ATHLEAN-X™

If you want to avoid muscle loss or wasting time in the gym you need to pay attention to your body’s natural early warning sign. Grip strength is one of the easiest and earliest ways to detect when your training is about to become unproductive, long before the negative side effects start to become apparent. It doesn’t have to be a surprise however. In this video, I’m going to show you the best way to test the strength of your grip and hands without having to spend a lot of money or take up a lot of time.First, why is grip so important. We know that your grip strength correlates to your performance on the bigger compound lifts. Due to the irradiation effect of a strong grip to more of the proximal muscles, as well as the stability provided to the entire kinetic chain that starts with a strong grip we will always need to strengthen our hand strength if we want to realize our true potential in the gym. Next, the interesting thing about grip strength is that it is driven perhaps more than any other element by neuromuscular efficiency. When your body is not up to maximal function, like when tired or ill, the strength of the grip is one of the first and most direct ways to realize this. Attempting to squeeze your hand and make a tight fist when feeling this way will show you just how impossible it is to obtain max strength.The same thing happens when you are approaching a state of under recovery. Many times, people will continue to add new things to their weight training regimens because they want to try something they’ve seen. The issue comes in when nothing else is replaced. Continuing to add more and more volume to a muscular system that already has reached it’s capacity to recovery from is a way to send your body into a deeper state of woe and make it harder for you to see new gains.You will see this in the form of decreased strength, a lack of desire to train, a plateau in new muscle hypertrophy or strength that seems to go on forever. All of this is avoidable if you just start testing the strength of your grip on a daily basis with a 2 minute procedure that you can do with an ordinary bathroom scale. The hand grip dynamometer shown in the video is the gold standard used by physical therapists for measuring grip strength but it is expensive and as you’ll see, not needed to get a fairly accurate snapshot of where you stand right now.Take the non-digital bathroom scale and support it on one knee. Position your hand on it so that your thumb is pointing up and your fingers wrap around the scale to squeeze it. Squeeze the scale as hard as you can and take note of the number in pounds that you generate. The key from here is now to consistently measure yourself and look for comparisons. If you see a drop of more than 10 percent from your baseline number then you want to take action to intervene on your current workout. You may need to take a reload week. You may need to decrease the volume of your overall work or even just lighten the loads that you are using to give your central nervous system a break. Even if this takes about a week or so to bounce back to baseline, you are going to be far better off for doing this than you would have been by banging away at your workouts in this state of under recovery.The key to avoiding this beyond just consistent measurement is to follow a training plan that doesn’t have you do more than what your body can recover from. All of the ATHLEAN-X programs available at the link below are designed to get you training to the edge but still allow your body to build itself up to be bigger and stronger from workout to workout.For more videos on how to gain muscle and the best way to build muscle without overtraining, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube

If you want to increase your bench press by as much as 40 pounds the very next time you perform the exercise, then you will want to watch this video. I’m going to show you how to add up to 40 pounds to your bench in your next workout just by incorporating two commonly misperformed elements of the bench press. For this, I’m bringing in powerlifter and expert KC Mitchell (That 1 Legged Monster) to help showcase exactly what it is that I’m teaching. The first thing that many people overlook, which is costing them a significant amount of weight lifted in the exercise, is the lack of leg drive. The force of the bench press literally starts with the drive of the feet on the floor. More than that however is, the direction of that force. Many people think that the direction you want to push your feet is straight down into the ground. This is incorrect.In order to properly perform your leg drive you need to learn to push your feet away from your head. This will drive your body up the bench if performed the right way. When you understand this concept you see how this ties into the second tip given in this video about proper bar path. We will get to that in a little bit. For now however, the feet will initiate the upward power of the lift and are therefore needed to be positioned properly.You can do this by setting up as you normally would under the bar and then sliding your body down the bench. From here, bend the knees and bring the feet back as far as you can under your body. You will point your toes down into the ground to apply the brakes and anchor your body in place. From here, when you push you want to think about trying to perform a leg extension. The toes should want to extend out as if you were straightening your knee.This will want to drive your body up the bench and slide your head closer to the top of the bench. If you contract your glutes while you do this however you will stay in place and transfer the upward and angled momentum into the bar instead. This is where bar path comes in. Many will incorrectly try and push the bar straight up over their head instead of back toward the rack. This is a mistake.Physics will dictate that a path of efficiency is what we are after when pursuing maximal strength. The most efficient path to press the bar is on an angle rather than steeply opposed to gravity. Drive that bar from the point on your chest back on a straight but angled line back to the rack. The leg drive shown will assist you in getting this right every single time.You also want to be sure that you are sliding your body far enough down the rack to perform the lift or you will have no room to push the bar back without it hitting the pins. This is going to be best accomplished by having a spotter who can help you unrack the weight. It doesn’t matter how little weight you are using, never feel intimidated or self conscious about it. Instead, perfect your form by lifting what you can control in the right way and your strength will increase quickly.If you are looking for a program that will help you not only get stronger in the bench press but in all of your key lifts while building a ripped, athletic body then head to the link below and get the ATHLEAN-X Total Beast program. Use my total body workout program to build strength, muscle and size in just 90 days.For more videos on how to increase your bench press and the best exercises to build a bigger chest by subscribing to our channel at the link below and turning on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Dumbbell exercises do not have to be less effective when it comes to building your legs - as long as you choose the right dumbbell leg exercises. In this video, I will show you the best dumbbell exercises for legs that will hit your quads, hips, glutes and hamstrings. As always in this series, I’m showing you which moves are best for the different training goals you might be shooting for.I will cover the best exercises for building strength, muscle hypertrophy, power, metabolic overload, a total body option, corrective movements and a specialized exercise for the outer hips and lower back.First up, we cover strength. Here, is is always most challenging to find exercises for the legs since the most effective and utilized leg movements for building strength are done with a barbell; namely the squat and deadlift. That doesn’t mean however that you cannot build strength with dumbbells if you choose the right exercise. The dumbbell reverse lunge is great at doing this while at the same time protecting the knees.Make sure that you keep your torso upright while stepping back and out to keep a wide base of support and not let poor balance undermine your ability to use this to progressively overload. For the posterior chain you would perform a Romanian Deadlift. The key here is to mimic the movement path of the bar as you would on a traditional RDL and keep the tension and driver of the exercise as the glutes and hamstrings.For hypertrophy there is no better dumbbell exercise for legs than the Bulgarian Split Squat. The fact that you can either front load the exercise to better hit the quads by standing upright or back load the exercise to better hit the glutes by leaning forward, gives you a great option and flexibility here as well. The best part about this leg exercise is that it also allows for intensification techniques to be added, like one and a half reps, that can further induce overload and muscle growth.For power, I love the dumbbell jump squat. The exercise trains triple extension through the ankles, knees and hips and is a great precursor to performing the power clean, hang clean and even the squat clean shown later in this video as the total body option. Make sure to land soft and eccentrically load through your quads, reset and perform the next rep with precision and quality. When training for power it isn’t about training to failure or fatigue but producing a limited amount of highly precise reps.Speaking of the total body movement, my pick here is the dumbbell squat clean. This is great because it requires you to lift the dumbbells from the floor and clean them. You can add an additional press overhead if desired to involve even more upper body and make this an even better total body movement.The metabolic dumbbell exercise of choice is a killer. This is called Walk the Box. This is something that I did when the USO’s and Sheamus from the WWE came in for a lower body workout and it brought them to their knees, literally. The idea here is that you want to train to metabolic fatigue and find a way to resist the burn for as long as you can. The buildup of metabolites creates a chemical stimulus for muscle growth that is dependent on exploring this type of brutal but effective training.For the correctives and specialized dumbbell exercise categories we want to target the hip complexes. One from the outside in and the other from the inside out. The adductor muscles are hit incredibly well with the Goblet Adductor Lunge shown. Make sure that all of the work to get back to the standing position is being done by the muscles on the inside of your leg. On the offset lunge, make sure you keep your pelvis level and stable to make the glute medius do all the work.As you can see, th

The deadlift is one of the most fundamental exercises you can include in any strength program, but is it killing your gains? In this video, I react to the recent interview Robert Oberst did with Joe Rogan on the JRE podcast in which the world champion strongman stated that unless you were a competitive deadlifted, you should avoid the movement all together in your workouts because the risk reward ratio is not worth the potential injury particularly if you are a professional athlete.I think it’s fair to start by saying that I have been known to bury a few bad exercises in my iron graveyard. Specifically, I believe that the upright row and behind the neck shoulder press are two of the worst exercises you could ever include in your workouts and should be avoided at all costs. Not only are they highly likely to lead to injury but there are superior alternatives that nullify even doing them in the first place.That said, the deadlift is not one of those exercises that I would suggest not doing. I believe it is one of the most fundamental movement patterns for not just our training plans but for every day life. The need to perform it correctly however is magnified due to the fact that the loads capable of being lifted on this exercise exceed what may be able to be done on any other single exercise.I do think it’s helpful to apply some context to what Robert is saying however. He is coming from an experience set that demanded he lift as much as he possibly could in order to win whatever competition he was competing in. The difference between first and second place could come down to lifting a weight or not. If a compromise in form was needed to do that, so be it. The end result however was that along with some titles came some unwanted body breakdown that could lead to regrets down the road.The comments made about the reality of pro sports weight rooms are very true. I can tell you having spent a great deal of time in professional sports training athletes that these guys are not often the best lifters. They got to where they are because of their incredible innate talents and physical gifts. Often times, they learned poor lifting technique at an early age and their ability to compensate through it makes it difficult to spot as they make their way up through college and to the pros.Forcing these athletes to perform lifts that are supposed to be good for them when their bodies may not be prepared for them properly, could lead to repercussions that could cost them their careers and the purpose of why they are where they are in the first place. This is especially true when you realize that there are other exercises like the power clean and hang clean that can give a training effect with fewer side effects if they are dealing with deadlifting limitations.This all underscores the importance of redefining what strength really is. It is not simply adding more and more plates to the ends of the bar. Instead, it is realizing that strength is founded on stability. The ability to keep your body free from compensation and lift a weight as mechanically intended without subjecting areas of the body to stresses they shouldn’t normally incur. This doesn’t always manifest itself as blatantly bad form. As discussed in the video, it can be a lot less obvious.The bottom line is, the deadlift is an important exercise that I believe should not be avoided. It should be learned and learned early however. If you’re looking for programs that teach you how to do this important lift the right way and program it into our day by day workout programs, be sure to click the link below and pick out the ATHLEAN-X program that best suits your specific goals.For more videos on how to deadlift and the best deadlift tutorial, be sure to s

If you have a hard time building big triceps then you are going to want to try this. It takes just 6 minutes and it takes the science of triceps contraction to a new level to get your triceps to respond better to all of the exercises you perform for them. This has to do with building a better mind muscle connection with the triceps muscle by taking it through the components of its two joint contraction capability.If you do not have good neuromuscular control or proprioceptive awareness of your body and joints then you will almost surely have issues developing a muscle to its fullest. We can test just how much of a problem this is for us by going through the three steps shown in the video.First, you want to try and straighten your elbow and squeeze your triceps as hard as possible. Be sure that you are actually straightening the elbow to lockout rather than leaving the last two inches of the extension unstraightened. This is key. Full triceps contraction only occurs when the joint is extended fully and maximum shortening of the muscle is achieved. You want to see if you can generate any contraction discomfort by squeezing in this position. If you don’t then you have some degree of mind muscle disruption but you will want to move onto the next test.Now, keeping your elbow straight, try and move your arm back behind your body and evaluate once again what type of discomfort (if any) you get from this position. If you have a good mind muscle awareness you will definitely feel a tight squeeze or slight cramp in the triceps muscle from putting your arm in this position.Finally, add one final component of the test by externally rotating your shoulders and getting your forearms to face forward. Repeat the drill by getting your straight arm back behind your body and once again evaluate what type of cramping, discomfort or tightness you may have in your triceps. If you don’t feel any of that in any of the three positions then you definitely have to do something about it since this is holding back the effectiveness of all of the tricep work you are doing.To rectify this, try the simple 6 minute routine shown here.1. Perform a pulsing triceps pushdown in just the final few inches of the rep for 45 seconds. You can use lighter weights here. The focus is on driving a hard contraction via the triceps muscle and not on worrying about progressive overload or strength. Rest 15 seconds and move onto the next movement.2. Lying face down on an incline bench, take two light dumbbells and move them back behind your body while maintaining straight elbows. Pulse your straight arms back even a few more inches, making sure not to let them drop past the level of the torso. Do this once again for 45 seconds and rest 15 seconds before moving onto the last exercise. Note, if needed, you may use no weight here if needed in order to ensure strong contractions.3. Finally, rotate your shoulders from this same position so that your forearms are pointing down towards the floor. For this final movement you not only want to keep your arms behind your body with your shoulders turned back but you want to once again reinforce the final two inches of elbow extension by quickly bending and extending the elbows just a little bit on every rep. Perform this for 45 seconds, rest 15 seconds and repeat this entire 3 minute circuit one more time for a total of 6 minutes.You will be able to do this quick routine for your triceps throughout the week without having to worry about it interfering with your currently programmed strength or hypertrophy work. With the absence of eccentric overload and the fact that it is not neurologically demanding as rep max strength work would be, you will be able to work on improving your mind muscle

If you want to build a bigger chest and prefer to use a home chest workout to do it, then you have found the right video. In just 10 minutes, I’m going to show you how to train your chest, shoulders and arms to build bigger muscles with just your own bodyweight and a single chair. You won’t even need a lot of space to get this workout done, making it perfect for those that are traveling or simply can’t afford an expensive home gym or membership.The workout is also going to be scalable from rank beginners all the way up to the most advanced. The key to the structure is that it uses reverse tabata timing and progressively easier exercises to ensure that even as you get fatigued, you’ll be able to keep the pain coming for each of the 20 intervals that make up this workout.The first thing you have to decide is whether you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate or advanced when it comes to your upper body strength and chest development. If you are a beginner, you will start with exercise six and proceed through exercise ten. If you are a more advanced, you will start with exercise one and proceed to exercise five. Finally, if you are intermediate (which is what I’m going to show you in the video) then you will start with exercise three and go to exercise seven.The key is to perform each of the five exercises for four rounds (a total of two minutes each) with a 10 second on and 20 second off cadence. If you want to stick with the same exercises from workout to workout, you can always make this progressively harder and add progressive overload by gradually increasing your work time and decreasing your rest time. The best place to increase to would be 15 seconds of work and rest time each round. For this home chest workout, you are going to start with 10 seconds of work time and 20 seconds of rest.You will find, as I said, that no matter which level of difficulty you start with you will be performing easier versions of the pushup exercise as the minutes wear on. This doesn’t mean that the workout is easy however. Because the cumulative fatigue is going to become a factor, you will want to be sure that you don’t underestimate the challenge that lies ahead of you.Having done the intermediate version of this home chest follow along workout, I can tell you first hand that this is no walk in the park. The hardest part is making sure that you are ready to go from the very first second of the work interval. You are only doing 10 actual seconds of work each round so you want to be sure that you aren’t moving too slowly during the transition that will cost you a valuable rep or two in the process.If you like the intensity of this quick but effective 10 minute home chest workout then you are likely to love what my complete home total body workout plan XERO could do for you in just 6 weeks. You can find the complete chest workout available at our website in the link below. Train without a bar, bench, bands or anything at all and see how to build ripped lean muscle in less then 50 days.For more videos on how to build bigger pecs and a big chest without equipment and the best home chest workout for mass, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at the link below and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

The perfect abs workout should consist of exercises for not just the six pack or rectus abdominis but other important muscles of the core as well. That said, even that doesn’t make the ab workout complete. In order to round out your midsection you will need to hit the obliques, transverse abdominis and serratus with a variety of carefully selected ab exercises to hit every function of the abs in the right sequence. That is what we do in this video.The problem with ab focused training isn’t just that it trains simply a fraction of what the core muscles are capable of but also that many people choose the wrong exercises or ones that duplicate the same function. For instance, if you look at the basic crunch, you will see that there are many different ways to perform it. Most of them are just duplications of the same top down motion. Putting too many of these too early in your ab workout is going to make it nearly impossible to perform the more difficult lower ab movements or rotational oblique exercises later on.You see, there is a specific sequence of ab exercises that is going to give you the best chance of performing them with optimal energy. You ideally want to start with movements that move the legs towards the rib cage. The weight of the legs alone can be enough resistance to challenge the muscles of the abs (particularly if you are a beginner). General fatigue from your ab workout is going to make it imperative that you start here. Then, you want to incorporate rotation into these lower ab movements, followed by the rotationally driven oblique exercises. Finish up your routine by transitioning to bottom and top half moving together (in our midrange movements) and then all top down and top down rotational exercises. The final piece of the puzzle is the serratus. Many people will overlook this muscle as an important core muscle but it truly is. Because of it’s role in stabilizing the trunk by keeping the shoulder blades in contact with the rib cage, they have an integral role working with the obliques. Both control rotation. The obliques controlling the rotation of the entire torso while the serratus are controlling the rotation of the scapula around the rib cage.The other important element of a perfect ab workout is making sure that you hit each of the major functions of the abs and midsection muscles. It’s not enough to just curl your trunk up as if you are doing a crunch. The role of the abs is sometimes to prevent motion all together. In this perfect ab workout, there will be anti-rotational exercises as well as anti-lateral and anti-extension movements.As you make your way through the workout however you also don’t want to miss the chance to train explosively. When you train like an athlete you always want to speed up what you slow down with your heavier weight training. The sledgehammer swing is a perfect example of this at the advanced level. Perform this powerful ground based ab exercise explosively and you will learn to use your lower body to generate force that your core has to command.Here is how to construct the perfect abs workout for beginners:1. ISO Reverse Crunches x 30-60 seconds2. Seated Ab Circles x 30-60 seconds (alternate cw and ccw directions)REST 30 SECONDS3. Recliner Elbow to Knee Tucks x 30-60 seconds 4. Opposite Side Tuck Planks x 30-60 secondsREST 30 SECONDS5. Oak Tree Stepouts x 30-60 seconds each side6. Banded Pulldowns x 30-60 seconds7. Plank Pushaways x 30-60 secondsHere is how to construct the perfect abs workout for more advanced lifters:1. Hanging ‘X’ Raises x 30-60 seconds2. Hanging Leg Spirals x 30-60 seconds (alternate right and left twists)REST 20 SECONDS3.

In this video, I’m going to show you how to lose weight without ever having to count calories again. One thing I hear all the time is “how do you stay so lean year round”. People assume you have to eat like a bird or be hunched over a scale calculating every crumb you put onto your plate. The reality of the situation couldn’t be any further from that. I don’t really give nutrition that much thought anymore because I’ve been using the same effective approach for the past decade and it has allowed me to stay lean and ripped year in and year out for over 20 years now.One of the reasons people get nutrition wrong is that they are overwhelmed by choices. Low carb, low fat, Keto, IF, IIFYM, the carnivore diet. Which is the best? What about calories in / calories out? Just measuring everything and entering it into an app? Where do you start? Which one works…and which one works the fastest? The truth is, they all ‘work’. From a purely scientific perspective they’re all accomplishing the same goal, limiting the amount of calories that you consume. They’re just doing it different ways. The problem creeps in when you’re stuck with an eating plan that doesn’t really fit your lifestyle for the long term and you end up abandoning it for your old, unhealthy way of eating. You know, the one which got you out of shape in the first place.I realize that there are people who choose to do specific diet plans because of potential health benefits that they might enjoy. For example, some people who suffer from inflammation have reported having relief with a Ketogenic approach. If your meal plan is meeting your personal needs and your health goals; it’s fine with me. More power to you. I’m not trying to convert people to my way of eating. For the majority of people out there however, they just want to look good, get leaner and maybe even carve out a six pack. For them, no matter what they do they often end up right back to where they started from often with an additional few extra pounds. If that’s you, you should give my easy to follow approach a try. It’s worked for me and it’s what I have all of my pro athletes doing.To start I divide my plate into thirds and dedicate a full third to my preferred protein. The remainder of the plate is divided up again for carbs with twice as many fibrous carbs occupying space compared to starchy carbs. For an example of this, be sure and check out the video where I demonstrate how I divide the plate and also show some specific meals I eat. It’s also important to mention that just because you’ve divided your plate up correctly doesn’t give you license to start stacking it higher and higher. That would defeat the purpose. You might be wondering how this could possibly work, how could he be eating pasta and rice without measuring or entering data into a calorie counting app to ensure he’s staying up on his macros. The fact is, if you’re making a conscious effort to fill your plate the way I describe, the rest sort of automatically falls into place. Fibrous carbs will provide you with the vitamins and minerals, your protein needs as an athlete are going to be met as we’ve prioritized protein by giving it the most real estate on our plate. To ensure you have plenty of energy (and your sanity) you’re still getting plenty of access to delicious carbs like rice, potatoes, pasta, couscous etc… Eating to be healthy and lean doesn’t have to be complicated, if you’ve found yourself banging your head against the wall trying to decide between wether you can eat breakfast or you should be writing off rice for the rest of your life, give my approach a shot. In even a few short weeks I bet you start to see a difference. What’s best, your going to get results without

In the past year, I’ve lost an inch on my arm size. The good news is, I know how it happened and I can make sure it doesn’t happen to you too. In this video, I’m going to show you the single exercise that accounted for this extra inch of triceps mass. Beyond this, I’m going to show you the science of how it works and the right way to perform this triceps exercise.First, it helps to understand the back story. Back when I was with the New York Mets, I made a friendly wager with Carlos Beltran that I could throw a ball from the rightfield corner to third base on the fly. I lost more than the bet. I wound up tearing the labrum in my right shoulder and spent years having to train around the injury without surgery. Last year, when trying to brace a fall and not land on one of my infant sons, I landed awkwardly on my outstretched left arm and did the same damage to my left labrum.During this time, I have had to make modifications to my arm training. These modifications, while allowing me to heal my shoulder once again without surgery have not come without some repercussions. Mostly, I have experienced a drop in about an inch of the size of my arms, and I can attribute it to not doing a single exercise.The exercise I stopped doing the way I normally do, or even all together, was the lying triceps extension. Some call this a nosebreaker or a skull crusher. To understand how significant this triceps exercise is to the overall mass of your arms it helps to look at the anatomy. Different from the other two heads of the triceps, the long head has an attachment at the shoulder blade. This bodes differently for how you want to train it.In order to work the muscle through it’s full range of motion, you want to find some movements that place the triceps on stretch. In order to do this you have to raise the arm overhead to create more distance between the elbow and the point of attachment on the back of the shoulder blade. This is easily accomplished with exercises like the seated overhead dumbbell extension and the more effective lying triceps extension.The issue is, not only does this position place the most amount of stretch on the triceps but it also places a shoulder that has issues in a compromising position. With the injury to my labrum, I was unable to reach the same levels of depth on the exercise or even the same range of motion without feeling discomfort in the shoulder joint and labrum. I stopped doing the movement because of this.What resulted, was a decrease in the size of my arms. The good news however is, I did train smart and gave my arm a chance to properly heal without needing to resort to surgery to fix it. Now, with the arm feeling good again, I can already see a return of the size of my arms by getting back to the staple bicep and tricep exercises I used to build up the arm size in the first place.If you want a complete program that shows you how to train hard and smart without having to set yourself back forever when injuries or issues come up, head to athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X program that best matches your current goals. See how to build your arms fast and build ripped athletic muscle in just the next 90 days at the link below.For more videos on how to build bigger arms and the right triceps and biceps exercises to build your arms fast, be sure to subscribe to the channel here on youtube below and make sure to turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

If you’re thinking about adding rack pulls into your workout, be sure to check out this video before you do. If you’ve looked up the exercise online you’ve probably found video after of video of guys performing rack pulls. Generally you’ll see it done one of two ways, from a position slightly below the knee as an auxiliary lift to support the deadlift, or from a much higher position above the knee typically done to overload the traps and glutes.The latter version has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, mostly for its ability to allow the athlete to load up the weight…a lot.When you’re using some of the largest, strongest muscles in the body for a such a short range of motion the weight can get really heavy, really fast. It’s not uncommon to see people doing rack pulls with upwards of two or three times their best deadlift. For someone with a meager deadlift that can still amount to 700-800 pounds. That’s significantly more weight than on any other exercise they’re likely performing, and therein lies the problem. For athletes who are eager to keep loading weight on the bar, it’s easy to fall into the trap of performing the exercise with rounded shoulders. When the weight gets that heavy it becomes difficult to keep the shoulder blades retracted and tight. What they don’t realize is that this compressed thoracic posture under tremendous load can set you up for thoracic outlet syndrome. While thoracic outlet syndrome is commonly seen in people with repetitive overhead motion, it can still occur by improperly performing an exercise such as the rack pull.Scapular retraction is often the weak link in this type of move, in order to accommodate the extra loads, the lifter will likely let their shoulders drop forward and hang down. This can cause the collar bone to rotate downward and put pressure on the delicate veins, arteries and nerves that are in the thoracic area. The result is pinching, stretching and unwanted downward traction on the Subclavian artery, Subclavian vein and Brachial Plexus an already long nerve which runs from the neck to the hands. Sufferers of thoracic outlet syndrome experience a number symptoms including muscle wasting in the fleshy base of your thumb, numbness or tingling in the arm or fingers, pain or ache in your neck, shoulder or hands as well as an overall weakening grip.The worst part is that these symptoms don’t occur instantly allowing the athlete to pin point the exact cause, but rather gradually, over time. Athletes often experience shoulder pain and attribute it to too much pressing in their workouts, not realizing the true cause.If you’re looking to build your traps, grip and posterior chain you’d be better off performing a traditional deadlift where the sticking points of the exercise will likely limit the weight to something that your body can handle. Faults in a deadlift are easy to spot and can be quickly corrected. If you want to supplement your deadlift with an exercise that allows you to overload more you could perform the rack pull below the knee. The greater range of motion prohibits you from making such huge weight jumps which will likely allow you to keep your shoulders back and stay in good upright position. Whichever you choose, be sure to engage the shoulder girdle, remain tight and hold strong posture. If you want more videos to help you to put the science back in strength, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.Build Muscle in 90 Days - http://athleanx.com/x/my-workoutsSubscribe to this channel here - http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24