Jeremy Ethier

These are the best things you can do Before your workout to maximize energy, muscle growth, and fat loss. Find out exactly what pre-workout foods to eat before the gym to improve your exercise performance. You'll also learn about two natural and effective pre-workout supplements. Finally, you'll discover the truth about stretching before a workout, how it can be harmful, and how to properly set up your warm-up. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX Doing certain things before a workout can help increase vascularity, improve energy, and boost your overall performance leading to a far better workout and more impressive results both in terms of muscle growth and fat loss. So today I want to go over 9 of the best things you can do before your workout to maximize your results. And first I want to start with something that most of you already have in your home, baking soda. Most people don't know that sodium bicarbonate or baking soda can be used to enhance gym performance. Baking soda is beneficial due to the fact that it's a mildly alkaline salt that can help regulate the ph levels in your muscles. To put it simply, In chemistry, pH is a scale that's used to indicate how acidic or alkaline a solution is. A pH of 7.0 is considered neutral, and a ph of 7 also happens to be the normal ph level within muscle cells. Your muscles function best when they're in this neutral pH state, but the exercise itself can have an effect that changes your muscular ph levels. You see during anaerobic exercise, which is basically any form of high-intensity exercise like heavy weight lifting or sprinting when you're working in that anaerobic state your body's demand for oxygen exceeds the available supply. So as a response the anaerobic energy pathway gets stimulated, and this pathway is primarily fueled by carbohydrates in the form of glucose, but aside from that it also causes an increase in the production of lactic acid. Excessive levels of lactic acid in your muscles causes pH levels to fall below 7, which disrupts energy production and your muscles' ability to contract, leading to a reduction in exercise performance. Fortunately, baking soda, with its alkaline pH of 8.4, can offer a solution for these lactic acids. By taking baking soda you can raise blood ph levels slightly, which allows lactic acids to move from the muscle cells into the bloodstream. And that process results in a reduction of pH within your muscles. This improves your muscle's ability to continue to contract and produce energy and has been proven to do so by a number of scientific studies. (12) For example, we have a study that examined the effects of taking baking soda 60 minutes before performing squats and bench presses to failure. (13) As you can see in the graph from the study there was definitely an impressive increase in squat performance (14) After taking the baking soda, the participants could do around eight more squats over the course of three sets than they could when they were not taking it, which is a significant increase. With that said, the study only found a performance increase in the squat but it finds a boost in bench press performance. This could be because the squat uses larger muscles than the bench press, but more research would definitely help. The other thing to keep in mind is that not everyone reacts the same to baking soda. While some experienced positive effects, others experience adverse effects like stomach discomfort, nausea, and water retention. That's why you might want to try out a small dose first before trying the standard dose; for example, taking only one-fourth or one-third of the normal recommended amount on your first time is a good idea. And the usual recommended dose is 90 to 135 mg per pound of bodyweight about 60 to 90 minutes before exercise. Now if baking soda doesn't sit well with you, another proven single-ingredient supplement that you can take before your workout in place of baking soda to reduce lactic acid is beta-alanine. Even though beta-alanine is a nonessential amino acid and it works a little differently it still provides a similar effect that can help you squeeze out a few extra reps when you would normally fail. It does this by working with another amino acid known as histidine, to produce carnosine (14.1), and similar to baking soda carnosine has a pretty big impact on your muscle's ph levels helping you perform better with high-intensity activities. When you take around 2 to 5 grams of beta-alanine it might give you a feeling of pins and needles in your extremities like your hands and a tingling sensation on your lips but you should notice a reduction in lactic acid and an improvement in performance. Even though the tingling sensation may feel scary for a beginner you shouldn't worry because beta-alanine is a natural amino acid and it's considered a very safe supplement...

If you want to actually get lean this year, the odds are stacked against you. More than 80% of people who try getting lean end up failing. But there are 3 simple, science-backed steps that have gotten me, and several others, leaner than they’ve ever been before. We'll cover a full fat loss meal plan, the best exercises for fat loss, how to lose stubborn belly fat, and more. Link to Calorie calculator: https://builtwithscience.com/calorie-... Fat loss meal plan: • The Best Meal Plan To Lose Fat Faster... Click below if you want a science-based, step-by-step plan that guides you every single week, just like we did with Jesse, Archie, and Tamara: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... Step 1 for how to get lean: your diet. First, you need to start forcing your body to burn fat for energy. This is done by creating a calorie deficit, where you're eating fewer calories than your body needs every day. You can do that by first fixing your food environment. Throw away your trigger foods and taking advantage of your laziness by placing your high-calorie snacks and treats in hard-to-reach places. This also applies to healthy snacks like nuts and granola. Also, when you do eat, try to shut everything down and just be present. Next, eat more protein. Eating enough protein “protects” your muscles from being burned off for energy during a diet. As for how much to eat, research typically shows the greatest benefit when protein is increased to about 0.8 g per lb of your body weight per day. In addition to protein, try to eat more of those highly filling, nutritious foods 80% of the time. Then 20% of the time, allow yourself to eat treats and more processed foods that, although won’t fill you up as much, will help you avoid an overly restrictive mindset. Finally, track your calories to ensure you’re indeed in a calorie deficit. Second step to getting lean: exercise. Combining diet with resistance training is more effective for fat loss than combining diet with just cardio. The reason lifting weights is great for fat loss is that it tells your body to prioritize burning more fat rather than muscle for energy. So, when it comes to how to get lean, you should use your diet to do the hard work of creating most of your calorie deficit, but also lift weights 3-5 times weekly to tell your body to keep your muscles and use fat for energy instead. But as great as lifting weights is, this doesn’t mean you hit the gym and sloth around the rest of the day. In fact, one of the reasons why people fail to get lean during a diet is because they subconsciously get lazier and reduce the number of steps they take as they get leaner and leaner. To avoid this, start tracking your daily steps. Try to build up to at least 7,000 steps per day and keep that consistent throughout your diet. So if you properly apply everything we went through so far, with the best exercises for fat loss (i.e., resistance training), for example, you should be able to lose about 1-2 lbs of fat per week. Repeat that for several weeks, and eventually, you’ll be at your goal body fat percentage. But we all know that’s much easier said than done. Step 3, staying consistent, is where most people fail. But there are 3 consistency hacks that I’ve found make people far more likely to stick it through and succeed. The first of my "how to get lean consistency hacks" is what I like to call the Power of 60%. Instead of aiming for perfection, just aim to hit your goals at least 60% of the time. Second, make use of diet breaks every 8-12 weeks of dieting. It’s a week or two where you increase your calorie intake to around 500 calories more than when you were dieting. While it’s not a free pass to eat whatever you want, it will give you more flexibility with your food choices and can help you recharge both mentally and physically before your next dieting phase on a fat loss meal plan. Finally, let's talk about how to lose belly fat. First off, don’t use your stubborn belly fat as a measure of progress. Usually, your body will start by losing fat around your chest, shoulders, arms, back, and even your face. Only once it’s lost enough fat from those areas will it make its way down to your upper stomach area and then finally your lower belly. Remember, you have a lot more fat to lose than you think. So until you get lean enough to notice your belly fat coming off, be proud of the fat loss progress you’ve made in your face, arms, chest, and shoulders. Don’t quit right before the going gets good!

Most people don't know how to bench press with the proper bench press form. For example, do you ever feel pinching or pain in your shoulder when you bench press? Or maybe it activates your shoulders and triceps more than the chest? Or maybe every time you start going heavy you end up hurting yourself. This isn’t because the bench press is a bad exercise, it’s just that most people do it wrong. There are 5 mistakes almost everyone makes with their bench press technique — be it on the barbell bench press or Smith machine bench press. Fix these bench press form mistakes, and I guarantee your shoulders will thank you, and you’ll start to feel your chest activating like never before. Here’s how to bench press for chest growth. Timestamps: 0:00 - Fix 1 2:15 - Fix 2 3:43 - Fix 3 5:12 - Fix 4 6:28 - Fix 5 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: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... The first bench press form mistake has to do with your elbow angle. If you use too wide of an elbow angle, you’re going to have a very hard time bringing the bar all the way down to your chest and doing so can create a lot of strain on the shoulders. Whereas a tucked elbow angle will help you get deeper and better activate your chest since it usually aligns with the direction that most people's chest fibers run. To find the perfect elbow angle for you, focus on touching your lower chest or nipples with the bar when performing the barbell bench press, then your elbows should naturally end up in the right place. But what if you bench on the Smith Machine? For angled Smith machines: Face the same direction that the Smith machine path is angled so that the bar moves down and slightly forward on the way down. At the bottom position the bar should touch the level of your lower chest right around your sternum. For straight up and down Smith machines have the bar touch bit higher right around the level of your mid chest. Now in order to properly do the previous bench press technique tip, you need to fix your grip. Next time you’re on the bench, rest the bar on your lower chest. At this bottom position your wrist, forearms, and elbow should ideally be straight up and down stacked directly under the bar. However far away your hands need to be to accomplish that is your ideal grip width. There’s a common mistake you want to avoid on the way up the barbell bench press: letting your shoulders take over. To prevent that, start by creating a “proud chest” by sticking your chest up towards the ceiling. Then, use your back muscles to pull the bar down to your chest as if you were doing a row, squeezing your shoulder blades together and keeping your chest up and proud. Lightly touch the bar with your chest, and then on the way up, think about squeezing your biceps into the sides of your chest as if you were trying to touch your biceps together. You may have to lighten the weight to do this properly. How to bench press for chest growth? It’s about the setup. You want to create stability when you bench press. Use a wide stance with your feet planted under your knees. Push your knees out and lightly drive your feet forward to activate your quads and glutes. For the upper body, activate your lats by bringing your armpits down towards your hips. Then, after you unrack it, squeeze the bar hard and think about twisting your hands outwards as if you were trying to bend the bar into a U shape towards your feet. Take a deep breath into your stomach, and brace your core as if you coughed really hard. So the last fix may not be what you’re expecting. See, research shows free weights lead to similar growth as machines. So if you apply all the fixes I mentioned in this article yet you’re still having trouble with the bench press, then your body honestly just may not be well suited to bench press. Unless you’re a competitive powerlifter, you shouldn’t feel like you have to bench press. You can still make just as good of gains with chest machines or even dumbbells where your joints can move a lot more freely. Also, consider playing with the range of motion. You’d be surprised with how deep you actually have to go in order to mimic touching your chest during the bench press. So if going all the way down when benching if that’s what aggravates your shoulder or you just don’t have the mobility for that yet, stop an inch or two short. Regardless of what exercise you choose to do, you always need to make sure you’re using the proper form. Poor technique is the single biggest reason why many people end up hurting themselves in the gym or just don’t see very good results from their workouts. If you need help with fixing your form on other exercises, head to https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ for a done-for-you routine that will take care of everything for you.

Wondering how to grow your shoulders? Today I want to share the #1 shoulder workout that absolutely blew up my delts. My Filipino genetics blessed me with a 1:1 shoulder-to-waist ratio and narrow clavicles that made me look frail and weak. But I refused to let my genetics define me. This past year, my shoulders are wider, broader, and fuller than they’ve ever been. I followed a simple, science-based shoulders workout that’s worked better than anything I’ve tried in the past. There are only 3 shoulder exercises (including the crowd fav, lateral raises) in this shoulders workout, but proper form is crucial, so pay attention. 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: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... First up in our shoulder workout, the side delts. This is the part of the shoulders that broadens your frame and is where I put most of my effort. Now in the past, in my delts workout, I’d always just do your typical dumbbell lateral raises. But there’s an exciting new area of research called long muscle length training that suggests muscles tend to grow better if they’re challenged in the stretched position. But the thing about dumbbell lateral raises is they’re easiest at the bottom when the delt is fully stretched and hardest at the top when the delt is fully contracted. The opposite of what we want. So I chose behind-the-body cable lateral raises for my delts workout to target my side delts instead. This is where I stand in front and to the side, so my side delt is now stretched behind me. Make sure the cable is 2-3 notches from the bottom so it challenges your delts the most when it’s stretched. A crucial progressive overload tip: I’d start around 10 reps per set, and only once I was able to do at least 15-20 reps per set with good form did I increase the weight. This way, I still made gains by increasing my reps, and then once I did make that jump in weight, I was ready for it. So the side delts create width, but the rear delts help balance out the shoulder and give it that 3D look. But it’s by far the most underdeveloped part of most people’s shoulders. We know that muscles are best grown if the arm path of the exercise matches the direction of the muscle’s fibers. In the case of the rear delts, they run at about a 45-degree angle. What I found to be the most successful of all the shoulder exercises with was using this 45-degree arm angle during the reverse cable fly, but with a few steps back from the cable to make it more difficult near the beginning of the exercise when the rear delts are more stretched. But you could apply this to the reverse pec deck as well. Move the seat up high and instead of sitting right up against the pad, scoot your butt back and lean your chest into the pad. This way, your arm angle will now line up better with rear delts. And if you don’t have access to cables or machines for your delts workout, you can do an incline dumbbell row with your arms kept at that 45-degree angle. In all of these exercises, though, to prevent your mid-back muscles from taking over, don’t squeeze your shoulder blades together. Push your arms forward to open up your shoulder blades, and keep them that way as you pull your elbows back. Lastly, we'll tackle the front delts in our shoulders workout. Now in the past, I’d always do standing barbell overhead presses. But they just really started beating up my joints, and it was always a struggle to stay balanced. So I switched this out for a more stable and smoother exercise on the joints, the seated dumbbell shoulder press. But not the way most people do it. Instead, you’ll want to try to bring the bench back about 1-2 notches, and as you can see, it’ll require far less shoulder mobility. Once you’re set-up, line up your arm with the front delt fibers by driving your elbows inwards slightly with your palms facing in. Then, press the weight over your shoulders and return back to this starting position after each rep. You now know how to grow your shoulders! Here are the 3 exercises with the reps, sets, alternatives, and how often to perform them. Seated dumbbell shoulder press 3 sets x 6-10 reps, 1x/week Alternative — machine shoulder press Behind body cable lateral raise 3-4 sets x 10-20 reps, 2-3x/week Alternative — dumbbell lateral raise (with partials at end) Reverse cable fly 3 sets x 10-15 reps, 1-2x/week Alternative — reverse pec deck, incline dumbbell rear delt row You could do this as a workout on its own, but I’d recommend splitting these exercises up into 2-3 of your workouts throughout the week. Research is always evolving. I may end up being wrong about all of this in a few years' time, but I will do my best to keep you guys updated with the latest science. So far, though, the research is promising, and it seems like it’s working.

This is the #1 arm workout that blew up my arms. There's only 4 arm exercises, but it's the science behind them that makes them so effective. Before we dive into exercise 1, realize that I was not born with big arms. God blessed me with twigs. I spammed them with bicep curls and tricep pushdowns in every single arm workout for bigger arms, but it didn't get me very far. As soon as I trained smarter and used the correct arm exercises, my arm growth took off. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did, so today we’ll use the latest science to create the best arm workout with the best bicep exercises and tricep exercises to blow up your arms. There are only 4 exercises, but proper form is crucial, so pay attention if you want to get bigger arms. 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: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... Let’s start with the biceps in our arm workout. A new area of research suggests that for the most growth, you’d want a bicep workout that challenges the biceps the most closer to the bottom when the bicep is fully stretched. There have been similar findings in other muscles like the hamstrings, quads, and as you’ll see later on the triceps as well. This makes me relatively confident in selecting preacher curls as a “top tier” biceps exercise. To potentially get even more growth, try to start the curl with a neutral grip and then turn your wrists in so your palms face up at the top. But I’d only recommend doing it if you’re using an actual preacher curl bench. Second, given the importance of the stretch, your arm should be almost fully extended at the bottom. But this is usually a position that most people have never trained their biceps in. So start off with lighter weight for 10-20 reps, and then over time, you can go relatively heavier for around 8-12 reps. Alright, so there’s 1 more biceps curl we’ll want to do in the best arm workout to really blow up the arms. This one will help grow the biceps, brachioradialis, and brachialis. Standing hammer curls are the usual go-to for these muscles. But for an even greater benefit, we can perform these on a preacher curl to make it difficult at the beginning of the exercise, when the muscles are more stretched. Similar to the regular preacher curl, start off lighter for higher reps and work your way to 8-12 reps with a relatively heavier weight. But if these feel tough on your tendons, feel free to stick with lighter weights and higher reps or swap them for behind-the-body hammer cable curls in your arm workout, which will still challenge the muscles more when they’re stretched. Now, let's move onto the triceps workout to get bigger arms. There are 3 heads in the triceps: medial lateral, and long. The long head is the only head that crosses the shoulder joint. So you’ll need special tricep exercises to target it. Research shows that compared to doing just the bench press alone, adding the skullcrushers resulted in no additional growth in the lateral head and a bit of growth in the medial head, but considerably more growth in the long head. And similar to skullcrushers, overhead extensions place the long head in a greater stretch. I would be pretty confident in recommending some type of overhead extension as a top-tier triceps exercise to include in your arm workout — at least for the long head. Aim for about 10-15 reps on these using moderate weight. Now, let’s target the 2 other tricep heads. I’ve found a lot of success with a triceps exercise I first learned from biomechanics expert Coach Kassem. The arm position seems to both stretch and challenge the lateral head more when it’s stretched, which as we covered is probably beneficial for growth. To perform it, grab the cable with one hand, face away, and let the cable come over your opposite shoulder. Position your arm in front and across your body, and then simply extend your arm while keeping your elbow locked in place. Aim for about 10-15 reps per set. Don’t have access to cables? Another option is a bodyweight tricep exercise - close grip push-ups. Or, you can do a dumbbell triceps exercise - the JM press. However, for some people, these can be tough on the elbows, so I’d recommend sticking with lighter weights and aiming for about 15-20 controlled reps. So here are the 4 exercises you should do for bigger arms: Preacher Curl: 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps Dumbbell Hammer Preacher Curl: 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps Cable Overhead Extension, 3-4 sets of 10-15 reps, Lateral Head Cable Extension: 3-4 sets of 10-15 reps For big arms, you can throw these arm exercises into a few of your workouts throughout the week or have a dedicated arm workout day where you do these all at once. Hope this helps. Good luck!

What’s the fastest way to build muscle? Can you work out half as much as you are right now, do just a few 30-minute workouts per week, and get the same or potentially even more gains? According to the latest science, you most definitely can build muscle fast. There are 3 time-saving strategies that have been shown to be most effective to help grow muscle fast. I’ll show you how to build muscle fast by applying them to your workouts, and at the end, I’ll also give you some done-for-you time-saving workout plans you can start using right away to build muscle fast and get more gains in less time. Download your free time-saving routines here: https://builtwithscience.com/fastwork... Take our quiz to find the best step-by-step fitness program for you and your body: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com "Long Length Training" Exercises YouTube Video: • How To Build Muscle Almost 2x Faster ... Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... To save time in the gym and build muscle fast, you want to do the least number of sets that still get you a solid return in gains. Based on current research, it seems likely that 3 sets per muscle weekly are probably enough to maintain your gains and maybe even build a little muscle depending on how inexperienced you are. But 4-7 sets per muscle per week is likely the sweet spot to get the most gains with the least amount of time and effort. However, if you are going to go with this minimal volume, there are 3 things you need to start applying to your workouts to continue to build muscle or possibly get even more gains than you were before. First, you should be pushing at least 1-2 reps to failure and even going all the way to failure on exercises where it’s safe to do so every single set. Second, since you’re only doing a limited number of exercises, it’s crucial you pick the ones that are most likely to give the most gains. There’s a really exciting area of research called “long muscle length” training. Basically, it seems like some muscles may respond better to exercises that challenge them the most when they’re in a stretched position. And lastly, to really ensure you build muscle fast, you need to dial in your form. Now, what if you want to make my minimalist workout even more time efficient and take it from 30 minutes down to just 20 minutes? This is where the next 2 time-saving strategies come in handy. First, supersets. These can help you grow muscle fast by cutting your workout time in half. But the key is to use what’s known as antagonist supersets. how long it takes you to catch your breath between the two exercises seems to be important. Keep the transition time as short as possible, no longer than a minute. But that said, supersets will only work if you’re still pushing your muscles close to failure every set. But if there are any exercises you can’t end up super-setting or would just prefer not to and you'd still like to build muscle fast, this is where the next method can come in handy. Drop sets. It’s where you do your first set until you can’t do any more reps, decrease the weight, then immediately do as many reps as you can, and continue dropping the weight until you complete about 2 or 3 “drop sets” in total. Now, you may be thinking, “Won't this reduce the amount of weight and reps I can do?” Let’s say you’re doing a set of 10 reps to failure. The first few reps you do contribute very little to muscle growth. It’s only during the last few reps, when the muscles are being pushed to their absolute limit, that the most growth happens. So even though you’re lightening the weight during each drop set, they’re already exhausted from your previous set to the point that every additional rep it does is now far more effective for growth. This is the likely mechanism behind why research has found that drop sets could possibly be the fastest way to build muscle. Now as for what exercises to use this method with, keep in mind during every set you’re training to failure. So you need to use exercises where it’s safe to do so and also really quick to decrease the weight for each drop set. Now as for how many drop sets to do to build muscle fast, I’d say try to at least match the total number of sets, including your drop sets, with how many normal sets you’d usually do. Lastly, as for how much to lower the weight during each drop set, the study protocols usually decreased it by 20% at a time. That said, 1 thing we have yet to discuss when it comes to how to build muscle fast is nutrition. You can train far less than someone else but end up getting dramatically better results by simply focusing on your nutrition. If you need help with that, head over to our website at builtwithscience.com for a done-for-you fitness and nutrition plan customized towards you and your goals.

How many sets per muscle group per week do you really need to build muscle? Some say just 1 set taken to all-out failure is best. Whereas others go high workout volume, doing 4-5 sets per exercise and taking over 3 hours to complete a workout. Who’s right? And more importantly, how many sets per muscle group per week should YOU do, especially as a natural? Well, the answer to optimal training volume might surprise you and is probably a lot less than you’re currently doing. Here’s how many sets per week you should be doing. GRAB THE FREE WORKOUT PLANS HERE: https://builtwithscience.com/freework... Click below for a fully customized, done-for-you training plan: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... The first major analysis investigating the relationship between how many sets per muscle group per week and resulting muscle growth was done in 2017. They compared: 1-5, 5-9, and 10+ sets per muscle per week. While it suggested that more was better, it didn’t let us know the upper limit. Fortunately, 6 years later, a similar analysis compared lower volumes of less than 12 sets, moderate volumes of 12-20 sets, and high volumes of 20 or more sets per muscle per week. Overall, this analysis suggests the sweet spot seems to be 10-20 sets per muscle per week. To find where within this range is best for you (i.e. exactly how many sets per muscle group per week you should do), there are 5 other factors you need to consider. The first of which is your individual response. Illustrating this is a 2016 study where they had 19 participants train one leg with 6-9 sets per week and their other leg with 15 sets per week. After 8 weeks, roughly a third of the participants had a leg that responded better from low volume, a third had a leg that responded better from high volume, and a third had a similar response in both legs. Suggesting that what one person can recover well and grow from may end up being too much for someone else. Factor 2 for your workout volume: exercise execution. In most studies, a “set” is defined as going to or very close to complete failure. But we know from past research that most people don’t push themselves hard enough to reach this point. Or, as soon as they get anywhere close to it, they start cheating and using momentum. So you may not need nearly as much volume as you think you do if you simply fixed these more important areas instead. Third factor that’ll decide your training volume, rest times. If you usually take longer rest periods between most of your sets, at least 2 minutes between sets, it’s likely that the lower end of the range would be best. Whereas the higher end of the range will likely be necessary if you mostly use shorter rest periods (less tha 2 minutes between sets). Fourth, how you count your sets. Generally, researchers still count muscles that are indirectly worked with an exercise as 1 full set for that muscle. For example, during the bench press, they’ll count that as 1 set for the chest and 1 set for the triceps. Now whether or not this should truly count as 1 set for the secondary muscles is up for debate, but it does affect how many sets per week you should do. I also think this discrepancy in how people count sets is why high-intensity training, where you do just 1 set (max 2 sets per exercise) CAN work, and HAS seemed to work for many people. Lastly, not everyone should be doing what’s “optimal”. Even though 10 or more weekly sets led to the most growth, 5-9 weekly sets still gave about 80% of the max growth. In fact, in some cases, even in trained individuals, just 3 sets per muscle week has been shown to build some muscle. So if you’re having trouble just being consistent in the first place, don’t chase the optimal guidelines. So first off, I’d recommend starting off at the low end of the 10-20 weekly set range, especially if you’re a beginner. Dial in your form, make sure you’re pushing hard enough, take longer rest periods. As you get more experienced, if you’re sleeping well, pushing hard with good form, and eating enough, yet you’re still not seeing gains, then chances are you might actually need more volume. In this case, add about 2 more weekly sets, especially on muscles that are lagging behind, and see how you progress. Otherwise, you might actually need to take a break or consider decreasing your volume. But remember, how many sets per muscle group per week is optimal is very individual. Experiment, listen to your body, and realize that you can still make incredible gains by just showing up and doing what you can, even if it’s less than what’s “optimal”.

Do you need cardio for weight loss? And how much cardio should you actually do? Some say you don’t need any cardio for fat loss, whereas others say you gotta do a cardio workout every day. I was determined to find the truth. After reviewing the latest science, interviewing the smartest experts in the world, and speaking to some of the top natural bodybuilders in the industry, here’s what I found about using cardio to lose weight. Special thanks to our guests for their valuable insight: ALBERTO NUNEZ: https://www.instagram.com/nunez3dmj/?... LEE LEM: / @l_eel_em DR. ERIC HELMS: / helms3dmj https://massresearchreview.com/ Need more guidance? Click below to create a step by step science-based plan that shows you what to eat and what workouts to do to get you into the best shape of your life: https://quiz.builtwithscience.com/ Click below to subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/jeremyethier/... Do you need cardio for weight loss? Cardio isn’t nearly as effective as most people think when it comes to losing weight and fat because of the constrained energy model. Most research has shown that people who start doing cardio without any changes to their diet tend to lose 20-50% of what they’d expect from the calories they’ve burned. What about doing more cardio to lose weight? Without changing your diet, you’ve probably got to do a whole lot of cardio for it to have a meaningful effect on fat loss. Which isn’t a very efficient or realistic approach for most people. The takeaway is that should think of cardio as a supplemental tool that you can stack on top of your diet to speed things up. But how much cardio, exactly, should you “stack on top”? I sought the opinions of Alberto Nunez, an extremely knowledgeable coach and lifetime drug-free pro bodybuilder who’s known for getting into insane levels of leanness, and Lee Lem, a natural bodybuilder just a few weeks out from his show. Surprisingly, both said that by using either a longer or more aggressive diet, they didn't really need cardio to lose weight or get into crazy shape. But including cardio had its benefits. Alberto and Lee say maintaining a high daily step count helped them burn more calories and make sure they don’t get lazier as they get leaner. But now I wanted to find out, on top of daily steps, how much actual “cardio” is required to get really lean? Here's Alberto's take: "Usually the smaller the athlete, the more cardio we will have to do. It helps so they can eat a little bit more, which is obviously gonna help with the mental component to some extent.” But he also emphasized it’s lifestyle-dependent: "I've had people do nothing. Nothing. And usually, this has to do with the occupation that if they don't move, they just get fired. So servers, personal trainers, labor-intensive jobs, things like that." But for most of his clients, "7,000 steps on average as our baseline you have that set. I'd say most people, per week, are going to require 4 to 5 days of cardio to lose weight, ranging anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes.” This seemed to line up with Lee’s protocol as well. On top of 10,000 steps a day and lifting weights 4 times a week, he’s also doing 5x 30 minutes of cardio to lose weight. But remember, this isn't just to get “six-pack abs lean”. We’re talking shredded. And they don’t do this much cardio right away. Whenever fat loss has stalled, and they’re not making progress, that’s typically when they decide whether or not they should add more cardio. Now as for how much cardio per week YOU should aim for? What I’d recommend is start with Alberto’s recommendation of walking 7,000 steps a day as a baseline. Once you’re consistent with that, try adding in 2 to 3 20-minute cardio workouts per week. And although Lee and Alberto recommend cycling or the elliptical, you have plenty of other options when it comes to the type of cardio to lose weight. The key is to choose things you actually enjoy and can recover well from. Now, from here, once your body adapts and you reach a stall in your progress using your current routine, you can choose to either eat a little bit less or add a little bit more cardio or steps to continue losing fat. You basically repeat this process for as long as it takes for you to reach your desired level of body fat. But the last thing you want to do is start doing a bunch of cardio to lose weight during your diet and then stop cold turkey as soon as it’s over. Dr. Eric Helms says keeping some level of activity (7,000 to 9,000 steps per day and strength training 2-3x weekly) seems to prevent fat regain. This is why for long-term success, when choosing the type of cardio to lose weight, it’s so important to choose activities you can actually stick to.

These are the 9 BEST exercises to build bigger & wider triceps. If you're looking to learn how to build big arms then your triceps are one of the first muscles to start with. This video will show you how to set up the perfect tricep workout for developing mass, size, and shape fast. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Diet/Workout Calculator: http://bit.ly/2v3kXnn Your tricep muscle is made up of 3 different heads. First you have the long head which is the part of the tricep located on the inside of your upper arm. Then on the outside of your arm, you have the lateral head which for most people is the most visible and recognizable portion of the tricep, especially when looking from a side or a front angle. And finally underneath those two heads, we have the medial head which for the most part is covered up by the long and lateral tricep heads, but it does pop out on the inside of the arm closer to the elbow which allows it to contribute to your tricep width. All three heads combined are estimated to makeup anywhere from 60 to 75 percent of your overall arms size so if you want to develop bigger and wider arms, it's very important that you work all three tricep heads correctly and effectively. So today I want to give you 9 of the best tricep exercises starting first with one of the most effective compound exercises that targets primarily the lateral and medial tricep heads, the close-grip bench press. Our triceps are highly involved even with a regular bench press but for the close-grip bench press there are a couple differences that help Target your tricep to a much greater degree. First you want to lay on a flat bench under a barbell and grab it with a closer grip where your hands are about shoulder width apart. While you can go a little closer dont take too close of a grip because If you do, you're going to strain wrists on every rep as you bring the bar down. Before unracking the bar make sure your feet are planted into the ground, your shoulder blades should be pulled back together, and you should maintain an arch in your spine. Then unrack the bar, bring it over your chest and lower the barbell down. Unlike the regular bench press we want to aim to bring the bar a little lower than our nipple line right around where our sternum ends or where your upper abs meet the lower part of your chest. On your way down your elbows should be nice and tight to your body. Do not flare your elbows out because that'll put unwanted tension on your shoulders and wrists and itll put you in a weak positon. Stop the barbell about an inch or two above your chest before pressing the barbell back up to keep constant tension on your triceps throughout the exercise. Then repeat for reps. Since this is a compound exercise you can lift some pretty heavy weight which is great for muscle growth, so don't be afraid to challenge yourself and go heavy on this one. Another great compound exercise for the triceps is the dip. Dips on parallel bars will primarily work the lateral head of your tricep. They'll also hit the long head pretty effectively and the medial head as well at the top of the contraction before lockout. To begin you would grab the two parallel bars, then you would hop up and lock your elbows out so that your hovering over the parallel bars. Now from here you can perform dips two different ways one of which will Target more of the chest while the other will Target more of the triceps. If we were trying to Target more of the chest during a dip we would want to lean forward however since we're trying to Target the triceps you want to concentrate on keeping your body as vertical as possible and your chest up throughout the entire dip. With that in mind lower yourself down until your shoulders are about parallel with your elbows or just a little lower than your elbows. Then press back up by extending your elbows until your arms are fully locked out and you're back to that starting position. From there just repeat for reps. When doing dips make sure that you're not flaring your elbows out. Instead, they should be tight to your sides and your wrists should be straight throughout the entire exercise. For the next one we have an excellent isolation exercise that really helps Target that long inner tricep head, as well as the medial head, it's called the French curl also known as the tricep overhead extension. And we can do this with an EZ bar or we can use a dumbbell both can work but today I'll be using a dumbbell. To begin you'll first want to take a seat on a bench with a heavy dumbbell resting over one of your knees. Once you get stronger and you're lifting a heavier weight load...

Learn how to get wider broader shoulders with these 9 exercises. This is the best shoulder workout for width, mass, and capped shoulders. Get a V taper upper body with boulder shoulders fast 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Diet/Workout Calculator: http://bit.ly/gt-calculator30 Timestamps: #1 Lateral Raise 0:46 #2 Bent Over Reverse Cable Fly 2:41 #3 The Reverse Dumbbell Fly 4:54 #4 Leaning Lateral Raise 5:59 #5 High Cable Reverse Flyes 7:13 #6 Cable Lateral Raise 7:52 #7 Leaning Lateral Raises 8:37 #8 Cable Crossover Lateral Raise 8:53 #9 Incline Lateral Raise On A Bench 9:30 Having broad shoulders is something that has been considered attractive for hundreds of years, long before gyms and bodybuilding ever even existed. To clearly see this, you don't need to look any further than the way tuxes and suits have been designed for generations. All suits have the shoulders padded up because we're subconsciously attracted to that v shape. Having an upright posture with wide shoulders and a narrow waist not only communicates that you're healthy, but it also makes you look more confident and more like a leader. Fortunately, we're no longer only limited to just padding up our suits to make our shoulders appear wider, there are certain exercises that can help build up specific parts of your shoulder allowing you to maintain that natural v shape even without a padded suit. And first I want to start with the most obvious exercise which is the lateral raise, but we're going to do a variation to make the exercise much more effective. Normally most people will do lateral raises standing perfectly upright. And even though this isn't necessarily wrong it's not the best way to perform the exercise if you're trying to add width to your shoulders. For this to make sense you have to understand that the shoulder has three heads, anterior, lateral, and posterior or front, middle, and back. To build width we'll want to primarily develop the middle and the back of the shoulder. Most people wind up overdeveloping their front head instead, because on top of isolation exercises like frontal raises that target the front of your shoulder, most people are still also doing plenty of compound pressing exercises like bench press, and military presses, which also primarily target that front head. So to focus on the middle of the shoulder we do lateral raises, assuming that we're completely isolating the lateral head of the shoulder when standing straight up. However when done this way the front of your shoulder will be very highly involved in the movement, almost equally as much as the lateral head that you're trying to target. So to better target the lateral head as well as some of the posterior head you'll want to lean forward. You can do this simply by starting the exercise with your dumbbells in front of your hips rather than to the sides of your hips. This will naturally put you into the correct leaning forward position. Then without swinging your back you would raise both dumbbells directly to your sides with a slight bend in the elbow, making sure to keep the elbows slightly above you writs. You do not want the dumbbells coming high up above the elbows. Continue to bring your arms up until they're parrallel with the floor and then lower back down to the starting position with the dumbbells in front of your hips. If you have a bad back and it bothers you to lean forward you can also do this exercise seated by sliding to the edge of a bench, leaning forward and passing the dumbbells under your legs for each rep. Let's move on to the next exercise which is the bent over reverse cable fly. This one will Target the posterior head or the back of your shoulder which is also very important for building up that wider look. To perform the exercise stand sideways to the cable and bend your upper body until it's almost parallel with the floor. You can use either a handle attachment or you can grab the cable itself. In either case you'll want to keep your arm extended with a slight Bend in your elbow and aim to bring the cable directly to the side of your shoulder, even with your upper body and parrallel to the floor. When raising up you want to again make sure not to bring your hands higher than your elbows. Another excellent exercise is a variation to a dumbbell upright row which some people call bent arm lateral raises. Now regular upright rows with a barbell can help us build up the traps and the shoulders but they also carry the risk of shoulder impingement. Taking a wide grip and only coming up to the sternum decreases that risk of impingement but the risk is still there if you accidentally come up too high or have poor shoulder...

These 9 Amazing Exercises will help you build THICKER, ROUNDER, and FULLER 3D Shoulders. Included is a full shoulder workout plan designed to effectively target the mid and posterior deltoid heads to even out your shoulder muscle. By following these step by step instructions consistently you'll have capped shoulders in no time. 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Calculator: http://bit.ly/37fPE6s 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com To build up the shoulders in a way that gives them that thick 3D cap-like appearance you need to know that your shoulder has three distinct muscle heads. One in the front which is known as the anterior deltoid, one in the middle known as the mid or lateral deltoid, and one in the back which is called the rear or posterior deltoid. You also have your rotator cuff muscles that sit underneath those external shoulder muscles but the front middle and back shoulder heads are the ones that are most visible when looking at your shoulder in the mirror. And if you want to have full, muscular looking shoulders it's very important to develop all three heads. But the problem is that for most people their front head is overdeveloped because of its used way more than the mid and rear head during compound exercises like the bench press and shoulder press. Also, the mid head is typically still used and developed more than the rear head which gets the least attention and development of all. This is unfortunate because the mid and especially the rear head is extremely important to work if you want to get that 3d shoulder appearance. And it doesn't help that there's a common myth suggesting that all you need to do to develop fully rounded shoulders are overhead pressing exercises like seated and standing military presses with barbells and dumbbells, because according to research these exercises primarily Target the Front head of the shoulder, as well as some of the mid head but they mostly leave the rear deltoid completely out, further emphasizing the imbalance between front middle and back. (1) So today I want to go over some of the top exercises that you can do for overall bigger thicker 3D shoulders and to accomplish that I want to specifically focus on the rear and lateral heads. Starting first with one of the top compound exercises for the rear head according to research from the American council on exercise...the 45-degree incline row. (2) for this one, you'll want to start lying face down on a bench with the bench at an incline angle similar to the angle that you would set up for an incline press. Even though you can perform this exercise with a barbell a lot of benches will get in the way of the bar path and won't allow a full range of motion. So I suggest that you use dumbbells and for your starting position you'll want to hold those dumbbells straight down. A lot of people make the mistake of keeping their shoulders tense and holding the weight at a forward angle, instead, just let the dumbbells hang straight down. Then row both dumbbells back by concentrating on pulling your elbows straight up toward the ceiling. Then return the weight back down the starting hanging position and repeat for reps. To target more of the back of your shoulders I recommend rowing higher than usual by flaring your elbows out to your sides and by having your hands rotated inward in a pronated position instead of a neutral position like you would normally do for regular dumbbell rows. But just like regular rows when your rowing up It's very important that you think about pulling with your elbows and not your hands to Target more of the back of your shoulders instead of your biceps. Next up is another great exercise for the back of your shoulder high cable reverse flys. This is a little different from regular reverse flyes on the cable machine because you'll be pulling the cables down rather than straight back targeting a slightly different part of the back of your shoulder that most exercises don't Target. To set this one up you'll raise the pulleys all the way up on each side. Then remove any attachments on the cables and instead grab each cable by the ball above the Carabiner. You're going to Cross Your Arms over so with your right arm you're going to grab the left cable and with your left arm, you'll grab the right cable. Then take a few steps back to eliminate any slack and stand with your feet even with each other. Then from that top position with one arm over the other you going to extend the cables to your down to your sides, so diagonally until both arms are about at hip level. Then return back to the starting position with one arm crossed over the other above eye level.

These are the 9 Best Exercises for the back of your shoulder. If you want to learn how to build bigger rear delts this video will show you the best way. Grow the back of shoulders with posterior deltoid exercises and workout designed to get you 3D delts fast. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX Your shoulder muscle has 3 separate heads, front middle, and back and the back portion also known as the posterior deltoid it's usually disprortionatly underdeveloped compared to the front and middle heads. This is due to the fact that many staple exercises like the bench press, overhead press, and pressing movements in general, all target and build up the anterior head and the lateral head, but don't do much for the posterior head. And not only do most people already perform more pressing exercises than they do pulling exercises, but they also throw in isolation exercises like frontal raises and lateral raises that further add mass on the front and mid-portion, while hardly targeting the back of the shoulder at all. In combination all of this can also leave the shoulders in what looks like a rolled forward position potentially hurting your posture. So today I'm going to give you guys the 9 best exercises to target the posterior head so you can fix this problem and build fully developed proportional looking shoulders. And first I want to start with a compound exercise that's extremely effective for the back of the shoulders, but also very overlooked, the kneeling cable lat pulldown. Now lat pulldowns are obviously primarily performed to target the lats and other parts of the back, but with some simple modifications, your posterior deltoids will be on fire. So to begin you'll grab two cables, that are set high up on a cable cross, and you'll kneel down on the ground, with your knees bent, and your body straight. Then you're going to pull both cables down aiming to bring them about even with your shoulders. As you do this it's very important that you concentrate on really retracting your shoulders the whole time. This is the key to more posterior deltoid activation. You're also going to focus on pulling your elbows, not just straight down, but behind your back. And also think about pulling with your elbows rather than your hands. Then Once you bring the cables all the way down slowly extend your arms back up over your head to the starting position and repeat for reps. Another compound exercise that's one of the best out there to target the back of your shoulders is the incline dumbbell high row. Here you'll set up a bench at an incline angle, grab two dumbbells, and lay in a prone position flat down on the bench. From here you want to hold both dumbbells with your hands in a pronated position and with your arms hanging straight down off the sides of the bench. Then you're going to row the dumbbells back focusing on pulling with your elbows rather than your hands and instead of having your elbows close to your ribs like you would with regular dumbbell rows you're going to want to open your elbows up out to your sides, almost like you're doing a face pull with dumbbells. This row will be wider than a regular row, and the dumbbells will come up higher towards your chest rather than your belly button. Once your row them all the way up lower them back down Next is another cable exercise the bent-over reverse fly. Now when most people do reverse flyes with cables they do them standing, and only really do reverse flyes bent over when using dumbbells. But performing bent over flyes with cables instead of dumbbells can provide a new unique challenge for the posterior deltoid, especially since you can cross your arms all the way over and still maintain tension on the back of your shoulders giving you a slightly longer range of motion. So to begin you're going to lower the pulleys to the bottom of the cable cross and stand about a foot behind them. Then you're going to bend over until your upper body is almost parallel to the ground and you're going to cross your arms to grab the left cable with your right hand and the right cable with your left hand. From that position you want to lock your elbow in a slightly bent position, and in an arch-like sweeping motion, you want to open your arms and raise the cables up to your sides. Your elbows should lead the movement rather than your hands, so they should rise up first followed by your hands. From there simply lower back down until your hands are once again fully crossed over, and then repeat for reps. To help balance out this exercise for every set you'll want to alternate which hand ends up in front of the other when the cables are crossed over. Next is one of my favorite posterior shoulder exercises that I hope more people are doing now that I've mentioned it in a couple of my videos, the long angle dumbbell row. To perform this one you'll want to set up a flat bench and grab a much lighter

These are the 9 Best Exercises for bigger wider forearms and a stronger grip. Learn how to combine a few of these exercises to create the ultimate forearm strengthening workout. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Diet/Workout Calculator: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX Your forearm is made up over 20 different muscles. Starting On the outside of your forearm you have a group of extensor muscles that help extend your hands outward as well as side to side and they're also highly involved in moving your fingers in all different directions. As we circle around to the inside of the forearm, we find the muscles responsible for flexion of the wrist and fingers which primarily help you curl your hands and fingers inward. Going a little deeper we find our pronator and supinator muscles responsible for rotating and turning the hand in and out. Finally we have one of the larger muscles of the forearm the brachioradialis, and this muscle is more involved with flexing at the elbow and moving the entire forearm rather than just the hand. This complex group of muscles is what gives us the ability to move our hands and and fingers in all different directions, and our forearm muscles are involved in almost every single upper body exercise ranging from pullups to lateral raises, and their even invloved in certain lower body exercises like deadlifts, and lunges. So by building them up not only will it help you develop important functions like your grip strength, but your forearms will also grow in size which will help your arms look bigger and fuller even while wearing a long sleeve shirt with rolled up sleeves. So today I want to go over 9 of the best exercises you can do to target and develop your forearms. And I want to start first with one of my favorite isolation exercise for working the inside of your forearm the seated barbell wrist curl. To begin you would grab a barbell with a pretty close grip. You want your hands close enough together so that your elbows are both able to fit side by side on the bench. Many people like to perform this exercise on the side of a bench where you would do it on your knees and that's fine, it would actually give you more space to take a wider grip but I find it a lot more comfortable for both my knees and my arms to do it in line with the bench rather than accross the bench. So after grabbing a barbell with your palms facing away from you sit down on the bench and position your forearms towards the end of the bench so that your wrists are hanging off the edge. As you do that you also want to slide your hips back and get down nice and low so that your elbows are planted into the bench. From that position you almost want to imagine that you're doing bicep curls except instead of flexing at the elbows we're now flexing at the wrists. So extend your wrists to lower the weight down and then curl your wrist back inward to raise the weight back up. Additionally since your forearm muscles are responsible for flexing your fingers, when lowering down you can allow the barbell to roll all the way down to your fingertips before curling it all the way back up. Besides incorporating more forearm muscles, doing it this way will also give a you a better stretch at the bottom and provide you with a slightly greater range of motion. Now you can do the same exact exercise by using just one dumbbell to work one forearm at a time instead of both at same time like you would with the barbell. This can be especially useful for those of you that feel a lot of pressure in your wrists when doing it with a straight barbell. Since the dumbbells are not connected you'll have a slightly freer range of motion which will take some of that tension off the wrists. Another great way to isolate the inside of your forearm with a barbell is by performing the wrist curls standing straight up. I find it most effective to do these behind your back. So to set this up you would rack a barbell right a little lower than hip level. Then turn your back to the barbell and turn your hands over so that your knuckles are facing forward and palms are facing the barbell. From there unrack the barbell and take a step forward. Then just like before you're going to curl the barbell all the way up before lowering back down and repeating for reps. When doing it standing you'll get a little bit shorter of a range of motion since you won't be able to hyperextend your wrists as far on the extension. However, this is still a very effective exercise to Target the inner part of the forearm and a great alternative to mix into your routine is to perform the same exercise with a cable...

Discover the 9 Best Lower Chest Exercises that will help you build that Attractive Lower Pec outline. There is a full chest workout included and even some exercises you can do at home. Find out how to train your lower chest to help make it look broader and perfectly defined. 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Calculator: http://bit.ly/2sJQvxz 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com What we all refer to as the chest is mostly made up of the pectoralis major which is a large exterior muscle that covers up the front part of our top 6 ribs and connects from our sternum, our collar bone, our ribs, and our external obliques across over to our upper arm and it sits on top of the smaller pectoralis minor. The pectoralis major also has two heads dividing it into upper and lower portions. Now on top that the muscle fibers don't all run in the same exact Direction some of them run more at an upward angle which is commonly referred to as the upper chest, others run straight across, or the mid-chest and finally some run at a lower angle or the lower chest. And today I want to give you guys the 9 best exercises that you can perform to Target this lower portion of your chest to help create that attractive lower chest outline. And the first exercise that you'll hear most people recommend for your lower chest is the decline bench press. But even though this is a great exercise to mix into your workouts to focus specifically on those lower fibers when compared to the flat bench press... on the decline press you will most likely have a shorter range of motion, you'll take tension away from the upper portion of your chest and you'll shift some of that tension over to your triceps and your lats. On top of that since you now know that the middle and lower part of your chest is actually part of the same muscle head it may come as no surprise that one of the best exercises to target the lower chest is the flat bench press. The flat bench press is such a great exercise that some studies show that it is all you need to build a bigger chest and simply working on increasing the weight that you lift on the bench press over time is enough to build up your entire chest including that lower portion. To set up the flat bench press you'll lay down on a bench with your eyes directly under the bar. Before beginning, you'll want to retract your shoulder blades and pack them nice and tight together. You can grab the barbell at a closer or wider grip but a good place to start is about thumbs distance from where the knurling starts. From there you'll lift the barbell, bring it over your chest and lower down aiming for your nipple line while keeping your elbows somewhere between a 45 and 75-degree angle from your body making sure not to flare the elbows too far out. Also, make sure your feet are planted into the ground and that your driving through your legs as you press since this will allow you to lift more weight. Another thing you'll want to do is maintain an arch in your back just make sure that your hips don't rise up off the bench as this can lead to a lower back injury. After lowering the barbell press back up and repeat for reps. (1) I recommend saving the decline bench press as a secondary exercise if you want to Incorporate it later in your workout after performing the regular flat bench press. With this one you would follow very similar cues, except obviously your feet would be off the floor and you would now also be aiming a little lower under your nipple line when bringing the barbell down. For the next lower chest exercise we have an isolation movement... the pec deck fly. Now normally I prefer using dumbbells and barbells over machines but by using the pec deck fly you're able to really isolate your chest in a unique way. Unlike regular flyes, with dumbbells, your biceps and forearms won't be involved as much in the movement since your arms will be bent and you'll be able to apply pressure directly through your elbows. This may be why a study sponsored by the American Council on Exercise showed that chest activation on the pec deck fly machine was very close to the flat bench press itself. (2) To perform the exercise you'll first want to adjust the seat to the right height so that your upper arms are about parallel with the floor when you grab the handles. Then sit straight up with your shoulder blades pulled back together and arch your back to help Target more of those lower chest muscle fibers. Then you're simply going to bring both arms inward toward the center of your body and then bring them back out until you feel a nice stretch in your chest. From there you would just repeat for reps...

Here are 8 common post-workout mista0kes that you should definitely avoid if you want to build more muscle and burn off that stubborn fat. Find out what you should be eating and doing after a workout to boost recovery. Avoid making these common weight loss and muscle building mistakes and you'll get to your goals faster. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX After a workout, your muscles are left broken down due to microscopic tears, and your glycogen stores are depleted leaving you feeling a little more tired and much hungrier than you felt before you started your workout. Now, this is all perfectly normal as long as you do the right things after your workout to recover and take your body one step closer to your goal of burning fat or building muscle. However, there are some very common mistakes that so many people are making at the end of their workouts, and these mistakes can literally kill your progress and actually make you move further away from your goal even if you're working out hard and consistently. And the first mistake that I want to start with is believing that you can't eat any sources of fat like eggs, avocado, or steak after your workout. Now this belief has been around for a long time, and I used to believe it too. It's based on the idea that fats can slow the digestion of your meal making it take longer for the nutrients to get into your muscle cells and for your body to switch from breaking down muscle to repairing and building muscle. On top of that, while carbohydrates and protein play a big part in the recovery and muscle growth process, fats don't really help spike your insulin levels the way that carbs do, they can't be used to repair your muscles the way that protein can, and in general, they don't really have any direct anabolic properties. But with all that said there's really no evidence that it's necessarily bad to have fats after your workout. Even though it might slow down the absorption of your post-workout meal, it shouldn't really hurt you or reduce the benefits that you experience. This is because even though you don't want to wait too long you don't necessarily need to get all those nutrients into your muscles as fast as possible after your workout. So if your meal takes a little longer to absorb because you added fat to it, it's really not going to make that big of a difference especially if you already had breakfast or you simply ate before your workout. Even though the research that we have is limited and is based only on cyclists rather than weight lifters, that research does still support the idea that even if you consume a very high-fat meal after working out where 45 percent of the calories are coming from fat, the recovery process should not be negatively affected. (1) So the bottom line is that it's okay to have sources of fat like whole milk instead of skim milk with your protein shake after a workout. (2) The one exception to this is if you haven't eaten anything in over 4 hours, then you may want to limit your fat intake after your workout to help get nutrients to your muscles faster. The next mistake is going overboard with rewarding yourself for your workout with food. I've seen people with my own eyes, hit the gym and then right afterward stop at a 7-11 and pick up some candy like gummy bears for example. Now even though one of the best times to have sugar does happen to be immediately after your workout since it'll help spike your insulin levels, there's a big difference between having a banana versus sour patch kids. First of all, working out, in general, is going to make you feel hungrier when you're done, and to put it simply if you're trying to satisfy that hunger with food that you find at your closest convenience store you're probably going to wind up overeating especially if that food is candy. And that's okay if you're doing a dirty bulk, but if you're trying to stay lean while building muscle, or you're if you're trying to burn fat, the food you eat will play a bigger impact than the workout you perform. For example, if you have 2 slices of pizza, you'll have to run for about 45 minutes to burn those calories off. So it's very important that you don't lose your will power and give in to the increased hunger that you'll feel after a workout by going for just any random food that comes your way. If you find that you have a problem with managing hunger after your workout makes sure that you have an already prepped post-workout meal waiting for you in the fridge, or even a quick... References: 1. 45% fat intake for cyclists after their workout didn't seem to have any negative effects on muscle glycogen recovery. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14978... people have a protein shake with whole milk. 2. "Whole milk may have increased utilization of available amino acids for protein synthesis. (when compared to skim milk)"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16679...

Find out how cardio actually affects fat loss, muscle growth, and your health in this Science-Based Presentation About Cardio Mistakes and Myths. Many people try to use cardio to burn belly fat and do as many cardio fat-burning workouts as possible. However, is this actually a good strategy? How does cardio vs strength training stack up? Learn what you never knew about cardio. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX Performing cardio can be very beneficial for your heart, your lungs, and your overall health. But overdoing cardio has been proven to lead to a shorter lifespan. This is just one of many counterintuitive things that many people simply don't know about cardio. So today I want to go over the 8 things that nobody tells you about cardiovascular exercise. Starting first with the simple fact that you don't burn as many calories from cardio as you think. Most people believe that you burn a lot more calories from cardio than resistance training. But according to the research, there actually isn’t that much of a difference. For example, we can look at a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. (9) In this study, researchers compared the energy expenditure of 30 minutes of weight training, to 30 minutes of a HIIT/circuit style training workout, to 30 minutes of a steady-state cardio workout performed at 70% of the participant's maximum heart rate. As you can see in the graph in front of you, there was no significant difference in energy expenditure between weight training and steady-state cardio. (10) In other words, if you want to lose fat.... from a purely caloric perspective, you would be just as well off performing a resistance training workout with a decent amount of training volume. In fact, resistance training is even better from a pure calorie-cutting perspective because another thing that no one tells you is that cardio Can Cause “Constrained Energy Expenditure. This is one reason why cardio isn’t that effective for weight loss and fat loss in general. Constrained energy expenditure basically points to the phenomenon that doing cardio tends to lower calorie expenditure in the hours after you're done with cardio. When most people do (aerobic) exercise, their non-exercise physical activity, also known as NEAT, tends to go down. This refers to the calories you burn through everyday activities, mostly movement that's not related to exercise. A couple examples include fidgeting, bouncing your foot up and down, and even the way you sit in your chair. The point is after burning calories through cardio, people tend to become less active throughout the rest of the day. For example, they may keep their hands and feet still instead of bouncing their feet around and fidgeting. Or, they may slouch in their chair instead of sitting in an active and straightened position. They may also be more likely to drive instead of walking. If you've ever done a heavy cardio session, you've probably noticed this yourself. A simple task like going to the kitchen to grab a glass of water requires more mental and physical effort than normal. In general, your body will make many unconscious adaptations where it'll cut back on every form of non-essential energy expenditure if you try to burn more and more calories from cardio reducing the number of calories you burn for the rest of the day which brings us right to the next point... Cardio is Not That Beneficial for Fat Loss. Now don't get me wrong. Cardio can be beneficial for many reasons, including improving heart health, endurance, and your health and well-being in general. However, if your sole goal is to lose weight, cardio is not the most effective option. This was well shown by a meta-analysis in which 14 studies were reviewed that involved over 1,800 overweight and obese people. (11) The researchers looked at whether cardio would benefit weight loss, and when the data was in they concluded that "Isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy." (12) So you're probably thinking well duh...isolated cardio won't work because doing cardio alone without dieting obviously won't help you lose weight. But what if I told you that you could just diet without the cardio and still lose the same amount of weight without all that extra effort. If you don't believe me I'll link up another meta-analysis, which by the way a meta-analysis is considered the gold standard of evidence. But this other meta-analysis also found that adding cardio to a diet plan did not increase weight loss compared to just dieting without cardio. The difference was 11 kilos of weight loss versus 10.7 kilos of weight loss. (13) So if you're doing cardio to improve your cardiovascular health or your endurance capacity you're on the right track, but if you're doing cardio to lose an extra 0.3 kilos which is the same as a little more than half a pound I think you're wasting your time...

These 8 foods lower testosterone levels, so make sure that you limit the amount you eat on a daily basis. Learn how to boost your testosterone levels instead of lowering them, increasing estrogen, which ultimately prevents optimal conditions for muscle growth and fat loss. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Diet/Workout Calculator: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone that's absolutely crucial for things like building muscle mass, strengthening our bones, improving our memory and mood, and of course increasing our sex drive and libido. And while certain foods like oysters pomegranates and Ginger can all help boost testosterone there are also certain foods that will hurt your body's ability to effectively produce testosterone and consistently eating these Foods overtime can even lower your testosterone levels. And low testosterone can lead to a chain of negative side effects including a loss of muscle mass insomnia increased body fat, depression, and low sex drive. So today I want to go over 7 foods that can hurt your testosterone levels based on scientific evidence. Starting first with flax seeds. Now I know that flaxseed products have gained a lot of popularity over the last few years and some have even called them a superfood. However even though flax seeds are very high in fiber and ala omega-3 fatty acids, flax seeds aren't that great for optimizing male hormonal health mostly because they're loaded with lignans. In fact, they're the world's richest source of lignans. Flax seeds contain about 75 to eight hundred times more lignans than most grains legumes fruits and vegetables. (1) now, this can be a problem for two reasons. First is that lignans are highly estrogenic. In other words, they increase levels of the female sex hormone estrogen. (2) Second is that lignans increase levels of sex hormone-binding globulin or shbg (3). Now, this may sound like a good thing but this hormone binds to free testosterone molecules rendering them inactive. So the testosterone won't be able to be used for other beneficial hormonal functions. We can see the direct adverse effects of flax seeds in a number of studies. For example, just 2 tablespoons of flax seeds were given to 40 male participants for only a month and their testosterone levels drop by around 10 percent. (5) In another very small but also very interesting study a woman who had high testosterone levels was also experiencing excessive facial hair growth. So to combat that researchers told her to eat 30 grams of flaxseeds per day for 4 months. after doing that her serum testosterone levels dropped by 70% and her free testosterone dropped by 89 percent. (4) In another study, two tablespoons of flaxseed per day dropped total testosterone in men by around 15% and free testosterone by 20 percent (6) however it's important for me to mention that the participants were also told not to get more than 20% of the daily energy intake from fat and a low-fat diet could've contributed to a reduction in testosterone levels as well. In either case, if you want to maximize your testosterone levels you're better off going with other sources of omega-3 fatty acids like salmon fresh sardines and walnuts. Let's move on to cooking oils that are high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. These include things like soybean oil vegetable oil corn oil sunflower oil and margarine just to name a few. Most cooking oils used today are processed so many times they go through either bleaching, degumming, or deodorizing. Couple this with the fact that these oils aren't that great for high-temperature cooking and you'll see why they're not the best choice for your health. But even if you don't use them for cooking their high content of specifically omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids hurt the production of testosterone. This is because most people nowadays already get way too much omega-6s and way too little omega-3s. Not only does this create inflammation throughout the body and increase your risk of various chronic diseases but a high omega 6 polyunsaturated fat intake may lower testosterone. (11) in a study where researchers look at how different nutrients influence hormonal health, they found that the more dietary fat the participants ate the higher their testosterone was. (12) this was found to be true for they're saturated fat intake (13) as well as they're monounsaturated fat intake. (14) However, the results were the exact opposite for polyunsaturated fats. The more polyunsaturated fat that the participants ate in relation to their saturated fat intake the lower their testosterone levels dropped. (15) so if....

If you're a Man that has some Lower Back Fat & you're looking for exactly what to do to get rid of those Love Handles, you'll find everything you're looking for in this video. I'll give you 8 steps to lose that muffin-top-looking lower back fat for good. Most people try to get rid of them with exercises and workouts made to try to target them. However, there is no way this will help you reduce side fat, lose belly fat, and get rid of those stubborn love handles. The same way that you experience overall weight loss, you'll experience overall fat loss. You can't target fat burn. Watch the video to learn what you can do. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Fat Loss Calculator: http://bit.ly/gt-calculator9 Timestamps: #1 Reduce Refined Carbs & Sugar: 0:52 #2 Add Whole Sources of Protein: 2:22 #3 Increase Healthy, Decrease Unhealthy Fat: 3:03 #4 Incorporate Unrefined Sources of High Fiber Carbs: 4:02 #5 Limit Alcohol Consumption: 5:09 #6 Full Body Weight Training 5:56 #7 PHA 7:07 #8 High Intensity Interval Training 8:44 Not everyone will store fat in the same places, but if you're a man I'm going to guess that your main stubborn problem areas are around your lower belly, your chest, and your love handles. And I know this because even though I've dieted to very low levels of body fat, whenever I've fallen off the wagon, the love handles were the first spot that I would see body fat starting to accumulate. And this is definitely not just a problem for me, many men find that their love handles are not only one of the first spots to gain fat, but they're also one of the toughest areas to reduce fat from, especially since there is no way to spot reduce that area with certain exercises. A lot of people will tell you that you can just crunch or hyper extend that lower back fat away, but there's definitely no chance that that's going to work on its own. Today i want to go over 8 things you can do within the realm of diet, weight training, and cardio that will work. First I want to start with diet, and your first step with diet should be to reduce refined carbohydrates and sugar. But we don't want to just impose a ton of restrictions. Since the lower belly and love handles tend to be the last spots to go we want to be on a diet that we can actually stick to. Because before your body starts burning those love handles it's going to burn the fat from your face, your hands, your arms, and your legs first. So you don't only want to do what most people do and simply focus on reducing your calories, cutting carbs really low, restricting yourself, and battling cravings all day and night long because that's a losing battle. Instead you want to optimize hormones like insulin, glucagon, testosterone, ghrelin, leptin, and growth hormone because all of them play an extremely important role in the fat loss process especially when we get down to the stubborn problem areas, that don't seem to want to budge. Controlling Insulin with your diet should be your first priority because insulin is like an on and off switch that controls whether you will be burning fat or storing fat. According to research having high insulin levels can also cause your body to preferentially store fat around your belly and love handles. Every time you eat... Research: Preferential partitioning of fat is regulated by insulin sensitivity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... High refined carbohydrate diet increases risk of insulin resistance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2... High Protein diet helps control appetite, speeds up metabolism, and helps increase fat loss https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... Dietary Fats Increase Fullness and Slow Down Gastric Emptying: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NB... High fiber carbohydrates decrease ghrelin and increase fullness https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... High fiber diet lowers insulin levels https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2... Alcohol Consumption linked to abdominal obesity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2... Alcohol Increases Overeating in Mice: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... Resistance training will improve muscle insulin action and β-cell function, increase strength and Lean body mass, and decreases total and trunk fat mass https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... Study Comparing High Volume vs High Intensity Training Finds The Latter to Produce more muscle gains - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Find out exactly why you're shoulders aren't growing and break your plateau with these 8 tips. You'll get wider, bigger, and stronger shoulders that have a 3D caped-like shoulder appearance. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX 3-dimensional capped-like shoulders create a v-shape upper body making you appear leaner, more attractive, and more athletic. If you're training your shoulders and they just don't seem to want to grow you're probably making one of three very common mistakes. First, you're saving your shoulder exercises Too Late into your Workout. If your goal is to bulk up your shoulders start your arm workouts with shoulder exercises so that you're fresh and can perform at your peak. Combining Shoulders, biceps, and triceps, into one workout can help you accomplish that better than a split where you would combine chest shoulders, and triceps. The second mistake is you're focusing too much on the front delts and not enough on the side and rear delts. Most compound upper body exercises like Overhead presses and chest presses will target the front head of your shoulders. So on your shoulder days, you want to focus primarily on the side and rear delts rather than the front delt. Finally, the last mistake is letting your traps take over your shoulders. To prevent this, stretch your traps before training your shoulders and focus on pushing the dumbbells as far away from your body during lateral raises rather than just lifting the dumbbells straight up. 3-dimensional capped-like shoulders help form a v-shaped appearance for your upper body making you appear leaner, more attractive, and more athletic. It also helps your arms look significantly more muscular when you have pronounced shoulders that appear to separate from the rest of the muscles in your arm. Unfortunately, many guys make the same common mistakes that prevent them from adding much mass to their shoulders at all, so today I want to go over 8 of the most common mistakes that are holding you back in terms of bulking up those shoulders. And the first one that I see all the time, is that most people don’t train through a full range of motion, especially when doing exercises like overhead presses. If you're someone that actually does go all the way down next time you go to the gym take a look at how most people perform their barbell, dumbbell, and machine overhead presses. You’ll see that most people don’t lower the weight further than the point where their upper arms are parallel to the floor before pressing the weight back up. What you want to do instead is lower the weight all the way down until your hands at least at ear level and you can go even lower until the dumbbells are about the same height as your shoulders. This is beneficial because it’s specifically the lower part of the exercise that stimulates the delts the most. The upper part, on the other hand, is largely a function of the triceps. If we divide the motion of an overhead press into a lower, middle, and the upper portion (**) we can see that the triceps are heavily involved in locking out the weight during that upper portion, Not so much your shoulders. Your shoulders fire fully in the lower and middle portions of the exercise. On top of the fact that your shoulders are more active in the lower and middle section, research also indicates that in general training through a greater range of motion is better for muscle growth. For example, studies show that full squats cause more glute and adductor growth than partial squats and a full range of motion curls produce more bicep growth when compared to partial curls. (1) Another common mistake is that you’re Focusing Too Much on the Front Delts But Not Enough on the Side and Rear Delts. This is usually done unintentionally and this issue can even affect advanced bodybuilders. Performing a disproportionate amount of volume for your front delts is common for two reasons. First, one of the staple shoulder exercises in everyone's routine is the overhead press. Unfortunately, the overhead press as great of an exercise as it is focuses primarily on the front delts. Meanwhile, the side and especially the rear delts get much less activation. The second, and also the bigger issue is the fact that you already train your front delts quite a bit during all your horizontal pressing exercises like the dumbbell and barbell bench press. So when you train your chest you inadvertently also train the front part of your shoulders a lot. Even your rear delts will get recruited to a decent extent as you perform different pulling exercises, like pull-ups, rows, and especially Bent over high rows. But that’s not the case for the side delts, which are especially important for giving your shoulders that wide look. With the exception of upright rows which can actually lead to shoulder impingement, your side delts are not activated to a very significant extent from most..

Find out exactly why your muscles are not growing. If you're not building muscle make sure that you're not making these common muscle building mistakes. If you want to ensure that your making preventing muscle loss & instead you'd like to gain muscle mass watch this video. You'll still grow muscle faster even if you're currently a skinny guy. As long as you eat the right foods to by following a solid bulking diet plan and your avoiding mistakes in the gym you will be in a great position for muscle growth. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Diet/Workout Calculator: https://bit.ly/2NWbWCm *Studies in comments Muscle...It's definitely not easy to build especially after you're no longer a beginner so you might be working out hard and you're eating right, but no matter how hard you try your muscles are still not growing. This is a common problem faced by many guys that workout a lot, but hardly experience any results even if their workouts are already challenging. And really it comes down to 8 key reasons why you're trying so hard but not seeing much growth. Starting first with a very common training mistake and that's Not Training Each Muscle Often Enough. A survey of 127 competitive male bodybuilders found that more than two-thirds of them trained each muscle group only once per week. This is what's known as a bro split where you work pretty much one muscle per day and it allows you to really focus on that muscle and break it down for an incredible pump. But is that optimal? Well, the answer is no, as shown by multiple studies. Specifically in one of these study's researchers observed the difference in the rate of muscle growth between training a muscle once or three times per week with a similar total training volume between both groups. And the results showed that those who trained each muscle three times per week gained much more muscle than those who trained each muscle less often. In another study, participants either performed all their weekly exercise volume in one giant full-body workout or they spread out the same training volume so they did the same amount of sets and reps, but they divided that volume into three smaller full-body sessions. And Once again, those who trained more often gained significantly more muscle. The once-a-week subjects increased their lean body mass by 1%. While those that trained each muscle three times per week gained 8 percent. And like I said many other studies also show similar results. (24) One reason why it's better to train each muscle more often than once a week is that if you do a ton of sets and reps all within one day you'll inevitably have lower quality sets. After you've done a few heavy sets for a specific muscle, the amount of force you'll be able to produce during later sets will decrease significantly. On the other hand, if you spread that volume out over the week, you'll be able to perform better for each set because you'll be less fatigued. Another reason why it's better to train your muscles at least 2 times a week is that protein synthesis generally only stays elevated levels for up to about 72 hours after a workout. So, if you're training each muscle only once every seven days, you'll only trigger growth for up to 72 hours that week and during the other 96 hours of the week, you would miss out on gains. Now another not so commonly known reason why you're not building muscle is that You’re Not Consuming Enough Cholesterol. That's right Not consuming enough cholesterol can definitely slow your gains. A 12-week long strength training study found a linear dose-response relationship between dietary cholesterol intake and lean body mass gains or in other words muscle growth). This means that the more cholesterol they consumed, the more muscle they gained. In another study, researchers compared a high cholesterol diet of 800 milligrams per day to a low cholesterol diet of fewer than 200 milligrams per day And the high cholesterol group had almost a three times higher muscle protein synthesis rate for 22 hours after intense resistance training than the low cholesterol group. This showed that the higher cholesterol diet was beneficial for muscle growth. The researchers concluded that cholesterol may aid muscle growth by helping your body cope with inflammatory responses, and enhancing cellular communication. Now, this is all of course within good reason, there are good sources of cholesterol and there are also bad sources of cholesterol so make sure that you stick to eating enough healthy sources of fat to optimize muscle growth. Moving on we have the next very common mistake that will prevent you from building muscle and that's not focusing on getting stronger...

Learn 8 New bicep exercises that you've never done before. Some of these bicep building exercises have been around for a while but they've nearly been forgotten. If you want to get bigger arms fast this bicep workout can help you get the size, shape, width, and strength that you're looking for. You can even do some of the peak developing exercises at home especially if you have a pair of dumbbells. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: https://bit.ly/2XGNydg If you're trying to grow your biceps your probably already doing plenty of the traditional bicep exercises like Barbell curls, preacher curls, and concentration curls. Even though these are some of the best bicep exercises that you can do, if you're not switching it up and incorporating some of the other less common exercises you'll be missing out on the opportunity to stimulate your biceps in a new way that they're not used to yet and by doing that you'll be leaving a lot on the table in terms of growth. Instead By hitting your biceps from different angles with unique challenging exercises that can help you optimally develop both biceps heads so that your arms look fuller and thicker in no time. And of course, changing up your bicep workouts always makes things more interesting for you as well, so let's start with the first amazing exercise which is the barbell drag curl. Now right away the drag curl has some unique advantages over regular curling exercises. You see with regular barbell bicep curls you wind-up incorporating the front part of your shoulder into the movement. This happens even if you have good form and it's especially true if you have bad form. With the drag curl, on the other hand, you take the front deltoids out and shift the tension almost entirely onto the biceps and specifically you'll be targeting the long head of the biceps more helping you develop that peak. So to perform drag curls you're going to start by standing straight up with your arms down and your elbows extended while holding a barbell in your hands with a grip that's about shoulder width apart or a little wider. Then you're going to curl the barbell up towards your upper chest but instead of curling a straight up like you would with a regular barbell bicep curl you're going to pull your elbows back and drag the bar as close as you can to your body the whole time. As you do this make sure that your elbows are tight to your sides rather than flaring out and when you get to the top slowly lower back down while still keeping the bar as close to you as possible. Then repeat for reps. Keep in mind that this exercise is a lot more challenging than a regular curl so you will definitely have to use a lot less weight then what you normally would use for regular barbell curls. And also if your wrists bother you when performing this exercise, you can also use an EZ bar instead and It'll allow you to take a much more comfortable grip. Moving on to the next one we have the cable preacher curl. Now its no secret that the regular preacher curl is one of the best exercises that you can do for your biceps. It locks your elbows in place and prevents you from cheating and using momentum. But by performing preacher curls on a cable crossover, you'll get all the benefits of the regular preacher curl with the addition of constant tension on your biceps throughout the whole range of motion. You see with the traditonal preacher curl the tension decreases as you get closer to the top of each rep, on the other hand with the cables you'll keep constant tension the whole time even if you try to rest at the very top. So to begin you'll want to lower the pulley to the bottom of a cable cross and attach an ezbar or a straight bar to it. then take a wide grip, Stand straight up, and take a few steps back. Next you'll squat down and place the lower part of your triceps over your knees. So your elbows should be a little past your knees and your arms should be extended. Before beginning make sure you lean slightly backwards to prevent the weight from pulling you off balance as you perform your reps. then just like you would with regular preacher curls you'll curl the weight up towards your collar bones and then slowly lower back down before repeating for reps. As opposed to the drag curls that target the long head, these preacher curls target the short head of the bicep on the outside of your arm. Another excellent bicep exercise that you're probably not doing is the dumbbell waiter curl. This is by far one of the best unorthodox exercises develop the long head of the biceps and build taller bicep Peaks. To begin you'll grab just one dumbbell with both hands around the plate on one end. Your hands should be in a supinated position....

These are 8 gym machines you should stop using. Some common machines at the gym can be really bad for your joints and lower back. Avoid these common gym mistakes so that you don't get an injury while exercising. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX Certain gym machines can put you in position that can do more harm than good especially if they're done incorrectly and unfortunately many of these exercises are very common. Most people assume that any machine that's put into a gym is safe and effective to use. But that's not the case. Having many different machines in a gym may be helpful for selling gym memberships, but basic dumbbells and barbells are typically more effective than the majority of the complex machines that you see at the gym. so today I WANT zoom in and focus on 8 machines that you're better off replacing or at least changing how you use them. Starting first with the very popular smith machine. Now the smith machine can actually be effective if you perform certain exercises that can only be done on the smith machine. However most people use the smith machine as an alternative to exercises like squats , deadlifts, and bench press which were all intended to be done with a regular barbell. Many people performing these exercises on the smith machine are under the impression that it'll decrease their risk of injury, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The issue is that the smith machine is locked into a set range of motion and has a set barbell path. This means that when you're bench pressing for example, the barbell is forced to go up and down in a fixed straight line. This is bad for your shoulders and it increase the chances that you flare your elbows as you lower the bar down. In a regular bench press your path would almost be an arch like motion from lock out down to the chest. Looking at squats we see a similar issue. Since the bar is locked into a set range of motion squatting on a smith machine isn't biomechanically natural. This is why most people end up squating, by leaning back against the bar. Not only does this take away huge benefits for your core, glutes, and hamstrings, but if you were to lean back like that using a regular barbell you would fall straight back. On top of the bad positions that your joints are going to be in, you're not going to be working your stabilizor muscles since the bar is locked and already stabilized for you. In fact stabilizor muscle activation is about 43 percent lower on a Smith machine compared to regular barbell squats. This can create lazy lifting technique and will only provide a small fraction of the results that you can get from doing these exercises with barbells and dumbbells especially in regard to functional strength. Another machine that you want to stay away from is the hip abduction and the adduction machine. These machines are typically used to train the glutes and inner thighs, but there are far better alternatives that are far more effective like squats and lunges. Both of these machines require heavy loads to be challenging. One immediate issue is that naturally your body would never lift heavy loads this way in real life. The only time these muscles would be engaged at a higher level would be when you're doing single leg activities like walking lunges, and they would mostly just be used for stabilization. Instead as you get stronger at the hip abduction machine you're going to target a muscle know as the tfl or the tensor fasciae latae. This muscle can easily get over worked and tight which will pull on another muscle known as the it band and that quite often leads to knee pain. The heavy weight loads used on both the adductor and the abductor machines can also easily lead to a lower back injury. I've personally seen this time and time again and advising clients to stop using these machines, usually helped improve their lower back pain. The last thing that I'll say is that these machines do not and will not help you reduce fat from your inner and outer thighs. For most of you this may be common sense, but many people using these machines are under the impression that they will slim their thighs by simply opening and closing their legs with resistance. Next is one that many of you won't like t leg press machine. Keep in mind if it works for you, you can continue using it, but this machine, as popular as it is, is responsible for a good amount of lower back injuries. And sure it's easy to blame the person doing the exercise, but there are certain components of this exercise that make a back injury more likely, which is why I suggest you replace the leg press with something like squats, lunges, bulgarians, step ups, and the list can go on and on. When doing leg presses your back is pinned against a pad in a way where it becomes very difficult to maintain the natural lumbar curve as your knees bend and the weight comes down. As you go further..

These are 8 common gym exercise mistakes that most people do wrong. Whether you're a beginner or if your advanced you need to make sure that you're doing your workouts correctly. Here I review the most common tricep, chest, and bicep workout mistakes that you need to avoid. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 Fat Loss Calculator: http://bit.ly/gt-calculator20 Timestamps: #1 Lunges 0:56 #2 Parallel Bar Dips 2:19 #3 DB & BB Chest Presses 3:37 #4 Cable Flyes 5:02 #5 Bent Over BB Row 6:02 #6 Cable Tricep Extensions 8:16 #7 Lat Pull Down 9:02 #8 Skull Crushers 10:11 We've all seen that guy in the gym bench pressing a ton of weight with hardly any range of motion. Or the spotter that rips the weight off on every rep even when his help is completely not needed. Or the guy doing bicep curls looking like hes trying to do the limbo. Even though you mightve laughed at these guys and their terrible form, you may very well be making some serious mistakes yourself. Even if your mistakes arent as extreme a relatively minor deviation in your form can switch the focus of an exercise away from the muscles that you're trying to target making that exercise far less effective. Over the years of spending countless hours in the gym both as a full time trainer and while working out myself, Ive narrowed down this list to just 8 of the most common gym exercises that i see people getting wrong. And today I want to give you guys some minor tweaks to make all of these exercises far more effective so you can better target the muscles that your trying to work, allowing you to build more muscle and see faster results. So let's start with the lower body for our first exercise which is lunges. The biggest mistake that I see people of all different skill levels make with lunges is lunging with an almost overlapping stride position. What I mean is that people will lunge in a straight line putting one foot directly in line with the other like they're trying to do some complicated sobriety test. This is wrong you want to plant your feet a little less than hip width apart for every lunge. While lunges can help you develop better balance, the exercise itself should not be a balancing act so there's no need to practically cross your feet over with each lunge. Another mistake is taking steps too close together. When you take a small step and lunge with your feet too close together you're going to be making more of a triangle between your legs at the bottom of your lunge. Usually your knee will also wind up going past your toe or simply just going too far forward which will put excess stress on that knee. On the other hand when you do it right you're going to be making more of what looks like a rectangle shape in between your legs and your front knee wont be going past your toes. The last thing about lunges is that you shouldn't let your knee smash into the floor on every rep. You can definitely come down to the floor and lightly touch the floor with your knee as long as you do it in a controlled way. Dropping to your knee on the other hand not only can It harm your knee but it'll also take the tension off your legs at the bottom of every rep. Now moving on to an upper body exercise, we have dips on the parallel bars. First of all you shouldn't do dips on a bench. Since your hands are locked behind your back the exercise puts your shoulders in a very unnatural position that can cause impingement. Luckily with parallel bars we could do dips without the hands being behind the back, but even with regular dips on parallel bars there are still a lot of mistakes to address. First of all you shouldn't be doing partial reps like I see many people doing at the gym. If you can't do reps where you go all the way down until your upper arm is almost parallel with the ground then work on improving your tricep strength with other exercises. if you have an assisted pull-up machine or resistance bands you can use those to help you work through a full range of motion on dips as well. Not going low enough is a problem but going too low is also a problem, you shouldn't go lower than parallel with the floor. Otherwise you'll once again be placing a lot of stress on the shoulders. The other thing that people will do is flare their elbows out way too far. While you can flare your elbows out a little bit and lean forward to concentrate more on your chest you don't want to flare them out too far. And the last thing that a lot of people do wrong is they try to do dips perfectly vertical. Even if you're trying to concentrate on your triceps you'll be a lot better off leaning at least slightly forward with your chest in front of your hips on this exercise. Next up are dumbbell and barbell chest presses. The most common mistakes with these...

These are the 8 best foods that men should eat to improve testosterone levels, sex drive, energy, and health. Some of these foods will also help you build muscle and get stronger. Find out the best diet and meal plan that men should follow to look and feel their best. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX References 1. “Researchers found that throughout life, men were about twice as likely as women to have a heart attack. That higher risk persisted even after they accounted for traditional risk factors for heart disease, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, body mass index, and physical activity.” https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-... are-twice-as-common-in-men-than-women 2. “ED, especially in younger men, is a marker of an increased risk of CVD,” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... 3. Drinking 50 milliliters of pomegranate juice per day for one to three years reduced arterial plaque by 30% https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.clnu.200... 4. Pomegranate also greatly increases levels of endothelial NOS (eNOS) https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascre... 5. Garlic reduces blood pressure and improves cholesterol profiles https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24035... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23590... 6. When garlic was combined with vitamin c ● systolic blood pressure dropped, on average, from 142 mm to 115 mm. ● diastolic Blood pressure decreased, on average, from 92 mm to 77 mm. ● nitric oxide levels increased by 200% https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... arlic_supplements_and_antioxidant_vitamins_in_lowering_marginally_high _blood_pressure_in_humans_pilot_study 7. Women actually prefer the body odor of men who eat garlic.: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... _You_Are_What_You_Eat 8. Most people know that Omega 3 is important for your health: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/9/93... 9. All participants believed that O3-FAs are important for health." https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/9/93... 10. Highlight “None of the study participants from the U.S. and only four individuals and Germany had an O3-I in the recommended optimal range.” https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/9/93... 11. Not getting enough of those omega 3 fats can increase body fat percentage while lowering muscle mass. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... 12. High-quality studies show that there is no link between cholesterol intake and heart disease.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2... 13. A 2013 meta-analysis found no association between egg intake and heart disease risk, although the scientists did link eggs to a reduced stroke prevalence. https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e... 14. There was a dose-response relationship between cholesterol intake and lean body mass.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... 15. Higher cholesterol intake helps with muscle mass See figure 1A: 10.1093/gerona/62.10.1164 16. More studies showing the same as 15: https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.109... https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article... https://journals.lww.com/acsm- msse/Fulltext/2007/05001/Effect_of_Dietary_Cholesterol_on_Muscle.1949 17. Sleep study by sleepfoundation.org. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/press... exploring-connections-communications-technology-use-and 18. The poll found that 43% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 say they rarely or never get a good night’s sleep on weeknights. More than half (60%) say that they experience a sleep problem every night or almost every night (i.e., snoring, waking in the night, waking up too early, or feeling un-refreshed when they get up in the morning.) https://www.sleepfoundation.org/press... exploring-connections-communications-technology-use-and 19. Kiwis can help with sleep: http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/APJCN... 20. Kiwifruit consumption may improve sleep onset, duration, and efficiency in adults with self-reported sleep disturbances http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/APJCN... 21. Testosterone levels are dropping in men: https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article... 22. “In conclusion, the mainstream of research that links ginger to testosterone demonstrated that ginger supplementation, particularly in oxidative stress conditions, enhances testosterone production in males.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... All other studies linked in the article on the website.

Stubborn fat is tough to get rid of, but these tips will help you lose that lower belly fat and love handles that just don't seem to budge. If you are stuck and can't lose any more belly fat regardless of how much you workout and diet watch this video it will help. 🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com 📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX There are physiological differences between regular body fat and stubborn fat. Stubborn fat tends to accumulate around the belly and love handles for men, as well as the hips and thighs for women. Stubborn fatty areas around your body just don't seem to burn off or change much even as you see the pounds fall off the scale. You might see changes in your arms, your face, and other areas that are further away from your center of mass while your belly fat or love handles basically stay the same. There are a couple reasons for this, one is that stubborn fat tends to have a higher ratio of alpha-receptors than beta receptors making the fat release at a slower rate from those last spots that just don't seem to budge.(**) These stubborn areas tend to receive less blood flow than regular subcutaneous fat as well. This means that even after you trigger fat loss with diet and exercise, and that causes your body to release the triglycerides that are found within your fat cells, Those triglycerides still have to be broken down into fatty acids and mobilized through the bloodstream to get "burnt off". So the lack of blood flow to these sites in combination with the receptors (1) makes it much more difficult to release and mobilize fat, making fat loss much slower from these stubborn areas. So how do we actually get to that fat and burn it off once and for all? Well first I know it might already be obvious but you have to be in a calorie deficit to create the conditions to burn fat, to begin with. If you're currently not burning any fat at all, and you're not losing any weight off the scale for a few weeks or longer, that most likely means that you're currently not in a calorie deficit. This could be for a number of reasons especially if you've already been dieting for some time. For example, as you cut calories to create a calorie deficit, even if you do everything right, you'll still lose some muscle over time, slowing your metabolism. You'll also be losing fat mass over time. Fat cells require energy to maintain. So when you lose fat while dieting you also reduce the amount of energy required to maintain your body. Since your overall body weight or body mass will also go down, basic movements will require less energy further slowing your resting metabolism. So as you burn more fat and get closer to the stubborn areas, your body will require less and less energy, so you'll have to reduce your calories further. To drive this home this means that even if a macro calculator says that you have to eat 2000 calories per day to be in a calorie deficit and burn fat if you're not losing any inches or pounds and you're tracking your calories at 2000 per day, it literally means that the calculator is wrong and you're likely at maintenance, and you'll have to subtract calories further to put yourself into an actual deficit to continue burning fat, and eventually get to that stubborn fat. And that brings me to tip number 2 before you assume that you're stuck and you start restricting calories further, make sure that you're actually tracking your calories for a full week and that you're tracking them accurately. Too many times people assume they're eating fewer calories than they actually are. This has been a consistent problem for not only average conditioned people that I've trained but also for more advanced bikini and physique competitors that I've trained. So just spend at least a few days, and track every calorie including the condiments that most people usually leave out, the oils you use, and the sugar in the creamer that you add to your coffee. After tracking if you still haven't lost weight or inches during that week, lower your calories by about another 200 to 300 calories and you'll probably notice more fat loss the following week. Keep in mind this process of dropping more calories is something that you may have to repeat a few times as your body adapts to your diet. And that actually brings us to the third tip, which is to incorporate refeeds or calorie cycling to blunt and maybe even reverse a process known as adaptive thermogenesis. This is essentially a term used to describe your metabolism slowing down more than what can be expected just from losing fat mass and muscle mass alone. (2) This so-called "starvation response" seems to be a natural response to the decreased amount of calories or energy that you're taking in. And as you get leaner and closer to burning that stubborn fat, adaptive thermogenesis is likely to affect you more and more making it feel like you're taking one step back for every step you move forward...