What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So we've got to talk strength today.
You are literally stronger on every, single exercise that you're doing if you want to
be, if you do what I'm going to show you here today.
That is – this is an appropriate shirt – "It's physics, bitch".
We've got to put physics into what we do and leverage is part of physics.
We're going to show you that if you ever want to be strong and realize your true strength,
and when you're trying to train for strength you need to utilize leverage.
It's not a cheat.
It's actually doing what your body is trying to do to be as strong as possible.
So the easiest example here – I'm going to take you through a bunch of them – is
the lat pull down.
If I'm pulling down I've got to figure out a way to create force up.
We do that with our knees.
Don't just hook your feet under here, drive your knees up into the pad.
So when I drive up I can pull down.
Here, drive up, I can pull down.
You'll notice a huge increase in how much you can lift on this exercise by not just
passively sitting here, but actively pushing against it.
Next thing: a bench press.
If I grab some weights here, and I go to press – we've talked about this before – I have
to drive the weight away from me that way, then I have to be able to drive my body this
way, into the bench.
So I drive my shoulder blades back, and down together, squeeze, and actively push into
the bench.
Also, we talked about using your feet to actively drive your body back into the bench.
Whether it be flat bench, or incline, but you push.
You're actively trying to drive your body into the bench so that you can push away with
more force because of the leverage.
Third example: a curl.
A spider curl.
I'm going to show you a harder version of the curl later on.
Again, we're here hanging our arms off the bench.
It looks like we don't have much leverage here.
It's this dead-hang curl for our biceps.
You've got plenty of leverage.
If you're curling up you want to be able to force down.
I could do that by driving my chest into the bench.
So don’t just hang out here, but push into the bench as I curl up, and we now have that
counterforce and leverage we need to be able to lift more weight, and realize the strength
that we have.
Next: deadlifts.
If you do a deadlift don’t just lift the bar.
So many people get here, they focus on everything that they need to do here, and they're lifting,
lifting, and focusing on that lifting portion of it.
But you're ignoring the fact that you can generate a lot of force into the ground.
Think of this as a leg press done standing.
If I was lying on my back and pushing into the leg press platform, I'm doing the same
thing here.
I get in position here, and I'm pushing, and driving into the floor, down, to lift up.
Push down to lift up.
I can deadlift a lot of weight for my size and I think the reason why is because I know
how to generate that opposite tension and force when I do the exercise.
It really helps me a lot to do that.
Pullups.
"Wait, Jeff!
There's nowhere for you to –you're floating in air!
How are you going to generate opposite force?"
Well, where am I going?
I'm going up.
The direction is up.
So obviously I can generate more tension downward by squeezing the bar.
You can either squeeze it – again, I wouldn't advocate this on regular pullups when I'm
trying to rep out.
I like to use a false grip there where I just hook my hands.
But if I'm doing weighted pullups for strength and I have 90lbs underneath me I'd be grabbing
on as hard as I can, and pulling down as I am trying to pull up and lift the weight up.
Two final examples here.
I'm trying to give you a lot of different ways so you can start seeing there is not
an exercise that you can't create more leverage on to help you to increase your strength and
realize your true strength.
Maybe you're doing a horizontal row.
These are more challenging ones.
If I do this you realize, if I'm trying to lift any kind of weight at all, I'm getting
pulled forward.
I have no leverage here to generate real strength.
So what does the intuitive person do?
They do this.
They put their foot forward.
"Well, how does that work?"
Because I'm literally driving into the ground from pushing forward into the ground that
way so I can lift this way.
So you're creating it, not necessarily from the chest here and the upper body, but I'm
still generating this counterforce.
So I'm driving forward to be able to pull back and I can lift a lot more weight by doing
that.
Finally, just to show you that it's not always the muscles down here and the muscles up here,
but it also could be your core.
If I'm doing a regular barbell curl, or a dumbbell curl, the direction of the weights
are coming up and backward.
So for me to be able to generate my ability to curl as much weight as possible, then I
need to be able to prevent this backward motion.
And to prevent backward motion and create this equal and opposite force this way I engage
the abs.
Down, right?
If it's pushing me back I need to be that way.
So if you want to start curling more weight contract the abs hard.
Here, and down.
Contract, and down.
So lots of different options for you, but the fact of the matter is you're a hell of
a lot stronger than you maybe think you are.
It takes just two seconds to implement what you need to do to get this right on every,
single exercise.
As you see, from exercise to exercise it varies, but every, single exercise has a technique
that you can implement that allows you to do it just like that and get stronger and
carry that through from workout to work out and watch your strength gains soar.
If you're looking for a program, guys, that puts the science back in strength and shows
you how to do these things step by step so you're getting the most out of every workout;
head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEANX training program.
In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what you want to see here in a future video and I'll do my best to do that
for you in the days and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.