How to PROPERLY Use Supersets to Maximize Growth (3 Science-Based Tips) Jeremy Ethier 2024-10-22 | How to PROPERLY Use Supersets to Maximize Growth (3 Science-Based Tips)
How to Bench Press for a Huge Chest (5 Easy Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2023-02-19 | With proper bench press form, the bench is the GOAT of upper body exercises. Learn how to bench press properly and you’ll see massive gains in your chest, shoulders, and arms. But get your bench press technique wrong, and even if it doesn’t happen right away, you risk seriously injuring your shoulders and elbows to the point where you may never be able to barbell bench press again. But don’t worry, perfect bench form is actually quite simple. Learn how to bench press for chest growth in 5 steps. The most important part to getting your bench press form right is with step 1, setup. To find the perfect grip width for you, lay down on the bench with your arms straight in front of you. Pull your elbows back until they make a 90 degree angle. Then, bring your elbows in towards your sides until your thumbs line up with your nipples. The distance between your hands is your ideal grip distance on the bar. Then, for a smooth unracking, position your body such that your eyes are directly under the barbell. And when you grab the bar, for the most secure grip, I’d recommend keeping your thumb around the bar. Finally, walk your feet back under your knees and plant them firmly into the ground. Step 2: create whole body tension. Before you even consider unracking the bar, you need to activate various muscles that will help unlock your bench press strength and keep you stable as you lift. Use your quads to push your feet down into the ground and use your glutes to drive your knees out. Then, activate your lats by bringing your armpits down to your hips. You can imagine there was a band attached to the bar pulling it back as you try to pull it forward. Next, we want to create an arch in your upper back by thinking about opening up and extending your chest. Once you’ve set your arch, straighten your wrists by pointing your knuckles to the ceiling. Then, through your nose take a deep 360 breath into your abdomen, and brace your core. Now, step 3: unracking. This is where most people lose all their tension and mess up their bench press technique before they’ve even started it. To avoid this, maintain your arch and stay tight, then push the bar up to get it off the rack. From there you want to use your lats to “pull” the bar into the starting position right above your shoulders. Then, re-engage your lats by thinking about bending the bar in half. Step 4: descent. The most common mistake people make here with the barbell bench press has to do with the bar path. During a proper bench press the bar should not travel straight up and down. Instead, you’ll want to bring it down and slightly forwards. To do so, focus on pulling the bar down towards your lower chest, right around the level of your nipples. As you do this, avoid tucking your elbows too close into the body and also avoid the more common mistake of flaring them out to the sides. Instead, to maximize chest activation and minimize shoulder discomfort, keep them tucked at about a 45 to 70 degree angle away from your body. Now as for how deep to go, ideally, you want to touch your chest with the bar. But if your shoulders roll forward at the bottom (which can cause discomfort and potential injury), stop an inch or two above your chest or wherever is most comfortable. But once you do reach the bottom position, your forearms should not be bent inward or outward. If they are, try narrowing or widening your grip to get your elbows stacked directly under your wrists. Step 5: ascent. Most people lose out on chest gains by letting the bar bounce off their chest. Instead, force your chest to work even harder by pausing here for half a second. But do NOT completely relax and let the bar simply sit on top of you. Keep the tension in your legs and upper back and feel your chest working to keep the bar stable. After the slight pause, use your quads to push your feet forward against the ground as if you were doing a leg extension, and then drive the bar up off your chest. Drive the bar back up towards your head so that from the side view, the bar travels in a slight arc. As you get to the top, keep your chest up by maintaining the arch in your upper back and squeeze your biceps into your armpits until your arms fully straighten over your shoulders. Exhale through pursed lips as you come to the top, take another deep breath in your stomach, brace, and then control the weight back down for another rep. And ... congrats! You now know how to bench press for chest growth.Found this useful? Click below for a step by step plan training plan that shows you how to properly train to maximize growth and minimize injury:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender/? utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+to+PR OPERLY+Bench+Press+for+Chest+Growth+%285+Steps %29&utm_term=19%2F02%2F2023 Click below to subscribe for more videos: youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
The PERFECT Deadlift (5 Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2023-02-11 | Here's how to deadlift properly with perfect deadlift form. Follow these 5 easy steps and and I guarantee your deadlifts will feel far better and stronger than they ever have before. #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube
STOP Doing Dumbbell Press Like This (Most Common Mistake) Jeremy Ethier 2023-02-08 | The dumbbell press is a great chest exercise to grow your chest, but only if done correctly. This is by far the most common mistake people make with their dumbbell press form. Fix this and you'll get better chest gains with less risk of hurting your shoulders. #shortsvideo #shortsfeed #shortsyoutube #shorts
How to PROPERLY Squat for Growth (4 Easy Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2023-02-05 | The squat is the KING...of poorly performed exercises. Get your barbell squat technique wrong and instead of growing nice quads and glutes, you’ll feel aches and pains in your knees, hips, back, and even shoulders. But if you want to learn how to squat properly or how to do a squat, follow these 4 easy steps and I guarantee you’ll get your back squat form perfect. Step 1: Setup. Your anatomy will determine what your perfect squat form looks like. Let’s start with your foot stance. Hold a light weight at your chest, set your feet hip width apart, and squat down. See how that feels and note how low you could get. Widen it by an inch or two and compare. Keep going till you find what feels best and enables you to squat the lowest. As for your foot angle, most people’s joints will feel better with their toes pointed out slightly, so don’t force yourself to keep them straight. And the wider the stance you use, the more your toes will have to turn out. Next, it’s time to grab the bar. Set your feet under the bar, half squat to get under it, and then place the bar on your upper back. Right onto the meat of your traps. Next, grip the bar with your hands as narrow as possible without pain in your wrists, shoulders, or elbows. Then, walk it out by extending your legs to lift it out of the rack and then taking three careful steps back. Lastly, to keep you balanced as you squat, spread your weight evenly over your foot by making sure each foot has three solid points of contact with the ground - your big toe, your pinky toe, and your heel. Step 2: Create whole body tension. You need to first activate several key muscles that will protect your back and keep you strong as you perform your squats. Start with the lower body. Screw your feet into the ground as if you were trying to touch your heels together. Then, level your pelvis with the floor by tilting it back as if it was a bowl of water and you were trying to prevent it from spilling. Lock this in by squeezing your inner thighs, glutes, and quads. For the upper body, pull your elbows forward under the bar and pull the bar down into your meaty upper traps. This helps activate your lats and keeps your upper back stable. Finally, take a deep 360 breath into your waist then brace your core. Step 3: Descent. Pull yourself down into the squat using your hamstrings. Let your butt drop down between your heels and push your knees out in the same direction as your toes. Keep your upper back tight by pulling the bar down and continue lowering as deep as you comfortably can. Squat down to at least somewhere close to parallel. But if towards the bottom of your squat your upper body falls forward, or your heels come off the ground, or your lower back rounds excessively into “butt wink”, these are all signs you’re not yet ready to go that deep. There are 2 reasons for this. The most common reason is limited ankle mobility. In this case, try elevating your heels onto weight plates and see if that helps with your squat technique. The other reason is a weak core and glutes. In this case, you can try out a more stable exercise like smith machine squats before progressing to the barbell. But once you can get deep enough, you may notice your knees end up over your toes. As long as your knees don’t cave in or out and instead push out in the same direction as your toes, letting your knees go over your toes is perfectly fine. But, once you reach the bottom position, to maximize growth DO NOT let gravity drop you into that last inch or two. Research suggests this is the most important part of the movement for growth. So force your muscles to work by controlling the weight down and pausing for half a second at the bottom before moving onto the final step...... but if you've found this tutorial useful so far, then consider joining one of our step by step programs that take care of all the guess for you. We show you what exercises to do, and how to do them based on your body. You can take the quiz below to find the best program for you and your body:builtwithscience.com/quiz-pricing/gender?%20utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+Barbell%20+Squat%3A+How+To+Do+It+PROPERLY+For+Growth+%20%284+Easy+Steps%29&utm_term=05%2F02%2F2023 The final step of learning how to squat properly (step 4): ascent. We want the chest and hips to rise at the same rate. To do this, drive up out of the bottom by pushing the floor away and thinking about driving your traps up against the bar. Continue pushing down against the floor and getting tall until your legs are fully extended. But as you come to the top, avoid letting out a big exhale. Instead, maximize the pressure in your abdomen to protect your back by keeping your lips held tighter together as you breathe out, to gradually let air out. Then, take another deep 360 breath in, brace, and repeat another rep. Click below to subscribe for more videos: youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
NEVER Do Planks Like This (3 Fixes You Must Make) Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-27 | Here's how to plank with perfect plank form. Make these 3 simple tweaks the next time you plank during a core workout and I guarantee your core will activate far better than it ever has before. #shorts #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube
How to PROPERLY Deadlift for Growth (5 Easy Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-22 | Deadlifts can be scary, especially if you don't know how to deadlift with proper form. Here's how to deadlift for beginners in 5 easy steps. Step 1: creating the pillar. Proper deadlift form starts with your feet. Walk up to the bar and align it right over your shoelaces in the middle of your foot. Widen your feet to about hip-width apart with your toes facing forward. Next, your hips and ribs. Deadlifting with the hips and ribs misaligned is the most common reason for back injury. They should remain stacked like a pillar and stay that way as you lift. To do that, let’s start with the hips. Think of your hips as a bowl full of water. Tilt your pelvis back so the bowl is flat. You can think as if you were trying to bring your belt buckle to your chin. As for the ribs, flatten them by engaging your core. At this point your ribs and hips should be stacked evenly on top of each other. But to keep them locked in that position, squeeze your glutes and inner thighs together and feel yourself getting taller as you do so. And finally, make a fist in each hand and push them down towards the ground to straighten your arms and activate your lats. Step 2: grabbing the bar. When you perform deadlifts, keep the pillar we created in step 1, and start pushing your hips back while keeping your fists pushing straight down under your shoulders. Imagine you had a bag full of groceries in each hand and you’re trying to close the car door with your butt. You want to continue pushing your hips back as far as you can WITHOUT your big toes coming off the ground. Once you reach that end point, bend your knees and bring your shins to the bar to pull yourself down those last few inches. Keep going until you can hook your hands onto the bar just outside your knees. Step 3: creating the wedge. The wedge is a powerful position that will prevent your lower back from being compromised as soon as you lift the weight on the deadlift. To create it, drive your knees out against your arms. Then, take a deep 360 breath as if you were wearing a belt and trying to push air against all sides of it, and then brace your core as if someone were about to punch your stomach. Next, think about extending your chest and getting tall from your hips all the way to your head. And finally, activate your lats by squeezing your armpits as if you had oranges in them and you were trying to make orange juice. Step 4: push. This is actually the simplest step, but it’s also where most people screw up their proper deadlift form. They think how to deadlift as a “pull” and end up breaking out of the position we worked so hard to create. To avoid this, a deadlift technique to use is to imagine your arms were ropes with hooks at the end of them just hanging onto the bar. Then, to lift the weight, rather than going from 0 to 100 and jerking the weight off the floor, keep the tightness we created in step 3 and think about pushing the floor away with your feet harder and harder until the bar lifts off the ground. When done correctly, your hips and chest should rise at the same rate. Continue pushing the floor away until the bar passes your knees, and then think about thrusting your hips forward or humping the air in front of you to meet the bar at the top of the lift. To avoid injuring your back at the top, your shoulders should not be behind your heels and your low back should not be arched. To prevent this, as you come to the top imagine you’re about to get punched in the stomach and keep your glutes squeezed together. At the top your hips, ribs, shoulders, and chin should all be stacked like parallel floors of a building.Step 5: descent. We want to control the weight down, but we need to do this with correct deadlift form. Now this will look very similar to what we did back in step 1, the only difference now is that you have a bar. Many people tend to let the bar sway forward in front of them which causes a lot of stress on the low back. Instead, push your hips back and slide the bar down as close as possible along your thighs. As soon as the bar passes your knee caps, that’s when you can bend your knees and slide the bar along your shins to get the bar back over your mid-foot. But to avoid losing tension and leaving gains at the table, avoid bouncing the weight up off the floor. Instead, stay tight and gently touch the floor with the weight before your next rep. And … congrats my friend! You’ve just learned how to deadlift properly! Not so scary after all, right?Found this video useful? Click below for a step by step fitness plan that will show you exactly what workouts to do every week and how to do them:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Deadlift+PROPERLY+For+Growth+%285+Easy+Steps%29&utm_term=15%2F01%2F2023Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
Creatine EXPLAINED 🔬 Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-21 | Most of us have been told how great creatine is, but how does creatine work? What are the creatine benefits and what can you expect before and after taking creatine? Well, it’s not “magic” and it won’t instantly boost strength and size, but it can give you that extra boost in the gym. Here's everything you need to know about creatine monohydrate and how to explain creatine for beginners. #shorts #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube
How to Get WIDER Shoulders (2 Exercises) Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-18 | Want wider shoulders? Here's 2 great shoulder exercises that you should add to your shoulder workout. These will focus on growing the side delts. Both are lateral raises, but different kinds. #shorts #shortsfeed #shortsyoutube #shortsvideo
UNLOCK Your Upper Chest: Best Bench Angle Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-14 | Struggling to grow your upper chest? It's important to choose the right bench angle when doing incline dumbbell press. Most people will better activate and grow their upper chest chest with a lower incline. Try this out and you'll feel the difference right away! #shorts #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube
How to Use Creatine For Growth (3 Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-11 | Creatine is one of the most effective supplements on the market. Here's exactly how to use creatine to maximize growth. #shorts #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube
Do This AFTER Your Sets to Build Muscle Faster Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-07 | More and more research is now showing the bottom portion of the movement when the muscle is fully stretched is the most important part for growth. Here's a technique you can do after your sets that takes advantage of that. Try it out to build muscle faster, but make sure you do it right! #shorts #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #shortsyoutube
NEVER Do Push-Ups Like This (3 Mistakes) Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-04 | Push-Ups are a great bodyweight exercise, but you must do them properly. Here's the 3 most common push-up mistakes and how to do push-ups with perfect form. #shorts #shortsvideo #shortsfeed
Grow Your Triceps 1.5x Faster (NEW RESEARCH!) Jeremy Ethier 2023-01-01 | Want to grow your triceps faster and get bigger arms? Try out this triceps exercise which might be the best triceps exercise you can do. #shorts #shortsvideo #shortsfeed
We Tested 17 Glute Exercises, These Are Best For Growth Jeremy Ethier 2022-12-28 | Well-rounded glutes are not only the key to a nicer butt, but they also play an important role in strength, power, athleticism, and preventing injury. To build a nice butt, it's important to choose the right glute exercises and do the best glute workouts. In this video we test 17 glute exercises (hip thrusts, back squats, cable kickbacks, bulgarian split squats, and more) to see which ones came out ontop. At the end, we combine everything into the best glute workout for women and the best glute workout for men to grow your booty faster and get you a bigger, stronger butt. Download the Glutes Workout PDF Below:builtwithscience.com/glutesPDFVideo To Help With Proper Glute Training Form:youtube.com/watch?v=0BBROgyHlFE&Click below for a step by step plan training plan that reveals all the best exercises you should do for each and every muscle group: builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/genderThanks to Coach Kassem for his help with the video:His Instagram: instagram.com/coach_kassem/?hl=enHis Training: https://n1.training/Click below to subscribe for more videos: youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
We Tested 17 Back Exercises, These Are Best For Growth Jeremy Ethier 2022-12-11 | The back is such an important part of what makes an impressive physique. But with literally 100’s of different back exercises out there, it’s hard to tell which you should do in your back workout. That’s why we got Betty - our muscle activation measuring machine. Today we’re using her to test the best back exercises on 4 different people. At the end, we’ll use the results to create a perfect back workout you can trust is the best back workout that’ll get you the muscular, powerful looking back you’re after.Different back exercises will target different back muscles. The two main features of a well-developed back are thickness, and width. Most thickness comes from the mid and upper back muscles. So we put a sensor on the mid-traps. We also put a sensor on the lower traps. The main muscle responsible for widening your back and building is the lats. Because it’s the largest muscle of the upper body, we put 2 sensors on it, one on the upper lats, and one on the lower lats. Next, let’s cover the details of the experiment that’ll help us find the best back exercises. Subjects: Coach Alex, Raza, Tahnee, and myself. There was no wager this time around. We had to control 3 variables: 1) weight testing, sensor placement, and maximum voluntary contraction. We did 1 set of 5 reps, then took at least 5-minute rest before moving onto the next exercise. We also rotated between horizontal and vertical pulling exercises. Note that Betty, and EMG research in general, has its limitations. More activation does not always lead to more growth, and there are other variables to consider when determining how well an exercise grows muscle. That said, after averaging the data, I did find some very interesting insights that align with other current research.First, “overall back builders” to include in your back workout. The first is deadlifts. Your legs are mostly responsible for moving the weight, but all of your upper and lower back muscles have to work hard to keep your body stable as you lift. Although they aren’t taken through their full range of motion and are only contracting isometrically, this is still a powerful stimulus for growth especially because of the heavy weight used and the deep stretch that some of these back muscles experience. The second exercise is bent-over rows. Similar to deadlifts, you’re able to load it relatively heavy and your whole back, including the lower back, is helping you stabilize and move the weight. The overhand grip led to more mid back activation whereas the underhand grip, led to slightly more lats activation primarily in the lower lats. Next, the best exercises for the mid and upper back. The exercise that came on top was the inverted rows. It led to the highest back activation for both Tahnee and Raza but didn’t do nearly as well for both myself and Alex. So while it is a great bodyweight exercise that I’d highly recommend for most females and beginners, as you get more experienced you’ll want to consider other movements that you can start adding weight to or save this exercise for the tail end of your workout. As for the other exercises that came out on top, wide grip seated cable rows and dumbbell chest supported rows with the elbows flared out and shoulder blades squeezed together at the end, both led to the highest activation after the inverted row. So, when talking about the “best back workout”, these two will definitely make an appearance. Now, I want to talk about the lower traps. It’s an extremely important yet often overlooked muscle for overall shoulder health and posture. So I’d recommend including at least one lower traps exercise in your routine. And the one that came out on top during our experiment? Incline prone Y raises.Last but not least, the lats. While lat pulldowns and pull-ups do a pretty good job of activating the lats, one move in particular however led to higher activation than any of those exercises. The lat-focused row. Let’s put everything we learned into “perfect back workout” that you can start using right away. I’d recommend picking one exercise from each of the categories we went through and then adding in prone Y raises to the end to give the lower traps some extra love. Sample Back WorkoutBent-Over Barbell RowPull-UpsDumbbell Chest Supported Row (elbows angled out)Incline Prone Y-RaisesClick below for a step by step plan training plan that reveals all the best exercises you should do for each and every muscle group:builtwithscience.com/built-with-science-v2-main-quiz-landing-page/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=I+Tested+17+Popular+Back+Exercises+%28STOP+Wasting+Time+During+Back+Workouts%29&utm_term=11%2F12%2F2022Download your FREE back workout PDF:builtwithscience.com/backworkoutVote for the glutes exercises you think will come out on top:builtwithscience.com/voteClick below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
We Tested 17 Shoulder Exercises, These Are Best For Growth Jeremy Ethier 2022-11-27 | Betty and I are back. She’s a $12,000 science machine that’ll help us determine which of these 17 shoulder exercises are the best and which are the worst for building big shoulders. I tested these best shoulder exercises on 3 subjects, averaged the data, and found some very interesting insights that align with other research out there. With the results from this experiment, you’ll be able to save literally years of wasted time doing the wrong movements for your body—and finally get those bigger, wider shoulders you’ve been dreaming of. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in and find out what the best shoulder exercises (really) are and then talk about how to use them in your shoulder workouts.Click below for a step by step plan training plan that reveals all the best exercises you should do for each and every muscle group: builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/genderVote for the back exercises you think will come out on top: builtwithscience.com/vote Click below to subscribe for more videos: youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Let’s explain what and then who we’ll be measuring to find out what the best shoulder exercises are. We’re putting sensors on the front, side, and rear delts. But we’re also putting one sensor on the upper traps, you’ll find out why later. As for who we’ll be testing, it’ll be me, Alex, and Raza (yes, again!) What about the wager? Well, we ordered the world’s hottest bowl of noodles. We also got the world’s hottest chip made with the Carolina reaper. And a gummy bear, which comes in at 9,000,000 Scoville. Each of us is going to write down on a piece of paper what we think the top 2 shoulder exercises will end up being for the front, side, and rear parts of the shoulder. The person who gets the most exercises correct still suffers, just not as much. They get to choose who has to eat what. Before testing what’ll give us big shoulders, we had to prep 3 things. First, our estimated “1 rep max” for each exercise. Next, we needed a clean shave to make sure the electrodes stick. Finally, before we could start the first exercise, we had to take our maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) measurements.During the experiment, we did 1 set of 5 reps and then taking at least a 5 minute rest before moving to the next exercise. We also rotated between front delt, side delt, and rear delt exercises to avoid overly fatiguing one region. So, what are the exercises that’ll give us bigger, wider shoulders? Let’s start with the front delts. Both winners were overhead shoulder presses, just different variations of them. We tested the seated dumbbell press, standing dumbbell press, seated barbell press, and the standing barbell press. But for the seated variations, we were actually able to use slightly heavier weight than the standing variations because of the extra stability provided by the bench. The seated versions performed the best. One more thing for the front delts. Although the overhead presses we just talked about will provide significantly more activation on the front delts (71% for me), it’s likely that you’re already working this muscle quite a bit whenever you perform chest exercises. So my recommendation would be to do overhead presses once, maybe twice a week depending on your goals. Now the side delts (i.e., what’ll give us wider shoulders). This took me by complete surprise. The winners ended up being the two standing shoulder presses we tested. But this is all simply because the side delts are helping stabilize the weight up at the chest, which isn’t a powerful stimulus for growth. It’s a case where more activation doesn’t necessarily lead to more growth, one of the limitations of Betty. Taking this into consideration, I’d remove shoulder presses from the top which would now bring the lateral raises to the top of this list. In this experiment, the standard dumbbell lateral raise and the lying incline lateral raise came out on top, with cable lateral raises following closely behind. All of those are great options. Last but not least, the rear delts. The top exercise was the double arm reverse cable fly. With this exercise, by setting the cables high and pulling the arms down and back at a 45 degree angle from the body, it lines up the constant tension from the cable almost perfectly with the rear delts. As for the other rear delt winner, it’s the reverse cable fly, but with one arm and the body positioned sideways to the cable. Now although these two exercises look very similar, they actually both challenge the rear delts in a different way. The double arm challenges your rear delts most in the middle of the movement. Whereas the single arm challenges your rear delts most in the beginning of the movement which recent research has shown to be arguably the most important part of the movement for growth.
We Tested 16 Chest Exercises, These Are Best For Growth Jeremy Ethier 2022-11-15 | Here's Betty: a $12,000 EMG machine who is going to help us determine what the best chest exercises for growth (from upper chest to middle chest to lower chest exercises) ACTUALLY are. EMG stands for electromyography, and it’s a way of measuring the electrical activity produced by muscles when they contract. To make sure I run this experiment evaluating my list of chest exercises as best as possible so that we, and you, could actually trust the data (i.e., that these are the best exercises for a bigger chest), I called up a few colleagues and they led me to John, a Master’s student specializing in EMG.Vote on the shoulders exercises you think will come out on top (winners get a FREE Built With Science program and ALL entries get a discount code):builtwithscience.com/voteTake a deeper look into the data here:builtwithscience.com/workouts/the-best-chest-exercisesClick below for a step by step plan training plan that reveals all the best exercises you should do for each and every muscle group:builtwithscience.com/built-with-science-v2-main-quiz-landing-page/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+Best+Chest+Exercises%3A+A+%2412%2C000+Machine+Reveals+What+They+Are&utm_term=13%2F11%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1It was time to prep the experiment to find out what the best chest exercises for growth really are—and think about all the variables we had to control. First variable: subjects. Everyone’s bodies are slightly different, and the more subjects in study, the more reliable the data. So, I wanted at least 3 subjects in total. Luckily we had Alex and Raza. Raza is more of a beginner so I thought it’d be interesting to see how his results compare to mine and Alex’s. Next, weight. we had to figure out how much weight we’d be using on each chest exercise to ensure that they were equally as challenging. A week before the test date, we all spent a whole day in our gym and figured out our estimated “1 rep max” for each exercise. On test day, we’d use 70% of this weight for each of the exercises. Plus, we came up with a wager. Before we conducted the experiment to find out what the best exercises for a bigger chest are, the three of us wrote down on a piece of paper what exercises we think will end up being the top 2 for each area of the chest. Once we got the results, we’ll compare them to each of our lists and the person who gets the least exercises correct will be dunked into a human body sized Canadian Tundra Death Trap! Here are all the chest exercises we tested:Push-upsBanded push-upsStanding cable flyHigh to low cable flySeated cable flyChest dipsBarbell bench pressIncline barbell bench pressFlat dumbbell pressIncline machine press15 degree incline dumbbell press30 degree incline dumbbell press45 degree incline dumbbell pressDecline dumbbell pressPinch pressPec deck machineNote: with several variables and just 3 subjects, it’s hard to detect any statistical differences. That said, I did average the data and found some really interesting findings that align with a lot of other research. So, let’s start with the best upper chest exercises. The top two exercises were both incline dumbbell presses, just at different bench angles. We tested 15 degrees, 30 degrees, and 45 degrees. The lower inclines of 15 degrees and 30 degrees came out on top. Next, middle chest exercises. The first winner is the decline dumbbell press, but not the typical version you see at the gym. We used just a very slight elevation by placing a weight plate underneath the front of the bench. Usually this helps emphasize the lower chest the most. But to my surprise, it did an excellent job of activating the mid chest for all 3 of us. The other winner was the seated cable fly. In this case we put the cable handles at chest height.Finally, the lower chest exercises. Here I expected high to low cable flyes to win, because tension from the cable aligns well with the lower chest fibers. While it did end up scoring well, seated cable flyes came out on top. This might be because it’s a more stable setup, with the tension from the cable still aligning quite well with the lower chest. The other winner was once again the decline dumbbell press, suggesting that the very slight decline aligns the press very well with both the middle and the lower fibers of the chest.Who got dunked? Watch the video! That said, I got really emotional during the ice plunge. After hitting 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, I founded Built With Science which stemmed from a bigger vision I always had in mind: to build a legacy that would bring a more scientific and research-backed approach to the fitness industry and weed out the BS and “bro-science” that plagues the industry. This little science experiment was a big step towards realizing that. I’m excited for where this leads and I appreciate you joining me on this journey.
How To Build Muscle Almost 2x Faster (NEW RESEARCH) Jeremy Ethier 2022-10-30 | You might be able to gain muscle faster (almost twice as fast!) as you are right now - and still remain “natty”. How? With what I like to call “stretch-focused training”. A training technique that has seemed to crack the code to what it takes to build muscle fast naturally. I’ve even started experimenting with it, and honestly, it seems like it’s working. Don’t just take my word for it, though. I’ve assembled my elite crew of researchers to dive into the science, separate the truth from the fad, and figure out the best way to use this training to build muscle faster. If you want to learn how to maximise your gains, keep reading.Click below to join our brand new 2.0 training and nutrition programs:builtwithscience.com/built-with-science-v2-main-quiz-landing-page/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=Stretch-Focused+Training%3A+The+New+%22Hack%22+That%27ll+Help+You+Gain+Muscle+Fast%3F&utm_term=30%2F10%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Before moving into the practical of how to build muscle faster, let’s explain the concept behind “stretch-focused training”. Whenever you lift weights, your muscles contract to lift the weight up and then stretch in order to lower the weight back down. The muscles can sense the stretch in the contractile units and, in response, kickstart a complex process that tells the body to build more muscle. This is what researchers now term "stretch-mediated hypertrophy". But is there evidence that it can help you gain muscle fast? Yes, and here are 4 studies I want to look at. First study: participants who performed only bottom half of the curl experienced 2.6x more biceps growth than those who only performed the top half of the curl. Second study: the group who only performed the bottom half of the leg extension saw better growth than those who did the top or the full range of motion! Further proof of the stretch-mediated hypertrophy (third study): participants who did the overhead cable extensions experienced about 1.5x more growth than those who did cable pushdowns. Fourth study: those who did seated hamstring curls saw better growth than those who did lying hamstring curls.How do you go about applying all this to potentially build muscle faster? I have 3 training tips for you. The first tip applies to all your exercises. We know how important the bottom position of an exercise seems to be for growth, so don't cut it short. Also, make sure you’re actually controlling the weight down to the bottom position, and then when you get there, don’t cheat or bounce out of it using momentum.The next tip when it comes to how to maximize your gains has to do with your exercise selection. Note: you don’t need a bunch of special exercises that will provide more “stretch-mediated hypertrophy”. You’re already doing them. The tried and true exercises like bench press, curls, and squats all put your muscles in a deep stretch position given that you perform them with a full range of motion. However, there are some muscles that can potentially benefit from being stretched to a greater degree. These are what’s known as “bi-articulate” muscles. So for these muscles, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing an exercise that puts them into that position of “extra stretch”. But until more muscle groups and exercises come up in future research, here’s the 4 muscles and exercises I’d be comfortable recommending you incorporate.The first two are the hamstrings and triceps. Using exercises like seated leg curls and any sort of triceps overhead extensions can provide a greater stretch and help you build muscle fast naturally. The biceps is another muscle I’d add to this list. One of its heads, the long head, can be positioned into an even greater stretch by performing a slight incline curl or a behind the body cable curl. Although there isn’t direct evidence on this yet, it does seem likely to provide a benefit. Lastly, the glutes. While there’s no direct evidence yet, romanian deadlifts, squats, and split squats will likely be your best bet since they challenge your glutes in that all important stretched position. Last but not least, we have more of an advanced tactic that I like to call “lengthened partials”. Before I share the technique though, just realize you don’t want to use this on big exercises like squats, deadlifts, and overhead press and you also don’t want to do this very often since it can be quite fatiguing. But every now and then, such as during your very last set for a “safe” exercise such as a dumbbell press, flyes, leg extensions, triceps extension, and biceps curl, try this out. After you reach the point where you can’t do anymore full range of motion reps, continue your set by performing half reps at the bottom position to stress your muscle in that stretched position until you reach failure.
STOP Doing Bicep Curls Like This (5 Mistakes Slowing Your Gains) Jeremy Ethier 2022-10-09 | Biceps training isn’t complicated. Although there are tons of different exercises, they pretty much all boil down to one movement: bicep curls. Hold a weight, flex the arm. Simple, right? Not really. There are 5 common mistakes almost everyone makes on the bicep curl. Fix these, and your curls (no matter what kind — dumbbell curl or barbell curl or cable curl) will instantly become far more effective at growing your biceps.Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll help you achieve proper form on all exercises — so you get results FAST:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=STOP+Doing+Bicep+Curls+Like+This+%285+Mistakes+Slowing+Your+Gains%29&utm_term=09%2F10%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Mistake number 1. You might’ve already noticed that as you curl a weight up, it gets harder and harder and becomes the most difficult mid-way when your forearm is perpendicular to the ground. After this point, it gets easier. Your body can sense this and finds ways for you to “cheat” through this difficult bottom half of the movement without you even realizing. One way it does that is by initiating each rep with a slight swing. Unfortunately, that additional load goes straight to your lower back which is now helping you get the weight up by using momentum. So, try doing a standard set of curls with your regular form. Then, stand with your back against a wall to prevent your body from swinging at all. If you had to drop the weight considerably, then it means you’ve likely been incorporating too much momentum into your regular curls. Although I wouldn’t recommend doing all your curls against a wall, you’ll see far better biceps growth and reduce your risk of injury if you simply lighten the weight and minimize the amount of swing you use, especially towards the end of your set.For the next mistake, two really interesting studies have found that participants experience more muscle growth when they only do the bottom half of the exercise (i.e., where the muscle is fully stretched). What does this mean? Well, I wouldn’t recommend doing only partial reps from now on, but it does seem that the bottom part of an exercise when the muscle is fully stretched provides a powerful stimulus for growth. Especially in the distal regions of a muscle like the bottom part of your biceps. So, whenever you do your bicep curls, avoid cutting the range of motion short at the bottom position. Instead, extend your arm fully by flexing your triceps at that bottom position before you go into your next rep to ensure your biceps get fully stretched. Third mistake: flexing your wrist on the bicep curl. The function of the inside forearm muscles is to flex the wrist. Many people, when they curl, subconsciously flex their wrist when trying to get the weight up. This can lead to the forearms working harder than they have to be, and eventually lead to fatigue and cramping. Instead, next time you do a curl, first bend your wrist back so that it’s aligned with your forearm, and then keep it that way as you curl.Next, let’s talk about the elbows. The primary function of the biceps is to flex the elbow. But whenever you curl with a weight that’s too heavy for your biceps to lift, your front delts will start to help by swinging your elbow forward. Biomechanics expert Coach Kassem tested this and found that allowing the elbows to excessively sway forward during the curl (note: across all variations, including the barbell curl) led to less biceps activation and more front delts activation. So instead, keep your elbow locked and focus on the biceps’ primary function - flexing the arm. A little bit of elbow movement is perfectly fine and hard to avoid, but anything more than what’s shown here will likely lead to more of your front delts taking over instead of your biceps. Last mistake: forgetting about mind muscle connection. If you struggle to feel your biceps even with proper form, try this out. With your arm by your side, flex your biceps as hard as you can. Then, bring your arm up in front of your face and again flex hard. You should feel a very strong biceps contraction when your arm is in that position. You don’t want to do curls in that position, but you can do this to actually feel what a strong biceps contraction is like. Then, when you go into the dumbbell curl (or whichever curl you prefer), rather than thinking about simply lifting the weight up, think about pulling the bar or dumbbell into your body. And, as you curl the weight up, focus on driving your pinkies up towards the ceiling. This emphasizes another function of the biceps, supination, which can help you get an even stronger contraction to get the most out of every single rep.Next time you do curls, apply these 5 fixes and let me know in the comments below just how much of a difference it makes!
BIGGER BICEPS: 5 Techniques To Speed Up Growth Jeremy Ethier 2022-09-25 | Want bigger biceps? I understand. Nothing shatters your confidence more than having twig-like arms. Trust me, I’ve been there and I know exactly how it feels. But the good news is that you can get bigger biceps. Growing your arms into big, sleeve hugging biceps is possible. You just need to get smarter with how you train them. There’s 5 techniques in particular that the latest science suggests can help speed up biceps growth dramatically. Today I’ll share how to get bigger biceps — fast — by implementing these 5 techniques in your biceps workout. Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll help you get results faster for all your muscle groups:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Get+Big+Biceps%3A+5+Mistakes+Keeping+Your+Arms+Skinny&utm_term=25%2F09%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1The first technique has to do with your back training. There are 2 things to remember. First, you will experience a lot of your biceps growth from your big back exercises. So don’t overlook their importance. Get stronger with your back training, and your biceps will grow as well. Two, to maximize biceps growth, train them directly with 1-2 exercises after your back training. This is especially true because as we’ll explain in the next tip, back exercises have a downside when it comes to biceps growth. That said, it’s important to pick the right bicep exercises. Certain bicep exercises may be better options than others. This is where the next tip comes in.The second technique to help you get bigger biceps is to make use of something called the stretch mediated hypertrophy. To do so, there are 3 things you could do. First, you need to use a full range of motion on all your bicep exercises, especially at the bottom position. This means fully extending your arm at the bottom position to get a full stretch in your biceps each rep. Next, you should choose bicep exercises that challenge the biceps the most when it’s in a fully stretched position, which is especially important because it’s something that the back exercises we talked about earlier just can’t do. The best options here are the slight incline dumbbell curl, and the behind the body cable curl. And lastly, for an even more powerful muscle building stimulus, after your last set for these exercises, once you’ve reached failure or very close to it, perform half reps of just the bottom part of the curl. This will allow you to push past your normal point of failure and will further prioritize this all important fully stretched position.The next tip has to do with your biceps workout volume. There’s a good chance that as long as you don’t overdo it, a small increase in your weekly bicep volume will be met with faster gains. My recommendation is to use 15 sets of direct bicep training as more of an upper limit. Instead of jumping straight to that, take a look at how many weekly bicep sets you’re doing right now, and add a couple sets to that. If you don’t feel overworked and your performance stays high, then great, keep doing that increased volume and in the future consider increasing it even further to see if it helps speed up your gains. I would however recommend splitting these sets up so you’re not doing it all in one session. That said, as you perform these sets, it’s important to apply the next tip if you want to experience the most growth out of them. Old school bodybuilders have long preached the benefits of focusing on feeling your muscle working as you train it. So to potentially speed up your bicep gains (for bigger biceps), whenever you do curls, try to really feel your biceps doing the work. E.g., think about pulling the bar or dumbbell into your body rather than just lifting the weight up. However, as you apply this tip, it’s important that you don’t end up sabotaging your bicep growth in the process. This leads me to my final tip.In order for a muscle to grow you need to continuously challenge them with more than they’re used to. To force your biceps to grow every week, first pick 2-3 bicep exercises that you’ll stick to week after week. Here’s a few that I’d recommend based on what we talked about earlier. Then, whenever you do a workout, write down how much weight you used and how many reps you did. Use these numbers as a goal to beat during your next workout by trying to do 1-2 more reps than you did last time or add a little bit more weight. Compared to your big compound exercises, progression with your bicep exercises will be slow. But focus on tracking your progress and making small improvements week after week and you’ll very quickly notice your biceps growing faster than they ever have before. You now know how to get bigger biceps — fast! Apply these 5 techniques and you’ll notice faster biceps growth almost immediately. Who knows, you might even reach Arnold status!
How To Eat To Lose Belly Fat (3 STAGES!) Jeremy Ethier 2022-09-11 | Belly fat is really easy to gain but seems almost impossible to lose. You’re probably aware your diet is the key when it comes to belly fat loss. But you likely have no idea where to start to lose belly fat, let alone how to keep fat loss going for long enough to get rid of the most stubborn areas. Today, I’ll share the ultimate 3-stage belly fat diet plan and show you, in a step-by-step manner, what to eat to lose belly fat and how to keep that going until your belly fat is gone. For good. Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll help you set up your nutrition plan and find foods and meals that you actually look forward to eating daily: builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Eat+To+Lose+Belly+Fat+%283+STAGES%21%29&utm_term=11%2F09%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1The first stage of the belly fat diet plan is designed to kickstart the fat loss process and keep it going until you get to about 15% body fat. Throughout this stage your hunger levels will be low, your risk of muscle loss will also be low, and physiologically it will be the easiest stage to get through. You only need to focus on 2 things: calories and protein. First, calories. Create what’s known as an “energy deficit” to start forcing your body to burn body fat for energy. You can do so by consuming less calories than your body burns every day. To find the appropriate energy deficit for your body, take your bodyweight in lbs and multiply that by anywhere from 11-13. The number you get will be a rough estimate of the amount of calories you should eat every day. To hit your goal calorie intake, focus on what’s known as “low calorie density” foods.But before that, there is one more factor you need to pay attention to for successful belly fat loss. Although eating fewer calories than your body needs will help you lose weight, you want as much of that weight loss to be from fat rather than muscle. This is where a higher protein intake comes in. As for how much protein you should aim for, a good recommendation for relatively heavier males in this stage who are at a higher body fat is to eat 1g/cm of your height. Focus only on calories and protein, and if you’re consistent, you'll be able to get your body fat all the way down to 15%. But at this point is when you’ll likely need to refine your approach to continue getting results. This is where Stage 2 comes in, which involves going from 15% down to 12% body fat. By this point you’ll be hungrier, your fat loss will have slowed down, and you’ll be at a slightly greater risk of muscle loss. This is where most people get stuck. There are two things that will help you overcome this to get rid of your belly fat. First, you need to get more precise with your approach. Start tracking your daily calorie intake more carefully if you haven’t.Second, start addressing your carb and fat intake. Although healthy fats are needed in your diet, on a gram per gram basis, fats contain more than twice as many calories as carbs do. An effective approach is thus to keep your protein intake high as is, but lower your daily fat intake to the lower end of what’s recommended for general health. This is about 20-25% of your daily calorie intake. As a result, you’ll now have room to introduce more carbs into your diet. Make these two tweaks and if you’re consistent, you’ll be able to get down to around 12% body fat which will help you to lose belly fat. This is where stage 3 comes in. This is the most difficult stage. First off, not only will you very likely have to be accurately tracking your calories everyday, you’ll also want to ensure your daily meals are making the best use of the limited calories you have. At this point your hunger levels will be the highest they’ve been. So most of your meals throughout the day will need to come from high volume foods that will help you stay full for less calories. This also means that you’ll need to be more disciplined when it comes to social events and dining out. Lastly, ask yourself if the sacrifices are worth it. While getting leaner than this will provide a bit more definition and cuts, it not only requires a lot more sacrifice, but for many people that’s when daily energy levels and strength will start to be negatively affected. So while you definitely can get to 10% body fat by pushing through with what you’ve learned, consider hanging around at a higher level of body fat first, be proud of how far you’ve come, and realize that the extra push just may not be worth it especially if you can’t maintain it. Overall guys, the strategy when it comes to your nutrition (i.e., what to eat to lose belly fat and how to keep that going) is actually quite simple. The hard part is staying consistent with it. You have to be clear about your goals and then find what you personally enjoy and can stick to consistently.
STOP Doing Chest Flys Like This (5 Mistakes Slowing Your Chest Gains) Jeremy Ethier 2022-08-28 | Chest flys are one of the most effective exercises for building your chest. But if you don’t do them correctly, they’ll end up working other muscles like your shoulders instead of your chest. There’s 5 common form mistakes almost everyone makes on the chest flyes exercise. They’re easy to fix but will make a massive difference when applied to your chest workout in terms of your chest growth. There are generally 3 different types of chest flys you can do. Dumbbell chest flyes, cable chest flyes, and machine chest flyes like the pec deck. Some of these options are better than others. But for now, as we go through the mistakes and fixes, I’ll make sure to show you how they apply to each one of these variations.Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll help you maximize chest growth:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=STOP+Doing+Chest+Flyes+Like+This+%285+Mistakes+Slowing+Your+Chest+Gains%29&utm_term=28%2F08%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1The first mistake has to do with the bend in your elbows when performing chest flys. I’ll use the dumbbell fly to illustrate this. At the bottom position, the straighter your arm is, the more tension will be applied to your chest. However, the straighter your arms go, the more your biceps also get involved. Eventually, there comes a point where your biceps work harder than your chest is and will become the limiting factor in the movement. The same is true with cable fly or pec deck. So, instead, at the bottom position you’ll want to keep a slight bend in your elbows such that your hands are just slightly outside your elbows. However, once you get to the top position, the opposite is now true. Straighten your arms and think about squeezing your elbows together as you approach the end position.The next common mistake on the chest flyes exercise has to do with something called the line of force. Let’s explain this with a cable fly. During this exercise, the direction of the cable will determine where on your body the force is being placed. To maximize chest activation, the direction of the cable needs to be aligned with the direction of your arms. You can play around with the cable height and your arm position until you get this right. And the same applies for the pec deck or even the dumbbell fly. In this case however, since you can’t adjust the line of force like you can with cables, you’ll simply want to keep your elbows up such that your hands and shoulders are always at the same height rather than letting your elbows drop down.Next mistake: given that many of us are stuck in a hunched over posture, your shoulders will have a natural tendency to want to take over as you’re going through your chest workout. To ensure the tension is being placed on the chest, first bring your shoulders down and away from your ears and then stick your chest up and out. Focus on squeezing your biceps into the sides of your chest. Your chest should remain up and out throughout this rather than letting your shoulders come forward and takeover.The next mistake has to do with how you’re setting up your fly. During the regular dumbbell chest flyes, cable chest flyes, or pec deck flyes, the main area targeted is the mid-chest. If you’re already doing a lot of flat bench press and flat dumbbell press which already target the mid-chest, I’d recommend adjusting the setup of your flys to work more of your upper and lower chest. The pec deck can’t be adjusted much because of the fixed bench. But for a cable fly, to target the lower chest you’d want to bring the pulleys up higher and perform a high to low fly. To target the upper chest, you’d want to use a bench set up at a slight incline. The same can be done with dumbbells by using a slight incline to emphasize the upper chest and a slight decline by putting a plate under one end of the bench to emphasize the lower chest.The last mistake has to do with the type of chest fly you choose to do. Dumbbell flys' main limitation is they’re only really hard and challenge your chest at the bottom position. Most of you are likely already doing either a dumbbell press, bench press, or machine chest press before you get to your chest flyes. These exercises already challenge your chest the most in the fully stretched position. So doing a dumbbell fly afterwards can be redundant. Instead, to potentially maximize growth, your workout should challenge your chest throughout the whole range of motion, especially in that end position when your arms are brought in together.How? Simple, with properly executed cable chest flyes or machine chest flyes, with cables having a slight advantage because you can easily adjust them to target the different areas of the chest like we went through.
BIGGER QUADS: 5 Mistakes Keeping Your Legs Skinny Jeremy Ethier 2022-08-14 | “How to get bigger legs?” is a common question I get. See, most people fail to understand that developing an impressive set of legs isn’t just about working hard. There are 5 mistakes people make during their quads workout that severely limit their leg growth. Today I’ll explain what those quad workout mistakes are, go through how to fix them, and then show how to implement this into your quad focused leg day so you can start growing monster quads fast. Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll transform your physique in the shortest time possible:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=EXPLOSIVE+QUADS+GROWTH%3A+5+Mistakes+Keeping+Your+Legs+Skinny&utm_term=14%2F08%2F2022Budget-friendly lifting shoes:amzn.to/3JnTdLJHeel-lift inserts (alternative to lifting shoes):amzn.to/3Qfi6fhClick below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1The quadriceps are a group of 4 muscles located in the front of your legs. Meaning? You need to program your quad workout carefully. And while some people can simply squat and see great quad development, others aren’t so lucky. Why? Let’s dive into the first training mistake and find out. Barbell squats are often recommended as the best exercise to grow bigger legs but they demand a lot from your core and lower back muscles to help stabilize the weight. Now this isn’t a bad thing, but if your main goal is to grow your legs then it can be an issue. And this is where machines can come in handy. Exercises like the hack squat, with the use of the back support, help minimize the stability demands of the exercise. As a result, you’ll be able to truly push your quads close to their limits without worrying about other muscles fatiguing first. Don’t have access to a hack squat machine? Another option is to use a smith machine squat during your quad focused leg day.The next mistake preventing you from growing monster quads has to do with your exercise execution. It’s been shown that the more forward your shin angle is, the greater the knee movement and the more the quads will be involved compared to the glutes and lower back muscles. But what if you have limited ankle mobility? One option is to invest in a pair of lifting shoes for a slight heel lift. Or use a couple weight plates to elevate your heels onto as you squat. This tip doesn’t just apply to squats. A low foot placement on the leg press could also increase quads activation. And lastly, you can also apply this concept to lunges and Bulgarian split squats.Applying the previous tips to your quads workout will reduce the tension placed on other muscles and move it to the quads. As a result, you’re not going to be able to lift nearly as heavy as you used to. So it’s absolutely crucial that you don’t let your ego get the best of you and let your body “cheat” to get the other muscles to help out. Control the weight and spend about 2-3 seconds on the way down of each rep, and you’ll experience far more growth in your quads despite using lighter weight. The next mistake has to do with your workout programming. Remember how your quads are made up of four muscles? Well one of them is “special”. It’s called the rectus femoris. It attaches at the pelvis and travels down the middle of your thigh. Because of its unique anatomy, during classic leg exercises like squats and leg presses, the rectus femoris doesn’t get very well activated. It is instead best activated in exercises like the leg extension or sissy squat where only your knees extend and your hips remain locked in place. The last mistake has to do with effort. We know that to maximize growth, you need to push yourself hard enough during your sets to reach at least within 3 reps of failure. So when it comes to your leg days, be honest with yourself, are you truly pushing yourself hard enough? Or do you stop your sets when you just start to feel the burn, and in reality could have done 5 or even 10 more reps? Given the sheer size of the quad muscles and the blood flow it receives, this is not going to feel comfortable. But the willingness to push through this discomfort is often what separates those who have an impressive set of legs from those who don’t. Consider using a pre-workout supplement to help with this.Alright let’s quickly cover how to apply it to your routine to get bigger legs. First, if you’re doing regular barbell squats and not feeling it much in your quads, try temporarily switching that for a heel elevated squat or a machine like a hack squat or smith machine squat. And for your leg presses and split squats, consider using the quad focused form to further emphasize the quads. Second, throw in a leg extension and/or sissy squat at the end of your workouts to emphasize the rectus femoris. Lastly, lighten the weight to force your quads to do the work but push yourself hard to reach close enough to failure.
What Happens To Your Body After 100 Push-Ups a Day For 30 Days Jeremy Ethier 2022-07-31 | Pushups are one of the most effective exercises to increase your strength and build up your upper body muscles like the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Some people take this exercise to the extreme and commit to doing 100 pushups a day, and seem to get impressive results. But what really happens if you do 100 pushups a day for 30 days? What muscles will grow and by how much by the end of this push up challenge? Are there any side effects related to this 30 day pushup challenge you should know about? Is it even worth your time and effort? Find out here.Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll prevent posture issues in the first place:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=What+Happens+If+You+Do+100+Pushups+A+Day+For+30+Days%3F+%28Is+It+Truly+Worth+Your+Time%3F%29&utm_term=31%2F07%2F2022Push-up form video:youtube.com/watch?v=Z88Rl5bpnmIClick below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1To maximize your gains and minimize injury from doing 100 pushups a day, make sure you do them with proper form. But what kind of growth can you expect from doing 100 push-ups a day? The highest activated muscles were the chest, triceps, front of the shoulders, core, and another muscle called the serratus anterior. These are likely where you’ll experience most of the improvements. As for how much of an improvement to expect in these muscles, we’ll dive into specifics later. But first, note that there are various side effects to doing 100 pushups a day for 30 days you’ll want to be aware of, starting with week 1. Men who rank “fair” in terms of their fitness on average can do about 15-20 push-ups in a row. This means you’ll likely need to do several sets of push-ups to get to a total of 100. In addition to this, the most noticeable effect you’ll experience in week 1 is what’s called DOMS, which stands for delayed onset muscle soreness. Since in this case your body isn’t used to doing 100 push-ups a day, week 1 is when you’ll experience the highest amount of soreness in your chest, shoulders, and arms.As for side effects you’d experience in weeks 2 to 3 of your 30 day pushup challenge? Since it takes roughly 48 hours for a muscle to fully recover, in the case of doing 100 push-ups a day, since you’re training the same muscles every single workout, they aren’t getting a long enough break to fully recover. Because of this, you’ll likely start to experience quite a bit of fatigue in weeks 2 and 3. Your body and muscles may start to feel more exhausted than normal and as a result your push-up performance may even start to decrease.So by the time week 4 rolls around, your body will have taken a beating from the high frequency and high volume pushups. You may also start to notice two things. First, if you regularly train your front muscles without training your back muscles, then the stronger front muscles will overtime start to pull your body forward into a hunched over position with your shoulders rounded forward. Now the other thing you’ll notice has to do with your joints. Even with proper form, the repetitive motion of push-ups can create a lot of strain especially on your wrists and elbows.What kind of growth can you expect to see at the end of the pushup challenge, though? In the push-up study I mentioned in the beginning of this video, the subjects weren’t doing anywhere near 100 push-ups a day. Instead, they were assigned to 3 sets of push-ups to failure twice a week. Given that the max number of push-ups they could do in a row was around 30 reps, this would equate to about 90 push-ups being done each session. A total of roughly 180 push-ups per week. Although this sounds like nothing compared to 100 push-ups a day, they still experienced significant growth. Over the course of 8 weeks, they experienced an 18.3% increase in the muscle thickness of their chest which equated to about a 3mm increase in thickness. Their triceps also experienced a 9.5% increase in growth, which also equated to about a 3 mm increase.If you halve these numbers, you can get a rough sense of the kind of growth you can experience after a month of doing push-ups just twice a week. If you were to do 100 push-ups a day would you experience more growth? I’d expect it to be similar or even less because you’re not giving your body adequate time to recover. Also, keep in mind that after these 30 days, if your body gets stronger then it’s going to need more of a challenge to continue growing.As for whether this is all worth it or not? Honestly, I would not recommend the standard approach of 100 push-ups every day without rest. It causes too many recovery issues and lacks the progression you need to keep seeing results past 30 days. That said, I will be working on a video that shows you a “better” way to execute the 100 push-ups a day challenge, and I’ll link that when it’s done. Look out for it!
STOP Doing Dumbbell Press Like This (5 Mistakes Slowing Your Chest Gains) Jeremy Ethier 2022-07-17 | As far as chest exercises go, the dumbbell bench press is arguably the most effective choice you could use to build your chest. Compared to the barbell bench press, it allows you to train through a greater range of motion, and can help prevent one side from becoming more developed than the other. That said, the DB bench press isn’t as simple as pressing the weight up and down. If you don’t do it correctly, rather than working your chest you’ll end up working other muscles like the front of your shoulders and your triceps. There are 5 dumbbell bench press form mistakes in particular that cause this to happen. Let’s start with mistake number 1 most people tend to commit during their chest workout.Click below for a step by step plan training plan that’ll transform your physique in the shortest time possible:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=STOP+Doing+Your+Dumbbell+Bench+Press+Like+This+%285+Mistakes+Slowing+Your+Chest+Gains%29&utm_term=17%2F07%2F2022Link to my all-in-one resistance bands:shop.builtwithscience.com/collections/resistance-bands/products/all-in-one-bandClick below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1The first DB bench press form mistake has to do with your arm path. Typically people use a very wide arm path and press the dumbbells straight up and down. Not only has this form been shown to have a greater risk for shoulder injury, but it also just doesn’t stimulate the chest very well. To maximize chest activation, you want your arm path to line up in the same direction that the chest fibres pull. You can do so by tucking your elbows to about 45 to 60 degree angle away from the body and allowing your grip to turn in slightly with your elbow.Mistake #2 you’re probably making on the dumbbell bench press has to do with your forearms. Make sure you’re not bending them inwards. This is because by bending the forearms inwards, you’re shortening the lever which makes the movement easier by taking some of the load off of the chest. It also gets the triceps more involved to take on some of the load as well. So lighten the weight, keep your forearm vertical over your elbow throughout each rep, and you’ll feel the difference right away.The third dumbbell bench press form mistake typically results from your daily posture. Given that many of us are already stuck in a hunched over posture, we have the tendency to round our shoulders forward whenever we press. This can lead to the front of the shoulders experiencing most of the growth. To avoid this, I’d first suggest extending your back over a foam roller, and then performing over-and-backs and band pull aparts with a band to promote chest activation. Then, when you actually go into the movement, on the way down think about using your back muscles to pull the weight down towards your chest by pinching your shoulder blades together. Then on the way up, avoid letting your shoulders forward. Keep your chest up and think about squeezing your biceps into the sides of your chest. It’s important to avoid this next mistake at the top position as well to build your chest in an optimal manner. The main function of the chest is horizontal adduction. Knowing this, you might think that bringing your arms in as close as possible at the top would better engage the chest. Some people even touch the dumbbells together at the top. However, since we’re using dumbbells, the line of force is straight down because of gravity. This means that once your arms are straight over your shoulders, there’s actually no more tension placed on the chest. Going further than this doesn’t stimulate the chest any further and is wasting energy that could otherwise be used towards your next reps. So instead, to keep constant tension on the chest, stop each rep once your arms end up straight over your shoulders.The last mistake doesn’t actually relate to form and instead has to do with the angle of the bench. The flat dumbbell press is great, but most of the growth you get from this exercise will be in the middle portion of your chest which can lead to the upper and lower portions of your chest underdeveloped. So in addition to doing just the flat dumbbell bench press, I’d also recommend doing an incline dumbbell press once a week as well. Now as for the lower portion of your chest, for most people the flat dumbbell press will already hit this region quite well. Some studies however suggest that a slight decline can help activate this region even more effectively.After you apply these various fixes to your chest workout, you’ll notice that you won’t be able to lift nearly as much as you used to. It might hurt the ego but it means that your chest is now doing most of the work. You’ll very quickly feel and see the difference this makes to your chest development.
ROUNDER GLUTES: 5 Mistakes Keeping Your Butt Flat Jeremy Ethier 2022-07-03 | Wondering how to get a round butt? For most men and women, round, firm glutes are seen as more attractive than having a flat, pancake butt. A nice-looking butt isn’t just important for turning heads though. The glutes are a key muscle for athletic performance and keeping them strong can also go a long way to preventing back and hip pain. The problem is, most people approach their glute training the wrong way. 5 mistakes, in particular, that keep them from getting a bubble butt. Find out what they are, and how you could avoid them, so you can make your glutes rounder here. Includes the best exercises you could do for round glutes.Click below for a plan that takes a step by step, science-based approach to all the muscles you train:builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=ROUNDER+GLUTES%3A+5+Mistakes+Keeping+Your+Butt+Flat&utm_term=03%2F07%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Before diving into the mistakes preventing you from achieving a bubble butt, let’s first understand the anatomy of the glutes. The glutes are composed of 3 muscles; the gluteus maximus, the gluteus medius, and the gluteus minimus. The gluteus maximus is much larger than the other 2 glutes muscles. It’s actually the largest and heaviest muscle in the human body. It’s also a strong predictor of sprint performance. Since this muscle makes up most of your butt and seems to be the most important region for boosting athletic performance, it only makes sense to make it the focus of your training. But most people fail to do this because of the following 5 mistakes.The first mistake people make that lock them into a flat, pancake butt has to do with exercise selection. The primary function of the gluteus maximus is hip extension, the movement of driving your hips forward. Most “glute exercises” you’ll find online either don’t train hip extension at all and focus on the smaller glute muscles, or they’ll train hip extension but not in a way that enables you to use heavier and heavier weights over time. The best glute exercises are instead the ones that focus on hip extension and enable you to use heavier weight overtime. Exercises like back squats, leg presses, bulgarian split squats, deadlifts, and hip thrusts. They’re not fancy, but if you use the right form and get really strong with them over time, these will be the key to the glutes growth you're looking for.The second mistake when most people try to make their glutes rounder is working the quads more than the glutes. In a leg press, if you were to place your feet higher up on the platform and stop each rep once your knees hit 90 degrees, this would enable your shins to stay vertical over the foot throughout and will also involve more hip extension, therefore emphasizing the glutes more than the quads. You can do these one leg at a time as well, and you can also apply this concept to lunges and Bulgarian split squats as well. Alright so we talked about the quads taking over but in other glutes exercises, the lower back and hamstrings actually have a tendency to take over. Let’s take a look at one of the best exercises for round glutes, the Romanian deadlift. To emphasize the glutes more, you want to use some knee bend. This incorporates more hip extension into the exercise. In addition to this, you should only go down as far as your mobility allows you to. This is the point at which the hips stop moving backward on the way down. So, try to look in the mirror and spot the point where your hips can’t move back, and stop each rep at that point.Alright so we already covered what some of the best glute exercises are, but the way you program them into your workouts is also very important when it comes to how to get a round butt. You want to include exercises that challenge the glutes in different ways. Bulgarian split squats, back squats, leg presses, and Romanian deadlifts challenge the glutes the most at the bottom position. At the top position however, there’s no tension placed on the glutes. So we’d want to look for an exercise that challenges the muscle when it’s fully shortened. Exercises like the hip thrust and the 45 degree hip extension both do just that. To apply this to your glute focused workouts, pick 1-2 exercises that challenge the glutes most at the bottom position, and then include 1 that challenges the glutes most at the top position. Finally: although picking the right exercises and performing them correctly will set you up for success, some people (especially those who sit a lot) will still have a hard time activating and feeling their glutes working. One way of improving this is with activation exercises.Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1The 4 Best Glute Exercises For A Nicer Butt:youtube.com/watch?v=HzRwKt2NLQ8
The PERFECT 5 Minute Posture Routine To Increase Your Height Jeremy Ethier 2022-06-19 | Are there exercises we can do to grow taller? Yes! That said, you’ll only become taller in the sense that you’ll reveal your natural height. Many of us sit for most of the day. Over time our bodies will learn to become extremely efficient sitters and lock us up in a hunched over, head forward, position. This reduces our height. There is, however, a 5 minute solution that can help improve your posture, undo the “damages” of prolonged sitting, and maybe even help you grow taller. Today I’ll show you the exact posture correction exercises and how to use them to grow taller in just 5 minutes.Click below for a step by step training plan that’ll prevent posture issues in the first place: builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gender/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Get+Taller+In+Just+5+Minutes+%28The+Perfect+Posture+Routine%29&utm_term=19%2F06%2F2022Grab your PDF copy of the full routine here:builtwithscience.com/posturePDFClick below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1First, let’s do a quick overview of the routine and the science behind how it helps you grow taller. If we take a look at the most common sitting posture, you can see how certain joints get locked up in poor positions. To improve our posture and relieve stiffness, we want to look for exercises that not only move these joints in the opposite way, but also strengthen the weakened muscles needed to keep the joints in the proper position for good. We’ll apply this concept to the three most common problem areas, and the areas that affect your height the most — the back, the shoulders, and the neck.Let’s start the process of helping you become taller by focusing on your back. The first exercise, thoracic rotations, is going to help improve your ability to rotate your mid-back. Next, we’re going to use the cobra pose to focus on extending your back out of its rounded position and strengthening some of your back muscles. This exercise is a great option to do so because the entire body is almost completely reversed in this stretch position when compared to a typical sitting posture. Now guys, before we move onto the shoulders, I want to emphasize that while these exercises may look easy when I do them, it took me a long time to improve my mobility to get to this point. Many of you will find them quite challenging when you actually try them, so don’t worry if your form doesn’t quite look like mine yet.Alright, so now that we’ve unlocked the spine, we’ll be better able to work on your stiff shoulders that are rounding you forward into a locked up position and also contributing to your forward head posture. The first of the exercises we’ll use to help you grow taller is the over-and-backs. These will focus on loosening up the shoulders. Now that we’ve temporarily loosened our shoulders up, we’ll be able to better target your weakened back and shoulder muscles. To do so, we’ll use what I call reverse wall angels. When done properly, you should feel this in the muscles of your mid back and shoulders. If you feel this more in your upper traps, try performing it on the floor or a on a bench instead as your mid-back muscles may not yet be strong enough to perform this upright. If on the other hand you find it easy, you can add pulses to each part of the movement and even add a bit of weight in your hands. Finally, we’re ready for the last piece of the puzzle, the neck. What we need to do is actually pretty simple. We just need to strengthen the deep muscles in your neck that have become weak and are failing to do its job of keeping your head in its upright position. As for the specific posture correction exercises you’ll use? Well, there’s only one. And although it may not look pretty, it’s extremely effective and can be done anywhere. It’s none other than the chin tucks. When done properly, you should feel the deep muscles under your chin working.Now, let’s cover how to implement them for the best results. You’re going to do each exercise for 1 minute. Within that minute, take it slow and try to do as many quality reps as you can. Quality is more important than quantity.Here’s how to grow taller in 5 minutes:BACK:Exercise 1: Thoracic Rotations (30s per side)Exercise 2: Cobra Pose (1 minute)SHOULDERS:Exercise 3: Over-And-Backs (1 minute)Exercise 4: Reverse Wall Angels (1 minute)NECK:Exercise 5: Chin Tucks (1 minute)Implement this 1-2 times a day, make an effort to get up and move more, and you’ll very quickly feel and see a difference. Don’t forget to measure your height before and after as well, and leave a comment below if you managed to gain an inch or two. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. Embrace your height, ignore anyone who puts you down about it, and enjoy the many other benefits this routine has to offer.Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
The #1 Exercise To Lose Belly Fat (FOR GOOD!) Jeremy Ethier 2022-06-05 | “How to lose belly fat” is one of the most common questions out there. And that’s understandable. Belly fat is really easy to gain and notoriously hard to lose. It can seem as though no matter what exercises you try to lose belly fat and no matter how well you eat, the belly fat just won’t budge. And unfortunately, with exception to surgery, there is currently no proven method of being able to spot reduce fat from the belly. There is an exercise, however, that is incredibly underutilized yet powerfully effective when it comes to losing even the most stubborn belly fat. Today I’ll share what that is and how you can start using it right away to lose belly fat.Click below for a step by step plan to lose stubborn fat and build muscle:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+%231+Exercise+To+Lose+Belly+Fat+%28FOR+GOOD%21%29&utm_term=05%2F06%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Why is belly fat is so hard to lose in the first place? Well, it comes down to the fact that certain areas of your body are easier to lose fat than others, and is largely determined by genetics. Now having your genetics stacked against you may seem problematic if you’re looking to develop a slim or lean looking abdomen, but there is a solution. As long as you create a calorie deficit, you will continue to lose fat. Eventually, if maintained long enough, you will lose excess fat from all areas of your body, even if your genetics put your belly fat at the back of the line. While diet should be your main way of creating a calorie deficit, adding additional exercises could help you to lose belly fat by keeping your metabolism high, even as you’re losing weight from dieting. That said, not all exercises are created equal. While things like running, rowing, cycling, or even HIIT workouts tend to burn calories very quickly, the truth is, the overwhelming majority of people can’t actually stick with traditional cardio long enough for fat loss to reach stubborn areas. And it’s not that these methods don’t work if you stick to it, because they do. The problem is simply that they’re brutal. They require a lot of willpower. Now don’t get me wrong, these forms of cardio definitely do have their place and some people have no problem sticking to them. In fact, I still do these intense sessions once or twice a week for conditioning. But I no longer rely on them as my main form of cardio to lose fat and nor should most people. Because if you want to lose your stubborn belly fat, and more importantly keep it off once it’s gone, then you need something you can stick to for life. What’s the solution?The best exercise to lose belly fat is walking. It’s the easiest to maintain, lowest stress, lowest fatigue, and most versatile form of cardio. According to research, intense forms of cardio like HIIT or running, while time efficient, didn’t provide any superior fat loss effect when compared to longer yet less intense forms of cardio such as walking. Which makes sense. It’s simply a numbers game. Your body doesn’t care whether the calories you burned were from some crazy intense fasted cardio session or from plain old walking. What matters most is what you can do consistently over time. And if you crunch the numbers, you’ll actually find that the calories burned from simply walking can very quickly add up to a meaningful amount.So now that I’ve hopefully convinced you of the power of walking, let’s dive into the specifics of how to lose belly fat from walking. The first step is to determine an average of how many steps you’re currently taking. You can use the health app on your iPhone or use Google Fit if you’re on Android. After a week, see what your daily average comes up to. Some of you however might be surprised with how few steps you’re taking, but this is a good thing, as it means you have a big opportunity to bump that up. Set a realistic goal and first aim to do an extra 2,000 steps a day. Given that the average individual takes about 1,200 steps during 10 minutes of walking, all you have to do is throw in two 10 minutes walks into your day to accomplish that. Once you’re consistent with that, try bumping it up by another 2,000 steps, and continue doing this with the goal of consistently getting at least 8,000 steps or even up to 15,000 steps, which seems to be the range that provides the greatest fat loss and health benefits. Trust me, the little things add up. Apply these tips and you’ll be surprised with just how much they increase your step count and even more surprised by how much of a difference it makes towards your fat loss overtime. That said guys, I want to emphasize that walking or any form of cardio is only effective for fat loss if it’s used in combination with a diet. So use your diet as the primary way to create a calorie deficit and supplement it with walking to help speed up the process.
Why YOUR Muscles Arent Growing (And How to FIX IT) Jeremy Ethier 2022-05-22 | “Why am I not building muscle?”—have you ever asked that? Well, building muscle is easy…. If you’re a brand new beginner. Past the “newbie gains” stage, building muscle becomes disproportionately harder, especially as a natural. This is why many people, no matter how hard they work in the gym or how well they eat, just seem like they’re not making gains anymore. Unfortunately, you can’t brute force your way past this. Beyond basic fixes like “eat enough food” or “get enough sleep”, you not gaining muscle comes down to 1 reason. Here, I reveal what the no.1 reason why you’re not gaining muscle and how to build muscle by modifying your training to instantly make it far more effective at building muscle (i.e., winning tips to build muscle).Click below to find a step by step program that uses science to help you build lean muscle and burn off fat:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+No.1+Reason+You%27re+Not+Building+Muscle+As+A+Natural%2C+Exposed&utm_term=22%2F05%2F2022Click below to subscribe for more videos:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1First, we have to understand how a muscle actually grows in order to take advantage of it. Historically, there were 3 mechanisms that everyone conceived as driving muscle growth. However, as more research was conducted over time, it became evident the science and reasoning behind some of these mechanisms was quite flawed. Unfortunately, most people, including many trainers, weren’t made aware of this. As a result, many people still train ineffectively, resulting in them not gaining muscle in the long-term. So what are these 3 mechanisms? And which of them are no longer reliable? The first mechanism, muscle damage, represents actual damage, known as microtrauma, that training can cause to muscle cells. This damage causes a reactive inflammatory response in the body which can create muscle soreness, and in theory, causes the muscle to grow bigger in response. The second mechanism is called metabolic stress. This mechanism represents the chemical demands placed on your muscles during training. As you work harder and create more and more build up, your muscles become more acidic, creating a burning sensation in your muscles. The hormonal environment and swelling of the muscle caused by this is theorized to cause muscle growth. Thus, explaining the various tips you’ll see on “chasing the pump” to build muscle. The third and final mechanism is mechanical tension. This represents the tension that’s placed on your muscle as it lengthens and then contracts under load. Generally, the heavier the weights you lift and the greater the range of motion you use to lift them, the more mechanical tension is created.All 3 mechanisms sound great on paper, but recent research has revealed that we’ve been undermining the importance of 1, way overestimated 1, and- well- were totally wrong about the other. Let’s start with muscle damage. As it turns out, research shows that although muscle damage and soreness will be a byproduct of hard training, trying to get more of it does not lead to more growth, and can in fact hinder it. As for metabolic stress, the available research on shorter rest periods, training to failure, and faster lifting tempos suggest that it simply doesn’t seem to be strongly correlated with hypertrophy. Finally, mechanical tension. This mechanism has withstood the test of time and recent research has only served to reiterate that it is the most important driver for muscle growth. So, if you’re not making gains, you’ll want to structure your workouts such that they maximize mechanical tension. There are 4 modifications you could use.First, don’t prioritize ‘feeling’ like you made progress, prioritize ACTUALLY making progress. You can do this by sticking with the same exercises week to week and slowly adding more weight and reps to them as you get stronger. Second, rest with purpose. Although optimal rest time highly depends on how taxing the exercise is as well as your training status, a good recommendation is to spend at least 1.5-2 minutes of rest between sets for most of your exercises, with 3 minutes of rest being a good idea for heavy compound movements. Third, increasing mechanical tension is NOT just about going from point A to point B or how much weight you can lift. It’s about HOW you lift that weight from point A to point B. Pay attention to proper form rather than let your ego get the best of you. In addition to that, another thing explaining why you’re not gaining muscle is the lack of mind to muscle connection, so be sure to develop that.Even if you feel stuck right now, thinking, “Why am I not building muscle?”, apply those 4 modifications to your workouts and you’ll very quickly notice the gains picking back up again. That’s the true power of science.
Go From 0 to 10 Pull-Ups In A Row (FAST!) Jeremy Ethier 2022-05-08 | Pull ups are a great muscle building exercise. But there’s a reason why so few are able to accomplish this impressive feat of strength and unable to do enough reps to truly maximize the muscle building benefits of this exercise. In this video, I’ll explain why that is, how to improve your pull ups, and then give you a full pull up progression workout designed to quickly take you from 0, 2, 4, 8 — or wherever you’re at in your pull up journey — to 10 pull-ups in a row and beyond. Yes, this is essentially a tutorial covering “how to do pull ups” for beginners!Let’s begin by covering why pull ups are so difficult in the first place. First, with pull ups, whether you weigh 150 or 300 pounds, that’s the weight you’ll have to overcome with each rep. Second, pull ups are not just a back exercise. No matter how strong your bigger back muscles or biceps get, if you have weak links in the chain, it will limit you from improving your pull-ups. There are 3 steps to solving these.The first step is to change the way you train your pull ups for strength improvements. If you currently can’t do any pull-ups or can’t do more than 4 in a row, we will use 2 other exercises to quickly build your strength. The first exercise is the inverted rows. The second exercise that trains your body in a vertical manner (like the pull up) is the assisted negative pull ups. Once you’re able to do between 5 to 7 pull-ups in a row, that’s when you’re ready for your pull up progression. You’re going to do sets of anywhere between 2-5 reps (at least 2 reps away from your max effort). You’ll do a set, rest for 30-90 seconds, do another set, and repeat until you reach a total of 20 reps. The goal is to overtime comfortably reach a total of 30 reps. Next, get yourself a few resistance bands. Loop one around the top of a bar just like this and put your feet into it. The band will exert force upwards as long as you stand on it, effectively reducing the amount of resistance you need to overcome with each rep. Choose a band that enables you to do between 6-12 reps. So, once you get to 8-9 reps in a row yet can’t quite break through 10, you’ll simply use the same routine as the 5-7 group but with more difficulty. For the bodyweight pull-ups, add a 5lb weight either with a weight belt or a dumbbell between your feet. For the banded pull-ups, switch to a thinner band or take one foot out to lessen the support. The next step in how to improve your pull ups is to strengthen common weak links in the chain. The first is the core; to best replicate the intense demands placed on the core from pull-ups, we can use what’s known as a long lever rocking plank. The second is the lower traps; we’ll use scapular pull ups to train it. Here’s the game plan (i.e., THE pull ups workout program suitable for beginners). Reference your current pull up ability — and progress accordingly from there.0-4 Pull-Ups:Inverted Row: 4 sets of 8-12 repsNegative Pull-Ups: 5 sets of 5 reps (progress to 5 second descents each rep) Long Lever Rocking Plank: 3 sets (aim to hold for 60-120 seconds)Scapular Pull-Ups: 3 sets of 8-15 reps (2 second holds at top position)5-7 Pull-Ups:Pull-Ups: Sets of 2-5 reps staying 2 reps away from failure (aim for 20-30 reps total)Banded Pull-Ups: 3 sets of 6-12 repsInverted Row: 3 sets of 8-12 repsLong Lever Rocking Plank: 3 sets (aim to hold for 60-120 seconds)Scapular Pull-Ups: 3 sets of 8-15 reps (2 second holds at top position)8-9 Pull-Ups:Weighted Pull-Ups: Sets of 2-5 reps staying 2 reps away from failure (aim for 20-30 reps total)Banded Pull-Ups: 3 sets of 6-12 repsInverted Row: 3 sets of 8-12 repsLong Lever Rocking Plank: 3 sets (aim to hold for 60-120 seconds)Scapular Pull-Ups: 3 sets of 8-15 reps (2 second holds at top position)It can easily be used as a full back workout performed once a week, or if you train back twice a week, you can plop in a couple of the exercises into each day. As you use this plan, you’ll also want to re-test your max pull-ups every month and then move on to the next level as your strength improves. Even if you can’t do any pull ups right now, use this workout, stay consistent, and just like countless others have experienced from my past pull up videos, you’ll be blown away with just how quickly your pull ups increase. That’s the true power of science. And if you’re looking to apply this science-based approach to the rest of your training to make faster gains and build a body you’re proud of, take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=Go+From+0+To+10+Pull+Ups+In+A+Row+%28FAST%21%29&utm_term=08%2F05%2F2022DOWNLOAD FREE PULL UP WORKOUT PROGRAM PDF HERE:builtwithscience.com/pullupPDFSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
What Happens To Your Body After Taking Creatine For 30 Days? Jeremy Ethier 2022-04-24 | What exactly does creatine do to your body? How does creatine work? And where does it go? What creatine benefits should you expect to feel, and how soon? Is it safe? And are there any creatine side effects you should know about? Today we’ll cover all that by doing a deep dive into what to expect throughout your first 30 days of taking creatine.So, first things first: what does creatine do to your body? Creatine is a substance we naturally produce and use up as an indirect energy source to power our muscles through high intensity activities. For this reason, we store most of our creatine in our muscles (95%). But, about 5% of creatine is also stored in the brain. Supplementing with creatine can increase our baseline levels by about 30%. As a result, our muscles have more creatine to power our muscles with, leading to more strength and muscle mass overtime. But approximately 20-30% of individuals naturally walk around with just about fully saturated muscle creatine levels. As a result, they experience little to no benefit from creatine supplementation. When you first start taking creatine, it takes time for your muscles to become fully saturated with that additional creatine. How long this takes depends on how much creatine you take every day. Using the loading method, it’ll take about 7 days to fully saturate your muscles. The other method is to take a baseline dose of creatine every day and to slowly increase your creatine levels overtime, often taking about 2-3 weeks to reach full saturation.Both methods get you to the same end destination, but will differ in some of the creatine side effects you may experience. For example, one of the side effects most people experience during this saturation phase is water retention and a small spike in your bodyweight. Another often reported side effect is stomach discomfort. If you experience this, or want to avoid experiencing it in the first place, try splitting up your creatine dose into multiple smaller doses throughout the day if you’re on the loading protocol. If it doesn’t work, stick with the non-loading protocol. In addition to this, avoid taking creatine on an empty stomach or with caffeine as those both scenarios seem to increase the likelihood of an upset stomach. Lastly, when you take your creatine, you can try mixing it with hot water to get it fully dissolved and see if that helps.Alright so the last side effect you and your doctor should know about has to do with your creatinine levels. Creatinine is a breakdown product of creatine. Since you’re taking more creatine, your creatinine levels will also slightly increase. And since high creatinine levels can indicate impaired kidney function, this can be alarming to see on a blood test if you’re not aware of it. However, creatine has been consistently proven to be a safe supplement for healthy individuals and your health professional should be aware of its effect on creatinine.Alright so our muscles are now locked and loaded with creatine! What happens now? What creatine benefits can you expect? First off, your strength should start increasing across most of your movements. Note that even just a slight increase in your strength or reps is a very solid return as far as supplements go and can lead to significantly greater muscle mass overtime. In addition to just improving performance however, a study that surveyed 52 NCAA athletes found that 81% of them reported faster recovery from their training as one of the benefits they noticed after taking creatine. So after you reach saturation, pay attention to how fast you recover between your workouts as you may notice an improvement. Lastly, creatine supplementation could consistently improve performance on short-term memory and tests of intelligence, with the benefits becoming even more apparent under stressed states such as sleep deprivation.So that should give you a very good idea as to how does creatine work, exactly, and what to expect once you start taking creatine. That said guys, creatine or any supplement for that matter, is just the icing on the cake. If you want to truly transform your body and see incredible results then you need to prioritize your training and your nutrition. If you need help in these areas and are looking for a simple yet highly effective science-based program you can trust, that shows you exactly how to train and how to eat to transform your body as efficiently as possible, then simply take our analysis quiz to find the best program for you and your body below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=Creatine+Before+And+After%3A+What+Happens+When+You+Take+It+For+30+Days+Straight%3F&utm_term=24%2F04%2F2022BEST WAY TO USE CREATINE:youtube.com/watch?v=Apgm6lKBfUASubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
STOP Doing Squats Like This (SAVE YOUR JOINTS!) Jeremy Ethier 2022-04-10 | Want to keep your joints healthy and maximize your strength? Here are 4 key barbell squat form mistakes that you’re likely making without even realizing it. In this “squat tutorial” video, I dive into what those are, and how to fix them, so you (finally) master the squat technique. By the end of it, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge of proper squat form, enabling you to achieve a safer and stronger squat right away.The first mistake has to do with your hip structure and how it affects what the optimal foot width and foot positioning is for your squat. To figure out what your optimal stance is, get onto all fours with your hands directly under your shoulders, knees under your hips, and ideally with your feet against a wall. From here, try to sink your hips back into heels as deep as you can without rounding your lower back. Make note of how that feels and how far you could go. Then, play around with it until you find that sweet spot position that feels the best and allows you to get the deepest without rounding at your lower back. Stand up and make note of how far apart your feet were. Then, either with your bodyweight or under the bar, squat down with your toes and knees straight out and see how that feels. Experiment and find what foot angle feels best and enables you to squat the deepest, which will now be your ideal squat stance.Next, a common barbell squat form mistake: butt wink. Although it may be fine for some individuals, for others it can put a lot of harmful forces on their spinal discs. So, you’re going to use a screening test created by back pain Dr. Stuart McGill. Do 10 cycles of back extension and flexion with the Olympic barbell — and if there’s pain, butt wink will most likely be an issue for you.There are two things you can do to minimize butt wink for a “cleaner” squat technique. The first is to simply limit your range of motion. However, oftentimes butt wink is an ankle mobility issue. To improve this, try squatting with your heels on plates or use lifting shoes and see if that helps. If it does, great, continue doing that while working on improving your ankle mobility.The next mistake covered in this squat tutorial has to do with your feet. Try standing up on one leg with your other knee bent behind you. Are you able to hold this for at least 25 seconds without falling over? Without adequate stability from your feet, your body will seek for it elsewhere, often leading to compensations that can cause excessive stress on the lower back and other areas especially with heavier loads.To help improve your foot stability, there are two things we can do. First, as per back pain expert Dr. Stuart McGill, the leaning tower drill. The second thing you can do is pay attention to how you distribute your weight as you’re squatting. Before you squat down, grip the floor with your feet and spread your weight across these three points; your heel, and the base of your 1st and 5th toe. Then when you perform your squat, make sure each of these 3 points remain in contact with the ground with the weight distributed evenly among them.The last mistake has to do with your bar path. A common mistake lifters make is letting their chest fall forward and hips rise up during the ascent. This shifts the bar forward from the mid-line, which can place more stress on the lower back. Although weak quads relative to your glutes may play a role in this, it seems that suboptimal motor recruitment patterns are the main culprit. That means you’ll have to re-learn the squat. The goal is to get your hips and chest rising at the same rate to keep the bar path straight up and down. To accomplish this, for at least a few weeks, swap out your regular sets of squats for double paused squats. You will likely have to lighten the weight considerably to break out of old habits, but after a few weeks of this, the proper squat form will start to feel more natural and is when you can switch back to regular squats if you wish. Hopefully you now see the importance of the finer details when it comes to each and every exercise you do. It’s not just about choosing the right exercises but also performing them in a way to get the most out of them while avoiding any potential injury or setbacks down the road. It’s so important that you get this right from the start and it’s why I focus so heavily on that not just within the YouTube videos I put out but especially in the Built With Science programs I offer. For those who want to maximize your efforts and start transforming your body today, take my analysis quiz to see what step by step program is best for you and your body below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=STOP+Doing+Squats+Like+This+%284+MAJOR+Squat+Form+Fixes%29&utm_term=10%2F04%2F2022ANKLE MOBILITY DRILLS:youtube.com/watch?v=TSIbzfcnv_8&Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
THICKER CHEST: 4 Mistakes Keeping You Small Jeremy Ethier 2022-03-27 | One of my biggest frustrations when I first started training was that no matter how strong I got with the bench press or how many push-ups I could do, I still didn’t get a big chest. Eventually, I realized that although I was doing the right chest exercises, I wasn’t doing them in a way that allowed my chest to do most of the work. In turn, explaining my chest mass. Or lack thereof. While my chest is still nowhere near where I want it to be, I do now have bigger pecs ever since I fixed 4 things. So, fix the 4 mistakes I’m about to show you to get a bigger chest. I guarantee during your next workout you’ll finally feel your chest light up and you’ll grow a bigger chest like never before. The first mistake preventing you from building a big chest: many of you are probably students or full time professionals who sit most of the day, meaning you likely have a hunched-over posture. If you’re locked up in this position, when you press the bar in a bench press, you’ll naturally be inclined to let your shoulders round forward and chest cave in as you push the weight up. The more you let this happen, the more tension is shifted away from the chest and onto the shoulders. There are 2 steps to fixing it. First, work on your mobility to help open up your chest so you’ll be better able to utilize your chest in the first place during any pressing movements. Second, bring your shoulders down and away from your ears, and then retract your shoulder blades by pinching them together as if you had a pencil between them on your pressing movements. Maintain this as you press, and your shoulders will stay pinned back and chest out, enabling your chest to now do the work. Focus mainly on maintaining this retracted position as you lower the weight down. For bigger pecs, your elbow angle should line up with the majority of your chest fibres. This tends to be at an angle of around 45 to 60 degrees. However, many of you will likely have relatively stronger shoulders and a weaker chest. As a result, your body will be inclined to flare your elbows out as you press to use your stronger shoulders to lift the weight rather than your weaker pecs. To minimize the odds of this happening, use a grip that’s about 1.5x shoulder width. Then, as you bring the bar down, tuck your elbows to roughly a 45 degree angle. And as you press, try to consciously avoid letting your elbows flare out. The same applies for dumbbell presses and even push-ups.By applying the previous 2 points, you’ll be setting up your form to maximally increase your chest mass. But you’ll want to boost activation even further by using something called the mind-muscle connection. Shift your thinking from pushing and instead to “pulling your arms together” which as a result is what moves the weight up. To re-enforce this, stand with one arm out to the side and the other holding your chest. Bring your shoulder blades down and pinched together like we talked about earlier. Now think about the following 2 points. Point A at your biceps and point B at your inner pec. Use that pec to bring point A to point B while feeling that chest contract with your other hand. Avoid letting your shoulder takeover by keeping your shoulder blades back. Once you start feeling that, try bending your arm as if you were pressing. Apply this to all your pressing movements. Once this “clicks” for you you’ll feel the difference right away.There is still 1 more mistake that has the power to sabotage your ability to get a bigger chest. What is it? Ego! If you properly apply the tips we went through, you’re going to start actually using your chest when you press. But since your chest is relatively weak compared to your other stronger muscles that usually take over, you’re not going to be able to lift as heavy of a weight as you’re used to. When this happens, don’t let your ego takeover and fall back into bad habits. Realize that now tension is being placed where it should be. So I hope you were able to see the importance of not just doing the right exercises but performing them in a way that maximizes your efforts when it comes to how to grow a bigger chest. Working smarter and focusing on quality work rather than wasting time in the gym is what we preach at Built With Science. It’s why within our science-based programs, we provide in-depth tutorials for each and every exercise as well as muscle activation drills just like we did with the chest but for all your muscle groups. To gain access and start transforming your body today, take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Get+Big+Chest%3A+4+Mistakes+Keeping+You+Small&utm_term=27%2F03%2F2022UPPER BODY MOBILITY ROUTINE:builtwithscience.com/fix-hunched-postureSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
The BEST Way To Use Creatine For Muscle Growth (4 STEPS) Jeremy Ethier 2022-03-13 | Creatine is an effective and safe supplement to help you build stronger and bigger muscles. But science also reveals that, when it comes to how to take creatine, there’s a specific way to use it (e.g., creatine before or after workout?) to maximize its benefits and save money while you’re at it. Today, I’ll show you how to do just that in 4 easy steps. But before that, what is creatine? And what creatine benefits can you expect? What is creatine? Creatine is a substance we naturally produce and use up as an energy source to power our muscles through the first 10 seconds or so of high intensity activities. Increasing our natural creatine levels through supplementation can provide a significant boost in power and strength during our workouts which overtime has been shown to translate to significantly greater muscle growth.But it’s very easy to waste a bunch of money on creatine without fully reaping its benefits. The first step to avoiding that is to make sure you pick the right type of creatine. Let's reference a 2021 review that analyzed 8 creatine types to determine which was most effective. It also broke down the costs per serving for the different forms of creatine, and found creatine monohydrate to be the cheapest. As it turns out, all 8 worked just as effectively at boosting muscle creatine levels. Meaning? Given that you could save over a dollar every single day from sticking to plain old creatine monohydrate, save your money and stick to that!The next step in understanding how to take creatine is its dosage. What I’d recommend is stick to 3g per day, a little less than the typical scoop size, as that’s going to be more than enough for the vast majority of people. Those on the heavier side may benefit from just a slightly higher dose based on your bodyweight. Now with that being said, when you first start taking creatine, you may actually want to consider bumping up the dose far above this. This is where step 3 comes into play.It takes time for creatine levels in your muscles to gradually increase and fully saturate. Depending on how fast you’d like to experience the benefits of creatine, there are 2 protocols you can use. The loading protocol saturates your muscles in 7 days, while the non-loading protocol takes about 3 to 4 weeks. The loading method is advantageous if you’d like to reap the benefits as quickly as possible. It’s also the protocol I’d recommend if you’re dieting. The only potential downside of a loading protocol could be some digestive distress from taking so much at once, but this seems to be mitigated if you space out your 20 grams over the day.Step 4: when to take it and what to avoid taking it with to maximize its benefit. So, creatine before or after workout? Well, remember that creatine doesn’t have an immediate effect. This means that taking it pre-workout doesn’t provide any unique benefit. As for what to take it with, there is some evidence that taking creatine with carbohydrates and protein increases saturation levels more than just taking creatine on its own, but this only really makes a difference during the initial saturation phase. That said, there is a small possibility that caffeine consumption may actually hinder the benefits of creatine. For now, the best recommendations are if you’re extremely concerned about the potential interference between caffeine and creatine, ditch regular caffeine consumption as creatine tends to provide greater benefits overtime. Instead, save your caffeine consumption just for times or workouts when you need it the most. But that can be a tough ask for many. In which case, a more suitable alternative is to simply avoid taking creatine and caffeine together. But again, research is far from conclusive. Here are the main key points to get the most bang for your buck. Using creatine monohydrate, follow either the loading protocol or non-loading protocol to saturate your muscles and then take about 3g of it whenever you wish every day to maintain it. Then, after a few weeks, there are a few signs you want to look for to see if it’s working for you. It won’t work for everyone. But don't worry, this is something I’m going to cover in a follow up video!All that said, guys, creatine, just like any other supplement, is not magic. It doesn’t do the work for you. But when paired with the right training and nutrition plan, can help give you a bit of an edge. And if you’re looking for a simple yet effective science-based program you can trust, that shows you exactly how to train and how to eat to transform your body as efficiently as possible, then take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Use+Creatine+To+Build+Muscle+%285+Steps%29&utm_term=13%2F03%2F2022Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How To Unlock Your Mobility in 5 Minutes (DAILY STRETCH) Jeremy Ethier 2022-02-27 | If we don’t regularly use the full range of motion of our joints through mobility training, we quickly lose our ability to do so. This hurts our full body mobility; the shoulders, hips, back, and ankles just don’t move like they may have used to. So, today, I’ll show you how by focusing on the right areas and the right mobility exercises, you can significantly improve your mobility through just a 5 min stretch routine. Implement this daily stretch routine and you’ll feel better, your lifts will improve, and you’ll likely soon notice an unlocking of tight and sleepy muscles that you may have never even known existed.First, what makes this 5 min stretch routine so effective? Well, the shorter a stretching routine is, the more likely you’ll be able to stick to it. And second, because this routine is only 5 minutes, we need to make sure it focuses on areas that need the most help. That’s why we picked 3 key areas: the hips, the upper back, and the ankles. The first move of our daily stretch routine will be used to loosen up the spine and our back muscles in preparation for our next exercises. To perform it, get onto all fours with your knees under your hips and hands under your shoulders. From here, in a gentle motion, round your back up towards the ceiling. As you do this, take a deep breath in while tucking your head down. Then, exhale as you reverse this motion. The next of our mobility exercises is called the “World’s Greatest Stretch”. Get into a plank position with your hands under your shoulders and feet together. From here, lunge forward by bringing your right foot up as high as you can. Next, take your right hand, place it on your knee and push your knee out and back and then forward and back a few times. Then, try to drop your right elbow as far towards the ground as you can while rotating your upper body down towards the ground. To really open up the mid and upper back, rotate your entire upper body up and to the right and reach your right arm as far overhead as you can. Then, reach back down and repeat this for 5 reps or about 30 seconds in total before switching to the next side. Up next on our mobility training, the modified Asian squat. First, get a rolled up towel and place your heels on it. From here, using a squat stance which is typically just outside shoulder width, squat down into however deep is comfortable for you. Keep your chest up and try to keep your heels down. From here, place your arms on the inside of your legs and use your elbows to push your knees out. Sit in this position for 30 seconds. For the next 30 seconds, move side to side to stretch out each ankle one at a time. Next, we’re going to really focus on mobilizing the upper back. Get into a half kneeling position with your right leg bent as close to the wall as you can get it, and your left leg planted forward in a lunge position. Place both arms directly in front of you with your right arm making contact with the wall. From here, push your right hand into the wall as you rotate your upper body to the left, trying to reach your left arm to the other side of the wall. Return to the starting position and then repeat for 30 seconds before switching sides.The exercise we’ll use are wall slides. To perform it, stand with your back against a wall and contract your abs to flatten your lower back on the wall. Then, slide your arms up and down the wall. To make this easier when starting out, place your feet further away from the wall. Then over time, try to get your feet closer and closer to the wall while trying your best to keep your lower back flat against the wall. Here is the full 5 minute routine that’ll help with full body mobility: Exercise 1: Cat Cow (60 seconds)Exercise 2: World’s Greatest Stretch (30 seconds per side)Exercise 3: Asian Squat (30 seconds hold, 30 seconds rock side to side)Exercise 4: Half Kneeling Thoracic Rotations (30 seconds) Exercise 5: Wall SlidesFocus on doing as many high-quality reps as you can within the 1 minute you have for each exercise. Implement this daily, make an effort to move more, and supplement this with exercises in the gym like split squats and overhead presses that help you actually use your new mobility, and you’ll very quickly notice a massive improvement in how you move and feel. And for a step-by-step program that takes a holistic, science-based approach to transforming your body by focusing not just on your workouts but also on your nutrition, your mobility, and your recovery, simply take our analysis quiz to discover which of our programs are best for you and your body below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+5+Minute+Daily+Stretch+To+Unlock+Your+Muscles+%285+Exercises%21%29&utm_term=27%2F02%2F2022MOBILITY ROUTINE PDF DOWNLOAD:builtwithscience.com/dailystretchSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How To FORCE Muscle Growth (5 Science-Based Methods) Jeremy Ethier 2022-02-13 | When it comes to how to grow muscle, you need to continuously challenge them with more than they’re used to. In other words: you need progressive overload. As simple as this sounds, most people’s training don’t accomplish progressive overload. Sure they’ll get a good pump and sweat out of their workouts but they aren’t actually doing much to signal their muscles to grow overtime. To understand the importance of progressive overload for hypertrophy, you should first know how muscles grow. So let’s say we just finished a workout. Immediately after, our muscles don’t actually get stronger. In fact, it’s not until after a few days of proper recovery that they adapt to the damage we put them through. Meaning? For consistent gains overtime, your workouts need to be designed such that they literally force your muscles to grow every single session. So, today, we’ll cover the 5 types of progressive overload you must know. Increasing the amount of weight lifted is the progressive overload method most people rely on. To apply it, it’s quite straightforward. Let’s say you can currently bench press 100lbs for 8 reps. Next week, you might try to increase the load and do 110lbs for 8 reps. That said, if you take our previous example of bench pressing 100lbs in week 1 and adding 10lbs of weight every week, at the end of the year theoretically you should be benching 620lbs. That’s impossible. This is where our next point comes in handy.When applied properly, adding more reps is another great way to incorporate progressive overload into your training to force your muscles to grow. As long as you’re continuing to push hard, you can keep the same weight and increase all the way up to 30 reps and still get the same growth compared to adding more weight. This is helpful if you only have limited equipment or a nagging injury and can’t increase the weight on your lifts. However for those who do have access to more weights, consider double progression. However, again this often only works for so long. What happens when you get stuck unable to add more weight or do more reps?The next method of progressive overload to stimulate hypertrophy has to do with how many sets you perform. However, while ee know doing at least 10 sets per muscle-group per week nearly doubles the amount of gains you would get from doing 5 sets per muscle group per week, there comes a point of diminishing returns when you get into the 20-30 set zone. A good rule of thumb is to increase volume no more than 10-20% per week. Then, once you get to the 20-30 set zone or just begin to feel quite fatigued, you can cycle back to the original program you started with. The next two types of progressive overload are ways you can continue forcing your muscles to grow while lifting the same weight and doing the same number of reps and sets every week. First: if we slow down our reps, we can increase the amount of time that tension is placed on the muscle to stimulate more growth. This is especially effective for exercises involving smaller, weaker muscle groups like lateral raises where adding just a little bit of weight disproportionately often increases the difficulty, or bodyweight exercises like push-ups and pull-ups where adding weight may not even be an option. However, you want to avoid going too slow as that can provide the opposite effect and start to hinder muscle growth rather than boost it. Note: it seems that we can slow down our reps up to about 6 seconds total. Oftentimes when people think they are challenging their muscles more by adding more weight to their lifts, they really just end up compromising their form in the process. Instead, realize that when it comes to how to grow muscle, if you do the same workout you did the week before, but you performed your exercises with better control, less momentum, and more activation of your target muscles, that is progression. Better form involves relying more on the target muscles and will result in growth even if all other variables remain the same. Now as for which of these 5 methods is best and will provide the most growth, the truth is, it depends. It depends on your level of experience, your equipment availability, and if there’s a certain type of plateau you’re stuck in. The best way to find out is to experiment with them and see what works best for you. But if you’re looking for a step by step program that takes care of all the guesswork for you and ensures that week by week you’re challenging your body in the right way to consistently build muscle and lose fat, just take our analysis quiz to find out which of our programs is best for you and your body below: builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=5+Progressive+Overload+Techniques+To+FORCE+Muscle+Growth&utm_term=13%2F02%2F2022 Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
4 Things NOBODY Tells You About Fat Loss (AVOID MISTAKES!) Jeremy Ethier 2022-01-30 | Losing weight is tricky. It’s a proven fact that the vast majority of people who attempt a diet to lose fat fail. Despite the many reasons for this, what I’ve found both in the literature and with helping thousands of people successfully transform their bodies, is there’s 4 things that if people simply just knew of before dieting, would greatly increase their chance of successful weight loss. Today we’ll reveal what those weight loss tips are and how you can use them to your advantage to lose body fat.First. Most people are unaware that not all body fat is created equally. Within our fat cells are two receptors, alpha and beta receptors. You’ll remember them as alpha for “awful” and beta for “beautiful”. This is because alpha receptors tell the body to store fat rather than burn it. Whereas beta receptors do the opposite and encourage fat to be burned off for energy. Where on the body do we have the highest density of these awful alpha receptors? For males, to protect our internal organs, they have the highest density within our belly fat and love handles. For women, for child bearing purposes, it tends to be around the hips and waist. This is what makes these areas so “stubborn” to lose fat from yet is where most of us starting a diet want to lose fat from first. Which then leads many of us to question, is there a “shortcut” to burning off fat from these stubborn areas? There isn’t. Instead, realize that only once you’ve lost enough fat cells from other areas of the body will your body start focusing on burning off your more stubborn fat cells for energy. Patience and consistency are keys.Second: weight loss isn’t linear. Aside from knowing this, what else can you do? To start, we recommend all of our Built With Science clients to weigh themselves everyday using the same scale, first thing in the morning, after they’ve used the washroom but before they eat or drink anything. If you apply this you’ll still see some variation but it won’t be as big. Then, see what your average weight is for the week and compare those week to week. Be prepared for periods of 2-3 weeks where your weight just doesn’t budge or even increases. This is completely normal. However, in the event that your weekly weight hasn’t budged for at least 3-4 weeks, then that’s a sign it may be a good time to change something up.Third of our weight loss tips. Weight loss doesn’t mean fat loss. Although the very low calorie, high cardio approach will help you lose weight quickly, most of the weight you do lose will be muscle rather than fat. The result? Pretty much just a “smaller” version of you - but with some of the negative side effects of muscle loss such as fatigue and hunger. To look and feel the way you really want, you need to lose fat while preserving or even building as much muscle as you can in the process. Focus on slow, gradual weight loss while also lifting weights regularly and prioritizing those workouts rather than just doing a ton of cardio. You also need a high protein intake. So to start, I’d recommend aiming to eat at least 0.8g/lb of your bodyweight in protein every day. If you’ve already been doing that, then experiment with increasing it up to 1.1g/lb of your bodyweight or even higher. Finally, we’ve been talking a lot about weight and even went through the importance of weighing yourself consistently. But the weight scale doesn’t reveal all and it can get extremely frustrating when you’re doing everything right but you just don’t seem to be losing weight. This is why you need to look at other measures of progress. Our team of Built With Science coaches have every one of our clients not only weigh themselves regularly but also take progress pictures, keep track of their strength during their workouts, track their waist circumference, and monitor their physiological changes. If, for example, your weight isn’t budging yet your strength is improving, your waist measurements are decreasing, you’re feeling more energized and have made positive changes with your lifestyle then those are all signs that you're moving in the right direction. When it comes to how to lose body fat, it’s important that you set up your diet optimally from the beginning and equally as important to know what to measure. That’s exactly why within our Built With Science programs we’ve not only created powerful custom tools for you to track your progress, but we’ve also designed them to automatically adjust the plan for you in the event that your progress slows down. To get access today, take our analysis quiz to discover what approach is best for you and your body below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=4+Things+Nobody+Tells+You+About+Weight+Loss+%28AVOID+MISTAKES%21%29&utm_term=30%2F01%2F2022Thanks to Bill Campbell for his feature:instagram.com/billcampbellphdSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
15 BEST Shoulder Exercises For Growth (And How To Use Them) Jeremy Ethier 2022-01-16 | Do a quick google search of the best shoulder exercises and you’ll be met with an overwhelming number of exercises and workouts. But how many of you have tried everything in the book yet end up disappointed? What you need, and what I wish someone told me back in the day, is more structure behind your shoulder workout. So, today, I’ll show you how to get bigger, wider shoulders by breaking down the best shoulder exercises for each of the 3 regions of your shoulders, how to pick the right ones for your body and equipment availability, and then show you how to combine them all into a weekly routine to grow all 3 areas of your shoulders.Let’s start with the front delts. The direction of its muscle fibers run almost 45-degrees to the side relative to your torso. To best activate this muscle, you’ll want to move your elbows into the scapular plane. Let’s apply this little “tweak” to 5 of the best overhead pressing options. The first exercise to consider adding to your shoulder workout is the standing overhead press. This exercise has been shown to activate the front delts very well, even higher than traditional front raises. Next, standing dumbbell overhead presses, shown to provide the highest activation across all 3 heads of the shoulder. The third exercise will be the seated dumbbell shoulder press, which provides a lot more stability for you to really isolate the shoulders. Then, we have the kneeling landmine press. It helps you work on any muscle imbalances you may have especially if you tend to only do barbell work. Lastly: the pike push ups, which help you target the front delts without any equipment.Next, the lateral head – which helps with creating wider shoulders. First, we have the dumbbell lateral raise. The second exercise, the lean-away cable lateral raise will help ensure the delts are working throughout the whole range of motion. Third, we have the standing cable Y-raise. It will take your side delt all the way to its fully contracted position. Don’t have access to cables? Then a great option would be the chest supported Y-raise. Last but not least, upright rows – but the better kind that’s kinder to your shoulders.Finally, when it comes to how to get bigger shoulders, we cannot forget about the rear delts. To best target this muscle, you’ll want to use exercises where your elbows can pull in this 45-degree arm angle relative to the torso. The first exercise will be the rear delt swing. Next, using the exact same setup and pair of dumbbells, you can take the rear delts to complete failure by turning the swing into a row by bending your elbows. Now we’ll move onto the standing barbell rear delt row. The key here will be with your elbow angle and how high you pull the bar. The same concept can be applied to a cable machine by using a wider attachment and that 45 degree elbow angle, making this exercise the rear delt cable row. Last but not least, an exercise I got from Coach Paul Carter that trains the rear delts in its fully stretched position. It’s called the rear delt cable pull. You can also do these with resistance bands if you don’t have access to the cable machine.Here comes the most important part; putting all the shoulder exercises you’ve learned into a workout routine. Now, research shows that the front delts are already highly activated in many of the pressing movements you’re already doing. So, since your front delts are likely already well developed, you’re only going to pick 1 main front delt exercise to do throughout the week. You’ll want to emphasize the side and rear delts more by picking 2 exercises from each of those categories. You can do 3-4 sets of each exercise and throw those into your existing workouts throughout the week or do it all in one shoulder workout. Sample shoulder routine:FRONT DELTSStanding Barbell Overhead Press SIDE DELTSDumbbell Lateral RaiseChest-Supported Dumbbell Y-Raise REAR DELTSRear Delt Swing → Rear Delt Row (dropset)Rear Delt Cable PullBut once you’ve found the best shoulder exercises that work for you, stay consistent with those week after week. Only if your strength plateaus in any of those exercises or you simply get bored of them should you consider switching to another exercise from the list, which will typically happen every 4-8 weeks.Guys, failing to have a detailed plan of attack every time you work out is why so many people stay stuck despite years of training. For a science-based program that takes care of all the guesswork for you so that you can transform your body as efficiently as possible, then take our analysis quiz to discover what program is best for you:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=15+BEST+Shoulder+Exercises+For+Boulder+Shoulders+%28And+How+To+Use+Them%29&utm_term=16%2F01%2F2022SIDE DELT EXERCISES VIDEO:youtube.com/watch?v=TChfFQC0eHsSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
STOP Doing Deadlifts Like This (SAVE YOUR SPINE!) ft. Dr. Stuart McGill Jeremy Ethier 2022-01-02 | If you’ve ever hurt your back deadlifting or are afraid to do deadlifts in fear that you will end up hurting yourself, you’re not alone. There are 5 reasons why injuries are common on the deadlift. I’ll share with you what these reasons are, how to determine the right deadlift form for your body and how to perform this proper deadlift form safely to help you, not hurt you. Learn how to properly deadlift without fearing lower back pain here.First, the problem with deadlifts is that it’s very easy to lose a neutral spine position – which contributes to injuries. So what can we do about this? Well, today I’ve brought in world renowned back pain expert Dr. Stu McGill, who has studied the science of back pain for over 30 years. The first reason you struggle with proper deadlift form may have to do with your hip structure. Those with deep hip sockets tend to have the most trouble getting into and pulling from the bottom position of a deadlift, especially when using a narrow foot stance. Those with deep hip sockets will thus need to modify their stance. To find the optimal stance and type of deadlift for you and your hips, get onto all fours with your hands directly under your shoulders, knees under your hips, and ideally with your feet against a wall. Sink your hips back into heels as deep as you can without rounding your lower back. Then, try to find that sweet spot position that feels the best and allows you to get the deepest without rounding at your lower back. Once you’ve found that position, stand up and make note of how far apart your feet were and the angle your knees were turned out at. That will now be the safest deadlift stance for you to use.Next up: using standard 45-pound weights on each side forces you to have the required range of motion or the right body structure to be able to safely deadlift from that height. Don’t have either? Rather than forcing your body to pull from the ground, find a way to elevate the bar to shorten the range of motion to a level where you can perform the deadlift without compromising on correct form. Then, after a month or so, try lowering it slightly and see how that feels. If that goes well, great, build from there and continue lowering. If that however causes back pain or breaks down your form, then go back to the higher plates.Third, you need to create what’s called the “lifter’s wedge” to create stiffness before you pull for proper deadlift form. When at bottom position, find a neutral spine and the bring bar as close to shins as you can. Then, think about bending the bar to engage lats/pecs. This will provide the counterbalance needed to “pull” your chest up and hips down, “wedging” yourself between the floor and the bar. You’ll have already performed 95% of the lift. From here, you simply apply 5% more effort by pushing your feet into the ground and bringing the hips through to complete the lift.Fourth: perfecting your deadlift technique and strengthening your protective back and core muscles takes time and repetition. During this process, many let their ego get in the way and try to lift loads that exceed their ability to maintain a neutral spine and stiffness throughout the pull. So, earn your right to have more weight. Focus on keeping good form, rather than how much weight you’re lifting.Now, what if you’ve applied everything we went through on deadlift form and are still experiencing lower back pain? Well, if it’s not a sharp shooting pain, your lower back muscles may just be adapting to the exercise. Pay attention to the level of soreness you get after your first few sessions. If it is just a matter of your back muscles adapting, then the soreness you experience after a session will decrease more and more overtime. If it doesn’t or if one day you feel a lot more low back soreness than usual, it’s an indication you’re breaking that neutral spine position during your lift and need to modify your form. I hope you guys were able to see just how much the details matter for every exercise you do. It not only keeps you healthy and injury free in the long run, but it gets you results faster. And if you’re looking for a program that applies this to transform your specific body safely and effectively with science, then take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=5+Reasons+Why+The+Deadlift+Hurts+Your+Back+%28Fix+Your+Form%21%29&utm_term=02%2F01%2F2022Big thank you to Dr. Stuart McGill for his help on this video. This man’s knowledge is incredible! DR. STUART’S BOOKS:backfitpro.com/books/gift-of-injury-the-strength-athletes-guide-to-recovering-from-back-injury-to-winning-againbackfitpro.com/books/ultimate-back-fitness-and-performance-6th-edition-2017Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How to Grow Your Rear Delts FAST (3 Simple Techniques) Jeremy Ethier 2021-12-19 | I’m going to show you how to grow your rear delts fast with 3 simple tips that you can apply right away to your rear delt workout (in the gym or anywhere else). Before we dive into the tips, let’s first breakdown what exactly the rear deltoid is and why yours are probably lagging behind, despite all the “rear delt exercises” you’re doing. As the name implies, the rear delt refers to the “back muscle” of the 3-headed shoulder muscle. They round out the shoulders by adding an impressive cap to the back of them. Most peoples’ rear delts however are underdeveloped, with the front delts being disproportionately overdeveloped. This happens because we do a ton of pressing work that develops the front delts, but very little work for the backside of our shoulders. And the exercises we do choose when we decide to work them, like reverse flies, just aren’t very effective. Let’s explore why this is so – and the exercises you should do instead.If you’re like most lifters then you probably rely on rear delt flies, the reverse fly machine, and facepulls to grow your rear delts. But during these movements, your arm is held straight out to the sides, creating two problems. First problem, this horizontal arm position lines up much better with the upper back muscle fibers like the mid-traps than it does the rear delts which run more diagonally. Second of all, the further the elbow can move behind the body, the better the rear delts can be activated. With a horizontal arm position, your elbow can’t get very far back. To maximally activate the rear delts, we need to find an arm position that lines up perfectly with the rear delts AND allows the elbows to travel furthest behind the body. Anatomically, this is where your upper arm is perpendicular to the spine of your scapula. Once you’ve found this arm position, you can apply it to pretty much any pulling exercise to instantly make it more rear delts focused.Ok so we got arm position down, the next two tips will show you how to apply it into your rear delt workout to instantly speed up your rear delt gains, no matter be it in the gym or at home. Most people leave their rear delts as an afterthought towards the end of a workout when they’re already quite fatigued. Here’s my recommendation. Whenever you do some kind of rowing movement, take the last 1-2 sets and replace them with a rear delt focused row. But if you’re using a cable machine, ditch the narrow V-bar attachment. Instead, find a wider handle attachment like the lat pulldown one. Wrapping two handles on top of the bar can help make it even better and comfortable. Next, grip the bar wide, and pull your elbows back behind the body while keeping them at the roughly 45 degree angle you found earlier. Pause at the end of each rep briefly where you should feel a very strong contraction in your rear delts, and repeat.So part of the reason your rear deltoid may not be growing very well is because of suboptimal exercise selection but it’s also because other muscles are taking over as a result of you using too much weight when you train them. To avoid this, we’re going to use a more isolation type of rear delts exercise and focus on quality reps. The exercise I’m about to show you (which is one of the best rear delt exercises around) is called the “better reverse fly”. To perform it, set up a bench to a 30 degree incline, grab a pair of dumbbells, and lay your chest on the bench. Then, pull your elbows back as far as you can while keeping them in that roughly 45 degree angle you found earlier. Focus on really feeling the contraction in your rear delts. If you either end up feeling it more in your traps, you’re unable to pull your elbow back behind the body very far, you can’t maintain that roughly 45 degree arm angle, or you’re forced to use momentum, then these are all signs that the weight is too heavy. If so, lighten the weight and focus on quality form. Then, to progress this exercise, avoid increasing the weight too quickly and having other muscle groups takeover. Choose a light enough weight that allows you to do about 15 reps each set with good form. Then, as you get stronger, focus on increasing your reps up to about 25 reps. Only once you reach that should you then move up to the next heaviest weight and repeat the process. Implement these 3 tips, and you’ll not only feel the difference but you’ll see the growth very quickly. But, chances are you’re making similar mistakes with other muscle groups as well. To prevent this from holding you back, just take my free analysis quiz which will determine which of my step by step programs will best help you build a body you’re proud of, just like thousands of our members have done, below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=Blow+Up+Your+Rear+Delts+%283+Quick+Exercise+Tips+For+Faster+Gains%29&utm_term=18%2F12%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
15 BEST Back Exercises For Growth (And How To Use Them) Jeremy Ethier 2021-12-05 | If you want to build a bigger, wider, thicker, and more balanced back, then there are 4 main regions your back exercises need to target. I’ll show you the best back exercises for each of these regions and then show you how to implement them during your next back workout (at the gym or even at home) for the best results. By the end, you’ll have a personalized back workout routine that you can start right away for maximum mass.Let’s talk about the most common mistakes people make when trying to build a bigger back. First mistake. Most people think of the “back” as one muscle, and will aimlessly put together a back workout without giving much thought as to what each exercise targets. The second mistake people make is neglecting the “hidden” muscles that play an important role in keeping your shoulders healthy and posture upright. The last mistake has to do with your workout programming, where you often fail to develop the back in a well-rounded manner. We’re going to solve each problem by equipping you with the best back exercises and then show you how to properly use them. Let’s start with the upper back, which is best worked where the elbows pull at roughly a 45 to 60 degree angle away from the torso. First up of the upper back exercises, the barbell row. Second, seated rows. The next exercise, the Meadow’s Row, is a great way to help prevent imbalances by working one side of the back at a time. This next exercise, the chest-supported dumbbell rows, is one of my personal favorites because it takes the need for stability out of the equation. Set your bench at a lower angle to about 30 degrees. Now we’ll get into vertical pulling movements like the pull-up. You’ll want to keep your elbows angled out to the sides by using an overhand grip slightly wider than shoulder-width. The last exercise, the lat pulldown, will biomechanically favor the upper back muscles more than it will the lats. The lats are responsible for adding more width to the back. The lats are best targeted during exercises where the elbows can pull as close to the torso as possible. The next 5 exercises are your best bet for growing a wider back during your workout at the gym. The first is the lat-focused barbell row. Next up, we have the lats-focused seated row. Then, back to one of my personal favorites, the chest-supported row. Fourth exercise: similar to the meadows row for the upper back, to prevent imbalances from developing we can do single dumbbell lat rows. Our last exercise will be a pulldown (the one-arm lat pulldown), but one that actually targets the lats.Alright so we’ve covered the big muscles and their respective exercises you should do during your back workout for mass (both thickness and width). Now we need to balance this out by working the lower traps by matching our arm angle to a 90 to 120 degree angle. First, the prone Y raise. Another great exercise is the standing cable Y-raise to provide constant tension throughout each rep. And now, the last area, the lower back. These muscles are already highly activated whenever we do compound lifts like rows, squats, and deadlifts. Still, isolation work for the lower back can be beneficial if you don’t do many of these lifts or if your lower back seems to be a weak link limiting your strength in these compound lifts. Back extensions will be our isolation move of choice.Now is the most important part; putting together everything you’ve learned into a balanced back routine that works for you. Here’s what I’d recommend: pick two exercises from the upper back category, two from the lats category, and 1 exercise from the lower traps category. Depending on your existing lower back training volume, you can choose to add in some back extensions as well. Sample Gym Routine: Upper Back:Exercise 1: Upper Back Focused Barbell RowsExercise 2: Lat Pulldowns Lats:Exercise 1: Chest Supported Dumbbell Lat RowsExercise 2: One-arm Cable Lat Pulldown Lower Traps:Exercise 1: Standing Cable Y-raiseSample Dumbbells Routine: Upper backExercise 1: Chest-Supported Dumbbell Upper Back RowsExercise 2: Overhand Grip Pull ups LatsExercise 1: Single Arm Dumbbell Lat RowsExercise 2: Chest Supported Dumbbell Lat Rows Lower Traps:Exercise 1: Prone Y-raiseHopefully, you were able to see that there’s a lot of thought that goes into picking the right exercises, plus putting them together properly. Within my Built With Science programs, I take care of all the guesswork for you by showing you exactly how to train and eat week after week based on your specific goal. To start today just take my free 30 second quiz and I’ll let you know which of my step by step programs will best help you transform your body:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=14+Best+Exercises+To+Build+The+Perfect+Back&utm_term=05%2F12%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How To Get 6 Pack Abs With No Equipment (DO THIS ANYWHERE!) Jeremy Ethier 2021-11-21 | You can sculpt a great set of abs using just your bodyweight and a few square feet of floor. I’ll show you how to get a 6 pack with no equipment by first exposing why that “no equipment abs workout” you see (along with countless others) are a waste of and how they can do more harm than good, then we’ll cover the 4 abs exercises we’ll use to hit every area of your six pack you can easily do at home, and finally we’ll wrap it up by showing you how to perform the six pack ab workout for the best results. By the end you’ll have a full, downloadable home abs workout you can use anywhere to build a great set of abs.There are 3 things we’ll do with our home abs workout that will make it far more effective than most bodyweight ab workouts out there. First, we’ll hit all 4 regions of your abs. Second, we’ll make the exercises more difficult overtime to continuously stimulate growth in your abs. Lastly, we’ll choose the proper exercises that’ll target your abs – instead of your hip flexors or lower back. The first exercise we’ll cover is one of the most demanding abs exercises you can do at home, and will target your TVA. We’re going to re-create a no equipment version of the ab rollout. Get onto all fours with your hands under your shoulders and knees under hips. Move into posterior pelvic tilt by rotating your hips and contracting your abs. Pull your belly button into your spine to fully activate your TVA. Then, from here, slowly walk your hands out forward. Go only as far as you can without breaking this form and arching at your lower back, and then walk your hands back. Progress it over time by trying to get your hands further and further out.Now we’ll move onto the next most demanding exercise to target the lower abs in our no equipment abs workout. First, lie on your back with your arms straight by your sides and knees bent to 90 degrees. Initiate posterior pelvic tilt by squeezing your glutes and contracting your abs. Next, don’t think about raising your legs, instead simply curl your pelvis up towards your belly button. Then, on the way back down, avoid arching your lower back. To make it easier, simply tuck your knees in towards your upper body more. As your lower abs strengthen, you can increase the difficulty by straightening your legs out more and more. To target the upper abs in our six pack ab workout, we’ll want to now use what’s known as a “top-down” exercise. First, setup by lying on your back with your knees bent and hands placed behind your head. Place a rolled up t-shirt or towel under your lower back to increase the range of motion your abs go through. Lift the shoulder blades up off the ground by flexing the spine, and then coming back down. Avoid yanking your neck as you come up and avoid using momentum. Take it slow and feel the upper abs working. To progress these as you get stronger, place your arms straight over your head and add weight using a bottle or backpack once that becomes too easy. Finally, for the obliques: our move of choice is a well-known exercise, Russian Twists. Sit on your butt with your knees bent and feet on the floor. Angle your back to about a 45-degree angle. From here, the goal is to touch either side of the ground. Avoid just reaching with your arms and not rotating much at your torso. Instead, let your shoulders dictate your rotation. When you reach to each side, focus on trying to line up your shoulder with your leg. Doing this will force you to rotate your torso and engage your obliques as a result. To progress this move overtime, you can raise your feet off the ground slightly and try to reach further and further out with your arms.Now let’s get into how to get a six pack with this workout. Here’s what you’re going to do:Walkouts: 5-10 repsReverse Crunches: 10-25 repsCrunches: 10-25 repsRussian Twists: 1 minuteRepeat x3You can do the workout 2-3 times a week, but as you get stronger it’s important that you try to increase your reps overtime while applying the progressions mentioned earlier. This will simulate the effect of adding more weight to help your abs grow and pop more. But keep in mind guys that no matter how hard you train your abs, you’re not going to get the six pack you’re after without a solid diet plan in place. That’s the secret behind the incredible transformations thousands of our members get using my Built With Science programs. Within each program you’re shown exactly how to train and how to eat to lose fat and build muscle.To start today, take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Get+%E2%80%9C6+Pack%E2%80%9D+Abs+At+Home+%28DO+THIS+WORKOUT+ANYWHERE%21%29&utm_term=21%2F11%2F2021PDF DOWNLOAD:builtwithscience.com/absathomeSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
WIDER SHOULDERS: 4 Mistakes Keeping You Small Jeremy Ethier 2021-11-07 | If you’re having a hard time getting your shoulders wider and thicker (i.e., big delts), it often comes down to 4 reasons. In this video, I’ll show you how to (finally) get big shoulders by explaining what part of the shoulder you need to focus your efforts on developing to build huge shoulders, and then show you the 4 reasons why people fail to develop this area, along with easy to follow tips to correct them. Apply all 4 of the solutions I’ll go through into your next workout for the shoulders, and I guarantee you’ll feel your shoulders working like never before, plus see a massive increase in shoulders size. The shoulders can be divided into 3 regions; the front, side, and rear. The front delt is heavily involved in many pressing movements like the bench press and shoulder press, and often becomes overdeveloped as a result. The rear delt is important for rounding out the back of the shoulder but won’t be the focus of the video. The side delts are what you need to focus on to build huge shoulders. As for the best exercise to build up this region, research shows that the dumbbell lateral raise comes up on top. But there are 4 major flaws people overlook with this exercise and their side delt training in general that slows down growth and likelihood of injury.First reason you’re struggling to get big delts. In the case of the side delts, most unknowingly use just 1 resistance profile by relying on the traditional lateral raise. But to stimulate more growth, you’ll want to also perform an exercise that has the opposite resistance profile, where it’s most difficult at the bottom and easiest at the top. If you have the equipment handy, one way to do this is by grabbing a cable, set up the height so that it’s at the level of your wrist, and perform a one handed lateral raise. But if you only have dumbbells, there are 2 exercises you can that’ll achieve the same effect. The first exercise accomplishes this by manipulating your body position. The second exercise changes the resistance profile by using momentum. But, when it comes to how to get big shoulders, these exercises will only be effective if you apply the next tip, which has to do with technique. There are 3 mistakes in total. The first is that your arms shouldn’t actually be directly out to your sides. Instead, you should move into what’s known as the scapular plane. A slight lean forward as you do this will help boost side delt activation even more. The second mistake has to do with your hands. Instead of turning your hands inward so that your pinkies end up higher than your thumbs at the end position, keep your hand flat with or with your thumbs just slightly higher than your pinkies at the top position. The last mistake has to do with how you think about the raise. Rather than thinking about raising the weight up, think about pushing your hands out to the sides, towards the walls. So you’ve now got the right exercises and the right technique, but even with all that you may be compromising your ability to build huge shoulders in the way you progress the exercise as you get stronger. With the lateral raises, you should be sticking with the same weight and focus on doing more reps instead, only increasing to the next heaviest pair of dumbbells once you can do about 20-30 reps in a set with good form. When you do eventually make that jump though, expect the number of reps you’ll be able to do with the heavier weight to decrease by about half. Instead of cheating or getting discouraged when this happens, realize that it’s completely normal and just focus on slowly building it up again and repeating the process. The last reason has to do with how often you’re training your side delts. Most people aren’t training them enough, often just performing a workout for the shoulders once a week. But the side delts recover quickly, and with the right programming, can be trained 2-3 times a week to stimulate more growth. What I’d recommend is start by picking out 2 days in your routine to train them. As long as there’s at least 1 day of rest between the 2 days. Then for each of the days you train them, add in 3 sets of the standard lateral raise and 3 sets of one of the variations I showed earlier to vary the resistance profile. This can be used as a starting point. Implement these 4 things and you’ll quickly start to notice the difference in your shoulder development. But, chances are you’re making subtle mistakes with the rest of your training as well. To avoid letting these mistakes hold you back, take the free 30 second quiz to find out which of my step by step programs would be best to help you transform your body just like thousands of our members have done below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=%E2%80%9CMy+Delts+Muscle+Isn%27t+Growing%E2%80%9D+%28The+4+Reasons+Why%29&utm_term=07%2F11%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How To Grow Your Chest With Only Push-Ups (FULL ROUTINE) Jeremy Ethier 2021-10-17 | Can you build a big chest with push ups? Yes, you can. In this video, I’m going to share with you how you can build a massive chest by using push ups only. First, we’ll do a test to determine your current push up level, then we’ll go through how to pick the right push up variations based on that, and then complete your push up workout with 2 key exercises to speed up your gains. By the end, you’ll not only know how to build your chest muscles (fast) using just push ups, but also have a personalized weekly push-ups routine. Step 1 of building your push up workout: assess your current push up level. First, warm-up. If you’re able to do push-ups, this is where you’ll want to do a few sets of 2-3 push-ups to get your body warmed up. Too difficult for a warm-up? You can do wall push-ups instead. After your warm-up, rest for about 2-3 minutes before the push-up test. When you’re ready, do as many push-ups as you can. Note down how many you get and see which level you fall under. Level 1 is if you got between 1-10 push-ups. Level 2 is if you got between 11-30 push-ups. Level 3 is if you got more than 30 push-upsStep 2 is learning the push up variations suitable for your level to use in day 1 of your routine. For those in the 1-10 group, we’ll use the incline push ups that will require you to lift less of your bodyweight, making it easier for you to do. Simply perform your push-ups on an elevated platform and use a height that allows you to do 3 sets of 6-8 reps. For those in the 11-30 group, take the number of push-ups you can do in a row and take 70% of that. For those in the 30+ group, you’re going to use a slightly harder variation called hand release pushups. We’ll aim for 3 sets of half the number of what your max push-ups in a row number was from step 1. To perform it, get into a normal push-up set up, slowly come all the way down until your chest is resting on the ground, take your hands off the ground, place them back, and then continue a normal push-up. Let’s now proceed to day 2, your strength day, which will further help you build a massive chest by (still) only using push ups. For the 1-10 group, you’ll use a variation that’s focused on the “downward” portion of the pushup. We’ll do 5 sets of just 1 rep of this variation. For the 11-30 group, for strength you’re going to do the hand release push ups mentioned earlier. For the 30+ group, we’ll want to do a variation that makes you lift more weight than you would with normal push-ups. We’ll do 3 sets of 50% of your max number of push-ups. To perform it, start in a normal push-up position, but come down to one hand instead of straight down. This shifts more of your bodyweight to one arm to increase the difficulty. Push back up using that one hand and then switch to the other hand for the next rep. For day 3 all groups are going to do something called EMOM push-ups. To perform it, take 50% of your max pushups number. Then, using a timer, every minute for a total of 5 minutes you’re going to perform that number of push-ups. Now it’s time to finish off your routine by adding 2 key movements that will speed up your push-up gains. When it comes to how to build your chest muscles (fast) using just push ups, this is ultimately key. The first is the shoulder tap, which will focus on strengthening these core muscles while integrating your shoulder, triceps, and chest muscles as well. The last exercise will add more volume to your routine while improving your push-ups power by focusing on the triceps. To perform it, you’ll do a standard push-up but with your hands placed closer together at about shoulder width apart. Based on your strength level, you can do these on an incline to make it easier or on a decline to make it more difficult. adjust the incline or decline of the movement based on your strength level like we did earlier with the standard push-up.This routine is a lot of volume for your chest and triceps and should replace all of the chest and triceps exercises you’re currently doing. After starting the routine, every couple of weeks re-test how many push-ups you can do in a row. Once you graduate from one level, switch over your routine to the next level. Hopefully, at this point, you know clearly that you can definitely build a big chest with just push ups.Within my Built With Science programs, I’ve used science and carefully thought out details to construct your weekly program in a way that will maximize your results and caters to your specific body and goals. To get started today you can take our free 1 minute quiz to find out which of our programs will best help you transform your body just like it’s done for thousands of our members below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Get+A+Massive+Chest+With+Only+Push-Ups+%28NO+EQUIPMENT%29&utm_term=17%2F10%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
The Smartest Way To Quickly Lose Fat (Mini-Cuts Explained) Jeremy Ethier 2021-10-10 | In this video, I cover my transformation from lean to shredded – in just 6 weeks. This was possible with something called a “mini cut”. Here, I’ll explain the science behind what is a mini cut, why it’s so effective to help you lose fat faster (yet difficult for people to stick to), how I modified my diet and training to make it easier, and what I did afterwards to maintain my mini cut results. By the end, you’ll know exactly how you can implement them to lose fat quickly, and keep it off.What is a mini cut? With mini-cuts, you aim to lose around 1-1.25% of your bodyweight per week – for a total of anywhere between 4 to 6 weeks. The idea with this is that you’re able to quickly lose fat without the muscle loss and fatigue that would occur if you had extended it any longer. That said, the problem with mini-cuts is that they’re hard to stick to. And, even if you do manage to stick through it, because of the changes your body experiences during the mini-cut it makes it very easy to re-gain the fat you lost as soon as you’re done. I’ll show the exact tweaks I made to my workouts and diet to make the mini-cut easy to stick to and what I did afterwards to ensure the fat I lost stayed off so that you can do the same.Let’s start with workouts. For weights, prior to the mini cut, I was lifting 5 times a week using the 5 day workout split from my Built With Science Intermediate program. However, an aggressive calorie deficit now means I have much less fuel to energize my workouts and support my recovery. This can quickly lead to excessive fatigue and strength loss. To avoid this, I switched to a 4 day workout split from my Built With Science Intermediate program and removed 1 set from every single exercise in the routine. As for cardio, prior to the mini-cut, I was on average taking 10,000 steps a day and doing two 20 minute HIIT per week. My approach during the mini-cut was to further increase my overall activity to burn more calories everyday rather than have to rely solely on eating less calories to achieve my goal deficit. I decided to do two things to lose fat faster. First, by taking more walks throughout the day and making frequent use of this under desk treadmill at my office. Second, I replaced my two 20 minute HIIT sessions with something much easier to recover from, light cycling for 30 minutes 3-4 times a week. Now, dietary tweaks I made during my lean to shredded transformation process. During the mini-cut I dropped my calorie intake by 25% to around 1,900 calories. To make this sustainable, I was strategic in what specific foods I’d be eating less of. to cut calories from my diet while ensuring I still had enough carbs for energy and enough protein to maintain my muscle, I reduced my fat intake close to that minimum amount rather than considerably dropping my carb and protein intake. In addition to this, I strategically timed the ingestion of my carbs to best fuel my performance and recovery. As for coping with hunger and cravings, I made simple food swaps that kept me full and enabled me to eat pretty much the same meals as I was before the mini-cut, but now with far less calories. To help me resist temptations during the day and curb my cravings at night, I always made sure that I had some kind of tasty yet low calorie dessert.However, although these dietary changes were key to helping me quickly and sustainably lose fat throughout the 6 weeks, it’s what I did after that helped me keep my mini cut results and is where most people mess up. Why? The first has to do with your metabolism. There is also data to suggest that lower levels of activity make regulating hunger more difficult, making it easier to overeat after a diet. So, because you can expect that your new maintenance calories may be slightly lower by one or two hundred calories, remain active by doing things you enjoy and can sustain, and keep a close eye on your bodyweight. Your weight will initially increase by a lb or two mostly from water due to the increase in food you’re eating, but it should stabilize shortly after and is an indication that you’ve found the right balance.Now guys, keep in mind that mini-cuts are exactly what their name implies - mini. They are NOT a long-term, sustainable solution. It’s short and aggressive for a reason as they quickly become unsustainable if continued for too long. But when used properly, they are effective. And for those who need more guidance on exactly how to train, how to eat, and how to execute a sustainable plan to transform your body, take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+I+Lose+A+LOT+Of+Fat+In+6+Weeks+%28Mini-Cuts+Explained%29&utm_term=10%2F10%2F2021UNDER-DESK TREADMILLS:Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How To Burn More Calories Lifting Weights (Do These 3 Things) Jeremy Ethier 2021-10-03 | One of the biggest differences between weight lifting vs cardio is that while lifting weights is great for building muscle, it’s not so great if you’re looking to burn calories. In this video, I’ll explain how that affects your ability to burn fat and build muscle, and then cover how to burn more calories by covering three tweaks that you can make during your lifting workouts. By the end, you’ll end up with a full body weight training workout that you can get started with right away to burn fat.Exercise alone is not very effective at losing fat if your diet is not under control. But with a proper diet, adding the right type of exercise to it can significantly speed up your results. When comparing weight lifting vs cardio, while resistance training doesn’t burn many calories compared to cardio, it does have one important advantage over the latter. Doing cardio alone can lead to a small amount of muscle loss. This is important to note because muscle is what will help keep your metabolism high as you lose weight and will ensure you end up looking lean and muscular rather than just “skinny” after a diet. This means that, if you’re looking to burn fat and build muscle in the most optimal manner possible, a combination of resistance training with cardio is best. I’ll show you exactly how to do this with three tweaks and then give you an example workout that puts it into practice. When it comes to how to burn more calories through weight lifting, the first tweak is with how much weight you’ll be lifting and how many reps you’ll be doing in your sets for each exercise. More specifically, research suggests that you can nearly double the number of calories you burn in a set by lifting lighter weights for more reps. However, although we can burn slightly more calories the lighter in weight we go, note that for the best muscle building results while still burning significantly more calories, a good recommendation is to use a weight that’s between 40-60% of the maximum weight you could lift for that exercise. For most people, this means choosing a weight that you could do around 15-30 reps with. Just remember, you still need to push yourself hard enough for this to be effective.Tweak 2 to burn fat with weight training involves using the most muscle mass as possible within your workouts. Illustrating this is a 2017 study tested a variety of resistance training exercises and compared the calories burned. They compared several “isolation exercises” that only worked one small muscle at a time, to “compound exercises” that work several different muscles simultaneously. They found that lat pulldowns, which work several back muscles as well as the biceps, burned almost 20% more calories than bicep curls. Squats, which work the whole lower body, burn almost 35% more calories than leg extensions. We’ll apply this by filling our workout with big exercises that will work every single muscle of our bodyFinally, the most important thing you can do to burn more calories is improve your time efficiency. How? You can do so by making use of a circuit style of training. Using this method will enable us to add more exercises and sets into our workout without having to stay in the gym any longer than normal. But we will want to be careful with the exercise selection to ensure we don’t compromise our gains by overworking the same muscle groups with not enough rest. Alright now that we’ve got the science down, let’s apply it into a workout that can be done either at a gym or even at home with just dumbbells.The workout includes 3 circuits that each have 4 exercises. Within each circuit you will progress from one exercise to the next resting for only 15-20 seconds. Pick a weight that you could do somewhere between 15-30 reps with if you pushed hard. If you reach above 30 reps, then you know it’s time to use a heavier weight. Finally, if you’re a beginner, perform each circuit 2-3 times, intermediate 3-4 times, and advanced 4-5 times. Circuit 1:DB Bench Press → DB Row → DB Shoulder Press → Reverse Crunch Circuit 2: Lower Body:Goblet Squat→ DB RDL → DB Calf Raise → Weighted CrunchCircuit 3: Full Body:Reverse Lunges → Push Up→ DB Facepulls → PlankYou’ll get the most benefit from this workout if you implement it no less than 2 but no more than 4 times a week. That said, I wouldn’t use this style of workout if your main goal is to build muscle and improve your strength. For those looking for an all in one step-by-step program that’s personalized specifically for your body and your fitness goals, you can take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=How+To+Burn+More+Calories+Lifting+Weights+%28Do+These+3+Things%29&utm_term=03%2F10%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
Build The Perfect Meal Plan To Get Ripped (4 Easy Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2021-09-26 | A one-size-fits-all diet plan doesn’t exist. That’s why, in this video, I’m going through – in just 4 easy steps – how you can build a custom diet meal plan made specifically for your body and your taste buds. We’ll first quickly figure out your calorie and protein goals and how many meals you should have for your fat loss diet, then we’ll fill in these meals for weight loss with specific foods. By the end of this video, you’ll have a system you can use to build countless different meal plans for your weight loss diet that you can actually stick to.I remember stumbling across a diet meal plan on an online fitness forum back in the day. It involved eating the same 4 bland, boring, lifeless meals every day for weeks on end to lose fat. Guess what? All the work and suffering didn’t even get me any results! Which came down to 2 reasons. The first is that many “health” foods we’re told to eat are very calorie dense. That means they can easily take you out of a calorie deficit. The second issue is that if a calorie deficit is achieved with a strict meal plan, then it will work in the short term but not necessarily in the long term. That’s why the meal plan we’ll go through today will be personalized to your body, your taste buds, and set up in a flexible way for both short term and long term success.The first step is the most important step if we want the diet plan to actually work. There’s no point adding any foods into our plan if we don’t yet know how many calories you can eat to lose fat. Now, most calorie calculators out there are a shot in the dark. They don’t consider how much muscle you have, how much you move every day, whether you lift weights or not, your age, your gender, and your height all affect how many calories you burn every day. The method we’ll use involves just a few simple steps that will take all of these factors into account and will be the easiest way for you to accurately determine the calorie target for your meal plan. To save you from the boring math, we’ve automated these calculations for you into the meal plan builder we created for you to download. Within just a few minutes of using it you’ll have your goal calories calculated for you.After calories, the next most important component of your fat loss diet meal plan is how much protein it contains. Whether you shoot for the lower end or higher end of this range however will depend on your body fat. Those with more body fat will require less protein. In the meal plan builder you can download, we’ve automated this calculation for you. Most of you will end up with a goal of 1 gram per pound of your bodyweight, for example a goal of 180 grams of protein if you weighed 180 lbs. The number of meals you eat per day for weight loss will determine how many calories and how much protein will be contained in each meal. That being said, protein frequency does seem to be important to minimize the risk of muscle loss as you lose fat. There’s an ideal range you’ll want to stick within. This seems to be between roughly 3 and 6 high protein meals per day, each separated by a few hours. This is where personal preference is key. Whatever you pick should best suit your schedule and keep you full and energized throughout the day. Once you’ve picked the number of meals you’d like to eat, divide your protein intake up evenly across the number of meals.Now it’s time for the fun part, filling in your meal plan for your weight loss diet. We’re going to provide you with 3 lists of protein, carbs, and fats to use to fill your meal plan with how you wish. In the downloadable meal plan builder, we’ve also added vegetarian and vegan protein options to this list. The foods in these lists are the lowest calorie density options available, and will be highly effective at keeping you full. So, at each meal, select the foods from each category that you want to eat and adjust the portions so that by the end of the day you get close to your calorie and protein goal by at least within about 10%. Throw in a little bit of your inner chef to get a meal plan that’s designed specifically for your body and filled with enjoyable meals .Nutrition is hands down the most important part of getting lean. Within our Built With Science programs we remove the guesswork from your plan and show you exactly how to train and how to eat in order to burn off unwanted fat. To get started today, you can take our free analysis quiz to discover to discover which of our programs would be best for you and your goals below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+Perfect+Weight+Loss+Meal+Plan+To+Get+Lean+%284+Steps%29&utm_term=26%2F09%2F2021Download the Custom Meal Plan Builder here:builtwithscience.com/mealplannerSubscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1
How To Get Your First Pull-Up (4 Steps) Jeremy Ethier 2021-09-12 | I’m going to share with you the most effective pull up progression routine to master the exercise. First we’ll cover the science behind the 5 key muscles that make mastering the pull up so difficult, then we’ll increase your pullup strength by going through the best exercises that’ll strengthen these muscles by about 56% faster than normal. By the end of this video, you’ll know exactly how to do a pull up, and also know the exact steps needed to get your pull ups from beginner, to novice, to master.Pull ups can be very difficult to master for two main reasons. First, they require a certain amount of strength in several key muscles (i.e., the core, the lats, the mid and lower traps, and the biceps) that tend to be weak. Second, they require your body to use these several muscles to work together. Your mid traps, lower traps and your core muscles have to keep your body stable while your lats and biceps pull your body up. To solve this, we’ll use a 4 step plan.Step 1 of your 4-step pull up progression routine: we’ll use 3 different pull-up variations to accelerate strength gains by about 56% (vs. only practicing it once per week). To further accelerate your strength gains by another 20% or so, we’ll perform these 3 variations with a method called daily undulating periodization. Variation 1 is the kneeling lat pulldown. Variation 2, negative pull ups, will be your “secret weapon” in gaining the strength you need. Variation 3, banded pull ups, when properly setup will be the closest thing to performing a standard pull-up. Here’s what your schedule should currently look like:Session 1:Kneeling Lat-Pulldown: 3 sets of 5 reps (heavy enough to slightly bring your knees off the ground Session 2:Negative Pull-ups: 5 sets of 1 rep (as slow as possible) Session 3:Banded Pull-ups: 3 sets of 4-8 repsIn step 2, we’ll increase your pullup strength by adding 4 accessory movements. The first movement, activated hangs, will help with improving your grip strength and the endurance of your back and core muscles. The second movement (Australian pull ups) will be added to session 1 of your routine. This movement teaches your body how to control itself as you pull, and will continue to strengthen the important core and back muscles used in the pull-up. The third exercise is the lat pulldown help add more overall pulling volume to your routine. We’ll use an overhand wide grip in one of our weekly sessions and an underhand close grip in the other session.Your weekly pull up training should now look like this:Session 1Activated Hangs: 3 x 10sKneeling Pulldown: 3 x 5Australian Pull-ups: 3 x 8-12Session 2Activated Hangs: 3 x 10sNegative Pull-ups: 5 x 1Overhand Lat-Pulldown: 3 x 8-12Session 3Activated Hangs: 3 x 10sBanded Pull-ups: 3 x 4-8Underhand Pulldown: 3 x 8-12Now let’s go through how to build your strength in each of the exercises in your routine. For the kneeling lat pull-down, you primarily want to focus on increasing the weight. For the negative pull-ups, every week you’ll want to increase the time it takes you to descend from the top position. For your banded pull ups, start with a band that allows you to do 3 sets of 4 reps. Continue using this band until you can do 3 sets of 8 reps. One you can do that, drop to the next smaller band you have to make it more difficult. For your Australian pull-ups, you want to aim to do 3 sets of 10 reps. Once you can do that, you can make this harder by reducing the height of the bar. For your holds, simply attempt to increase the time you can hold. For the seated lat pulldowns, simply increase the weight every time you can successfully do 3 sets of 12 reps. First off, to use this routine for the best results, replace all of your current back training with these 3 weekly sessions and do them consistently. It would also be a good idea to reduce the number of sets you do by about 10-20% for your other upper body muscles. Then, after a week or two of this, before each of these 3 weekly sessions start your session by attempting to do a chin-up. Once you can do a few chin-ups in a row, you’ll likely not only know just how to do a pull up, but also have the strength needed to master your first solid pull up and can build from there.Within our Built With Science programs, we take care of all the guesswork in your routines by crafting a weekly program that caters to your specific body and fitness goals. To find out which of our programs are best suited for you, you can take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+Most+Effective+Way+To+Master+The+Pull-Up+%284-Step+Progression%29&utm_term=11%2F09%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Music by:brettjanzen.cabrettjanzenmusic@gmail.com
The Best Glutes Workout To Grow Your Flat Butt (GYM OR HOME!) Jeremy Ethier 2021-09-06 | I’m going to show you a glutes workout with 6 of the best glute exercises to grow your butt. First we’ll go through some of the science behind how to grow the glutes to teach us the 2 muscles to focus on, then we’ll go through all of the butt exercises which you can do at home or at the gym. By the end of this video, you’ll know exactly how to build a bigger bum and your butt is going to be bootyfull.To understand how to build a bigger bum, you first need to know glute anatomy. The glute max is the biggest glute muscle. Its primary function is hip extension. The glute medius is the second biggest glute muscle. This muscle keeps our hips balanced when we move. It also helps with hip abduction.The deadlift, one of the best glutes exercises around, is going to be our primary heavy exercise for the glute max. First, use a hip-width foot stance with the toes slightly pointed outwards. Squeeze your glutes hard and push your knees out against your elbows. Brace your core, tuck your chin, push your feet through the floor while driving your hips forward to stand up. On the way down, reverse the motion. But only push your hips back as far as they can before your lower back starts to round. Once the bar is just past your knees, squat it down and then reset. If you’re using dumbbells, you’ll want to instead stop just past your knees before coming back up. Perform 3 sets of 6 heavy reps with 3-4 minutes of rest between each set. Now we’ll move onto bodyweight walking lunges. First, slightly lean your upper body forward while keeping your head in line with your body, and maintain that position as you lunge. Next, instead of simply stepping “up” after each lunge, think about stepping “forward”. At the bottom position of each lunge, take your hands and apply some resistance to guide your front knee inwards. Then, push your knee back against your resisting hand as you stand up. Do 2 sets of 10 reps on each leg with about 2 minutes of rest between each set.Next, we’re going to focus on the glute medius with a superset to grow the glutes. To perform the first exercise, put a cable setting down to its lowest and connect the strap around your ankle. Don’t have a cable? Set up a band wrapped around both legs or looped around a fixture instead. Grab a pole or any fixture for balance. Keep your torso upright, tuck your chin and brace your core. From here, sweep your heel back but also slightly out to the side at roughly a 30 degree angle. Do 12 reps on one side. Immediately grab a pair of dumbbells, elevate your back leg, and get into a split stance position. Keep about 80% of your weight in your front leg and the other 20% in the back. Drop your back knee towards the ground. As you lower yourself, keep the shin of your front leg straight up over your foot. At the bottom position, use your front leg to push back up and repeat for a total of 12 reps. Once complete, do the other leg on both exercises to complete your first superset, and then repeat that 2 more times for a total of 3 supersets for each leg. Another way to stimulate growth is with butt exercises that are most challenging at the top position when the glutes are fully contracted. The gym version is the 45 degree hip extension. First, set up the pad such that it’s just below your hips. Brace your core, tuck your chin, and then bend at your hips to pull yourself down. Squeeze your butt hard to pull yourself up. The home version will require just a stack of books. Flatten your back against the floor, place one foot up on the stack of books with the other leg straight. From here, push up against the stack of books while raising the opposite leg to 90 degrees. Hold this top position for 1-2 seconds while squeezing the glute of your planted leg hard. Repeat this for 3 sets of 15 reps on each leg.The Best Glutes WorkoutGlute-Focused Deadlift: 3 sets of 6 repsGlute-Focused Walking Lunges (bodyweight): 2 sets of 10 reps each legSuperset: 3 sets of 12 reps each legGlute Med Kickbacks RFESS45° Hip Extension OR Single Leg Elevated Glute Bridge: 3 sets of 15 repsYou can implement this glutes workout once a week or implement these exercises into your other workouts throughout the week if you’d prefer. Either way, I hope you were able to see the importance of carefully selecting your exercises as well as performing them in a way that maximizes growth for the target muscle. Within our Built With Science programs, we apply that to each and every one of the workouts we provide. To join today, take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+Best+Glutes+Workout+To+Grow+Your+Flat+Butt+%28GYM+OR+HOME%21%29&utm_term=29%2F08%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Music by:brettjanzen.cabrettjanzenmusic@gmail.com
How To Grow Your Biceps In 10 Minutes (Using Science) Jeremy Ethier 2021-08-22 | Wondering how to grow big biceps? I'm going to give you a killer 10 minute dumbbell biceps workout. We’ll use 3 different training methods that will cut your workout time by 1/3rd WHILE helping you get bigger biceps – at the same time. I’ll show you how each of these methods work using science, and exactly how to use them (with some of the best dumbbell biceps exercises around) in your workout for big biceps.Alright so here’s the 10-minute dumbbell biceps workout. Method 1 takes about 2 minutes to complete and will use something called rest pause sets. Method 2 will pair two bicep exercises together as a compound set that will take 5 minutes to complete. Method 3 will finish the workout off with drop sets that will take only 1 minute to complete. Assuming 1 minute of rest between each method, you’ll be done in just 10 minutes. Method 1: Rest Pause (1 set of 20 reps total)Dumbbell CurlsMethod 2: Compound Set (3 sets of 8-12 reps)Spider CurlsIncline Dumbbell Curls3 compound sets of 8-12 repsDrop Set (5 drop-sets total):Hammer Curls5 drop-sets totalTo kick the workout for big biceps off, we’re going to implement rest-pause training. This is a method where instead of doing a bunch of sets for an exercise, you combine it all into just one long set. We’ll apply this to our workout with an exercise that is safe for us to push our limits with, standing dumbbell curls. Start by finding a weight that you could typically do 6-8 reps with. You’re going to perform as many reps as you can while maintaining good form. Once you finish your first rest pause set and can’t do anymore reps, put the weights down, rest for just 20 seconds, and then immediately perform another set using the same weight again for as many repetitions as you can. Keep repeating this process until you have completed a total of 20 reps. Method 2, compound sets, takes two types of bicep exercises that can be performed back to back without rest. This is possible because the bicep is composed of two heads that have slightly different functions. We can take advantage of this to save time AND get bigger biceps by performing a compound set of two bicep exercises performed back to back without rest. To perform this compound set, start by setting an adjustable bench up to 30 degrees, generally the third or fourth notch on the bench. Then, pick a weight that you could typically do 10-12 reps with in a normal bicep curl. With the dumbbells in hand, lay with your stomach on the bench and your arms hanging down in front of you. Lock your elbows in that position and then curl the weight up. Do as many reps as you can with good form, ideally somewhere between 8-12 reps. Immediately after, we are going to flip over on the bench, keep the same exact pair of dumbbells, but now position the arms behind the body. Lock your elbows in place, and then curl the weight up. Once again, you are going to empty the tank on this one by performing as many reps as you can while keeping good form. After doing so, you’ll have completed one compound set. Take 60 seconds to rest and then repeat this 2 more times. After your last set, rest for 60 seconds, then move onto the final exercise. For the last exercise we are going to use drop sets. This is where you do a bunch of sets without rest but drop the weight after each set. As for the exercise we’ll apply drop sets to, we want to use one of the best dumbbell biceps exercises around that will target an arm muscle called the brachialis. When grown, it can help to push up your biceps, creating an illusion of a bigger bicep. It can be targeted by using curls where the hand is in a neutral position, such as in a hammer curl where you hold the dumbbells as if they were hammers. To implement this, start by finding a weight that you can initially do between 15 and 20 reps with. Using that weight, perform one set of hammer curls to failure with good form, keeping the elbow locked in place with minimal swinging. After you can’t do any more reps, immediately move to the next lowest set of DB’s and perform another set to failure. Repeat this until 5 total sets are completed. Then you’re done! You now know how to grow big biceps – even only with just dumbbells. You can see how much more effective your workouts can be if you apply the right science. To apply this science to all your workouts, not just your biceps, then take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:builtwithscience.com/your-potential-realized/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=The+FASTEST+Biceps+Workout+With+Dumbbells+%28That+Actually+Works%29&utm_term=22%2F08%2F2021Subscribe to my channel here:youtube.com/jeremyethier/?sub_confirmation=1Music by:brettjanzen.cabrettjanzenmusic@gmail.com
