What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
If you've been looking to build muscle, you've likely been given the advice that if you want
to do it the best is to keep looking for ways to add weight to that bar.
'Lift as heavy as you can on as many exercises as possible.'
I will tell you this, though.
That is not the only way.
Matter of fact, that way is extremely limited because it's only one training variable.
That is one finite, limited technique because
for anybody that's been in the gym for any length of time can tell you, you're going
to hit some walls.
You're going to have to start looking and digging deeper.
In this video, I'm going to show you how you can do a whole lot more than just add weight
to the bar and ensure that you still build muscle.
So, to start you have to realize that your muscles are not sitting there doing math,
counting the weights that you're using, alright,
it being impressed as you add more and more plates to the bar.
All they're doing is 2 things.
They're interpreting tension and overload, tension and the load that you're using.
If you can manipulate the tension, or if you can manipulate the overall load on your muscles,
you've got a chance to build muscle.
And we can do that right off the bat here with a technique that I call 1 and 1/2 reps.
With the 1 and 1/2 rep technique, you can see I'm going to take one single Barbell Curl,
or a Curl,
for the entire duration of this video to show you just how many ways you can manipulate
to add muscle and do so with a lot of different techniques.
The 1 and 1/2 reps, you can see that I am actually taking this single rep and elongating
it, dragging it out, increasing the length of time under tension.
We come up.
We come down halfway.
We go back up again.
We're hitting peak contraction twice in the same rep, ok.
So, we're actually increasing the overall load on our muscles without just one way that
we do it.
You can see here.
I've showed this exercise before.
This is a Plyo Curl.
Now the Plyo Curl we're doing explosive and accelerative reps.
And these are all things that appear in our ATHLEAN AX2 Program which is a bit more advanced
if you guys have gone through the AX1 Program.
AX2 is that next step that builds off of the foundation you build in AX1.
But these are the kind of things that allow you to explosively perform reps so that
you can tap into muscle fibers that you may not be hitting under a steady duration, or
a steady tempo more specifically, that you use on most of your other weight training.
But it's not just how you do the reps, it's what you do between reps.
And I've got a technique that we use, and we broke out in our NXT Program which again,
is even another step beyond AX2, our monthly training program where you can see the Intensity
Technique.
And in the Intensity Technique, we're basically taking a rest/pause technique where you're
doing it, as I demonstrate here,
you're doing your 10 to 12 rep backs to failure, ok, and then you're only resting for as long
as 10 to 15 seconds for a rest/pause.
As soon as you hit a maximum of 15 seconds, you have to get it right back on the bar again.
Lift as many more as you can, and you do this for 5 minutes straight.
So what we do is, we maximize those high-effort reps, the ones that truly matter, the ones
that occur towards failure.
We're maximizing those and we're kind of getting rid of all those submaximal buildup reps to
get to the ones that really count.
But we don't have to stop there.
Of course we can change one of the training variables to the equipment that we're using,
doesn't have to be a straight barbell.
We can use dumbbells.
We can use bands.
We can use cables.
There's a lot of things we can do to, again, change the overall effect of the exercise.
And right away, if you grab a pair of dumbbells, you can see that you can either move them
together in a Curl that we do at the same time, or we can move them unilaterally.
And if you do that, we've all done these before, you know it's a little bit easier to do them
unilaterally, the right arm and then the left arm in alternating fashion,
than it would be to do them together, But does that mean that you should stay away from
the one that's easier?
No, sometimes we can overload the weight more
so that does give us an opportunity to focus on increasing the weight that we might not
have the opportunity to do if we did it together.
Or, we could even take them and put them straight together as we do in AX2 for our Straight
Bar Dumbbell Curl.
We're basically reenacting a Straight Bar with the use of 2 dumbbells that we have to
squeeze together, again, more tension to be able to execute the lift.
So there's a lot of ways that we can manipulate those.
Or, we could utilize the technique, again, another one that comes in the AX2 program,
we have a whole phase dedicated to it with backward rep training.
See, in a traditional alternating Dumbbell Curl,
we basically have one arm that's being held down at rest at our side while the other arm
is coming up and executing the rep.
But what if we could do that when we flip it around, and we look at the one arm up at
our side in peak tension and the other arm up at our side in peak tension.
We drop one down and execute the Curl.
We drop the other one down and execute the Curl.
You can see that there is no rest period anymore.
So by just changing how you perform a rep, the same exercise but how you perform it,
the sequencing of the reps themselves, you can dramatically increase time under tension,
increase load, effecting both,
that tension and load that we talked about in the beginning, to really truly have a bigger
impact on your overall ability to build muscle.
And if you do decide to switch the equipment once again, choose something like a cable,
even here you have more opportunities to change the overall effect that the exercise will
have,
and the end result on your muscle growth.
And that you can see here as I do a Single Arm Cable Curl.
Upon executing that same flexion of the elbow down here at my side, it will have a profoundly
different impact
if I elevate my arm, bring it up over my head, and do the same thing.
Why?
Because now we're involving another joint involved in the biceps' true and full function,
and that is shoulder flexion.
So, we can actually get a stronger contraction, and ultimately better gains, just by performing
the same exact joint movement at the elbow,
but elevating it so that we involve other joints that like to participate in the movement
too.
But you don't have to stop there because you can even extend that to other joints entirely
aren't involved in bicep flexion but do have a secondary impact on the exercise itself.
We have a Fielder Curl that we do in the AX1 Program that really is the ultimate in athleticism.
Yes, it's a bicep-building exercise because we are executing a Bicep Curl,
elbow flexion under load, but we've got a much more athletic component built into it
as well by adding movement of the lower body.
So, more joints involved, more athleticism, and if you are building towards that as an
athlete,
that you're trying to get a carryover of something that's functional to what you might be doing
as a Third Baseman, say,
to be able to field the ball and then throw, you would execute the same Curl but now have
an overlapping athletic movement incorporated into it.
And again have yet another level of development, maybe not as much focused on bicep growth
and muscle mass but really creating a more functional unit as a whole.
But you don't even have to stop there, guys.
You can take multiple pieces of equipment and use them at the same time.
And we've done this, again, in AX2
where I've shown you guys in previous videos here too, overlapping strength curves because
of the different strength curves that individual pieces of equipment provide.
Again, you look at a band bicep curl you realize that at the very bottom of the rep, there's
really no tension on that band.
And the tension will steadily,
steadily rise until it gets peak tension at the very end of the rep.
But if we use dumbbells, we know that as we curl the weight up that the hard part,
the hardest part of the motion is going to be right here at 90 degrees and that is because
our forearms are fully maximized.
The surface area is fully maximized to gravity.
And if you go any further beyond that, it actually gets easier.
Well, if we take the 2 exercises together, as I'm showing you here,
you can see that by holding bands and dumbbells at the same time, we get a strength curve
that doesn't top out in the middle or top out at the end only.
What it does is, it reaches a peak in the middle and it maintains it because of the
additional bands at the end.
So now we again, we've now maximized tension.
It doesn't have to be time under tension, it's just maximizing the overall tension that
the muscle is experiencing
that would have been limited if you had only chosen 1 of those 2 exercises alone.
But regardless of what exercise you choose, you're still not limited to just those training
variables.
You can also manipulate what you do between sets
so that when you do complete a single set, how long are you waiting in between sets?
See, one of our favorite techniques is the Density Training Technique.
And we have another phase again devoted in ATHLEAN AX2 to this, and that is if you and
I do the same amount of work, all things being equal,
same amount of weight lifted, same amount of sets, and if it takes you 45 minutes, an
hour, to do it, and I can do the same thing in 20, than I have done much more work.
My muscles will perceive a much bigger stress on them, a much higher intensity effort, and
in that right there we've accomplished much more work for them
and we've ensured that we will get an overload.
We will get an adaptive training response when we start to get bigger and stronger just
because of the time it took between sets.
Start shortening those times that you're taking, and you'll notice that it's a much harder
workout.
And last but not least, just because you don't have equipment maybe,
you're working out at home, or if you're working out somewhere where you just don't have access
to a gym, that doesn't mean that, no equipment doesn't mean no overload.
You can certainly create overload and tension and therefore spark a muscle-building response
if you get a little bit creative.
In our ATHLEAN XERO Program guys, I show you literally no equipment at all.
No bands.
No bars.
No bench.
No bull.
Whatever's around you in your surroundings.
Here I'm showing you a Doorway Curl.
I will tell you this.
If you execute this the proper way,
if you angle your body the proper way, and you make sure that your bicep is doing all
the work here,
this becomes a hell of a difficult exercise variation once again proving that you don't
need to have access to a full gym to build muscle.
We've shown that so many times.
You can build muscle with literally nothing but your bodyweight, but you have to understand
the training variables.
And you have to understand how to overlap them.
And how you're not limited to just the big 3 of the weight that you're using, the exercise
you're selecting, or the sets of reps schemes.
There's so many things that you can do.
And it's how you lay these out that will ultimately impact the results that these will have on
you building muscle and really the amount of plateaus that you experience through your
training.
Guys will definitely experience plateaus.
If you rely simply on just weight selection and trying to throw more weight on the bar,
I don't care how long or how strong you are, or
how long you've been training, you're going to hit plateaus.
But my job as a Strength Coach and a Physical Therapist, really, is to excel in my ability
to come up with
not just 10 ways to vary your workouts, or 100 ways to vary your workouts, I have to
know thousands of variables to manipulate during the workout
so that I can get a different training response.
Not everybody that I work with can get the same response because they're coming to me
with all different limitations.
Or they're coming to me at all different levels of ability.
I have to be able to adapt to that and have all these training variables.
I think that's our biggest strength of what we do in all of our ATHLEANX Programs.
Whether you're just starting out and have the foundation of AX1, or moving on to AX2,
or
moving through NXT, the idea is I've got to be able to continue to stress you.
And I think we do a really good job at it.
If you haven't already, guys, and you want to start to experience what training like
an athlete is, than I would definitely recommend
you head to ATHLEANX.COM right now and get the training program that's appropriate to
where you are right now.
And then let me take over the rest.
I'll make sure that wherever you are now, I'll get you where you want to be,
and I'll get you there step-by-step integrating all these at the right time.
So, I hope you found this at least eye-opening, at the very least, of how many things there
are that you should be doing and could be doing to build muscle
especially if you've been locked into that mentality thinking, 'Oh, I've just got to
add more weight to the bar.'
It ain't gonna' happen all the time if you rely on that alone.
Alright guys, make sure you leave a thumb's up and a comment below.
Anything else that it is that you want to see, remember, I always say now.
This is your channel.
You let me know, and I'll make a video on it.
Alright.
In the meantime, I will be back here in just a couple days.