What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
If you want to look like an athlete you've got to train like and athlete.
This is something I say all the time and if you're going to do that, you'd better carve
out some portion of that to be explosive training.
It's an element that you cannot miss if you're trying to maximize the results that you see.
Because explosive training takes advantage of the fact that we can get into more type-2
fibers, recruit more maximally your type-2 fibers which are more capable of growth and
hypertrophy.
We have to be able to accelerate through a motion in order to do that and to realize
that.
When it comes to shoulders and shoulder training, it becomes a lot harder to do that safely
because if I had to do that with a barbell press and throw that barbell up overhead and
then try to catch it on the way down, that becomes a circus act and something that will
likely send you to the emergency room, as opposed to helping you grow bigger shoulders.
But we can do it with the use of a med ball.
Med balls are actually a training tool that some people think are long forgotten.
They should be part of your training if you want to be a complete athlete, or develop
a complete physique.
The first exercise you might think "Oh, I know where he's going with this."
It's an overhead med ball toss because it has that acceleration component.
I don’t have to slow the weights down as I go through the midpoint.
I can actually accelerate the weight all the way through to the end.
But, what's lacking here?
You don’t have a good, eccentric component on the way back down.
You're not eccentrically loading the shoulders; you're just throwing it and getting out of
the way and letting it drop.
So that's not the answer.
Someone suggest "Maybe a wall ball."
This is an exercise that, again, allows you to load the shoulders and throw through the
rep.
go through the rep explosively to allow for more power, and to allow more of that recruitment
of the type-2 fibers.
But here, again, are you really eccentrically loading the shoulders on the way down?
Not really.
You're actually getting a big help and a big assist from the lower body, and also your
elbows are tucked in really close to your sides.
You're not really loading the shoulders as much as they can be because you can increase
that moment by getting your arms out longer.
Which is why we do what I call the plyo-solo-toss, for the shoulders.
This is a great exercise.
You want to load it with a heavier medicine ball.
What you're going to do is act like you're going to do a forward shoulder raise.
Instead of actually having to decelerate the weights as I get to the top of the motion,
as you would with dumbbells, you could keep it going.
You could actually try to accelerate through and power through what would normally be end
range of motion on this exercise.
As you release the ball you now have that all important, eccentric component on the
way back down because you have to try to catch this at about 90 degrees, or slightly higher.
When you do this you can instantaneously see – some would call it spontaneous eccentric
contraction.
You've got to slow that ball down before it gets all the way to the bottom, and then quickly
reverse the movement and generate power again from that stretched state.
You keep going up and down with this for as many reps as you can.
Usually with this 20lb ball here, I'll fatigue around 16 to 25 or so, depending on where
I sneak this into my shoulder workout, but I always try to put it in somewhere to take
advantage of the explosive training.
So as you can see guys, explosive training is an incredibly important part of training
like an athlete, but more so to the guy that's not even interested in being paid as an athlete,
to getting better results.
I try to incorporate it along with all the other things I think you need to develop a
complete physique.
We do that in our ATHLEANX training system.
You can get that over at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, try this out.
Put this in your next shoulder workout.
There's an instantaneous difference that you will feel from even a set or two of this.
Even the pump that you experience from doing this exercise will be different, I guarantee
you.
Because you're going to be recruiting muscle fibers that have been dormant because there's
no other shoulder options that will target them like this does.
Let me know how you found this video.
If you've found it helpful, leave your thumbs up below and let me know what you want to
see here in the future videos and I'll do my best to cover them.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again real soon.
See you!