Go ahead, hot shot. Oh, I'm back, baby. Run it. Jesse. Ooh. Jesse. Are you serious? Oh,
I'm dead serious. That's the best one yet. Look, guys, it's Jeff Cavaliere,
Athleanx.com. And he is back. Anybody that was worried out there that he was actually gone, no,
Jesse's still here. And by the way, who filmed that last video? My replacement. Oh my God. You
got to keep the head in the frame. Oh, yeah, I know, you missed me. I'm actually glad Jesse's
back. But it's actually more than just Jesse being back. Today we're talking about Jesse's
back. Right, we're talking about from a hard gainer perspective, a skinny guy, what can you do
to build your back? Because I think what happens a lot of times with skinnier guys is that they don't
oftentimes focus on building it back. The first thing they do is they try to focus on what they
see in the mirror-- bigger chest, bigger biceps, whatever it is, and they're not really focusing on
building a bigger back. But we know how important a bigger back is, especially when we talk about
what Jesse was dealing with. And that was Postural issues. Bad postural issues, right? Really like
that. And a lot of times, people will develop that if you're a skinnier guy because if you're
self-conscious at all, and you sort of adopt this posture, right? A lot of insecurities. Like Jesse,
you could see him right here, in the three sets of 12 video. Staring right into your soul. And
staring into the soul. Now he's overconfident, which is why he got thrown into the quantum realm
in the first place. No, for real, he's actually built confidence as he's built the back. Right,
so what I want to do is go through what you do to build your back. Right. Right, specifically what
are you doing? So, in a particular workout, either whether you're doing a bro split, whether you're
doing a push-pull leg split, which is really more often what you're doing, what's your mindset when
you do your back training? So, my mindset is that I always have a stable exercise, and that's the
dead lift. I always dead lift no matter what kind of back day I'm doing whether it's a pull
or whether it is a straight back or whatever. I find that it's great for increasing strength and
it's also, again, allowed me to work on my posture and it strengthens my lower back, which is really
important because, as you know. Yeah, he had a weak low back, which I think was actually some
of the root of his problems, starting down low, carrying right up the kinetic chain. Yeah. So,
all right, so the dead lift staple of the workout. Next thing you got a choice, right? Yes, there's
always a choice on this one. I either like to do a bar bell row or a seated cable row. So for
a horizontal pulling movement, working more on that depth, right? The front to back thickness
here. Yes. Is more of that row. So now the seated row. Seated row I love because it allowed me to
get into that stretch because as we have the cable down lower it allows me to get into that stretch
and really feel it in my lats. But when I pull back, not only do I feel it in my upper back,
but I feel it in my rear delts as well, which I think is really important because that's a muscle
that's often overlooked. Yeah, so you could see with that low cable set up like Jesse referred to,
it brings your arms out in front of your body, separating the attachments of the lat so you get
a better stretch, which allows you to get a more powerful contraction on every single rep, but it's
just a good way to do the seated row. Yeah. Okay, as opposed to just doing it at the same level
of your hands. Right, get them out a little bit lower than you. If you don't do the seated row,
what do you do instead? I do the bar bell row. Okay. So I like the bar bell row. Obviously,
it's another staple kind of classic exercise for your back. But I like that it reinforces
the strength of the lower back because you have to sit back. And with a weak low back you're not
going to be able to handle that position really well while you're pulling the weight up. So I
talked about when it comes to the bar bell row, how important it is to actually as an exercise to
learn the hinge. Yeah. Right, because if you hinge properly, then you're going to be able
to carry that bar bell in the right position to bring it up towards your chest without being too
far in front of you. Because when the bar bell gets out in front of you, that's when it starts
to put extra strain on your low back. But if you can learn how to hinge and sit back into that row,
that's when you actually start to see the proper mechanics pay off in terms of being able to do the
exercise without any of the negative side effects. Correct. And again, I like to alternate when I'm
doing these. I don't do them on the same day. I like to alternate. Right, it's one or the other
there. Yeah, it's one or the other, and then I go back and forth. Thirdly now, you went horizontal,
now you're working vertical. So you have a choice there too. Another stable exercise is the pull-up,
obviously. It's always great to be pulling your own body weight up. But, the other choice is a
lat pull down, but not just any lat pull down, it's the rocking lat pull down that you taught
me a long time ago you showed on this channel. Where I thought when I was doing lat pull downs
originally, I felt like I was pulling a lot with my forearms, a lot with my biceps. Allowing my
lats to really take over on that movement I think has made a whole bunch of difference in the size
of my lats and the width of them as well as just getting that mind-muscle connection. You have
to actually use the muscle it is that you're trying to grow. And I say that a lot of times,
if you focus on initiating the move with the muscle you're trying to grow, you'll actually be
surprised at how much you can make it grow. And with Jesse, again, he mentions sort of pulling
more from here, pulling with his forearms, pulling with his biceps, not necessarily pulling with his
back. Then when you do that rotational pull down here, down in one side, you're actually able to
get an elbow not just inducted, which is one of the main functions of the lats, but you can get
it back behind your body into more extension, which is going to allow a lot of the people out
there that can't feel this mind-muscle connection to feel a lot better. All right, so that covers
the vertical, the horizontal, your main staple exercise. This is the part where I think things
start to fall off the rails for a lot of people and instead they don't focus on the correctives.
Right. And in Jesse's case, when it was a postural imbalance that was sort of setting off the whole
cascade of negative side effects about with all of his lifting, that was a staple exercise too. And
those actually all are done in every time that you're training. Every single time I train. So the
first one up is the carry. Carry, I like to grab a pair of heavy dumb bells, sometimes a trap bar,
sometimes kettle bells. And, honestly, even plates when I'm moving them to and from the bar. I just
try to get as many carries in and I take a couple laps around the gym because I know it's good for
my grip, but it's also even better for my upper traps. And something you've been actually doing
all the time now almost every day. Yes. And honestly, I mean, definitely starting to pay off
more in the overall thickness of your upper torso here. So carries, that's upper traps. Yup. Lower
traps. Lower traps is always that plate raise. I like getting the overhead and then tilting
it forward. It's almost like peeking through the window. I think that's been great for lighting up
my low traps and just made me a little bit more strong in the rest of my lifts. So lower traps,
for those of you who haven't been doing enough lower trap work, crucial for establishing good
posture and good biomechanics of the shoulder whenever your arm goes up overhead. So the trap
raised does that and you can see the lower traps. Remember, they're a kite-shaped muscle, guys. So
we're not just working on the top part here, but you got to work on the lower part here, too. And
again, the benefits that they provide in terms of the structural integrity and stability of your
shoulder are so important that you can't overlook them. So the trap raise is what Jesse uses. Then
you have one last one here to focus on your low back, because again, some of your root issues
were at low back weakness. Yeah, this is the hyper row. This is great for my low back. Has made it
a lot stronger. And as you've told me before, a strong low back equals a strong upper back. Well,
so the point here and why I think this is a good exercise, the low back doesn't just feed up to
the thoracic spine, and posture, and everything else. But the back sets the stage. You even hear
guys like Greg Jennings say, I put the team on my back. When you got a strong back, everything
else sort of starts to fall in line. Yeah. And I think that if a hard gainer, someone who's skinny,
maybe even dealing with some confidence issues, goes and they start to train their back just
because they can't see it directly in the mirror and start to train their back, a whole cascade of
good things start to happen. It's true. Right. And if you're ever worried about seeing what your back
looks like, just stick your phone out, hold it out in front of the mirror, you'll be able to see it.
Jesse's so experienced in shooting selfies in the mirror. I'm so vain these days. So arrogant. So
arrogant. I'm looking for Josh Brolin to come back again and snap his ass right out of here
again. He's already annoying me. All right, look, I'm glad you're back. Thank you. And I'm glad that
this video actually looks like it's filmed with us in it. Yes. So, guys, if you're looking for
programs that will help you not just build the confidence, but build the body most importantly,
you could head over to Athleanx.com, realize that you're going to do it the right way. You're going
to build not just your body but you're going to learn how to do it with our corrective
exercises worked in to make sure that nothing gets overlooked. They're all available at Athleanx.com.
In the meantime, if you found the video helpful, if you're glad he's back, leave your
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