ATHLEAN-X™

The hip flexors are one of the first areas we rush to stretch since they tend to feel tight more often than any other muscle group. The problem is, tightness can often be confused for weakness and when you stretch a weak muscle you are only making the problem worse. In this video, I’m going to show you how to determine if your hip flexors are tight or weak and the appropriate approach depending on those findings. First we need to talk a little bit about anatomy however. If you have ever had low back pain while doing ab exercises, then you know why the hip flexors are so important. They originate on the lumbar vertebrae and can pull on your lower back when they get tight. They can also wreak havoc elsewhere when weak. Determining whether or not you are dealing with a tight or a weak hip flexor is crucial. To start however, you have to understand that the hip flexors are not a single muscle group. Instead, there are 5 muscles that contribute to the act of lifting the hip into flexion. Three of these (TFL, rectus femoris, and sartorius) originate at the level of the hip and the iliac crest which means that they are at a mechanical advantage to lift the knee to the level of the hip but are at a disadvantage to lift them any higher. Two other muscles however (the psoas and iliac) are found at a higher origin and are capable of lifting the hip past ninety degrees. Knowing the difference between these muscles is a crucial step in determining the right course of action once you do your tests. Speaking of the tests, the first thing you want to do is see if you have a true tightness caused by muscle shortening. To do this, you are going to perform what is called a Thomas Test. Start by sitting at the edge of a bench or box with your legs halfway over the edge. Lean back and pull both legs into your chest and be sure to flatten the lower back against the surface. From here, slowly drop one leg while tightly hugging the other to your chest. You want to observe two things about the down leg. First, is the thigh capable of making contact with the bench and second is the knee able to bend and hang freely at 80 or 90 degrees of flexion. If you find that either of these is not happening then you will want to straighten your knee and see what happens. If upon straightening you find that the thigh goes down to the surface, then your tight rectus femoris was what was keeping the leg up and you’d want to stretch that. If the leg didn’t drop down even after straightening the leg then you are dealing with a tight psoas or iliacus that could benefit from stretching. The key is however, many times the Thomas Test is normal but the hip still feels as if it should be stretched. This is usually due to fatigue caused by having a weak hip flexor. In this case, you want to proceed to testing your strength. You can do this by either hugging one knee to your chest while standing tall and then releasing it. If you can hold it above 90 degrees but feel a cramp in the outer hip, then you likely have a high hip flexor weakness in the iliacus or psoas. If you can’t hold it there and the first place you can gain control of the thigh is at 90 degrees or lower, then once again you likely have a weakness. Alternatively you can place your foot on a flat surface high enough to place your knee at a starting level above the hip. From here, lift the foot while standing upright and see if you can hold it off the box for at least 15 seconds without the cramping discussed earlier. If weak, you can use this as the exercise to strengthen it and can add resistance by placing a band around your foot or ankle. Bottom line

There are definitely some workout techniques that, while effective, are not universally recommended for various reasons. In this video, I show you my 5 best workout tips and tactics that you can apply for more muscle gain if you have the workout confidence and space in your gym to get them done. I’m not holding back in this one, as I believe each of these techniques has the ability to deliver big results if you are able to do them. I start with the issue of workout confidence however. Nobody knows what it feels like more than I do to enter a gym feeling self conscious. When I first started to train I always felt as if someone was looking at me no matter what exercise I was doing. They were looking to see if I was going the exercise wrong or if I was struggling with a weight that most people should handle rather easily. When I started to focus more on me and not on what people were thinking of me, everything changed. In fact, I realized that most people do the exact same thing. They are focused on what they need to do and couldn’t care less what others are doing around them. Once you have this level of gym confidence to try new exercises and see how they work for your body, the restraints are lifted and the results start to go to another level. The 5 best workout techniques that I rarely recommend are held back due to issues of equipment usage in commercial gyms and the fact that one of the exercises could make you feel self conscious if you are just a beginner. I’ll start with that one. The stuck reps used on squats is a tremendous way to bust through a plateau and take your squat strength to a new level. Instead of quitting after completing a set of back squats to failure, rest the bar on the pins and try to push it off as hard as you can. If you truly went to failure you will not be able to move the bar and this will become an overcoming isometric. This form of static muscle contraction is great for recruiting extra motor units and overtime allowing you to get more out of the exercise when you perform it in the future. Beyond that is the issue of taking up too much equipment in the gym. For instance, doing inverted rows requires that you use a straight bar in a squat rack (without ever doing a squat). Some people get testy about doing anything but squatting in the rack. That said, this is a great upper back and potentially explosive posterior chain exercise that really doesn’t work better anywhere else. The same can be said about the run the rack technique for biceps. The combination of dropping the weight with minimal rest afforded by the proximity of the dumbbells to each other allows me to keep the overload coming even when the biceps have been fatigued and or taken to failure. Of course, a lot of people tend to use the dumbbells in the rack so it has to be carefully timed so that you are not obstructing others from getting their workouts in as well. The same can be said for using two benches to perform the taps pushups or even a squat rack for squatting but doing so for 10 sets of 10, which can take up a good 20 minutes in one spot. The key is finding a way to not compromise your confidence, the effectiveness of the workout or the courtesy of others around you when you’re training. If you are looking for a complete training program that gives you options to not just train at the gym but in the comfort and privacy of your own home as well, head to http://athleanx.com and get one of the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems. Stop holding back and instead step out of your comfort zone to realize all new gains in strength and muscle size with me coaching you every step

Pullups can be one of the harder exercises to do a lot of reps of simply because they demand you have good strength and control of your own bodyweight. In this video, I’m going to show you how to do 20 or more pullups in a single set regardless of how many you can do right now. The key is to use the pullup progression I lay out as well as the instant fix that you can use to start doing more pullups in your very next set. First it is important to understand that a pullup is not just a back exercise. There is far more that goes into executing a proper pull up. You need strength in your arms, forearms, and core as well. That’s right. If your core isn’t strong enough or you are forgetting to activate it when doing this exercise then you are definitely costing yourself a chance to increase the amount of reps you are performing on this popular upper body exercise. To increase the number of pullups you are doing you need to learn the right progression. I like having people set up a bar at about neck height and then grabbing it with one hand. The angle at which you align your torso to the bar is dependent on the ability level and your strength. If you are just starting out or consider yourself more of a beginner, you would start with your body more upright and behind the bar. If you were more advanced, you could get your body more beneath the bar. Either way, you want to grab the bar with one hand and try and pull yourself up to it. The key is to keep your elbows out wide and not allow your body to twist as you pull up. This will demand that your core is activated here as well. As I already mentioned, this is going to come in handy and useful when it comes to plugging the energy leaks later on in this video. The other mistake people make when performing this one arm inverted row is that they allow their forearm to collapse as they pull in and the hand winds up making contact with the chest. To perform this right, you want to make sure the hand is in line with the shoulder and touching the outside of the chest when your body is as high as it gets towards the bar. Keep working yourself down until your strength allows you to be under the bar. Make sure you work both arms each time you do this. You will be surprised at how quickly you will be able to make the transition to get lower and lower and this will quickly start translating over to your ability to do pullups. Next, once up in the pullup position you want to be sure that you plug the energy leaks that are common and killing your ability to knock out a lot of pullups. Do this by tightening your quads, pointing your feet towards the ground, squeezing your glutes, and then contracting your abs. Your body will experience a tightness that has been lacking and will instantly help you to transfer more of the force you are exerting into the bar to do more pullups. No it is not a magic trick, it is just biomechanics and efficiency that is helping you to do this. If you are looking for more detailed step by step instructions on how to do more than just pullups, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. I coach you through every workout and train you just like a pro athlete. Start seeing next level gains by taking your training to the next level. For more videos on how to do more pullups and the reason why you can’t do more pullups right now, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

When WWE superstar Jinder Mahal visited the ATHLEAN-X gym the other day for an injury assessment and workout, we captured it all on film. In this video, you’re going to get a behind the scenes look into what goes into being one of the top wrestlers in the business and the type of attention paid to his workouts and training to make sure he not only gets to the top but stays there. Jinder Mahal is the epitome of hard work. Nothing has come easy for him. His work ethic and desire to be the best have propelled him from the middle of the card on the WWE roster to one of the top talents in the company. It is therefore no surprise when you see the level of determination he has and the focus with which he approaches his training as I witnessed in his recent trip to the X-box. After competing in a match the night before against AJ Styles, Jinder came in a bit banged up. Not only was his previously injured shoulder (torn labrum) barking but so was his non-injured right shoulder. Unsure of how exactly it happened, I put him through an evaluation to try and determine root causes that could be longer standing and contributing to the reoccurrences. What became apparent quickly is the trap dominance that Jinder has developed in his physique. Nearly every overhead move is initiated and highly contributed to by the upper traps with very little activation of the lower traps. This not only leads to a physique imbalance, but more importantly, structural imbalance that can lead to injury down the road. The goal was to take him through the various ways that he could incorporate more activation and attention to these smaller muscles without having to devote an entire program to an already packed agenda and a workout that has to be efficient in order to keep him feeling fresh for the rigorous wrestling schedule these guys are known for. Using the lat pulldown machine, and a heavy dose of activation training tips we covered many ways for Jinder to start getting more out of every workout he does. The transition to how he could train with heavy weights without reinjuring the shoulder as well as workouts that can be included for a conditioning and strength training effect were included as well and will appear in part II of this video. WWE wrestlers are known for more than just their athletic ability and in ring talents. They also have to be aesthetically impressive and must even be an engaging personality and able to entertain the crowds on the microphone. None of that can happen however if you are unable to stay in the ring because you are sidelined with an injury. This video showcases how important it is for a WWE wrestler and any athlete to pay just as much attention to what they do to prepare to step into the field of competition as they do when they are in it. Preparation is the key for optimized performance and longevity regardless which sport they play. So take a look into the Jinder Mahal workout and assessment video and see what it looks like to step into the X-Box and work with Jeff Cavaliere. For a complete day by day workout plan that allows you to train like an athlete, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Follow a step by step plan of workouts and meal plans to get in the best shape of your life. For more videos on how to train like an athlete and other WWE workouts like Sting, be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Eating healthy is a requirement if you want to get ripped and lose body fat fast. The problem is, often times foods masquerade themselves as healthy when they are anything but. In this video, I show you how to spot the 8 biggest healthy foods making you fat. We call these trap foods because they sneak up on you when you least expect it. I don’t care how much you are training or working out, if you refuse to get your nutrition in check you will never look as lean as you should or could. Proper nutrition and good food choices are required to get ripped. What I hate however is when you are misled into thinking that certain foods should be in your diet because they are “healthy”. You blindly trust the guidance and then wind up frustrated when you aren’t seeing the results for your efforts. In order to fix this once and for all, you simply have to educate yourself about these traps so you can avoid them in favor of better choices. First up is guacamole. Recently, I did a video on how the healthy fats in avocado are great for your body. The problem is, people confuse healthy foods for lean foods. Packing a huge calorie wallop with every tablespoon, we tend to overlook the impact eating this food can quickly have on our waistline by eating almost 10-12 tablespoons per serving on average. Sure, healthy fats are healthy, but like anything else…eaten in excess you will quickly run into trouble with them. Low fat or lite versions of foods are often way worse than the full fat, regular versions. Beyond the fact that they usually just do a sugar for fat swap, you’re also getting a bunch of chemicals thrown in to these highly processed foods that you probably want to avoid all together. Now I know a lot of people like to have their morning glass of OJ or other fruit juice, but if you are looking to get ripped then you are far better off opting for water and getting your fruit in solid form. The amount of sugars packed into these “healthy” drinks is astounding. In fact, you are likely to find that a comparison between them and a glass of soda yield almost the same amount. Add in the fact that liquid calories are far too easy to consume (and don’t provide the fiber benefits of the solid forms) and you’ve got another reason to avoid these. Sushi is supposed to be a healthy food option that packs a protein punch in the process. Not so fast. In fact, with just a sliver of fish in every piece, you’re getting just 15% protein and instead packing in the starchy carbs with enough sticky rice to hold a small fort together! Add in the sodium IV drip you’re getting from your “low sodium” soy sauce and you’ve just made another perfect trap food. Opt for the sashimi instead and you’ll get what you thought you were getting when you iniitally decided on having sushi. There’s something about the word granola that just sounds so healthy. Maybe it’s that it sounds like the word grain? Whatever the case, you can’t ignore the fact that this is made up of calorically dense ingredients that just won’t play well in an attempt to lose fat. If you don’t make it yourself then you’re going to be guaranteeing yourself a ton of sugar and syrup as well, as both are needed to hold all of this “goodness” together. There are more trap foods not covered here in the description but you will find in this video. You want to be sure if you are not avoiding them all together that you are at least educated about their pitfalls so you can limit them in your diet when you are trying to get and stay lean. If you are looking for a complete meal plan to help you get ripped and stay ripped step by s

One of the biggest problems people have with ab training is that they rarely feels it in their abs. One of the main contributors to that is the involvement of the hip flexors. In this video, we are going to cover some tips that will help you disengage the hip flexors so you can better engage your abdominals and really start to carve out those 6-pack abs. A simple way to disengage the hip flexors is to engage the antagonist muscles, the hamstrings. One hack you can try is to squeeze a foam roller between your heels and the back of your upper thighs. Doing so ensures you’ve engaged the hamstrings and thus ‘turned off’ your hip flexors. What’s cool about this trick is that if you get sloppy you’ll know it because the foam roller will fall, or start to slip out of your grasp. Start with the upper abs. With the hamstrings and glutes engaged by pulling against a foam roller with your heels into your legs, we’ll raise our entire shoulder girdle off the ground. Don’t NOT pull your head and neck but rather fold our shoulders up. Imagine trying to touch your chest to your upper abs, that intense contraction you should feel is a sign that you’re on the right track. Do 10 of those with the same strict form squeezing the muscle at the top. Imagine your six pack is a wet towel and when you squeeze that contraction you’re forcing all the water out of it. When you’ve completed all your reps move onto levitation twist. Again, keep the hamstrings under tension and make sure to squeeze at the top of the movement. When trying to get 6-pack abs you always want to put focus on a solid contraction, don’t just go through the motion. Perform 5 reps to each side here. Lastly, we’ll move onto the lower abs or bottom up ab exercise portion. Continue to use your foam roller in place, if you don’t have a foam roller you can use anything really, the goals is to force a contraction in your hamstrings by pushing your heels into the back of your upper legs. Once you’ve got that going start by raising your pelvis off the ground. A tip I like to give with performing any lower ab training, is to think of it as moving the pelvis rather than lifting the legs. Your legs are really just the moment arm or resistance that can be used to make the movement more difficult depending on how far out you extend them. Perform 10 solid reps of this move making sure to contract your abs as hard as you can to really get that squeeze. Perform this short sequence at the start of you ab workout and you should notice a better mind muscle connection through the rest of your ab training. If you are looking for a complete program that will not only build tighten your abs but everything else, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and build muscular, and a ripped midsection in no time. For more videos on ab workouts and ab exercises for 6-pack abs, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

When WWE superstar Jinder Mahal visited the ATHLEAN-X gym the other day for an injury assessment and workout, we captured it all on film. In this video, you’re going to get a behind the scenes look into what goes into being one of the top wrestlers in the business and the type of attention paid to his workouts and training to make sure he not only gets to the top but stays there. Accompanied by the Singh Brothers, Part II of the Jinder Mahal workout series wraps up the evaluation of the previously injured shoulder and transitions to workouts and training techniques that can be used to help strengthen the area and keep him training while continuing to address the rehabilitation needed to fortify the area against future injury. We cover the importance of front loaded pressing, which can be achieved most easily with an Olympic bar in a landmine setup. Pressing from this position puts the arm in the anatomically friendly scapular plane. Not only does this allow pressing exercises to be performed by those that are dealing with a bit of shoulder discomfort but it does so in a more natural plane and minimizes the risk of injury. Many different exercise variations are covered to make sure and hit the shoulders from all angles and functions. Pressing movements like the bench press and pushups are also covered extensively here. The high degree of shoulder involvement in these exercises demands that we address them to make sure that the more mobile shoulder joint isn’t compromised when doing these popular moves. The importance of once again limiting the trap dominance that can quickly alter the biomechanics of these exercises is addressed as well as techniques for more readily activating the chest and making it be the prime mover of these movements. Finally, two quick workout circuits are demonstrated…the first of which can be used as a finisher to an existing workout and the second as an advanced rehab protocol to assist with shoulder stabilization. Neither of these takes much time and the variety of the exercises that can be included and substituted in here makes for an ever changing challenge. The key is, both reinforce the adjustments that are needed based on the findings of Jinder’s evaluation to not only get his shoulder back to full health but most importantly, keep it there. So take a look into the Jinder Mahal workout and assessment video and see what it looks like to step into the X-Box and work with Jeff Cavaliere. For a complete day by day workout plan that allows you to train like an athlete, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Follow a step by step plan of workouts and meal plans to get in the best shape of your life. For more videos on how to train like an athlete and other WWE workouts like Sting, be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Most people that workout fall in love with the pushing exercises because they help to build the muscle that we care most about. When you train your chest, triceps, shoulders, or even your abs you are feeding into a front to back imbalance that is not only costing you a chance to have muscle symmetry but to maintain healthy joints and muscles in the process. In this video, I’m going to show you one thing that you need to do at the end of every workout you do to help counteract the problems caused by your current workout. Most workout programs never come close to programming enough shoulder external rotation or scapular work to offset the high volumes of pushing that come with every program to build bigger muscles and look ripped. As a physical therapist and strength coach, it’s impossible for me to draw up a workout program that ignores one over the other. That said, I have accepted the fact that most of those that create workout programs are not physical therapists and do not have the experience with programming that is needed to be aware of these postural pitfalls and muscle imbalances that come from putting workouts together the wrong way. To counteract that, I say there is one thing that you need to start doing right now after every workout that will at least start to get you back on the right track. It is a simple two exercise combination that helps to strengthen the muscles of the upper back, lower traps, rear delts and rotator cuff that will offset the work that you are doing in the rest of your workouts. Perform a set of face pulls to failure and then immediately go into a set of overhead rope pulls. The goal on the face pull is to not just pull the handles of the rope towards your face but to externally rotate your hands as you do so. Try to pull your hands so that your thumbs are pointing behind you at the end of the rep. You also want to make sure that your elbows are pointing down and not higher than the level of your shoulders in order to keep your joints in a healthy position. Next you want to perform the overhead trap raise. Here you also want to try and rotate your thumbs out as you raise your arms overhead to clear more room in the shoulder joint and allow you to get maximum elevation over your head. The lower traps are the muscles that fire to keep your shoulder blades in the right position and help strengthen your shoulder girdle and posture. Do three sets of this superset combination at the end of every single workout you do. I don’t care if you are training chest, legs, push, or even pull. Whatever your split is, you need to start accumulating the volume in this posterior chain if you want to start overcoming the posture, imbalance and tendency to increase the likelihood of shoulder injury. If you are looking for a complete program that puts the science back in strength and shows you how to get the most out of every workout, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and overlook nothing in your workouts. For more videos on how to fix your posture and how to get rid of rounded shoulders, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

If you want to grow bigger muscles you have to first learn the three options you have for doing it and then not get attached to any one. The biggest problem people have is that they get stuck on one particular method for building muscle and are afraid to explore other avenues for doing it. This happens because they see success with something and fear that veering from that will cause them to lose gains. In this video, I’ll show you the three main methods of hypertrophy and how you need to explore each of them at different times in your training if you want to reach your true muscle size potential. I will show you the pros and cons of each that wind up costing you the maximum amount of muscle mass that you can pack on if you dwell in one method at the exclusion of the other two. The three main methods of hypertrophy or muscle growth are progressive overload, metabolic stress and eccentric muscle damage. Each of these has their own benefits as well as drawbacks that tend to make them rely on each other for best results. We can start with progressive overload since it is the most basic of the three and is the one that you have likely been taught to pursue first when you initially began lifting weights. The concept behind progressive overload is either adding more and more weight to the bar to increase your strength on the exercises that you are doing or to increase the amount of work that you perform in a single workout over time. You can also keep the amount of workload the same in your workouts but increase the frequency of your training to hit your muscles more often and take advantage of the 48 hour cycle of muscle protein synthesis. The issue here is that this is not an endless road. You will ultimately hit a wall in terms of the strength that you develop or the size of the muscles that are performing the work. When you cannot add a single extra pound to the exercise what happens then? When your newbie gains are over and you cannot add another pound of muscle, what do you do then? If you make a mistake you may wind up adding more weight than you can handle and you either allow your form to fall to the point that the exercise is no longer effective or worse you wind up getting injured. What people will suggest next is to pursue more volume and frequency at submaximal loads. They argue that you won’t be likely to hurt yourself because of the lighter tension on the muscles and that the increased workout sessions will lead to an overload needed to build muscle. Here is where frequency comes back to bite you. While you may not see anything but gains for awhile, ultimately the result of higher frequency is overuse injuries that derail you over time. Here is where metabolic training becomes a savior. Not only is it a great way to train with injuries (since you can use lighter weights and in abbreviated ranges of motion) but you can use it to spark new gains because you likely never explored it enough the right way to use up all the potential gains you have in you from doing it. Finally, you can use eccentric training to put back the tension overload on the muscles that has been missing by using the exclusively lighter weights of metabolic training and cause your muscles go grow this way as well. The key is not falling in love with any one method at the exclusion of the others since here again this muscle soreness created by this can prevent you from seeing the increase in frequency and volume that you would want to use for max gains. If you are looking for a program that meshes all three perfectly so you can finally reach your true muscular potential, head to http://athl

Anyone that has ever struggled to build muscle has likely dealt with skinny legs and become frustrated trying to add mass. In this video, I’m going to give you 4 leg workout tips for mass that will help even the hardest of hardgainers to pack on size and start bulking up your legs in no time. The first thing that most guys with skinny legs get wrong is that they allow their ego and self consciousness get in the way of what they should be doing in their leg workouts. No doubt, it can be a bit intimidating to watch others around you squat multiple plates while you are struggling to lift even one big plate for clean reps. That’s ok. Everyone starts somewhere and if you choose to start further ahead of where you should be it is a mistake that is going to hold you back for years to come. Most guys with skinny legs will put more weight on the bar than they can handle in the squat and then proceed to crank out quarter reps. Not only is this robbing your legs of the stress that they can handle but you are doing this at the exclusion of doing the reps you should be doing to build bigger legs the right way. What you need to do is lower the weight to those that you can handle and get your intensity not from the heavier weights but from the high rep sets that you do in good form through full range of motion. The next thing the hardgainer has to do for his legs is learn how to properly push from the ground. There is no way that you are going to lift as much weight as you can in your leg workouts unless you learn how to push through your feet. An equal and opposite force is needed to lift the weight that is on your shoulders during a squat. There is no better place to learn this than with the deadlift exercise. The deadlift demands that you push through your legs during the first half of the left, beyond which point it becomes a pulling exercise. If you practice just the first half of the deadlift or combine it in one and a half rep fashion, you will build more strength through the legs off the floor. The will dramatically help you to increase your squat and lift heavier weights over time. Multi-dimensional leg training is also important to fully developed legs. Almost all of the leg exercises that hardgainers use only stress the legs in the sagittal plane. Squats, leg extensions and leg curl are all one plane exercises that don’t mimic the functionality of the legs and limit the amount of growth that can be had by training the adductors and abductors of the legs as well. Finally, I like to include exercises for the legs that are technically easier to perform than the squat and allow for someone just starting out to add weight faster. The Bulgarian Split Squat is a great exercise for doing this since it literally puts you in the right position to perform the exercise. The quads get loaded and the safety of the exercise is intact since you can simply dump the weights if you need to at the bottom of the squat without risk. For a complete program that hardgainers have used to build muscle and keep low levels of body fat, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Build athletic legs and get ripped without compromising your long term health or gains by using the same program relied on by today’s top professional athletes. For more leg workout videos on how to add mass to your quads and hamstrings, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24