is slow down the pace, don't make this a race. I don't care how many repetitions you can
do of a Captain's Chair Crunch. Instead, what I care about is the quality of every repetition. So
go slow and deliver it. Lift up, curl down under control. Lift up and down, under control. It's not
unlike any other exercise. The eccentric matters here to make sure you slow it down, you keep that.
But where it's supposed to be off of the pad. It doesn't matter what level of experience
you have, a lot of people love to do the Crunch Pulldown. I mean, it feels powerful,
right? You're moving a weight stack with your abs, but not really if you're doing it like
this. Because you never want to sit back. A lot of times people will sit back onto their heels,
they're moving their hips through space. If you really want to isolate the abs,
you have to stop moving your hips and just go straight down from there. Remember, flexion
of the spine is what the abs are responsible for. You want to isolate that to that, use your elbows
as the target point for the floor about 6 to 8 inches in front of you. If you do that, that
will isolate the abs and take away the momentum of the entire body that's taking away from the
work you're trying to do for your core. Now, of course, when people hit the gym,
they oftentimes are going to stick to the cardio machines only. If you're going to do that,
you got to do those right, too. When we're talking about the Climbing Mill or the Step Mill here,
there's a few things you're doing pretty much pretty wrong. You have to make sure that if
you're going to do this right, you let the step go all the way down because that's going
to take you into full extension at the hip. Too many times people will short rep every single
step. In other words, they keep stepping as soon as the next step becomes available to them. But
all they do is stay in constant hip flexion, never getting through full extension and therefore never
really working the glute and the hamstring fully. Just like on any exercise, full range
of motion matters. The same thing applies here even to conditioning and cardio exercises.
So, let's stick with cardio for a minute because a lot of us will find ourselves right here smack
dab on the road to nowhere, or at least the treadmill. What I'm talking about is if you're
going to do this, at least do it right. Meaning utilize the full weight of your body when you
perform the exercise. Because the more you move your body in space and the full weight of it,
the more calories you'll burn. So, the first thing you want to do, though, is make sure that
the machine that you're using actually asks you to input your own body weight, because otherwise
it's just making an estimate and oftentimes the estimate is going to be incorrect. So whatever
calories you think you're burning, you're not. But the second thing you want to make sure you
never do is don't lean on the treadmill. Because every little bit that you lean
forward and take some of your body weight away, you're doing less work. And less work
means less calories burned. less calories burned means getting less from the exercise and more
of something you don't want, wasted time. The place where most people will find themselves
when they're training their back is at a Lat Pulldown Machine because maybe you don't have
the strength to lift your entire body weight up in a vertical pulling motion. But you can take some
of the weight off by just using a stack in a lat of pull down. But I want you to do these right,
because a lot of times we mess these up. So, the first thing you want to do is don't just pull the
bar down and a lot of times cave yourself down on top of it. That will not engage the lats the way
they should be. Instead, I want you to attack the bar with your sternum. So as the bar comes down,
reach for the bar with your chest, come up to the top. And here the second most important
thing allow for a stretch on the lats. A lot of times people will short arm this
like they do a pullup. Let yourself get that full lat stretch on the top. Come down and attack the
bar with your sternum. You get a much better lat engagement. You'll see the elbows will drive back
behind you rather than staying out here in front of you because you're forgetting to do that.
So obviously when you hit the gym, you're going to want to train your biceps at some point and a lot
of times people will go grab the EZ Bar to do it. But if it's your biceps that you're after, there's
a few things you want to make sure that you're doing. Number one, allow your wrist to bend back
as you come up to the top, right? So don't try to curl up with a straight wrist or more so, people
tend to use the wrist to help the curl at the top because the weight starts to feel heavy, so, they
use a little extra assistance from their forearms. Don't do that. You allow your wrist to bend back
a little bit so that the bar is moving almost straight up and down against gravity, you're going
to have more work being done by the biceps. But the other thing you might want to do is just
flip your grip around. Because when I flip by a grip here now you can see I went into
more of a supinated position of the forearm, which we know will hit more of the biceps. So,
by gripping it underhand like this, I've got more biceps engagement and I actually going to
have an easier time having my wrist stay in that slightly extended position at the top.
So, remember, I know you're going to curl, but when you do curl right.
Now if you purchased an Athlean-X program to take with you to the gym, you likely wouldn't be doing
the Concentration Curl. But I know you still like to do it. So, if you're going to do it,
let me show you how to do it right. You don't want to have your elbow in the wrong position because a
lot of us will just dig it right here into our thigh. But what you're doing is just basically
setting up a seesaw that you're going to just push into your elbow and then rock your body back,
which is basically doing all the work that your biceps are supposed to be doing on the curl.
So instead of doing that, bypass the elbow, put your tricep into the back of your leg and put
it deep into your thigh. Now, when I'm back here, I've got the arm up here stabilized,
but it's not rocking anymore. I'm not teetering back in that direction. As a matter of fact,
I really can't even do that from this position. The other thing I want you to do is, by getting
deep it allows you to still be able to supinate here at the top. Because we know in order to
really hit the biceps you don't want to get full supination of the forearm up here at the top. If
your arms out here too far you're going to find that to be very uncomfortable. So, get it deep,
get it down, and that will give you the right Concentration Curl if you're going to do them.
So, when we hit the gym to train our back, inevitably we're going to choose some variation
of a Row, and that's a good thing. But if the row that you do is a One Arm Dumbbell Row with your
knee up on the bench, that's not so good thing. Because I talk about how when we take our knee and
put it up here like this and then asymmetrically load ourselves to do the exercise, especially if
we start to do it fairly heavy. There's an inherent weakness that men have, especially
in the inguinal canal, that can increase your risk of hernia because of the susceptibility
that we have to the increased stretch from the position and the asymmetrical load.
So, what do we do? We just change the position, raise that bench up and use it for something to
stabilize your upper body on. And now we've got both feet in contact with the ground, and we've
eliminated that increased risk. But I can still perform the exercise one arm at a time. Now,
when I row, I want to also avoid turning this into a Hammer Curl, right? This is not a bicep
exercise. Instead, I want to think about putting this dumbbell in my back pocket. If I can slide
the dumbbell up towards the side here, I can get my arm back behind my body, focus much more on
the lats and let the arm go along for the ride and the biceps do a lot less than the work.
If I do this right, again, I can not only focus more on the lats,
but I can even allow the elbow to drift a little bit high to work more of the upper back and rear
delt. The idea is it's much easier to keep a good position in your low back and to eliminate any
of the increased risk on hernias that would come from the knee on bench variation.
So, whether you're an iron addict or you're new to the game, you're sure to find something
helpful from this video. And if you do, make sure you share it with someone else that you
know could benefit. In the meantime, if you're looking for a full program, you can find them
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