JEFF: What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we are here to help you with your chest training.
We're going to deliver.
By the way, we – it's not him.
No, no, no.
We're reaching out, getting a little divine intervention today.
We're laying down the 10 Commandments.
The 'Shalts', and the 'Shalt Nots' of chest training so you can get the most out of your
training.
Let's get started right away.
MALE: I'm sorry to interrupt, but Jesse?
JESSE: Yeah?
MALE: I've always been a big fan of your beard.
JESSE: Oh.
Thanks!
MALE: Big fan of beards in general.
It's a good beard.
JESSE: You know what?
I think I'm going to grow mine out again because I dig the beard, too.
JEFF: Can we get this thing going?
The firs commandment is:
MALE: Thou shalt not shrug your traps.
JEFF: You heard him.
You'd better get those traps out of your chest training if you want to see the best results
from your chest training.
We've thought so much of this, and so highly of this that we made it the "Chest Master
Tip".
Meaning, when you get down to a bench-press, the first thing you need to do is pull your
shoulders down.
Activate your lower traps to get those upper traps out of the domination of that exercise.
Why?
Because when the traps shrug up, you're basically also getting your shoulders up, and forward,
which puts them in a better position than your chest to actually do the pushing.
You're going to see that's another major thing we make sure we do properly.
If you go to a dip station and you get ready to do your dips, what's happening?
Most of the time you collapse under your own weight, and your traps shrug up again.
You want to actively depress them, which puts the chest into the position as a primary mover
to then push, and initiate the contraction.
Which actually leads us to:
MALE: Thou shalt initiate every contraction from the chest.
JEFF: You absolutely need to do this, and it's so simple, but we overlook it.
You need to initiate from your chest.
You can see it happen right here.
Again, there's a very close interplay between the roll of the front delt and the chest.
If you don’t respect it, and see where that line is drawn you're going to miss out on
the opportunity to get more out of every contraction.
What your body wants to do is let your shoulders take over, and move just a little bit in front
of your chest here, and then they want to do the pushing, as the line of first defense.
If you actively keep that chest pushed out, and initiate the contraction from here you
can feel it.
The very first 1/8th of an inch that you move should happen because of the contraction of
the chest, and then from there, you continue to push.
You're going to feel the difference.
It's a major difference, but it does take a cognitive awareness of the fact that the
fist contraction has to come from the chest, and as soon as you initiate there you're going
to put yourself in a better position for the entire rest of the rep.
MALE: Thou shalt adduct at every opportunity.
JEFF: Adduction.
The absolute critical component of a complete chest contraction.
Now-
JESSE: Wait, Jeff.
Jeff.
Adduction.
That's 1+1=3, right?
JEFF: No, no, no.
That's addition, and that doesn’t' even equal 3.
Didn't you go to college?
Dude, this is not a good advertisement for Quin PA.
So adduction, when you actually do a chest contraction, is going to be a final pushing
of that, if you're going to get a complete chest contraction.
The role of the chest is not push away from the body, but to come across the body, and
bring the arm across.
I don’t want you to think that heavy training is always going to produce the best results.
It will produce a component of the best results, but if you're avoiding some of these adduction
type exercises that I'm showing you here because you think they're using too light of weights
to produce a result; you're leading yourself down the wrong path.
Lighter weights that produce a complete chest contraction are going to produce great results.
If you take those weights, and push them to failure, you're going to get the benefits
of them.
It doesn’t matter, your body doesn't understand the number on the side of the stack, or on
the side of the dumbbell.
All it understands is the tension it's creating.
When you create maximum tension by going to a maximum contraction, which is when you get
a better end result for your chest.
I want to make sure you're not forgetting to include these types of exercises in your
chest workouts.
MALE: Thou shalt not avoid drop sets.
JEFF: You stay out of this one before I drop you.
JESSE: Okay.
JEFF: Drop sets, guys.
Drop sets are a very critical component of complete chest training.
Why?
Because when you go back to what we talked about earlier, the chest doesn't usually act
alone.
A lot of times it's getting help, sometimes unwanted, from the front delts, and from the
triceps, too.
But drop sets allow us to really take every last drop of effort out of the chest to ensure
that we're really hitting it hard.
So what you do is, you do a regular bench-press, and then go grab a lighter set of dumbbells,
and drop it down.
Again, maybe half the weight that you used, and you go to another set here.
The benefit here being that you might have been using some of the other assisted muscles
here to get the heavier weight done.
But when you drop it done, now you're really focused on everything we already talked about.
Initiating contractions, and really forcing the chest to eek out those last few repetitions.
That's going to be key.
It doesn't just have to be here.
You can do the same thing, even with a dip.
You do a regular dip here with full bodyweight, or even a weighted dip, and then you drop
down seamlessly if you're using a band.
Just step into the band, as you see me do here, and crank out a few more reps.
Again, really in that second half of the drop set, really focusing on saying "All right,
take all the other big muscles out of it.
Let the chest finish out the job here."
And really finishing what you've started.
MALE: Thou shalt include pullovers.
Yes, pullovers.
JEFF: I'm not going to make him repeat himself again.
He's right.
Chest pullovers.
Pullovers done for your chest is one of the best exercises you could possibly do.
It's something you 'shalt' start doing now if you want to see the best results.
Especially for your upper chest.
What you do is, you take a dumbbell, you lay back over the bench as if you're doing a regular
dumbbell pullover for your lats.
But instead of flaring your elbows what you do is, you try to bring your forearms and
your biceps closer to each other.
From the bottom position here, you initiate – yes, reenacting that same commandment
again – initiating the contraction from the upper chest.
The whole dumbbell movement is created by the squeeze, initially, by the upper chest.
Bring it just to the position where it's over your head, and you bring it back down again.
This is a great way, if you've never tried it, to feel this really intense contraction.
Almost like this V-line here that forms the upper chest.
A great way to activate it, and hit it every, single time.
MALE: Thou shalt do squeeze ups.
JEFF: Guys, when you're doing any of your pushup variations here, you want to make sure
you're getting some component of adduction if you can.
As a matter of fact, you don’t have to be limited to just having your hand in this fixed
position on the ground, which prevents you from getting any closer movement of the arms
into adduction.
You can do other things.
We've actually covered and entire video on pushup variations, that I'll link at the end
of this video for your to see, where you can get a lot more variety.
You can see some of the exercises here.
The key is, when you're getting yourself off the ground, even if you are doing it from
this fixed hand position, is not to just worry about pushing form me, to you, but worry about
pushing your hands like this.
Even though they're not going to slide on the floor, if you feel that you're going to
slide on the floor then you're actually going to squeeze your body off the ground, which
does what?
It puts your chest out in front of your shoulders, once again, and it gives you and overall better
impact from every, single rep of pushups that you're doing.
Squeeze ups.
MALE: Thou shalt protect thy shoulders.
JEFF: All right.
Your shoulders need to be protected when you're training your chest.
Did you know that there are more injuries done to the shoulder through chest training
than there are through direct shoulder training?
JESSE: I didn't know that.
JEFF: It's true because most of us don’t have any appreciation for the fact that every,
single exercise we do for the chest – no matter what it is – is involved in, obviously,
the shoulder joint.
Because we're using either heavier weights to try to really bulk up our chest, or because
we're doing some awkward movements; we put our shoulders in some really weird positions.
So what your job is to do is to protect it at all costs because any shoulder injury is
going to take you out of the gym entirely.
It's going to take you out of your chest training entirely, and there will be no gains made
if that’s the case.
So you can see the things I do here.
One: I switch to a floor fly, as opposed to an unsupported bench fly.
We've talked about this many, many times before how the gains can still be made here.
As a matter of fact, you can have eccentric overload gains that you can't have when on
the bench, and still get way more shoulder protection from the floor.
You can also do more decline bench-pressing, which will put the shoulders a bit more back,
into a natural position, and a safer position to press from.
And if you don’t even have access to a decline bench, all it takes is a single plate propped
up under the end – the foot – of the bench you're using, that gives you even a slight
5 to 10 degree decline, that's going to do what the job was, that purpose of saving your
shoulders.
Guys, respect your shoulders.
You're going to need them on chest day.
MALE: Thou shalt not forget face pulls.
JESSE: Oh!
I know this one!
I do this because you told me to do this.
JEFF: Yeah, right.
Well, that might be the only thing that you've ever done that I've told you to do.
JESSE: I'm not a good listener.
Why do you think I screwed up my math equation?
JEFF: That's true.
You stopped listening in nursery school, I guess.
Guys, you have to do face pulls for more than the reasons that we just talked about regarding
shoulder health.
The thing is, I say for every three sets of a chest exercise you're going to do, I want
one set of face pulls done at the end of that workout.
Why?
Because you want to create muscle balance.
Far too much of the pushing is going to create rounded shoulders, but beyond that, rounded
shoulders make your chest look small.
I don’t care how big it is.
You could take the guy with the biggest chest, make him go like this, and everything is caved
down, and in.
Open up the shoulders, have the ability to externally rotate your shoulders, and get
into better posture upright here.
Your chest itself actually broadens, and gives you the appearance of a better looking chest
without ever even having to lift it.
MALE: Thou shalt do overcoming isometrics.
JEFF: Okay, no.
Now we didn't just save Jesse's alma mater some embarrassment.
1/10th of the embarrassment he would have had.
We are actually taking the shirts off here, to demonstrate something very important about
the value of overcoming isometrics, and why you need to include them in your chest training,
if you want the right results.
Jesse, come up here.
All right, demonstrate something really quick.
With Jesse in this position here, he's at the end position of a bench-press.
If I were to try to go and resist him, push against him as hard as I could, I really can't
budge him that much because he's pretty strong out there.
However, if I get him back into the bottom position of a bench-press and I say "Jesse,
now go ahead and resist me."
It's actually not that hard to push him right off the camera.
But now, we reverse the roles.
If I get out here and I press, Jesse really can't move me.
But now, if I get into that weak position here, all the way down at this spot here,
and I say "Jesse, now go ahead and press" – Jesse, go ahead and press.
JESSE: I'm pressing!
JEFF: You can press, Jesse!
Whenever you want to press, you can press.
I have the ability to generate good strength back there because I'm doing this.
This is an overcoming isometric.
The purpose of including these is to become more isometrically strong in your weaker points
of the range of motion in the bench-press.
We know that the bottom point is a sticking point.
We don’t train that way.
Isometrics give us the value of increasing our strength within 15 degrees up, and down
of the position we train it in.
By doing the exercises I'm showing you here, I load the stack up as much as I can, I'm
trying to basically move an immovable object.
But I'm increasing my fiber recruitment capability, which increases my strength generation in
this weak spot.
So now, when I attack a bench-press I have more strength down there.
I'm going to be able to get more weight off my chest.
Meaning, I'm not going to be limited by the heavier weights in my weak point.
Ultimately, I'm elevating the weight I'm using, and therefore, the results I'm getting.
Now Jesse, go put your shirt back on.
JESSE: Thank God.
MALE: Thou shalt not train chest on Monday.
JEFF: I know.
It's a tough pill to swallow, even on International Chest Day you've got to switch things up,
guys.
The rule here is that you can't keep doing the same thing.
I know a lot of people say "Jeff always knows what I'm going to do."
I could tell you what your last chest workout was.
See how close I am.
Flat bench-press, into incline dumbbell bench-press, into dips, maybe, and maybe a little bit of
cable crossover, and then maybe even some pushups.
JESSE: But, Jeff…I've-
JEFF: Hold on, Jesse.
How close was I?
How close was I to what you actually did?
The fact is, when it comes to chest training, I've never seen a more repetitive workout
of ALL those workouts that we do than that.
I think we fall in love with that sequence.
I think it makes us feel good.
It gets the pump going and we never vary.
But I will tell you this: just like any other form of training, if you want to change yourself
you're going to have to challenge yourself, and you're going to have to introduce all
new things to your training.
So what we want to do is, not just stop at changing the day that we train chest.
How about not training chest by itself at all?
Maybe even switching the order that we do the exercises.
I know, this is making your eyes spin, Jesse.
Maybe it's even changing the order of the exercises we do.
Instead of just doing those flys – floor flys, not bench flys – after your bench-press,
how about putting them before, as a form of pre-exhaustion?
You will NOT feel the same way if you do that exercise sequence in the reverse order.
It's going to-
JESSE: Jeff?
JEFF: Yes.
JESSE: You're messing with National Chest Day.
JEFF: I said "International Chest Day".
JESSE: I know.
You're messing with it.
JEFF: But what's the point?
This is what's going to benefit you.
JESSE: Yeah, but you can't mess with International Chest Day.
That's just the way it is.
JEFF: What are you – why?
Because you don’t know what to do on a Monday otherwise?
JESSE: Maybe not!
I don’t know what to do on a Monday.
JEFF: Have you been following our programs?
JESSE: Yes, but I like to do chest Monday.
JEFF: You don’t do chest every Monday.
JESSE: I like to do chest on Mondays anyway.
JEFF: So you've still been doing it?
JESSE: Yes.
JEFF: Guys, don’t follow him.
If you're looking for a program that actually maps out what to do, you won't have – turn
this way.
You won't have a chest that looks like this.
You'll actually have a chest.
You can get that, guys, by following our step by step programs over at ATHLEANX.com.
We put the science back in strength.
We lay it all out in a progression that makes sense, and that actually, yes, makes you get
better gains, faster.
Those are all over at ATHLEANX.com.
If you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below.
In the meantime, I'm getting out of here.
I'm not standing too close to this guy.
See you.
MALE: Seriously?!
Works every time.