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Dumbbell bicep curls are one of the most popular biceps exercises performed in the gym or at home. The problem is, it is also one of those arm exercises that is most commonly performed wrong. In this video, I’m going to show you the best way to do the standing dumbbell curl for bigger biceps and some other added benefits you may not have been aware of. First we need to start by looking at what is not optimal about the standing alternating dumbbell curl. When you alternate your arms during the reps you have a period where one of the arms is resting. This is taking the tension off of the biceps for the 2-3 seconds that it takes to perform the rep on the other arm. If you are training for metabolic hypertrophy, this brief period of rest is enough to sap all of the benefits of that form of training and is therefore something you want to avoid. The next thing is that by alternating your arms during the movement you are sacrificing a great deal of core involvement that you could be getting by not doing this. Think about it. When you curl the weight up, the momentum of the load wants to tilt you backwards and make you lean back with the weight. The only thing that helps you to prevent this is the stabilization and contraction of your abs and core to not let that happen. If the load that you are lifting is in just one hand, you will only be having to control half of the weight. In this example I am curling 30 pound dumbbells. My core will only have to contract hard enough to control the thirty pounds. If on the other hand I lift the two dumbbells at the same time, then I will have to work that much harder in order to control the 60 combined pounds that are in my hands. Finally, there are often times many muscle imbalances that are developed by performing your dumbbell bicep curls in alternating fashion. If you are training for strength but one side is weaker than the other you might see that your arm struggles more to get to the top. At the same time, you might find that you simply cannot move the weight at the same speed that you can on your stronger, more powerful arm. Both of these are problems but not easily seen when you are doing them one arm at a time. If on the other hand you switched to the simultaneous standing dumbbell curl you would notice right away when the imbalance exists. Simply watching as one dumbbell was curled faster and more unevenly than your weaker side would give you instant feedback that you needed to correct the strength imbalance. Forcing the dumbbells to move together is a great way to overcome whatever disparity exists and even out the development of your biceps. The same goes for the tension problem. By forcing the dumbbells to move together, there is constant tension on both biceps throughout the entire exercise. This makes for a move more capable of creating hypertrophy and for getting those biceps of yours bigger. Finally, the core becomes instantly more active and responsible for holding you steady when you switch to the double arm movement. Now you can do one other alternative and that is to alternate the direction of the arms during the movement but to make sure you are doing them at the same time yet again. Here you get the same benefits of the tension and imbalance correction but you sacrifice a bit still on the demand of the abs since only one dumbbell is moving up at a time. In fact, you might cancel out the demand a bit because the other is counterbalancing and moving in the opposite direction. Either way, the standing dumbbell curl is best done when not alternating the arms while performing it. Now don’t get me wrong, even performed th

An ab workout doesn’t have to be long to be effective, but it should be more frequent. In this video, I’m going to give you the exact ab workout routine to do 6 days a week (take one off day) for just 10 minutes at a time. There are beginner and advanced ab exercises so anyone can take part in the workout and even challenge a friend to see who can last longer. The rules of this ab workout are pretty straight forward. First, identify whether you will be following the beginner or advanced version of the workout. There are 8 ab exercises for each level. Simply choose any 5 for your workout. You may change the ab exercises that you are picking on any given day, just remember to only pick 5. Perform each of the exercises for abs for one minute in a 50 second on, 10 second off format. Your rest time here will be short so you will want to make sure that you are using this time only to transition to the next exercise in the workout. Perform each of the 5 exercises and then repeat, except on the second time through you are going to use a 40 second on, 20 second off format. This is to build in additional rest as you fatigue. All of the exercises are shown here in follow along format, meaning that you can choose to either do them with me or with Jesse depending on your ability level. Try and see if you can make it all the way to the end of the 10 minutes without resting. If you have to stop at any point, try to get back into the workout as quickly as you can to keep the burn in the ab muscles. Here are the ab exercises in the advanced one hour a week ab workout: Figure 8’s Side Stepthroughs Starfish Crunch Serratus Side Crunch Chainsaws Twisting Pistons V-Up Russian Twists Triple Crunch Here are the ab exercises in the beginner one hour a week ab workout: Canoes Reverse Corkscrews Upper Circle Crunches Side Crunch X Man Plank Heels to the Heavens Frog Crunches Pendulum Planks Remember to take a day off once per week. This 10 minute routine performed 6 times a week will equal 60 minutes of total ab work in a week. Before you think that this is too big of a commitment and that you just do not have the time to do this, think again. We all have at least one hour a week that we are spending too much time online or wasting in some other way. You can definitely carve out this small time, especially if you have ever wanted to carve up your six pack and get those abs to show year round. If you are looking for a complete workout and nutrition program that will help you to show your abs and keep them showing all year, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. See exactly how the pro athletes do it by training exactly like one. It is possible to have ripped athletic muscle naturally if you just apply the same workouts and meal plans that have been proven to get you there. For more ab workout routines like the 22 day ab workout, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Some people think that there are no good bodyweight bicep exercise options for building bigger biceps. That simply isn’t true. In this video, I’m going to show you a bicep exercise you can do without any fancy equipment that will not only help you to build bigger bis but will help you to put some serious peaks on them at the same time. All you need to do this is a pullup bar. Of course, a simple doorway pullup bar purchased from any sporting goods store is perfectly capable of doing the job here. The key is for you to first identify what your goal for training is since you can do this particular biceps exercise two different ways. If you feel that you never get a great contraction on any of the exercises you do in your arm workouts, you can use this as an activator if you do it as an isometric. The exercise is the chin hang and you want to do it as the first thing in your arm workout if you want to use it to prime your bis for the rest of the exercises to come. You should feel the most incredible contraction ever in your bicep muscle if you get this right and remember to do it completely fresh in your training. By virtue of having your elbows flexed hard, your middle and ring fingers squeezing the bar to act as an isometric supinator, and your arms in front of your body to flex your shoulders, you are getting a complete contraction on your biceps. Simply jump up to the bar and squeeze for dear life. Remember not to let the angle of your arm close down too much here or you will shift the focus of the contraction to the lats rather than the bis. Also, you want to be sure you are really squeezing hard through those last two fingers so you get the feel of trying to twist the bar in your hands. If you would rather use this exercise as the perfect bicep workout finisher, the only two things you will change about it are the time you do it and the method you use when doing it. First, the time. Obviously as a finisher you are going to want to do this after you have completed all of your bicep exercises in your workout. Just when you thought you had enough, you throw in one or two final sets of this. Jump up to the bar and slowly fight the descent. Your one and only goal is to not let your body drop down to the floor. Pretend that you are hanging over a pit of molten lava if necessary, just don’t drop your feet to the ground. You want to use the same mechanics as you did on the first application of the exercise, except this time you will likely be much more fatigued and find that you just can’t hang as long as you did in the beginning. If you really want to push your biceps to the limit, quickly jump back up to the bar for a second, third or fourth round (if your feet hit the floor) until you simply cannot control the descent at all. You will have reached true negative failure. Here is where you are able to push yourself through the limit and into the zone where muscle gains are sparked. For a complete workout program that uses nothing but your own bodyweight to train your biceps, chest, back, legs and the rest of your body be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN XERO program. No bands, bars, or benches are used while you are still able to carve out bicep peaks and a complete athletic body with just your own body. For more bodyweight biceps workouts and exercises you can do without equipment, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Rounded shoulders are one of the most common postural problems that not only makes us look bad when standing but it compromises our bodies over time. In this video, I’m going to show you how to fix rounded shoulders in just 4 steps by attacking the problem with the right series of corrections. In order to get rid of round shoulders you will have to work on correcting joint issues, muscle weakness, muscle tightness and bad habits. We start with the joint correction. Most of us would think that we likely have a problem with our shoulder joint if the issue is rounded shoulders but that isn’t exactly accurate. In fact, tightness and restriction in the mid back (thoracic spine) is a far more significant joint mobility issue that is causing the shoulders to assume a bad posture. You can use things like a foam roller to try and correct this mobility issue but what is more effective and easier to implement is the simple drill shown in this video. All you have to do is lie face down on the floor and extend your arms up over your head at a 45 degree angle. Roll backwards to one side and let your arms stay high. This will not only rotate your thoracic spine but it will move it into extension and help you open up the restricted area. Do just a few turns to the left and right each day and you will quickly see your posture improve from just this alone. Next, we have to deal with the muscle issues. Muscles involved in causing rounded shoulders are either tight or weak. The syndrome is called upper cross and it is one where the muscles of the pec minor, levator scar and upper traps get tight and short and need stretching while the rhomboids, subscapularis, serratus and lower traps get long and weak. Here we are going to first focus on those that need to be stretched. The best two stretches are ones that you can do without any equipment. All you need is a doorway to position your body in and you are good to go. Stretch the subscapularis by putting your elbow inside the doorway and getting your arm into a position to throw a baseball. Rotate your body away from the elbow and you will feel a good stretch in the muscle deep inside your armpit and in the back of your arm. Hold for just 30-45 seconds and repeat a few times. Best results come from doing this just a few times per week on both arms. The pec minor stretch can be seen described here. Be sure to also stretch it for 30-45 seconds a few times a week and before long you will find it easier than ever to get into the correct posture because you have freed up the tightnesses. In order to be able to hold this proper position however, without thinking, you are going to have to strengthen the right muscles as well. Here are shown just two exercises that you can do with one inexpensive resistance band. The key is that they not only work the right muscles to fix the problem but they work them in the right combination with each other. The focus here should not be on doing lots of reps but rather fewer quality reps. This whole routine for fixing your rounded shoulders should not take you more than just 5 minutes to perform. The key is going to be to be consistent with it. I tried to keep it really easy to follow and low in the requirement of equipment. Just a few times per week and 4 steps is all you need to start making the rounded shoulders you now have a distant memory. If you are looking for a complete workout program that is designed by a physical therapist to not only give you great posture but help you to build serious athletic muscle in the process, head to http://athleanx.com and get one of the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems. Start trai

Popular exercises are popular because they are able to generate results for those that perform them. In this video, I’m going to show you how to make 5 of the most common exercises you are doing even better with just a few simple changes. You will be able to start getting better results from your pullups, tricep pushdowns, lunges, bulgarian split squats and dips starting today. The key to the effectiveness of these exercise suggestions is that in no way will making these changes compromise the effectiveness of the original movement. What good is making a substitution or doing an exercise differently if all it does is take away the ability of that move to help you build muscle. Here, I am only showing you things that will be consistent with the intention of the exercise in the first place but help you to add more muscle building effectiveness in the process. We start with the chest dip. This chest exercise is one we do to build our chests without needing much equipment. In fact, this can be a home chest movement that you can use a counter top for if you do not have a dip bar. The key is to look at what is happening at the top of the dip and take advantage of what you can be doing to increase your chest mass (as well as hit your abs) while there. Instead of just going up and down in a normal dip, stop at the top and lift your pelvis directly up towards the ceiling. This will engage the serratus and abs and make the chest have to work even longer to maintain its contraction. In the long run, this will be a more effective version of a dip without taking away the benefits the classic version provides for your chest. Next is the tricep pushdown exercise. The big problem with this move is that the line of force (the cable) does not remain perpendicular to the forearm throughout the movement. It starts in that position but quickly loses its effectiveness as you move towards a complete contraction at the end of the rep. You can ensure that you keep it there however by doing the rocking tricep pushdown shown here. This will keep the cable perpendicular to the forearm at the beginning and more importantly, at the end of the rep, and help you to get better gains because of it. Next is the Bulgarian Split Squat. This leg exercise is already one of the better leg movements but it can be made better if you take away the balance component and not let it undercut your ability to perform the move with heavier weight. This can be a great leg developer but if your balance is making you use light weights because you can’t stay upright without them, then you are missing a chance to get more from the exercise. Use a hand to hold yourself up and you instantly eliminate this concern and can start getting more from the move. The pullup is a great upper body exercise that you likely didn’t think you could improve, but you can. Add a twist at the bottom of every rep and pull your body up in the direction of the twisting pelvis. This creates a stretch reflex on the lats and allows you to pull with more strength on every rep. It is not hard or complicated to do. It just requires a quick turn and then initiate the pullup. Give this a try and you will see better results from your efforts. Finally, the lunge is an exercise that can be rather hard on your knees if you have some pain in them. The Sprinter Reverse combo lets you get the best out of the exercise while hitting the anterior and posterior chain at the same time. Watch how it is done and even if you don’t have knee pain, be sure to give this a try if you want an alternative to the classic lunge that can help you build better legs. All of these exercis

Every now and then the best thing you can do is reach for a new exercise to help spark all new gains. In this video, I’m going to show you my new favorite back exercise that is best for your lats and getting a wider, stronger back. The back movement is actually a variation on a more common but still overlooked back exercise called the straight arm pushdown. Here, I’m going to show you how to perform the one armed version of the straight arm pushdown and how to do it for better gains. There are some immediate advantages to the single arm version that aren’t present in the more common two armed version. First, you cannot hide your back muscle imbalances. If your right arm is stronger than your left, using the more traditional double arm version will allow you to hide your weakness with the strength in your other side. This not only promotes more imbalance but it will compromise your lat development in the long term. In order to isolate one side at a time you need to train one side at a time. Beyond that however is that fact that you are able to get a better lat contraction with the single arm variation as well. Because you are able to pull the arm down and back while twisting your torso a bit in that direction at the bottom of the rep, you can get an incredibly strong contraction in your lats that is absent in the two arm version. Go ahead and try it yourself and you should instantly notice the increased contraction that you feel in the side you are working that you simply won’t get when using two arms at once. The other major benefit of the back exercise shown here is that you can use the free arm to help spot you as you start to fail. This means that you can push the exercise beyond positive failure and either perform forced reps or negative reps to increase the intensity of the movement and get better back gains because of it. The width of your lats is going to be determined not necessarily by your genetics but by the amount of complete development you have in your lats. The better you can contract the muscle and take it through its full range of motion, the more likely you are to reach your full potential in getting wider, thicker lats. Now, before you think that you need a full gym membership in order to take advantage of this new back exercise that is simply not the case. With just a band and a pullup bar, you can anchor the band on the bar and turn this into an easy to perform home back exercise that can provide the same back gains as its gym companion. Never let the excuse of not having access to lots of expensive equipment be the reason why you aren’t seeing the type of gains that you should be. For a complete program that shows you how to make gains, not excuses, head to http://athleanx.com and get one of the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems. Train like an athlete and see that the biggest gains in your lats will come from performing your back exercises right rather than just simply performing them. For more back exercises and workouts to build wider lats and a thicker back, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Ab wheel rollouts are one of the most commonly performed ab exercises in the gym. Given their ease of setup, they are actually a great exercise for home workouts too since you can do them on the floor with very little space and one inexpensive ab wheel. The problem is, the ab rollout is also one of the most abused and misperformed exercises which can quickly ruin your lower back if you don’t fix how you’re doing them. In this video, I’m going to show you how to perform an ab wheel rollout safely so you can train your abs without wrecking your back. The problem with the ab wheel rollout starts with the position of your lower back during the setup of the exercise. The two things you want to avoid is letting your hips drop down into a straight line with your back and getting the hands out too far from the body. Either one of these will shift too much of the focus onto the lats and turn the into the prime mover of the exercise. This is not bad if you are looking for a great bodyweight back exercise but this is certainly not our goal when performing the ab wheel rollout. The back should be pulled out of the natural anterior pelvic tilt that occurs during the setup for this exercise. While you will be flexing the spine from above, a key function of the abdominal muscles, you will likely only be flattening the lumbar spine and pulling into a more of a posterior tilt from the excessive anterior tilt. This will have an effect of actually putting the back into a safer position to perform the exercise. From here, you want to consciously make sure that you hold the abs in a contracted position as you initiate the rollout. Only go out as far as your ab strength can support you. If you are a beginner, you may only be able to go out a foot or two. That is ok, as long as your lower back is not caving in at any point because your have surpassed the strength of your abs then you can still get great benefits from the exercise. If you are stronger, you can go out further and even hold the end position for awhile to increase the challenge. The next part is where most of us will ruin the exercise, even if it has been performed properly up to this point. Instead of initiating the return of the ab wheel to the top using the hips you have to contract the abs first and be sure to move your entire torso in one piece. Your hips and the wheel should come up together, without allowing the hips to travel backwards. In fact, you can check that you are doing this right by placing a bench behind your hips and making sure not to make contact with it with your butt as you pull back to the top. The most important element of this move is that you are getting both benefits of the abs if you want to get the most from it. The anti-extension and spinal flexion components of the abs are both going to be tested if you perform this right. Both are needed in order to build the ab strength necessary not only to get great results from the ab wheel rollout but to keep it a safe exercise choice as well. If you are looking for a complete training program that will not only train you to make the best muscle gains and fat losses than at any other point in your training without compromising your joints in the process, head to http://athleanx.com and get one of our ATHLEAN-X Training Programs. For more videos on how to squat, how to bench press and how to gain muscle without ruining your joints, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

The key to any arm workout is intensity. There is no better way to ensure the intensity of a workout than to take the normal volume you would do and condense it into a much shorter period of time. In this video, I show you an arm workout with just 4 biceps and triceps exercises that you can complete in 8 minutes or less that will spark all kinds of arm gains. The setup for the workout is easy. All you need is a single pair of dumbbells, a bench that you can adjust to an incline and a pullup bar. You want to start with just two arm exercises, the hands out incline curl for your biceps and the incline dumbbell triceps extensions for the muscles on the other side of your arm. Choose a weight that you can perform 12 reps to failure on in your weaker of the two exercises. In this case it is the triceps extension for me. Start by performing a set of the hands out incline curls to failure. As soon as you cannot complete another rep lift the dumbbells up overhead and go right into your overhead triceps extensions. Here again, you will want to go until you cannot perform another quality rep and your triceps are fatigued. Back again to the incline curl where you want to perform as many reps as you can to failure. You keep bouncing back and forth between these two arm exercises until you can’t complete any more meaningful reps. This will happen rather fast because as you fatigue in one arm muscle group you will have a shorter rest time before having to complete reps for the other muscle. By virtue of this short rest time you will eventually fail out in both exercises. At this point however, you are only half way through your workout. This occurred in just 4 minutes for me. Move on immediately to the next pair of exercises in this 8 minute arm workout. Here you want to do a bicep chin curl hold. The goal here is to squeeze your biceps as hard as you can to maintain your position on the bar. Even as you fatigue you want to keep trying to contract your arms as hard as you can and fight the drop. Once you cannot hold it anymore, go right to the floor and crank out reps of the cobra pushup. You want to concentrate on squeezing the triceps hard at the top of every pushup. The benefit to this triceps exercise over others is that you finish with your arm in extension behind your body so you are actively contracting the long head of the triceps as well. Rep out and get back up on the bar again. Keep alternating these biceps and triceps exercises until you once again cannot perform any more meaningful reps of either exercise. It is an arm workout like this that can convince you of what I say all that time and that is, you can either work out long or hard but you cannot do both. In this intense 8 minute arm workout you are going to push your arms to the limit and get an incredible workout in no time at all. If you are looking for more workouts that help you to trade in workout length for intensity, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. For more arm workout videos and exercises for how to build big biceps and triceps, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Shoulder pain is one of the most common workout injuries that get in the way of you making gains, especially in your chest. In this video, I’m going to show you how you don’t have to stop doing your chest exercises just because your have pain in your shoulder. In fact, I will coach you through how to change the way you are doing the bench press regardless of what type of shoulder pain you are experiencing so you do not have to give up the chest gains. First, it helps to understand the general types of shoulder injuries that can be the source of your pain. You can either have an injury to the labrum (and often times biceps tendon as well due to the proximity of it to the labrum), rotator cuff, bursitis, impingement, or the AC joint. Each of these has their own characteristic symptoms that slightly differentiate it from the other however it is best to have your shoulder evaluated in person by a qualified physical therapist for an exact diagnosis. When it comes to working out with a shoulder injury it can be really tough. The fact that your shoulder joint is so mobile and intimately involved with all upper body exercises makes it tough to train around, unless you know how to do it. The bench press is a staple exercise for building a bigger chest and is one that also happens to be very difficult to perform once shoulder pain or injury has set in. That said, there are tweaks you can make to the movement that make it possible for you to start doing it again and not have it aggravate your symptoms. In fact, it could help to make your shoulder pain go away as you build it back stronger than ever. When you look at the AC joint injury you have to understand that it is caused mostly by forced internal rotation (especially with some velocity). This can happen when you target too low on your chest or forget to arch your back and bring the ribcage to the bar rather than forcing the bar to seek out the ribcage. If you adjust the cage up by arching the back and dropping the shoulders back you can not only fix the targeting of the bar on the chest but you can effectively shorten the depth and keep your shoulders more secure. With a labrum tear you are likely to have a greatly compromised shoulder stability. This becomes especially bothersome when you experience the pain at the bottom of the press. Here you are not only dealing with the most instability but you are also putting the biceps tendon on the most stretch because of the arm extending behind your body. This causes pain either way. The key is to temporarily switch to a floor press to have a more equal base of support for your shoulder. The rest of the issues tend to revolve around one common outcome and that is the impingement that can occur in your shoulder from bench pressing. Here the goal is to create as much room as you can in the shoulder joint when doing the exercise. You can depress your shoulders which will deactivate the traps and create more room in the joint. You can alter the position of the elbows to be closer to your body which will do the same thing. Finally, you can switch the grip from overhand to underhand to make sure you are externally rotating your shoulders and creating room as well. All of these changes are small but critical to getting you back to training your chest without shoulder injury. If you are looking for a program that helps you to get all gains without the pain, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training programs. For more videos on how to workout with injuries or how to build a big chest with bad shoulders or shoulder injury, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtub

Likely, you have done plenty of pushups in an effort to try and build your chest. It is the classic bodyweight chest exercise after all. That said, there are some major limitations to the exercise that can be greatly overcome by making a few key changes to how you perform them. In this video, I’m going to show you a pushup variation that makes pushups better. It is something that anybody is going to be able to do and more importantly, feel in their very next set. To start, it helps to understand a bit of the natural pressing mechanics that are in place during a bench press. Your arms should never move in a straight line as you press the bar over your chest. Instead, you want to try and press up and back in an arc pattern if you want to follow the natural pressing arc that your body’s biomechanics dictates. You can see this same movement pattern built into the hammer bench press machine as well, and it’s there for a reason. You might think however that you cannot replicate this when doing pushups because your hands are fixed on the ground and you can’t follow an arc created by a machine that was designed to do this. Yes you can. You have to change your mindset though. Instead of thinking how your hands are going to move on a moveable machine you have to think how you are going to move your body on a set of fixed hands. It is possible and getting it right will provide you with the most effective pushup you have ever tried. Start by placing your hands on the ground with your thumbs at the bottom of your chest line. Your body should be flat against the ground. From here, flare your elbows out to the side without moving your hands. This should allow your elbows to drift away from your torso to about 30 or 45 degrees. At this point you are ready to perform the pushup. That said, don’t jump into anything because as you will quickly see, it is not just doing the pushup that is going to make this effective it is doing it in a very specific way. You don’t want to push your hands straight down into the ground and press your body off of it. Instead, you want to think about squeezing or pinching your body off the ground by driving your biceps towards each other. The entire lift of the body off the ground should be done by pinching under the body and getting those arms to drive towards each other. This provides the adduction feel that is helpful for eliciting an incredibly strong chest contraction. It also takes some of the load off of the shoulders and triceps. These two muscles tend to dominate the pushup and can quickly prevent the chest from getting the work that it should get from the movement. As you squeeze up you want to do one more thing. Rock backwards on your toes so that when you are at the top of the pushup your body is further back than when it started. You should feel the contraction shift more towards the upper pecs and chest if you do this right. This is because you have essentially done a horizontal incline press. Squeeze as hard as you can and lower yourself back to the ground by sliding your body forward again (rocking on the toes to get there) until your hands are once again positioned at the bottom of your chest. Keep repping out until you reach failure. You will notice that you are able to do far fewer reps than a normal pushup but that does not matter. The key is getting more from the exercise and getting bigger pecs because you are doing it right. If you ever thought that chest exercises and pushups alone were enough to build a bigger chest you likely haven’t gotten the best results you are capable of. It is how you perform the exercise, and every other mov