What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Jesse Laico, Athleanx.com.
What is this stance? What is this? What?
This tricep thing going on? Oh, I'm I got to show off the
angles. You know, being skinny guy, you got to show off what you got, right?
You can relax. It's okay. Okay.
So listen, let's talk about skinny guys though, because that is the subject of the video. Skinny
guys like Jesse or formerly skinny guys. Formerly skinny.
Bulking up now, of course, through his hard work. We focus, though, on arms because a lot of times
the arms will lag even in terms of development as the rest of you grows. Jesse still had
arms that were a little bit on the thin side. So, today we're going to go through a workout that
we use to help to start to grow those things that even when he doesn't have to flex them.
Then I want to show you guys, too, we're going to introduce a new format here, and the new format is
let's go through it together. So, Jesse and I are both going to go through this work out
and show you the footage as I commentate on what's actually going on. So that being said, let's jump
right into the workout with the first exercise. And we kick this workout off here for our biceps,
at the wall, for our strict curl, cheat curl combo, which is actually something I went over
and through, painfully through, with the great C.T. Fletcher right here against this very wall.
It didn't get any easier here today. So, what we do is we focus on picking up a weight that's
going to be challenging, that's going to get us in the five to six rep range or so.
Okay, and what we want to focus on is making sure that in the strict curl that you're not relying on
momentum. So, what's nice about this is that the wall serves as the feedback to prevent the extra
momentum because you have to keep the back of your head, your upper back and your butt in contact
with the wall throughout the entire set. Right.
But then what we do is we step away from there, so we turn this into an immediate sort of super set.
I give myself about 10 seconds only to put the bar down, shake my arms out, get right back into
it again and now utilize the momentum that I can have here to allow me to continue to kind of cheat
through some additional reps. Not to sacrifice form entirely, but just to allow the momentum
to put me in a position to have another eccentric, overloaded rep. Because I've talked about many
times before, the eccentric lowering of the weight is one of the most important things you can do.
If you want to start building up those biceps, you really got to apply that eccentric overload,
and this is a way for me to sort of concentric cheat it up and then slow it on the way down.
Right. Of course, now Jesse,
when he takes over and does the same thing-- Much lighter weight, mind you.
Whatever, he's still doing the same thing. He's feeling the same thing that I'm feeling
just at a different level. He has a little bit of a more narrow grip.
Yeah, I did that because it felt a little bit more comfortable on my wrist.
So, with the easy bar, you have that option to either go narrow or go wide. I like to go
a little bit wider. Yeah.
Now again, what are you thinking here as you--it feels a lot harder to keep that strict form,
you don't realize how much you use momentum and cheat.
No, you really don t. Until you have to keep yourself braced up against the wall that whole
time, you don't have any idea what it's like to actually strictly move that weight up.
Then you step away from the wall. Then I move into the cheat curl,
and you know that that eccentric overload, like you were saying, that feels like nothing else.
That's just the first exercise in the workout, there's more to come. As a matter of fact,
your favorite right here. And that is a combination exercise that's actually part Waiter
Curl and part Spider Curl. Your favorite? The Waiter Curl for sure, 30 days worth.
Thirty days worth. Jesse actually did this one exercise for 30 days.
Here's the deal we get an incline bench, we get inverted on top of it with a single dumbbell,
with our hands cuffed underneath it. And what we have here is the benefits of the Spider Curl,
which places the bicep in that peak contracted state at the top something different than we
get from the normal strength curve of a Standing Dumbbell Curl. And we get to take that forearms
out of it that sometimes tend to dominate the curl, especially as we get fatigued. So,
we have the dumbbell allowing our wrist to sort of bend back and all we're focusing on is getting the
top of that dumbbell lifted straight up towards the ceiling. And you can see when Jesse steps in
here too, he's getting the same sort of overloaded effect here. And again, this is something that's
not just what you're doing here. In other words, you've been working on obviously building up your
physique by building up your strength and all the big lifts. Everybody has seen your deadlift and
your squat, but how does this fit in? Well, you know, is it part of my overall
training to be stronger? No. But is it because I want to get bigger
arms? Yeah. I want to improve my physique. And so, this is what I do to help that.
And it's okay to have these overlapping goals. If you want to have bigger arms, you can still
do this as an accessory to what you're doing in terms of building up your strength.
Yup. In this case, here we're doing
three sets of about 8 to 10 repetitions, and that brings us to the final exercise for our biceps in
this arm workout. And this is something I love I covered before, it's called the Cross Body
Hammer Curl. So, Jesse, here's a quiz for you, let's put you to work here.
Let's hear it. What am I actually trying to
work here with the Cross Boy Hammer Curl? Oh, I know it's this is your brachialis.
Ok, hotshot. Now why are we working the brachialis at this point?
Because it gives a little bit more depth front to back or side to side, I should say.
So, it s filling your shirt sleeves sort of the width of your arms?
Yes. Right? So that's
a good thing at goal. Again, if your goal was esthetic base, try to fill your shirt sleeves,
this is why we do what we do. Now, I'll throw this in here. The pronated position of the forearm acts
to sort of minimize some of the bicep contribution as a supinator. So, what we get is this increased
focus on the flexion of the elbow, which is going to shift the focus to that brachialis.
Right. All right, so with the
science out of the way, what does it feel like now when you're doing your version of this?
When I do the exercise, I usually feel pretty good. I mean,
sometimes it's a little melancholy. I m talking about what you're actually
feeling in the muscle you're working. We don't want to know about Jesse--
Really? Okay. --on a mood meter.
Really, OK? And the mood On the mood meter?
Well, I definitely feel more activation of the brachialis than I do the bicep.
By the way, why are you melancholy? You're making these gains, should be nothing but happy.
There are some mean people out there. That's true. Mean commentors too.
Mean commentors. So, you're feeling the brachialis work.
Yes. All right. And
you're kind of getting that pump that you get to kind of round out the rest of this workout.
Right. It's not just up and down, it's more side to side.
So, what we do here is two to three sets of a little bit higher rep range here,
10 to 12 on each arm to wrap up the first half of the workout, which brings us to the triceps.
And so, the bicep portion of the workout started with a more compound or heavier, loaded lift.
We're going to do the same thing here, but we're actually going to change the focus around.
If the bicep started strict and then allowed us to use a little bit of momentum after, this actually
goes in the opposite direction. We're going to start with a little bit of extra assistance
here through some momentum that then goes into more of a strictness to the second part.
And the first part you're seeing me do here is the Lying Tricep Extension, but we do it a little bit
of an extra stretch on the long head. So, as I get down to the bottom of every repetition here,
I'm allowing the arms to sink just a little bit to apply a little bit more of that stretch on
the long head to help with that recruitment and to power this bar up to the top. As soon as I'm
done with this half of the exercise, though, I don't stop. I go right into the second half,
and this is a JM Press or at least a JM Press modification. It's a little bit harder to do these
at this point, again, in the fatigued state where you're simply just letting the hands almost
drop now with a target being your front delts rather than anywhere back behind your head. Yes,
I'm getting some assistance from the shoulders and the chest to do this, but because of the
tight positioning of my elbows, most of the work here is being done by the triceps.
Yup. So then when you pick up the bar
and you do this again, what are you feeling, especially with the stretch part here?
Yeah, I really noticed a stretch in the muscle at the bottom of the rep,
which not only feels like solid activation, but I think it really lets me use some momentum to
power the weight up overhead. With the JM Press modification, I would only be handling a little
bit more weight here, but with pre-fatiguing of the muscles, it makes the lighter weight for a
little bit more challenging and requires them to work a little bit harder, despite the fact that
the weight has been lowered a little bit. So going pretty heavy here in the six to
eight rep range in the first half. And again, however many you can get in the second half,
three sets of this. That brings us to the second exercise here and our tricep portion of the
workout, and it's my favorite variation of the Pushdown, we call the Rocking Pushdown. Something
I've covered here before, and the main goal here is to try to keep that rope perpendicular
to the forearm for the entire duration of the Pushdown. That's something that doesn't happen
on a typically performed stationary version of a Pushdown. But you can see when I start here,
that rope is perpendicular to my forearms, placing as much tension as I can on the triceps and as I
rock back at the end, I'm still maintaining as much of a relationship of that rope,
that perpendicular relationship, to my forearms at the bottom. So, I still have high tension on
the triceps throughout the entire range of motion. Jesse when you do this, what are you feeling?
Do you mind if I take over on this one really quick?
Yeah, sure, go ahead. What are you feeling? All right, what s going on guys. So today we're
going to talk about this Pushdown here where you get the bicep activate--I mean--
That's not the bicep. --the tricep activation with the
with the brachialis and the elbow joint. That's not the brachialis.
And so, you're going to come here and you're going to pull it down to here--
Did you--can you bring Jesse back please? Oh shit. Okay.
So, Jesse. Yes?
What did you like most about the exercise? Well, I like most about the exercise is how well
I can actually feel the tension in the tricep when I'm performing it. Sometimes I feel like when I do
a regular Pushdown, I kind of get a little bit of extra engagement of my shoulders or my chest
because probably I'm doing it wrong. But when I do this version of the Pushdown, I really do feel it
in my triceps and it's a good feedback. It helps to keep the elbows a little bit
tighter to the side, which is always going be a good thing for getting more
tricep engagement. Three sets of 10 to 12 here. We got one exercise left and it too is a combo.
And to wrap it up, we go for that light exercise, the one that people like to relegate to the
dumpster. They don't like to do the exercise, but it matters. It's the Tricep Kickback. And
we're not just going to stick there, we're actually going to combine it with another
exercise done immediately after. So, as you can see, when I do the kickback here, I like
to do them on an incline bench that I lay face down on because I take away any of the rocking
or momentum that might be generated if I were to do this standing. I've done them standing before
and I like them that way. But this is a way that I can really sort of hone in on performing these
without that momentum. And the key here is keeping those elbows as far back behind my body as I can,
because what I want to do is put that long head in its peak contracted state.
In order to get that, the arm has to be back into extension behind the body.
But I'm not finished entirely. As soon as I'm done with that half, I come back down to the ground
and I perform one of my favorite bodyweight exercises that also tends to get the arm into
more extension than, let's say, something like a diamond cutter pushup. It's a push of variation,
we call this the Cobra Pushup. And I'm trying to get my chest out in front of me as much as I can,
so as I mentioned, that arm can stay sort of in as close to an extended position as I can
during a Pushup. Right.
And again, I rep this out as much as I can until I can't do any more. I'm doing two to three
sets. First half I m choosing about a 10 to 12 failure rate, and then I go into straight failure
not knowing how many I'm going to be able to do, especially at this point in the workout.
Why is it that people don t like the kickbacks? I think the kickback is a great exercise, and I
think it's great for building your triceps. I mean, as you can see here, you're not using
very heavy weights. I think some people get a little bit embarrassed about the ways that
they can handle on this exercise. And there is an insufficiency built into the exercise
that doesn't even allow you to use a lot of weight on it. However, it doesn't make it
a bad exercise to just sort of have to embrace the fact that the weights won't be as heavy as you're
used to in other exercises, but they're playing a very important role here to place that tricep
in its peak contracted position, particularly, like I said on the long head. And then come
back and complement it with one more body weight burn out. And so with that, guys, there's the arm
workout that Jesse's has been doing here to try to build up his arms and I think successfully so.
I think they're looking pretty good. In addition to the strength that you're
building. Nice work. Thank you.
If you want to do the same workout, guys, you can follow along step by step,
follow the sets and reps. If you want a complete arm workout program, we have them directly over
at Athleanx.com. The Ultimate Arms Program is a great place to start. In the meantime,
if you like this format, if you like Jesse and I going through the pain together and breaking down
what we're feeling. Make sure you leave your feelings below in the comment section. In the
meantime guys, if you haven't done so, make sure you click Subscribe, turn on your notifications
so you never miss a video when put out in the future. All right guys I'll see you soon.