What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
This is what happens when you forget to film the intro before you do the workout, but it
leads to an important point.
What happened in this workout you're going to see today is what left me in this position
right nw.
out of breath, barely able to talk.
I'm doing it with just a barbell and a set of dumbbells.
Guys, you can build muscle mass if you want to trade in some of that workout length for
intensity.
Let me show you exactly how it's done.
Alright, so first exercise we're going heavy.
Mass building the exercise.
Start with the cornerstone heavy exercise like the deadlift.
The deadlift, for me, it's a leg exercise first and foremost.
That first push and pull off the ground – it's a push – I'm pushing with my legs and then
of course I've got my low back, triple extension, my gluts, my traps, everything helping me
to power this up.
Pretty heavy here for me.
An 8 rep max.
I'm trying to get heavy weights done quickly.
Now I come over here, now we have to shift the focus.
I'm shifting to a pushing exercise to give all my pull muscles and my lower body a break.
So we're going to a classic dumbbell inclined bench-press.
So rom here I'm trying to go for about a 10 rep max here.
Now, there is a metabolic carryover from the deadlift that I just did.
So it's going to make what's traditionally, maybe, might be your traditional 10 rep max;
it might be a little bit less.
Especially as you pile up round after round.
So, here I'm working on my 10 rep max, I drop down, and I grab one dumbbell and I bring
it over with me to do a really cool exercise.
It's a hybrid of what we call a dumbbell shovel curl.
The shovel curl is done with both hands on the handle and it basically mimics a cross-body
hammer curl.
So we're working forearms and biceps, brachialis, but then we've got to make it a little more
difficult by going over the top with our press.
In the press there's a lot of core strength and stability through your abs, through your
obliques, to be able to maintain that position.
I put myself on the ground, on my knees in order to demand that my core do most of the
stabilization.
I don’t have the benefit of my feet to do that.
Again, about an 8 rep max.
It's just whatever you can do with the weight hat you've chosen from the bench-press.
Now, I'm at about 1:40 for that first grouping.
I take advantage of some extra time here.
I don’t want to go into my deadlifts tired, okay?
Again, it's metabolic in terms of what happened from those other two exercises.
They were not really impacting the muscles I would use here on the deadlift.t so they've
had a good amount of time to rest and recover from that.
I just want to make sure I have my breath so I'm not doing this in a fatigued state.
So now I'm back to, in this case, the 405.
Again, drive up.
By this point, the workout, one round in and I'm kind of geared up and ready to go.
Of course, I started with a little bit of a warm-up to get myself ready, but here I
am now in the second works and I'm cranking now.
Again, notice that first pull is just a straight leg movement.
It's like a leg press up from the ground.
Then once I get to the knees; boom!
Shift right into the hips and make the hips drive through and drive your whole body forward
and pull the bar up.
Now, back to the dumbbell bench again.
So you can see, again, there's a few elements at play here.
By stacking the exercises the way we're doing it we're actually allowing muscles to relax
and rest without wasting time.
Remember, it's 12 minutes.
You don’t have a lot of time here, but I'm trying to prove a point.
You can definitely build muscle mass despite the fact that you may not have that much time.
Sometimes there are more challenging.
These are "density workouts" we like to say.
We're condensing what all is done here – 5 rounds – which is basically 5 dead lifts
with an 8 rep max, 5 sets of a 10 rep max inclined bench press, and 5 sets of our dumbbell
shovel curl, or shovel curl press.
So, that's being done in 12 minutes.
That might take you 25 or 30 normally, or even longer for some guys.
45 minutes.
So when you do the same amount of work in a much shorter period of time you're dramatically
increasing your workload, therefore overloading your muscles and giving them stimulus to grow.
So I don’t count the reps.
At this point I don’t even care how many reps I get.
Remember, it's just about going to failure and making sure that the load you're using
is enough to cause overload.
So now I'm in here, round 2, the last exercise on here, running the clock.
Still going, I'm still ahead of that 12 minute pace.
Again, some people might only get 4 rounds in, but if they're 4 really good rounds that's
great.
It's the effort level.
It's the intensity.
Remember, intensity is one of the biggest factors for driving muscle growth.
Far too many people do not workout at a high enough intensity.
I've talked about under training, I've talked about over training.
Over training is something that is going to be very real for natural guys who don’t
allow their bodies a chance to recover from workout to workout, or within a workout cycle.
Most importantly, the effort has to be there if you want to get anything out of your workouts.
Now I'm moving into another round, a little bit closer up just to see the nuances of the
exercise.
Remember, it's always – with the deadlift – it's hip, hip, hip, and right at the level
of the knee, and drop.
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, and knees.
So if you want to know how much hip and how much knee contribution it's really easy.
Let the bar dictate.
When it reaches your knees; boom!
Drop your knees down.
When you're pulling up, pull straight by pushing through the legs until you get to the level
of the knees.
Once at the knees; boom!
Drive the hips forward, just like that.
Next, on the incline bench-press, you can see the level of the incline.
I've got it at 30 degrees.
We talked about that before.
The best angle for targeting upper chest and minimizing the shoulder involvement, we'll
get that shoulder involvement on the next exercise.
For the safety of our AC joints I don’t go down below the level that I'm bringing
it here.
I'm going to hear some people saying "No, you're supposed to go all the way down and
touch your chest."
For me, those extra 2" aren't worth the health and safety of my AC joint.
I've already popped it once and I was out of the game for quite a while trying to recover.
So now, on this one here, again it's whatever dumbbell weight I used on the press.
I'm going to use it here as well and just try and crank out as many as I can.
A limiting factor – who knows what it's going to be?
It could be your core.
It could be your forearms.
It could be your biceps.
It could be your shoulder as you can see it gets tough to press that up and overhead.
So there you have it, guys.
A 12 minute mass building workout that encompasses every single muscle group in your body and
it hits them intensely, but quickly.
Remember, workout efficiency is your best friend.
A lot of guys don't have a lot of time to work out and they use that as an excuse to
not do it at all.
If you're willing to trade in some of that time that you don’t have for a lot more
intensity I guarantee you can get a lot more out of your workouts.
If you're looking for a program that spells it all out and pairs all your workouts up
the way they're supposed to be written, guys, it's the ATHLEANX training system.
You can get it over at ATHLEANX.com.
If you've found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below.
I know you like when I take the torture myself.
Leave your comments, let me know what else you want to see me do and I'll do my best
to bring them to you here in the coming weeks.
I'll see you back here real soon.
Thanks, guys.