JESSE: Okay, I know what you’re thinking.
“Jesse, big legs; they don’t go together.”
However, if you follow this one tip that Jeff’s going to give you in this video it’s going
to make a difference.
How do I know?
Here’s me before.
And here’s me after.
This is not that long ago.
If nothing else, if you think the tip sucks and you don’t like it, you’re getting
a fantastic new intro from me.
Your boy, Jesse.
JEFF: What’s up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we’re going to talk about-
JESSE: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
No intro?
JEFF: Okay.
What’s up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Jesse-
JESSE: No.
We’re going to do – wait, that’s it?
JEFF: That’s it.
No intro.
We don’t need the intro.
JESSE: No.
THEY want the intro.
Run it.
JEFF: Thanks, guys.
Thanks a lot.
Appreciate that.
All right, can we talk about-
JESSE: How about that?
That was good, right?
JEFF: Yeah, that was good.
All right, let’s talk about you.
JESSE: Yes, me.
JEFF: Let’s talk about your legs.
JESSE: Okay.
JEFF: Today’s video is about building bigger legs.
We talk about it in “Just Do THIS”.
It really is about just doing something and it doesn’t have to be complex.
Jesse is somebody that had some pretty thin legs.
You can see the early version of Jesse here.
JESSE: Yeah.
JEFF: You guys watched.
You were watching as he was in this position, but that’s the part that makes him all so
relatable because a lot of people have legs like this and now we see Jesse and some of
the leg gains he’s made.
Which are definitely impressive.
It’s something I can relate to because I grew up, at Jesse’s age, also having a bit
of struggle in putting on some size in my legs.
But because of understanding the anatomy of the legs and understanding the quads and their
relationship to the adductors, and how all this plays together; I learned, as a physical
therapist, where our quads tend to look for help.
Why they tend to bail out and look for other muscles to do their job.
As soon as we understand that we can intervene, make the quads do the work, and get so much
more out of it.
JESSE: Right.
JEFF: So, what we did with Jesse is something really simple.
The first thing is, we loaded the quads.
What I mean by that is you peek at Jesse here squatting.
There’s a big reason why people talk about squatting to parallel.
When you get to a depth of parallel it’s the only time that you’re placing the quads
under the maximum amount of tension.
We know that only when the downward force of gravity is perpendicular to the femur,
is when that quad is maximumly challenged.
If we do any variation of shortchanging the parallel squat – if we’re two, three,
eight inches above-
JESSE: Quarter squats!
JEFF: Quarter squats!
Parallel, we’re not challenging the quads.
In order to challenge the quads and make them grow you need to learn how to get down to
parallel.
We do that.
Of course, we have some things we can incorporate to make us do that better.
The next thing comes in play.
Knee travel.
JESSE: Yep.
JEFF: A lot of people talk about, when you do your squats, you have to have a pretty
wide stance, and your knees need to stay in line with your feet.
Meaning, the knee travel is not necessarily straight ahead in the sagittal plane, but
it’s a little more of an angle.
I say, more often, the frontal plane.
What that does is incorporates the adductors to a much greater degree than you want if
you’re someone struggling with quad development.
Why?
If you look at this from the top angle here, you can see as the legs travel outward, yes,
we’re getting a good degree of knee bend, but we’re often going to be limited to the
depth that we can get to because the stretch on the adductors is too great.
Try it yourself.
Take a wide stance, try to really start letting your legs go out as you go down, and you’re
likely going to feel a really intense stretch right up in the groin, under the pelvis, because
those adductors are being pulled on to their greatest degree.
JESSE: I’ll save you the trouble.
Don’t do it.
It sucks.
JEFF: What happens is, when a muscle is stretched like that it automatically wants to unload
that stretch.
Meaning, it wants to go back to its shorter position.
To do that you really get this stretch-reflex contraction.
Unfortunately, out of the adductors as opposed to the quads.
So, the best way to do this is to fix your stance.
Narrow it up.
Take a narrower stance here.
You can still have your knees travel outward over your toes.
Your toes can still be pointed slightly outward, but you want to have that narrower stance
so you’re relieving the adductors of that overstretch and allowing the quads to do the
work.
When you get to the bottom of this position here, the bottom of a squat, you can see the
quads are much more active.
They’re much more the initiators of the upward ascent of the squat.
That’s what you want.
When you can place all that tension on the quads, you’re going to get much more development
on the quads.
Now, what’s the last thing we can do?
What do we break out?
JESSE: We break out a box.
JEFF: Back to the box.
Jesse is a little bit – his parallel point.
The point that was the sweet spot for him needed to be just a touch higher.
Some people are always at a loss.
“What box should I use if it’s too high?”
Just take a plate, like he’s doing here, and put it down to match the depth that you
need to get to.
By putting that there you’ve done two things.
Number one: you’ve allowed yourself a target and the target is behind you.
Meaning, you’re going to have to sit down.
JESSE: Yep.
JEFF: You’re going to have to create some more depth to get down there.
Second, when you’re there it gives you that momentary biofeedback to know that you’ve
gotten down to that endpoint.
You’re at parallel.
The last thing, we don’t just have you come up.
If you want to place more tension on the quads, you stay there.
JESSE: You pause.
JEFF: You pause.
You hang out for a little bit.
JESSE: My favorite thing.
Pause squats.
JEFF: But you kiss the box.
You don’t go down there and sit your ass down and hang out down there.
You kiss it.
You go down and just barely graze it.
You pause there for two or three seconds.
If you are ever trying to get your quads to grow and they couldn’t do it, this is going
to do it every, single time.
JESSE: Yeah.
JEFF: The slightly narrower stance, pausing and hanging out down there at maximum tension,
and applying maximum tension because you’re getting to that proper depth to do it; this
is the magic formula.
There’s nothing secretive about it, but it works.
I guarantee you.
It works every, single time.
Again, check out the before and after here.
It’s working for Jesse and it’s something that I promise will work for you as well.
Hopefully you’ve found this video helpful.
If you’re looking for more step by step advice where I build in the nuances of how
you perform the lifts, not just what you do, but it’s how you do it because that matters
so much; we’ve built them into all our programs over at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, if you’ve found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
For all you encouragers of those stupid ass intros-
JESSE: They’re not stupid!
They’re wonderful!
Everyone loves them.
JEFF: I don’t know what to say for you guys.
Other than ‘subscribe’.
JESSE: Thank you.
JEFF: Turn on your notifications.
And I guess you have your ability to express your free will and demand more Jesse intros,
at the very least.
But only if you subscribe and turn on your notifications.
JESSE: That’s fair.
JEFF: All right, guys.
I’ll see you guys in a few days.
See ya.