What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I’m going to talk to you about how to make you about how to make you stronger
in the fastest way possible.
I’m going to tell you this right off the bat.
This is going to be a very simple video.
Not necessarily easy because the hard work that has to come from implementing what I’m
going to tell you here is never going to be easy.
But it’s simple by the fact that this is not complicated.
We all know that there are two things that will produce the most amount of strength the
fastest.
That is choosing compound exercises as the basis of what you do.
Number two: progressively overloading them.
The beauty behind progressive overload and compound exercises is that they go hand in
hand.
Because of the multiple muscles participating in these compound movements we have a great
capacity to add significant weight to that bar to allow us to do this.
Now, we run into some problems down the road when we start to reach plateaus, but for beginners,
my God, it's one of the best ways for us to reach those new heights, in terms of what
we can produce, strength-wise.
However, I’ve also pointed out here before that when we take this approach we have to
be very, very sure that we’re working on filling the gaps and not leaving cracks in
the foundation along the way.
It’s not enough to simply perform the exercises we know are supposed to be the big ones, the
big, compound lifts, and bastardizing them along the way in the pursuit of numbers alone.
Pursuing numbers alone will almost always leave cracks behind in the foundation of those
exercises that you’ll have a hard time repairing as you build on that.
You build, what I call, compensatory strength on top of a weak foundation.
What we want to do is build true strength along the way.
So, what are the compound exercises?
Again, it’s simple, guys.
We’re not breaking ground here with what we’re saying.
We know if we’re going to do something, let’s say pressing, we’ve got to press.
What I like to do is press vertically and press horizontally.
So, we're going to do an overhead press - not behind the neck, guys.
I’ve covered that before, why that’s biomechanically not the best place to press from anyway.
We want to press from in front of our body and we want to do a bench-press.
Typically, I prefer a slight incline.
About a 30-degree incline on an incline bench, as opposed to a flat out bench-press.
That covers our pressing.
Pulling.
We want to row, and we want to make sure we’re doing some sort of vertical pull.
For me, that would be a weighted chin-up.
We could go with a weighted pullup.
I like that, too.
But by getting our elbows out in front of our body, again, safer for our shoulders and
number two, we recruit the lats in a better way because we put them on stretch once we
get our elbows in front of our body.
So, there’s our pulling.
So far, pretty simple.
Then we have our lower body.
It couldn’t get anymore simple here, guys.
Squats and deadlifts.
Anterior chain, posterior chain.
At least much more dominantly posterior chain for the deadlifts.
The fact is, these exercises are great because they allow us to perform in a way that’s
athletic.
We know that athletic movements are going to require multiple muscles to work together,
not in isolation.
So, I like them, and they are a foundation for building athleticism.
However, we’re going to get back to that in a second.
When you do them, when we program these foundational movements into all our training programs – all
of them – because we realize how important they are.
When you do them let’s just say – and I’ve used this example before – in a bench-press
you’ve got your triceps, you’ve got your shoulders, you’ve got your chest all contributing
to that lift.
Why are they so effective as strength generators?
Why?
Because we can load them.
We can load them significantly because you take a muscle like the triceps, the shoulders
of the chest, each having their own strength capacity, and you pair them up synergistically.
These are agonists working together in a synergy for a common goal.
To press that bar off your chest.
In every circumstance the combination of muscles that work together is going to be higher,
with a better strength capacity than that which could be performed by any one of them
individually.
We know that.
That’s why isolation exercises aren’t necessarily the best way to attack your strength.
However, we do know, as I’ve pointed out before, that at some point down the road you
might want to start individually trying to address these component parts, knowing that
as each one of them gets stronger the overall impact of the whole is going to improve.
We realize that.
But for beginners, most of all, those just looking to get strong, fast, they would focus
on the one exercise they can do that will incorporate the three.
That’s what we want to do.
However, here’s what I talked about that we wanted to make sure we addressed; what
could happen here.
And what could happen here, if you’re singularly focused on strength, you’re going to leave
holes behind.
I guarantee you’re going to leave holes behind.
It could be in the form of imbalances.
It could be in the form of muscle weaknesses.
It could be in the form of neglecting other elements of athleticism.
Guys, we know that just because you’re strong does not mean you’re a good athlete.
There are a lot of ‘oafie’ people walking around, big meatheads that are strong as shit
that couldn’t do one, simple athletic endeavor.
Not one.
Couldn’t run a 300-yard shuttle in less than 45 seconds.
Couldn’t’ do a box jump on anything over 40”.
That’s pretty bad.
You need to have some of that athleticism on top of your strength if you’re trying
to be, overall, much more impressive than just singularly focused on one element.
But I mentioned the susceptibility to injury.
Why?
I talked about it in recent videos.
If you move in one plane all the time that’s ultimately – while building a critical component
of athleticism, which is strength – it’s also leaving many vulnerabilities behind because
we don’t move in one dimension.
Always training in the sagittal plane.
The deadlift.
The squat.
The bench-press.
Always training in the sagittal plane here is leaving you very vulnerable to the other
planes.
We know we need to be able to move and thrive in all three planes.
So, we need to train there.
That’s why, when I look at a complete training program, it’s not always about strength.
ATHLEANX is not the place to come if you want to become the next Thor Bjornson.
And I love Thor Bjornson.
Literally, the World’s Strongest Man.
But he’s also – this is his craft.
This is his area of expertise.
He applies a level of science to it and a level of respect to the process that it deserves.
Not just some guy who likes to bench 350lbs.
That’s who you’re going to go to for all your advice.
Or claims to have a 500lb squat, and that’s who you’re going to go to for all your advice.
Guys, that’s not how you should be selecting your criteria for who you should listen to.
Listen to a person who’s exceled in that area.
The area that I believe I excel in, is creating the well-rounded, all around athlete.
I know that athleticism is about more than just strength.
You build your foundation on that.
All of our programs build a foundation around strength movements.
Around the core compound exercises because of the value they provide, as I just told
you.
But you know at some point you need to start exploring that frontal plane.
You need to explore the transverse plane.
You need to explore corrective exercises.
I know they’re boring.
I know they’re the little, sissy things you see people doing.
Rotator cuff and face pulls.
Guys, there’s a reason why it’s so important because we’re filling in the gaps that the
big exercises don’t provide.
We also know – I’ve actually seen this first hand.
Carlos Beltran, one of the best athletes I’ve ever worked with.
One of the strongest athletes I’ve ever worked with.
We go into any lower body-based movement and his strength was phenomenal.
We try to check his internal rotation strength, or external rotation strength of his hips
and they were incredibly weak.
How is that possible?
Because we didn’t train it…or he wasn’t training it.
Until we started training it.
And when we did, he became an even better athlete and he had longevity.
People thought he was going to hang it up.
He stayed around for nine more years and excelled.
That's the point.
If you want to be a complete athlete – and I’m not even talking about if you want to
compete athletically.
I’m saying, you want to function as a complete athlete; you’ve got to focus on your mobility.
You have to focus on your flexibility.
You have to focus on your ability to move in space.
Your agility.
You have to focus on your ability to accelerate and decelerate.
You have to focus on your ability to generate power.
You have to focus on your strength.
But it’s a component.
It’s not the only thing.
So, I hope you see the value of this.
Again, if you’re a beginner and you just want to look like you lift, great.
Strength only is a great way to go.
But realize there will come a point where you’re likely going to have to start introducing
some of these elements.
I hope it’s not because you’ve painted yourself into a corner because of your obsession
with strength.
God forbid, you’ve painted yourself into a corner because it was an obsession on numbers
alone and you left all those cracks in the foundation.
It’s a great foundation.
It’s what you should build yourself on, but you’ve got to make sure you’re not
leaving on a shaky foundation.
So, I lead you down that road with caution.
However, I will tell you this, again, we can simplify the process.
It’s never been a complex process, but it’s one I think we need to have a little more
respect for.
Don’t settle for being one-dimensional.
Realize the potential of adding strength to the entire picture and realize how much you
can excel then.
That’s what we’ve achiever, or what we’re trying to achieve.
So, guys, I hope this clarifies any questions you might have.
We have a perfect workout series that we came up with that tries to take this approach.
Even an example of a chest workout.
We know that pressing through a pushup, through a dip, through a bench-press while taking
an exercise through its full range of motion is not taking the chest through its full capacity
the range of motion through the shoulder joint of what it’s capable of.
None of them adduct the arm across the chest.
That’s a hole.
That’s a hole that’s going to come back and wind up biting you later on down the road
because you’re not strengthening the chest through its full range of motion, via the
joint it’s attached to in crossing.
So, we need to do that.
We’ve tried to work those into those exact workouts.
Just to give you more of an idea when you’re trying to fill the gaps, what it would look
like.
Guys, if you haven’t seen those videos make sure you check them out.
They’re on our YouTube channel here.
If you haven’t already done so, subscribe and turn on your notifications so you never
miss those.
If you’re looking for complete programs that take these foundational exercises as
the foundation of what we do and build off it to make sure we leave no holes behind,
those are all our programs available at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, if you’ve found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover and I’ll do my best to do that for you in
the days and weeks ahead.
See you soon.