What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Would you get pissed if I called you a cheater?
Now, don't take offense because we all are to some degree.
See, if you're working out and you're lifting weights, you're cheating.
And it's not because you're consciously trying to do it, guys.
I made a point a couple weeks ago in a video we did on ab training and specifically how
our hip flexors take over for our abs
where I said one comment, that our bodies are masters of compensation, and I think it
might have blown by that too quickly.
See, the fact of the matter is our bodies are so damn smart.
And in order to get them to respond to our training, we have to force them to not be
so efficient with what we're doing in the weight room.
We have to make our workouts inefficient from a standpoint of, we can't let our bodies tell
us the movement patterns they want to move in because guess what?
They'll cheat.
They'll cheat around your strength deficits.
They'll make every single move we do easier.
So what I wanted to do was just showcase a few of them to show you just how our bodies
take over
and make exercises that should be done one way make us do them completely different
and at the same time they rob us of the results that we should be seeing while doing them.
So, right away, if you're going to do your shoulder training, you can pretty much guarantee
that unless you're consciously examining how you're doing each rep,
you're probably cheating on those reps, and I can tell you you're probably costing yourself
some shoulder size in the process.
First of all, I call it the Traps Trap.
When we're doing a Side Lateral Raise, what likely happens here?
What we know, and you can always analyze this part of the exercise,
you're just trying to work that dumbbell from somewhere down at your side to out at your
side because you know that's how the exercise is executed.
But we don't know how we get there and what muscles are helping us do it.
And a lot of times, anything that's in the area of the muscle you're trying to work will
try to contribute.
In this case, the traps take over to a large degree.
The Traps Trap is that while I'm trying to get this dumbbell up, I let my traps shrug
and help pull up.
You can see that just by shrugging, I'm able to elevate this arm higher, but it's not really
focusing on the side delt that I'm trying to really have do the exercise.
So, we don't want that to happen.
That cheat is one that's not going to help you in the long run.
So what we try to do is let the arm stay, I've demonstrated this in a previous video,
stay low and almost like it's going under a fence.
Try to reach up and under the fence.
If you at least do that, you're depressing the shoulder on this side,
try to keep the trap out of it, and reach up and out.
You can still bend a little bit at the arm, but that is even a little bit of a cheat.
I'm ok with it because you have to adapt by allowing for a little bit heavier weight if
you do that because you're basically shortening your movement arm here, ok.
But, if you're going to keep it straight out then obviously now you've got more gravity
here pushing down on your arm that way it becomes essentially heavier, ok,
so, that's 2 cheats in 1.
Next is another area of the shoulder.
It's the front delts, and we've done this before, too.
If we're going to do a Front Shoulder Raise right here out in front of us, we know what's
the target.
The target is to get that dumbbell from here up to here, ok, somewhere in front of our
body here.
But guess what?
We can do that if we're having troubles because we don't have a strong enough front of the
shoulder.
We can do that by bringing it about that far up, and then doing that with our back.
And guess what?
Now I got, it's a parallel, but did I get there with the muscles that we wanted to work
and do the job?
No.
So, we're getting our lumbar spine to say, 'Hey, I'll help out.
I'll bring this up.
You just worry about getting the momentum started.
So, get a little bit of momentum, and then I'll kick in by going into extension.'
But yet again, not what we're looking for if we're trying to build up our shoulders.
And we're not going to pick on the shoulders only, guys.
This is literally going to happen on every single exercise unless you're consciously
worrying about
how you're doing the exercise and focusing on doing it right because the body wants to
take over.
So, even on triceps, how many of you have seen guys do their Tricep Push Downs like
this?
They lean over the top and they'll do that.
Well, again, naturally
your body is going to want to do this.
Why is that versus maybe staying upright here and doing your Tricep Push Downs here?
Well, first of all, your elbow will travel, and along your elbow joint, will travel a
longer movement arch.
And again more distance traveled that you're moving the weight is going to be more work
for your tricep to do that.
If we hover over the top of it and start from here, our travel is much shorter.
We're only going about 30 or 40 degrees of motion.
But that's not it.
On top of that, when we get in this position, we're basically doing an exaggerated, almost
like a dip, like a really close, instead of having our arms here,
we got our arms in here and we're getting our chest to contribute to this Tricep Push
Down.
So, we're here.
We push down.
Yeah, those guys can load up the weight stack because they're really using much more than
just their triceps to do that.
So, is the cheating effective?
If you want to look like you're moving a lot more weight.
But for me, that's not necessarily the end game here.
The end game is to get you looking and performing better by generally building the accurate
strength in your triceps.
So, yeah, even back, too.
Again, every single muscle group a culprit.
On a typical One Arm Row, what do you see?
You see guys maybe start off with good intentions of lifting the dumbbell straight up, straight
down, get our elbow up as high as they can back behind their body,
but the weight starts to get heavy.
So, our body says, 'Whoa.
I can't do this alone.
I need some help, and the only way I can do that is if I start rotating my body.
If I rotate off of this arm, then I know that I'm actually making myself feel like the dumbbell
is traveling further but I could have stopped here.'
ok.
Stop here and then rotate and I feel like the dumbbell just went up another 6 inches,
when it did nothing because we didn't actually extend our arm behind our body any further.
So, we get it to here and we're rotating like that.
Up and rotating, and you see guys do Rows like that instead of keeping flat, keeping
their shoulders square to the bench.
That would be your visual key.
If I can keep my shoulders squared to the bench and then pull back with my elbow, then
I can ensure that
all the work is being done by my back, ok, and obviously the bicep instead of allowing
this shoulder to open up, or the straightening out of this down arm.
Another place cheating is rampant is here at the Pull Up Bar.
Why?
Because, again, we know what the goal.
A Pull Up is so simple.
We've got to get our body up to the bar.
But it's not just about doing that.
It's about getting our sternum up to the bar, getting our chin over the top of the bar,
and it's not about just getting our chin to the bar.
So, we'll see as people that will approach the Pull Up Bar, and they'll just try to get
their chin up so their lats won't get them there.
And they'll do this.
They'll reach.
They'll reach as far as they can go.
And they'll come up and reach at the top.
And up and reach at the top, and it's horrible.
It's not a good rep, ok.
If you want to do these what you want to do is, you want to actually make sure that you
engage the lats first,
and you know the secondary cheat is actually trying to pull down with our forearms.
That's the other thing.
You'll try to pull your forearms into it to get your body up, but instead, you should
really just be getting a thumbless grip.
Hook your hands on the bar, take the forearms out of it, and then try to initiate here through
the back down by pulling with the elbows.
From there, always keep your head straight forward.
If you keep your eyes straight forward, once your eyes cross the level of the bar, you'll
know you've reached your chin up there because
your chin's obviously lower than your eyes.
So, if your eyes go up there, the chin will be right at the bar.
So, if you go here and we lock in the elbows, pull down.
Up to the top.
Once my chin and my eyes are over the bar, my chin is at the level of the bar, and we're
good.
Ok.
Here.
And down.
Cross the bar with my vision.
So, there you have it guys.
There are just a few examples of how we become masters of compensation and overcome even
our weakest link if we let our bodies do that.
Remember, our bodies are much smarter than we ever give them credit for, and they'll
always be smarter than us because we can't consciously always know what we're doing wrong.
But our bodies will always know the easiest way out, and if you think that this is limited
to the newbies, the guys in the gym for the first time, no.
It gets worse when we talk about professional athletes.
Why?
Because professional athletes are so athletic.
They have such innate athletic abilities that oftentimes they're better at hiding their
own weaknesses.
And as a Strength Coach, it's my job to try to pull that out of them and figure out where
they're compensating because again, they're compensating, too.
They're just like everybody else.
But that's just guys talking about overcoming strength weaknesses.
It gets worse when we start talking about
overcoming injuries and things that we take into the weight room with us because the same
thing will happen there.
One joint hurts ya', you're gonna' find a way to shift it to somewhere else, and that's
NOT what we're looking for.
Guys, if you want to start training with a complete program that gets you from not just
point A to point B, we talk about it all the time,
it's about getting you from A to B the right way using the right muscles at the right time
in the right sequence, then guys,
ATHLEANX is what you should be using because this is how athletes train.
This is how we train like athletes.
And you can do that guys by heading to ATHLEANX.COM right now and getting our ATHLEANX Training
System.
In the meantime, if you do these things yourself, and guys I'm guilty of every single one of
those or I wouldn't have known to show them to you.
If you've got your own, make sure you let me know in the comments below.
What is it that you struggle the most with?
I might be able to give you a tip like I did with some of the exercises here to help you
overcome some of those popular cheats.
In the meantime, if you found this one helpful, let me know below and I will make more videos
for sure in the coming days of whatever else it is that you'd like to see, or you'll find
most helpful.
Thanks guys.