JEFF: What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Look who's back!
It's Jessie again.
We have another hard gainer workout edition.
This time we're hitting the triceps and as you can see, our boy Jessie is actually starting
to get some triceps.
Go ahead, flex the tricep there.
So he's starting to get some triceps, but more importantly you can probably see a bigger
difference in Jessie in that he's actually starting to fill out.
On top of that, he's actually starting to get some better posture.
He's not looking like this anymore.
Our goal si to make sure, as a hard gainer, that Jessie doesn't look like this anymore.
So he's starting to get away from wrapping some tissue around these bones of his.
JESSIE: I'm starting to look like this.
JEFF: Not yet, but we're trying to get him there.
So what I want to do is show you – we're going to do something different here today.
I'm going to actually walk on that side of the camera.
I'm going to take Jessie's job, and I'm going to do my job as well.
I'm going to actually do a trainer eye-view of what I see when I'm training Jessie, but
more importantly, I'm going to be able to point some things out as I go through what
I want Jessie to do.
So for triceps what I'm going to do is go ahead and grab the camera.
Jessie's going to grab his dumbbells for the first exercise, which is going to probably
shock some of you because the first exercise that J-bird is going to do over here tricep
kickbacks.
You're probably thinking "Holy shit!
Why tricep kickbacks?
That's like the epitome of specialization exercise.
But for hard gainers they don’t – go ahead, Jessie and get down – they don’t really
have a good mind-muscle connection.
So by doing this exercise here we're actually putting the tricep – as you can see – in
this maximally short position.
With the arm and extension back behind his body we can get the most shortening of the
tricep.
So he's going to feel this the most.
It's going to give him an opportunity to feel what the mass contraction feels like in a
tricep.
A lot of people don’t know what it even feels like.
Think about when you started training and you heard someone say "Contract your tricep."
You didn't even know what to do.
So here I can actually do that, and I can get that mind-muscle connection before we
start going into some of the heavier training.
Good job, Jessie.
So now we would basically do that.
Now one thing I want to point out – go back in the range of motion right here.
Go ahead.
So he's doing a pretty decent job.
I see people all the time, they lift it over here – go ahead and lift up – but they
lift to there.
This becomes a bicep curl at that point.
There's no benefit of doing a bicep curl when we're trying to do a tricep.
So the full range of motion on this exercise actually starts down low.
The bigger key is "Where is the position of the arm in relation to his back?"
It's got to be behind his body where it is.
A lot of time people will try a tricep kick back from there, but in order to get the long
head we need to get it up, behind his body, and then go from there.
So really, his range of motion is about from there, to there.
So good.
Now Jessie, come on out of that.
We do about three sets there, keeping the rest time pretty short for activation.
Then we'll move onto some of the heavier sets.
What we have here is a really jerry-rigged version of my leaning, rocking tricep push
down.
The idea here is, I'm going to have Jessie go through it kind of slow to illustrate the
point.
On a regular push down – go ahead and start coming down, Jessie, to the starting position.
So from here, this line here from the cable machine represents the direction of the force,
okay?
So right now we know that the forearms are going to be moving here to work the tricep.
If the cable can stay perpendicular to the forearms instead of parallel to it, we can
keep the resistance on.
But as we go down to the bottom here, you can see that now the cable is almost parallel
to the forearm.
So he's going to lose some of the resistance and tension he could have on the triceps.
For a hard gainer, again, they have to make sure that they are keeping the tension on
the triceps.
So what we can do is, we can start close.
Go ahead and be in that 90 degree position.
We can start here, and now as he goes down he can rock back like that, and you can see
the tensions stays on the triceps, and the angle is now more perpendicular to his forearms.
Go ahead, Jessie.
Now do some reps.
So from here, rocking back, good.
All the way in, all the way in, and rock back.
Lean in even more.
Even more, even more.
Right there.
Stay there.
Now back.
No go a little bit slower so I can show one more time.
Go real slow motion here.
So from here, perpendicular, rocking back, rocking back, lean, pull down, pull down,
pull down.
There you go.
You can see in the back through his triceps there.
So I'll go heavy here, but now – Jessie, step down.
After he reaches failure what I want to do is, I understand that volume can be an issue
when we go heavy for hard gainers.
Go ahead and get down.
So while we want to go heavy, we don’t want to lose out on volume.
So I'll have him immediately drop from that exercise down to the ground here to do our
cobra pushups.
Now get down and swoop under, and push up.
Okay, that's an exercise I covered before, and it's one that I love because you can get
a good contraction of the tricep.
What I want him to feel like is that there's a fence right here.
Go ahead.
Sneak down, and under Jessie.
There you go.
Slide back.
There you go.
Now slide under.
Contract right there.
Slide down, down, down.
Push back, just to there.
Good.
Come forward.
So I'm trying to keep the tension there.
He's actually doing this one from his knees, which is fine because, again, it's a burnout
set here.
We're just trying to extend the set beyond the failure he reached on this exercise to
get a little additional volume.
Okay, great.
Cool.
Now pump out.
So I'd have him do his sets over here.
Maybe four sets, or so.
So we're over here, now we've come to the last exercise.
So we're going to do a bench press variation where what we want is, we want to be able
to have, obviously, a close grip variation for Jessie to do.
Jessie, go ahead and flatten that bench out first.
He basically – it's the way he does this exercise that's going to make all the difference
for him.
So come on down.
Again, elbow position means everything.
If his elbows start to drift over here he's basically now recruiting his chest.
Lift the dumbbell a little bit.
He's recruiting the chest and front delt as you can see that pop out there.
So if we get it in here we can see all that quiet down.
Now we're going to use his triceps as he presses up.
So go ahead and press up.
Boom, like that.
And then come down.
Elbows stay nice and tight to his side.
The key here is, we're trying to go heavier, again, on this.
We're demonstrating so he would generally go a little heavier on this, but the angle
of the arm is important.
If anything, I don’t want him to come this way.
I want him to go back that way.
So Jessie, now bring them back behind your body.
So now up, and back right there at least.
He's breaking the vertical, which is going to put more stress on the tricep in a good
way.
Good.
Come down.
I know you guys are going to say "Jeff, you suck at the camera!
Put Jessie back!
You're too close!"
I'm just trying to show you the part that's working here.
Obviously, everybody knows how to do a tricep bench-press.
All right, Jessie.
Go ahead and put that down.
Like we did on the last one, the same thing we're going to want to do is have a drop option.
The drop option – go ahead and sit down, Jessie – the drop option here is one that
we want to basically be able to transition to quickly without much rest time in between.
Here, what we can do is a bench dip.
Now, Jessie is notorious for having those incredibly rounded shoulders, but as you'll
see, much, much better.
We've been working a lot on this.
So the shearing he could get in his shoulders from this exercise is not there anymore and
I want to try to challenge him, but I'm going to shorten the range of motion.
Go ahead.
So one first tip – let's show them the first tip we do – is the hand positioning.
So the hand positioning is, start by just opening your hands up on the bench.
What that does is, that makes it nice and easy for him to get into that position.
Now slide out.
He's going to stand on his feet here because I'm just trying to rep out.
Then he's going to go and drop down – he can turn his hands back now to get into the
– right.
So he's just doing that to position his shoulders as he opens his hands just slightly, now he's
going to go down, shorten the range of motion, and really work on keeping this open.
There you go.
Nice.
So we're trying to challenge him in this posture that's difficult by shortening the range of
motion.
Still allowing him to do it, but doing it under a little bit of fatigue, too.
You don’t want to completely abandon the things that challenge you.
You want to figure out ways to actually alter them so they're still challenging, but you're
doing it in a more favorable position.
So he'd rep out there.
Now go back and squeeze, right, the triceps.
Now, how I like to finish it – Jessie, go ahead and grab those light dumbbells one more
time.
After we do those sets you go up and put it up on an incline.
We just go back and we do that tricep kickback one more time to reestablish – this is the
old Jessie, this is the new Jessie.
So we reestablish – go ahead – that mind-muscle connection.
Go ahead.
Even some upper back gains for Jessie here.
Squeeze and hold.
Hold, hold, hold, hold.
Hold.
Get them up.
Now Jessie also has bone chips in his elbows, for those that are wondering.
He can't straighten his elbows anymore, but that's okay.
A lot of people that are watching have the same thing.
You've just got to extend as much as you can.
Fight it, fight it, fight it.
Get them in!
That's the look of intensity right there.
All right, go ahead and drop.
So we'd end up with that.
So let me put this back on the sticks here and give you guys the wrap up.
So as you can see, a work in progress.
The take home message here is that there are some things you want to focus on within the
exercises you do to make them better, to get more out of them, and it's not always about
weight.
A lot of times it's about how you do the exercises.
Like I said, even the exercise we use to kick off the workout would be contradictory to
what many people would think you'd start with, but when it's a hard gainer issue I can tell
you 99 times out of 100 there is no good mind-muscle connection.
Reinforcing that is key to having a productive workout.
So we try to initiate that right away.
Beyond that, it's how we structure the workout, the exercises that we choose, and putting
it all together, adjusting posture and everything else.
In the end the idea is – look at how you stand still.
Like the – like you're on top of a mountain.
That's good.
He's getting more confidence in his physique, and he's getting better on top of it.
It's all one big picture, and it all matters when you train.
So if you're looking for – if you like the hard gainer series and you like Jessie, of
course – he didn't even say a word in the whole thing.
JESSIE: Well, what do you want me to say?
JEFF: I don’t know.
Something.
JESSIE: It's your series.
I don’t know.
JEFF: All right.
So anyway, if you like Jessie leave a comment and a thumbs up below.
If you like the hard gainer series leave your comments.
We'll continue to do it.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength where
everything matters; then head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEANX training program.
In the meantime guys, we'll be back here again in just a few days.
See ya.