You think that body weight training means that you have to go bicep-less?
Not if you are going with Athlean XERO and not if you watch what I'll show you here today.
What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM
Bicep training and bodyweight training.
For a lot of you, they don't mix.
Right?
How can you possibly train your biceps when you have to rely on pulling.
And if you haven't heard about the Athlean XERO Program, that's the new bodyweight program
from AthleanX.
No bands, no bars, no bench, no bull, right.
So there are no bars allowed, so forget that.
So if you think that that's all you can do, I'm here to show you today, I'll show you
three exercises that you can do to disprove that.
Again I don't care if I am in a an X-Box filled with equipment or a cardboard box.
It's my job to be able to show you guys alternatives and things that you can do.
So the first one starts right here up against a wall.
Now don't tell me you don't have a wall because you've got to have something that you are
standing in.
And unless you were air dropped in here, there's a door and there's a wall.
So what you do is get into a wall, against a wall.
Now understand, if I don't have a bar and I need resistance, I can use my leg.
The thing is if I do a normal bicep curl I'd have to be able to curl all the way to the
top in order to get contraction.
Well I'm sorry, I'm somewhat flexible but not all that flexible.
I can't get my leg up to here, up to my neck level.
So what you do is you make a change, you change the orientation of your body.
So what we do in this case is we lean forward.
So we're going to cross over, we're going to grab underneath the ankle.
Instead of trying to curl up to here, which would be half range of motion.
We just simply lean forward.
Ok, so from here my job is to curl the weight up to the shoulder here, you know up until
a peak contraction.
Guys familiar with AthleanX, we have the Fielder Curl, where you're actually in this bent over
position.
It changes the strength curve, so that you're peak contraction occurs around the halfway
point opposed to all the way up.
So it is actually perfect for what we are trying to do here.
So I'm leaned over and I'm using my leg as resistance.
If I want more resistance, I simply push my leg down, that way, back, to where it started.
If I want less resistance, I let it come up . But cooler once I get it to the top here,
I can push and do eccentric training for my bicep too.
So again here pushing down and not letting it extend.
Push, push, push and not letting it extend.
And then I can work on the concentric by pushing down with my leg and trying to curl it against
that resistance.
I mean, it's actually even better than a bar if you get good at managing your resistance
because we have adaptable resistance around the whole way.
Let me hit the floor now and show you another thing that you can do and doesn't even require
a wall.
Ok.
So here we are back down on the floor now and again another example.
Because as I said with Athlean XERO, the goal with that program was to eliminate excuses.
Bodyweight training can certainly be hard, it can be challenging, it can be a muscle
builder.
But you have to eliminate the excuses.
And one of them is again, that you can't build biceps doing bodyweight, Wrong.
Right, we're going to show number 2, why that is.
If you come down to the ground here, you may have seen this exercise as an option before.
When you lay on your side, you put your arm flat on the ground.
Get this arm out of the way. and then you pull yourself up like that.
Ok, trying to eliminate the abs and you pull up.
The problem that I have here is that there is too much surface area here.
You know, you've got your whole forearm up against the ground.
The more surface area you have the more your tendency is going to be to push through there
to drive you up and pull you through.
So we make one slight tweak to this and it actually gives us more range of motion to
get the job done at the same time.
So get more of a peak contraction.
You just turn a little bit, ok so you're up where your elbow is in contact with the ground
but the forearm isn't.
The legs instead of being pancaked down to the ground here are off the ground.
The arm is up over here.
And then I pull all the way up.
and because I can keep going, I can actually allow the knees to come in a little bit and
really get a peak contraction here on the biceps.
I go down, I can let the legs extend a little bit, then I come up, again pull real hard
with this hand, let the legs come in to keep the peak contraction a little bit more and
then go down.
Again the challenge here is to try to keep the abs out of it, as much as you can and
let the arm and the elbow do the work to pull you all the way up.
Ok so again, On Fire.
And do 10 or 12, guys this is one of those exercises where is it a little awkward looking,
sure.
It's not how we are used to training biceps.
But get down on the ground, try one, see if it makes your biceps work.
And then leave the comment, or leave the thumbs up because you're going to see it absolutely
does.
Now one more for you, kind of X-tend it beyond just the floor, to show you things that you
can do as you are walking out of the room.
Alright so before we leave today, I need to show you one more exercise you can do when
you're leaving.
Right here in the door.
Now a cool part and feature of the Athlean XERO Program is this X-tended series, I call
it Athlean X-tended.
I say, bodyweight training you want to do it with absolutely nothing, with not even
a single piece of equipment.
I've got an entire program for you and that's what we did.
But let's say, like most of us, 95% of us can find other things around the house.
Counter tops, doorways, hardwood floors, chairs, couches, things like that.
That we can actually do really unique stuff on, that can complement the program.
We came up with a whole series of these.
They work right in with the XERO program.
And it gives us alternatives that you can switch out on the fly, really cool, cool feature.
But one of them is right here in the doorway.
If you get in a regular doorway and you sort of straddle the door jam.
Alright, if you stand fairly close to it so your feet are fairly close to the bottom of
the wall here.
That's actually about how close you'd want to be.
Ok to start off.
Now when you come up, if your hand is right here on the door frame on the inside of the
door.
I'm basically going to pull and then as I come up, the hand is going to try to turn.
Ok, so you are just basically turn the forearm, the hand if fixed on the inside.
So the forearm will turn in order to get that supination at the top.
So basically I'm pulling my bodyweight in and I'm turning the forearm up at the top.
Now I can already get a good contraction of the bicep here but that's not enough.
Ok this is a little too easy.
Anybody that does TRX stuff will know that this incline is too high to cause a lot of
resistance.
So what do we do?
Again because we're straddled around the doorway, we step through the door.
And we step through the door.
Now my feet are, my other foot is in the same position on the inside of the door.
Now I lean back in here.
And as I come up it's already a lot harder.
And I pull and turn the forearm.
Up and turn the forearm.
Ok, so again, all the way up, pull, pull, pull, pull.
Dead weight, my body is complete dead weight at this point here.
All the way up, and pull and then down.
So, as you can see guys.
Lots of options.
Extinguish the whole idea here that you can not do bodyweight training and bicep training
at the same time.
Same applies to the back.
There's a lot of ways to train your back without getting on a pullup bar and relying on the
same old same old or bars or dumbbells.
As a matter of fact as I've said, all that in the Athlean XERO Program.
Guys, regardless, if you have equipment or if you don't have equipment we've got programs
for you at AthleanX.com.
The main thing is, you've got to get started.
And you've got to start training the right way.
Whether it be the tweak over here on the wall of getting your body in the right position
to take advantage of the fact that you don't have external weight.
Or whether it be things like this on the ground or other creative things to do.
That's the whole point of AthleanX, to create functional, athletic, strong bodies.
And I think we're doing a good job of it, because you guys are all transforming yourselves,
using the information.
So leave your comment below.
Let me know if you try a few of these.
In the meantime, if you want the Athlean XERO program head over to AthleanX.com , over there
as well, AthleanX, AthleanX 2, all other things there too.
I'll see you guys back next week.
In the meantime have a good rest of your weekend.