What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I'm going to talk about an issue that – I can hear it already – some people
are like "If this isn't body dysmorphia, I don’t know what is".
But honestly, there's a real valuable lesson in here.
I did lose some arm size over the course of the last year.
I wasn't quite sure of what I was doing differently that might have led to it until I started
to look back a bit.
Specifically, into the timing of this and when this might have happened.
Bringing it back a little further in history, I had a labrum tear in my right shoulder that's
been well documented here.
Me and Carlos Beltran from the New York Mets, All-Star Outfielder.
He made a bet with me that I couldn’t throw a ball from right field to third base on the
fly.
I thought it was easy because it looked a lot closer than it was and my labrum knew
the opposite.
I literally felt it rip as I tried to throw it and lose my bet.
But I dealt with that for a very long period of time.
That was back in 2008.
I've worked around that to the point where my shoulder now feels great, but my left arm,
as of last year – my two boys, my twin sons – were running around.
One came this way and one came that way.
I started to fall and I didn't want to land on them so I awkwardly reached out, landed
on my arm, and I could feel that same, recognizable burning, searing pain inside my shoulder where
I knew I had hurt my labrum on my left side.
So, the last year I've been dealing with it and training around it.
As I always tell you guys, you want to make sure you train around your injuries and don't
just stop training because there are always things you can do.
But the things you can't do, the things that are very aggravating, are the things that
you need to pull back on because you're just going to continue to aggravate the problem.
And therein lies the issue.
What was I doing differently in my training that was pulling me away from the exercises
that were more aggravating, but at the same time, more rewarding?
We know since stopping it I've lost this size.
We have to look at the arms to figure out what's going on anatomically.
We know when we talk about arm size, if you're looking for a place where you're lacking in
size you should go to your triceps because there's more mass in your triceps than there
is in your biceps.
Some people have said '2/3 of your arm'.
Specifically, I've made videos on this, too.
2/3 of the 2/3 should be dedicated toward your longhead because that is going to occupy
the majority of the size of your arm.
The longhead is the meatier area on the inside here, closest to your body.
What we want to do is see what we could to impact that.
We know that training the longhead you've got two things you need to focus on.
Number one: it has an attachment that's different than the other two heads of the triceps and
it has an attachment here on the scapula.
So, it starts here and then it crosses the elbow as the other heads of the triceps do
as well.
So, to get this to be fully trained you want to be able to A) bring the attachment here
closer.
And you do that by bringing the arm into extension.
I've brought them closer to each other.
But also, you want to be able to have some separation and stretch.
So, I need exercises that do this.
I'm sure you've heard about that.
It brings it up overhead.
You can see if I take the triceps from here and attach it down here, and bring it up,
there's that stretch being applied to that band that's absent from the other two heads
of the triceps.
So, I need to get my arm up.
Well, that's the problem.
What do you think is a problematic position for a labrum?
When you bring your arm up overhead, you're closing down the joint space in here and creating
some issues with labrum problems, if you have existing labrum problems.
So, I've gone on record saying that my most effective exercise I built my arms up with
were the bicep cheat curl and then this right here; a tricep extension done with an easy
curl bar.
So, when we get with the easy curl, obviously we can load it up a bit.
But I want you to take a look at what it does anatomically.
First of all, the positioning here when you grab the bar, your arms are going to internally
rotate a bit.
Your shoulders internally rotate to get into this overhand position.
Then, to put the stretch on the longhead you've got to get your arms bent – elbows bent
– and then back, and down.
We've got to get as much elevation as we can here of the humerus as we just demonstrated
up over on the skeleton.
So, when I'm here, now I come up and I extend.
Now, you don’t want to take this all the way to the top.
I made a video a long time ago where we pointed out how our friend Dick here, he does it this
way.
But you don’t want to be a 'Dick', right?
So, we want to make sure we do it right.
We keep it back here.
You can see Dick did it like this.
So, don’t be a 'Dick'.
We haven't used Dick in a while because we have Jesse now, so we don’t really need
him.
But instead what we do is-
JESSE: What the hell does that mean?
JEFF: We keep the arms angled backward.
So as long as they're angled backward there's still work being done by the triceps here,
up, and extend.
But this is the best way to hit the longhead of the triceps and get it on that big stretch.
Down, stretch, up.
So, guess what I haven't been doing for the last year because
all that extra motion – back, up here – is uncomfortable for my shoulder?
But if your shoulders are healthy it doesn’t mean you'd want to avoid that.
I think it shows the significance this exercise plays in adding arm size to that 2/3 of the
triceps to that 2/3 of the overall arm size.
It's significant.
So, you don’t want to do that.
Now, if I had to look back and make a modification what I would have done was switched to dumbbells
and changed my grip.
This is why.
If I take dumbbells, number one, I have more shoulder freedom anyway because I'm not locked
in on a bar.
But number two, what I want to do is, instead of being overhand – because we know internal
rotation of the shoulder happens when I do that – I would just go and turn this way.
It's not just forearm supination because I could supinate my forearms and do nothing
with my shoulders.
But what tends to happen is, when I supinate my forearms, I can turn my shoulders into
external rotation as well.
So I have an underhand grip.
Now I come back and do the exercise and get the same benefit here.
But you have to sacrifice the amount of weight you're using because with this underhand grip,
externally rotated at the shoulder you don’t have as much strength as you do in the overhand,
internally rotated position.
So, would it have been a perfect compromise?
No, because I would have had to drop the weight that I was using.
So overall, the amount of stress I had on the triceps is still going to be decreased.
The fact is, I wanted to show you how this has that significant of an impact on the overall
size of your arms and through my exclusion of it, because of training around the discomfort,
I learned that lesson.
Now my shoulders are feeling good because I did the right thing, because I took the
smart steps to allow it to heal.
Now that I'm feeling good again, I'm able to go back in this exercise and anticipate
quickly being able to – because of muscle memory – being able to regain that lost
size.
Again, it may not be that significant to you or you may not notice it so much, in terms
of me, but I've showed you some clips here as well.
You can see the differences.
The fact is, it's impactful no matter what the size of your arms are.
If you do this exercise, you're going to have bigger arms.
If you don’t, you're not.
So, I hope you guys found this video helpful.
In the meantime, if you're looking for programs where we program this exercise and show you
how to do it the right way so you're not sacrificing any gains in the process – remember, not
like a 'Dick' or Jesse – you can head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get them all in
our programs.
In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover and I'll do my best to do that for you.
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All right, guys.
See you soon.