yeah what's up guys happy tuesday welcome back to another episode of eat train prosper
oh
today is brian and myself and our episode for today is going to be on our favorite movements for each muscle group and more importantly why before we jumped into this which was a cool it was it was a question provided
ah
to us for our last uhinstagram and which was last week's episode of you i caught that
yeah
and we thought it would be a fun question just
yeah
to expand into its own episode so here we are
yep
before we jump into that brian is going to kick us off with some updates
yeah i'll try and be be quick here and get us to the topic degore as quickly as possible so i am now five weeks out from p r p last week i wasn't sure if it was three or four as it is in fact now five weeks um things are improving i would say my function is still not that of before r p but still optimistic that it's going to be good i am using my hack squat in my basement as kind of the representation of my nee ling week to week as it progresses through so my top weight ever
on it is something like five sixty for seven or eight and the way i've been progressing through is the first week i did nothing on it i didn't do any legs and then it was two hundred for ten next week was three hundred for ten the next week was our hundred for ten and then just this week i hit five hundred for ten which i think is getting close to that you now five sixty for seven or eight number so we'll see if maybe i can do that next week the doc told me before the procedure that by week six
i should be mostly back to full function and so if that's the case i'll probably
oh
throw five sixty on there and just see what happens and see if my knee can handle it so um so that's cool looking forward to that next week beyond that him's gone the next six of eight days so i am super dad and trying to do soccer practices and school drop offs and pick ups and figure out what to do with it on the weekends when there is no school so i'll have a busy life these next few days but planning to still try to train over like quiet time and whatever else t v time t v time is the
best you know quick what i end up doing when the kids are here and i'm like on full duty as i end up splitting my training up a lot so it'll be like thirty or forty five minutes at one point of the day in thirty or forty five minutes at another point of the day and that seems to work pretty well um so then moving on paragon programs have new cycles starting on ten twenty four this is going to be the second in the series of three specializatio cycles that we're doing so
this one is quads and shoulders which is going to be super cool some really great feedback that i got on the last cycle because it's really the first one i've confidently used pieces of that progression model that you and i have talked about the one that you're following the one that i made the instagram post about where you know length and movements are starting at rep from failure or something and short movements are starting around two raps from failure
and then the short movements progress into partials and eventually beyond partials um so this cycle for paragon the or one that's just ending was glutsin back and i've had a ton of feedback from people saying that the use of partials on these short movements has been just completely opening for them and like i always knew that partials had the additive effect of you know insuring that you're actually at failure that isn't why i use them really because i kind of know when i'm at failure i
use them as additional stimulus but the feedback that i've been getting from everybody is that wow i never really knew how many more i had in the tank until i started trying to do max parcels and realizing that i'm actually getting full reps so that has been like a super cool like clandestine unexpected benefit of utilizing these partial reps and something that i know will be ubiquitous across cycles going for like it's not going to change the way
that i program you know separating these movements out and the way these movements are progressing through the mess is is something that i think will stay for the long term so really cool feed back to have on the first time implementing it and and i hope to be able to use like reverse drop sets and maybe eventually lengthened only sets i don't know if that's something that is suitable for like the general programs but i don't see why i couldn't do like reverse drop sets and
more like length and specific partial work and stuff like that so excited about all of that we have bands branded from paragon coming in the next couple of weeks they should be out by earlier mid november and we're also going to start using bands as op ans in the dumb bell only programs it just opens up kind of the ability to program more creativity and to kind of emulate cables a little bit better than dumb bells can do and the dumb bells almost always going to
be lengthened overloaded because you're fighting gravity um using bands kind of allows us to change the resistance curve and emulate some of the more like bio mechanic type movements that um that i like to program these days so that is all of my updates i feel like i've never been so efficient with them
yeah before we move on can you just adjust
yeah
the gain down on your microphone you're coming across
oh
a super super like max out there and then worst
oh
case scenario if it is just on my end we can just have it up in post
yeah it's the same as it's always been it didn't seem like it got knocked or anything so
okay cool
does it sound better
it does now yeah
okay cool
cool so
oh
i mean we were joking about this before we got we got
ah
officially on i really don't have any updates i have one
ah
cool thing that that i did it was new is we did shrimp boil on sunday and that was super
okay
super cool what i was really surprised at it was
oh
one simple like
oh
bone bone simply
yeah
like boil
oh
you know water in a big a big container on the stove and then it's like you add in i forget what went in first like the potatoes and then the
eh
onions and you just chopped a couple of things and you just threw it in
yeah
a bunch of old bay seasoning and it come amazing the
yeah
one thing i would say is like if you are being super super you know macro conscious there is smoked sausage in it which is going to be super high and fat pert relative volume but if you wanted to
oh
like get a little bit specific in and choose with a more like a lower fat sausage option it's a really like macro friendly meal we have red skin tatoes shrimp corn on the cob
oh
onions and then whatever you would do for that and it makes a grip of food like i felt kind of obnoxious as we were like dumping it out the end
yea
we had like two huge m what do you call like oven sheets like filled with food and we were just like there's no way in hell we could eat all this
yeh
so it could be a really thing if you're like someone with a bigger family or you have like you know five teen age kids or something like that it's a very simple
yeah
meal and you get a grip of pretty decently quality food there to do and it was a lot of fun
that's super cool i love that what did you mark down as your macro's for that meal
i don't remember but i add it was a day we did it on sunday and i trained i was already super sore from saturday and i trained on on friday or sunday
m
too because i was a day behind because i got blood work don on friday and i ate a lot of it i think it was probably like a twelve hundred calory meal for me with carbsware probably damnear hundred and eighty or something like that on the day
yeah
sorry on the
no
meal not on the day that was like a five hundred
no
carb day for me for
yeah
sure and i blew
nice
out the fat the fat i blew i
oh
generally followed super low fat diet anyway but it was a my protean was two seventy on the day and curbs were like pushing five hundred in stuff
m
so it was a big day
m
but coincidentally right on monday
oh
then i had my highest way and yet i
m
was like one
ye
one ninety six point eight or something like that of this kind
oh
of reverse period or gaining
yeah
you know winter but then on monday i had an incredible pump from training um like incredible so i was like oh wow like maybe i'm still like a little like a little under eating even though my weight has been like climbing and stuff but it was just like i had a massive massive sunday
a
night meal and then in an un paralleled pump on monday's training
oh
which is you know when you do it when so much of my life is like ground hog day so when you have these like outliers i was like something
uh
is different you know what i mean and the only thing i know
yeah
is i just ate a lot more than i normally would for that last meal on sunday
yeah interesting very interesting what did you wait to day
today's tuesday same exact thing two days in a row identical one like n ninety six point nine
explain
or something like that you know
i was one ninety six point four so we are once again hanging
again
out
within
in the same pound range
yep
i like
yep
that very cool okay cool let's jump in and talk about some movements
yeah let's do it so
m
when i so when i would so for all
oh
the listeners brian and i will generally keep
yeah
like notes in
yeah
a shared word document
oh
as we go through so when i was putting mind in here i really did best to not look at any of yours because i didn't want them to influence you know my decisions
yeah
but what i did was i just followed the same body part lay out that you have so that we're not
yeah
like jumping all over the place
yeah
so do you want to kick us off with a chest
yeah yeah so real quick before we get started i think it's important
m
that we
okay
have like a primary and a runner up for for each body
oh
part and the main reason for that is a well there's two reasons
yeah
a it's really hard to choose and be a lot of times movements work in unison with other movements and
yeah
an example of that just to start real quick is like you have quads like maybe you want to put pendulum and hack squad as your two favorite but that kind of like doesn't make a lot of sense because you would make
oh
much more sense to pair one of those with a leg extension so um so i thought about it in that way when thinking of my two movements for each body part
kay that is a really good
yeah
um anecdote to
m
put in there because
m
very i shouldn't say very rarely
oh
but in most cases scenarios you're never just going to be training like one movement for a body part in in a you know and following up with what you said it doesn't make sense in a lot of context to do pendulum squat and then move into the hack squad
oh
is your secondary moe and um so yeah it's a really good point to bring up there
yeah that's just the way i thought about it so i mean if you thought about it differently throughout you're the way you placed it like that's fine too but that's my kind of caveat for for my choices um yeah so getting into chest hum
yah
i really just can't get away
yah
from the dumb bell fly press just on a flat bench it's just been a staple for me for two years now and i really like it
ah
because
yeah
it is such like a heavy lengthened overload movement where i now am doing it to even be more lengthened i'm taking two to three second pause
oh
at the stretch position of the movement
oh
and just kind of letting the
oh
peck stretch out at the bottom much like d c training used to do with dante trudel
yeah
but he would have you flies and then at the end you would just hold the dumb bells in the extended position for as long as you could until they basically like fall out of your hands so this is a maybe more
yeah
like future version of that
yeah yeah
but i think that there is some benefit
oh
in in that deep stretched position there so i've been doing my dumb bell fly presses that way and i get a ton out of them i mean
oh
i know we don't we don't use soreness as as meaning a whole lot aside from possibly that you didn't do enough if you never get sore
oh
that's the way i look at it anyways but
yeah
you know this movement i've been doing for two years non stop in my program and still i can feel the fatigue and the the stimulus from that movement in session and then also post work out and the next day so it's just it's a keeper for me it seems to just be able to help maintain i guess at this point it's hard to say that i'm gaining much chest muscle but um that movement has been just one that i feel helps me maintain that muscle with an extremely low amount of volume which
then allows me to focus on other muscle groups a little bit more so i really like that aspect of it and then my second one is a cable sternocostal basically like a cable press that is slightly high to low but mostly kind of just horizontal um and so i really like that it has that natural like wide to narrow converging path and i would say that if i had access to a really good chess press machine like the atlantis converging
ye
one or one of the prime converging ones i would probably put that above my my cable press by i only get to use that when i go hang out a nd one so i'm gonna stick with the cable press for now
yeah so in what i was afraid would happen with this episode is we would end up choosing all the same things and
uh
in traditional briant and aron form here we are so what is slight different and we've talked
h
about this before
yeah
i personally am not
yeah
a fan of that cable fly press um only just it's just we're all goin to have those things where we just do not feel great performing for different ver reasons and that is just one for me but what i have is my number one is the converging chess press machine now like a celectorized one why i like this celectorizedm
oh
i shouldn't say necessarily because there is a there is an atlantis one that is plate loaded but it's incredibly smooth throughout you get an incredibly smooth and consistent resistance path throughout the entire range of motion genera your cable celectorized
yeah
move machines will better recreate that but some are really really good um basically like a
yeah
seated upright converging
my
chest press machine what i like is you can
m
really set yourself up to get a really good stretch in the length and position and then because get that converging arm path you are getting pretty shortened as well i wouldn't say not like fully fully fully shortened but pretty damn close much better than as opposed to like a dumb bell press or something because the dumb bells are larger as you
yeah
lift more and then what i have for my you now back up or secondary would be what brian described as as a duel cable version of
oh
that converging chess press machine that can be that is i would say you know look one of the most underrated pressing movements i really really like it it can if you push it well and hard you can really i would say if you're pressed on time that might be like one of the may be a soul choice movement for me sort of thing for a pushing movement
yeah i may actually try that seated upright because i do it kind of reclined with the cables coming from behind me
hm
to emulate more of the
costal
machine type
now
yeah yeah yeah exactly
oh
but if it's more like if i think of it more as like one of those pecdeck machines where you grip the handles and you just kind of like squeeze together across the middle that like a bit different of an arm path but i think it would be super effective and i'm looking for some variation in my chest so i may give that a go here coming up and then just to clarify one thing in the beginning you said the thing you you didn't like and you said it was the cable press what
you meant was the dumb bell press
oh
right
sorry yes
fly press
ah thank
yeah
you thank you for cleaning
it took
that
it
up
took me a little while going through listening to you to be like wait a minute i'm pretty sure there was a there was a flaw
yeah
there
yeah
but yeah so aron does not like my dumb bell fly press but he does like the
ah
ill cabell set up
yeah
cool
ah
moving on to back i
m
separated back into basically three regions i have upper back rear delt and lots and then we also delt as
okay
lateral deltas in front delt so we separated those into three regions as well
yep
but starting with upper back i have a chest supported row with wide elbows so any time we're training up or back we're going to want the elbows to kind of be out at that like seventy ich degree
m
from the torso range and i really like i feel pressed to choose one but i mean t bar cable and dumb bell are all like super solid for this the main the main important factor for me is the chest support so that i can truly get that deep stretch in the upper back over whatever
oh
the support is and then i really like pushing against the pad too the way to brace coming back up so i guess if i had to be pressed and choose i would say t bar is probably my favorite if you have a t bar with wide arm path then i would say cable and i guess dumb bell would be my last choice but cable and dumb bell are kind of in between say the the reason i would choose cable over dumb bell was just because it gets kind of annoying to have to carry like ninety or hundred pound dumb bells
over and like throw your body over
oh
a bench like while holding
yeah
hundred pound dumb bells
ah
so just for that like minor inconvenience i feel like
yeah
i would go cables over dumb bells but they're both super effective and then my second one would be a wide pull down so same arm path you know pronated grip wide arms just pulling vertically more instead of horizontally and that one you would definitely want to have you legs locked in so that it's a it's not like the way you do the iliac lap pull down where you're kind of just on a bench you know you need to have your legs secured underneath those pads
yeah i guess as i'm getting into mind
yeah
the way that i structured my two choices it ends up being more of like this is my top choice and then if i'm in a gym environment where i can't do my top choice like this is how i would emulate that with like a secondary choice
i
so
like that too that's
that
a good way yeah
so
yeah
kind of like i said i followed brian's lay out so with upper back i have the chest supported upright like machine row that's where you're going to be sitting like vertically chest supported i really like a my pronated grip this is one of those few times like i said that brian and i will differ i really don't like the like elbows that like you know ninety or seventy i feel like just very
oh
strong in that position um and it feels unstrong and unnatural so i will generally take a little bit more a little bit lower than seventy you know what what might be considered almost like a rear dealt rowing angle
ah
but i'm
ah yeah
when you're pulling like what i find
yeah
is like hat i'm pulling like very
yeah
very forcefully and like that upper back row you are pretty strong
yeah
i feel like the rest of the muscular true will overtake the rear delt like i have to focus on like a rear delt row on the
m
rear delt or else i'll like you know cal i guess it is a really really good term to use so with that that upper back you know or sorry upper back machine supported upright
a
row with like a semi pro ated grip
yeah
i really really love anything chest supported for upper
okay
back because it's going to basically save you from yourself and your ego of trying
oh
to over compensate with your hips in raising the back and that sort of thing and then as my back up there what what i have is what brian picked is number one so basically chest supported plate loaded upper back row where your feet are going to be on that plate and then that's more like a you know almost like forty five degree angle like you're laying down on top of it more so um
m
the how the interesting thing
yeah
there again is i really really just like a semi pronated grip i feel
yeah
so much better in that post and i don't get any kind of like joint angle alignment issues so what i would say to the listeners is like play around with your grip see what feels better for you and you may need to grab blake angles ninety or a d hand over a d handled dave de ring
yeah de handle
de handle um and loop it around there to achieve that semi pronated grip
that's interesting what you said about the elbow position why not feeling good or natural because i definitely feel that too especially if i try to get to like eighty or ninety degrees it's it's okay around seventy degrees but i think the thing is that you can't expect to get this is what i learned at least you can't expect to get the same amount of protraction when you have your elbows higher so the whole point of finding that position for the rear delt is the point where
you can get the most scape
oh
attraction because then your rear delts are going to essentially shorten the most at the top of the movement
yeah
so that was all the test that cats used it and one was he was like hey fenagal around with your elbow position and wherever you can get the most scapratraction that's your rear dealt line you know so when you put those arms up higher you're not supposed to get as much scapprattraction and once i stopped trying to get scaprattraction as if i was doing a rear delt row then that higher elbow position started to feel much more
oh
comfortabl um so now i just think about it as initiating with almost like squeezing my lower traps together that or mid traps like mid lower traps i just think about squeezing those together to initiate the movement and whenever those are squeezed together i don't try to get any more scape retraction than that and you can see it in the videos the elbows don't go nearly as far back as they do with like that rear adult ro set up where they're a little bit low
yeah that's a that was a very very good helpful additional explanation on that
so maybe try see what you think with that in mind um cool so moving on to rerdelts my my movements are literally the exact same as my upper back
yeah
ones but we're just changing the
ah
a position so it's the chest supported row starting with t bar and then cable and then dumb
yeah
bell and then i didn't even choose a second movement because i think that it would be that same pull down with the legs locked in it would just be with again forty five degree hand grip and elbows traveling a little bit closer into the body so so we're basically doing the same movements with with a different hand position for moving from upper back to rear delt
yeah and mind kind of are too and i mean there is a slight bit of ambiguity between the upper back and wear dolts like it's not going to be like a very cut and dry this is strictly rear dealt this is now strictly
ah
up er back so
for sure
in performing these there is there's going to be some some cross over and
oh
some blurred lines for sure there what i have for mine is a just a seeded cable row with a semipronated ma grip what i really like with the mag grip is that it i guess what would be like the middle with my grip is it just lines everything
hm
up or i don't have to think about it and i just know like here you know when i'm at the length end i'm in a perfect position and as i row back like obviously the grip with doesn't change it puts me right in that you know retracted
oh
shortened rear dealt position i love that with that
yeah
one your rear doubts really are that's strong i don't feel like i need
yeah
the chest support or anything
yeah
like that which would be harder to set up there anyway and i just do a traditional exceeded know cable row with that grip
hm
and i just know what i know that position that i
okay
want to find and i find that
ah
mad grip with the semipronated um grip is just the simplest way to get me from like you know length into shorten without me to modify much else okay
yeah that's that's a good point about the ambiguity between the movements to because like that wide pull down like is often considered a rear delderandupper back or like it's kind of kind of just a bit of everything right so i think that ultimately like shifting hand position or elbow position within a matter of twenty or thirty degrees like literally it might go from hey this movement is sixty percent upper back
oh
and forty percent rear dealt to like sixty percent real rear dealt and forty percent upper back but i mean no matter what you're still working both when you do both
yeah and
uh
then for my
yeah
second one which i will do often
yeah
because not a lot of places have the merit is a i have it here prone incline
yes
rear dealt d b row so i set the incline on a
oh
not a super steep incline but not a low incline like a medium you know type incline i then lay on it and i lay up enough to where my maybe the top of support right at my upper ab so like my chest and shoulders can kind of round over the top of the bench and then just the elbows you know that kind of lines your rear delt up great it right on top of gravity with the dumbell directly under
yeah
and i just row straight up and that one i
yep
do like to
you actually do that one really well i've noticed your form on that cast featured it on one of the n one photos like last year and you get to like a really good short position for your rear adults that way
yeah that one i say i probably feel that best but it's hard to progress
yeah for
yeah
sure otherwise i mean it is may be easy to progress but it would you would compensate without realizing it type thing like
yeah
that's because like you
oh
do that with the fifty pound dumb bells or
yeah
something like don't use super heavy weight right
no yeah probably like forty five fifty max
yeah
there
so like when i was looking at the video that are the posts that cass made he also had a picture of me doing it with like eighty fives or
yeah
something
nowhere
but
near that mac
no no but my forms as good as yours
okay
so that's more of the point i'm trying to make is just that it's hard to progress because a very slight shift
yeah
in the way that you're executing it can
m
allow you to progress and maybe you won't even realize that the way that you're doing it has changed slightly or gradually over time
m yeah that that's a really really good point
yeah cool so moving on to late to finish up the back here um my number one is the one arm whole variations like i don't want to then separate lots into iliac lads and lumbar las and threats and lads and all that so so whatever angle you decide to work your lads at whether it's like a high to low or iliad or like a more horizontal like lumbar type of approach i really really like the braced one arm version of these movements my current go to is the one where i'm bracing back
again the bench because i feel like it provides me just a ton of stability and i can really work that muscle without any sort of balance or stability issues i'm also a fan of doing it you know gripping braced on the functional trainer itself that works super well too and then i'll also add that i don't generally find myself doing a ton of work specifically for the thoracic lat region which is the upper lat
yeah
region and the
ah
reason that that is is because i feel like as we discussed with the ambiguity of these different movements that a lot or almost all of the upper backwork that i'm doing for our rear adult work is also hitting my thoracic lads given that their function is very similar to those functions and that they're higher up on the back so i try to be as efficient as i can with my training and i feel like spending time on the thoracic lads while i'm also doing a bunch of other specific upper back and rear
delt were just kind of seems like too much for me so
oh
i tend to focus on the hidelopole and then the horizontal pole for
m
the iliac and the lumbar regions
m
and then my second choice would just be the same legs locked one that i described for the wide pull down but now with a neutral grip and with the torso braced so if you allow your back to get into like thoracic extension where you're kind of sticking your chest up in the air you're going to take some of the stimulus away from the lads and put it into the upper back so generally what you want to do is keep your core braced down so that you're doing that pull down you're lean back
but you're not opening your chest to do so you're leaning back and kind of hunching forward and maintaining that
yeah
position which will help you kind of bias the lads a little bit more as you're doing that pull
yeah
down with your legs locked underneath
yeah before i jump into mine which are of course very similar the one i thought would be helpful to bring up depending on the manufacture of your kind of what's traditionally called like the lap pull down where brian like you just said your legs are locked underneath you may find it really hard to emulate what brian just said at the end because sometimes the weight orientation of the cable is so far like back kind of over your head where
m
i've been
oh
in somewhere i'm like trying to do it focused
m
and i just can't because it's way too far back
m
so just kind of no that that you may run into that and you might be like why can't i you now feel this in my lap or why can't i line it upright sometimes like the angles are just off too much to be able
yeah
to do that
well
oh
just to add like one kind of practical piece for people like this is definitely not one of
yeah
my favorite movements for the lads but it's the most accessible and i even i even made an instagram ost on this but you can find any single cable stack in your gym it can even be like a traditional lap pull down and you just you know take the handle off and put a de handle
oh
on there and then you just go and you kneel down on the ound like just go and kneel down and as long as you have it braced controlaterally so if you're pulling down with your right arm your left leg is forward um
oh
that will give you the stability so that you can work the
yeah
lad extremely effectively not as effectively as if you're braced against a bench you know the way that i described but it's definitely accessible to just grab a cable polly from somewhere and just kneel down and suddenly you can do lap pull down so
i have a quick side to touch on so
m
before i re jump
oh
into it my number one choice for the lap is the unilateral supported pull down as well but one thing that i have found that i have the last handful of weeks out to like
ah
six to eight weeks have i've been performing the noticed i don't like bracing it with like a a knee on the bench with my hand like i was taught how to do it and like i see everyone else doing it for
yeah
i would find that it was like really tac in my core to try and brace like that and then one
m
day i was on was like i'm just going to see what happens if i sit
ah
on the bench facing
yeah
it and then like let's say i'm pulling with my right hand i jam my right foot into the front of the where the bench
yeah
sits on the ground and i just like a you know not necesarily lock that leg out but put sure they are to square my hips square my pelvis and i love bracing it that feels so much
m
easier to me there and i wonder like if there's probably something i was doing wrong and in version one if that feels so much easier for me but also i'm just curious why i haven't seen more people doing it that bracing it the way that i just described
i don't know i mean i've done that before as well it's a good question i think i find it a little bit harder to keep the core kind of neutral at the
yeah
like i find myself when i'm braced face down or face forward into a bench i feel more likely to maybe want to arch backward as the rebs get tough
hm
so that way like maybe my first thought second thought would be that maybe it changes the angle like in some people's cases it changes the angle and makes it too steep like if you're if you're that close to the cable stack that maybe neel on the bench and pushing back gives you enough space so that you can keep your shoulder from getting too high which would then de activate a little of the late at the top of the rep
yeah
but those are just you know
yeah
small concerns i think if that way works for you there's really no reason that you shouldn't do it
yeah the last thing i will say there is actually i'll post this up you know well i'll try to remember to do it a week from today when the episode comes out but actually filmed one today
yeah
of me doing that and the bench is too are upright and i do lose a little bit of that like hollow core positioning
yeah
um so yeah that's the last thing i would add there is if you are going to do it that way you would probably want to set the bench one not ch less vertical if you want
m
to sit on it so that you can kind of lean forward a little bit more
yeah
yeah
yeah but then you would need to compensate for the fact that you're now moving even closer to the cable stack
yeah
so you have to somehow figure out a way to separate the bench further back while still having the stability of the bed not sliding so maybe it just adds like an additional layer of complexity to the set up
it probably yeah
oh
yeah uh
do you have a second one
i do and what i have here is
oh
seated cable row
yeah
lap focus you know that's like a lumbar lap focus um this is one where depending on the weight stack i ha available i will either do un laterally or buy laterally so this is one where i feel pretty good personally about my ability to perform by laterally with like a quality stimulus in each i cannot replicate that with the bilateral chest supported row with both arms at the same time i do much better now laterally there but see cable
yeah
row again kind of leaned forward a little bit like brian was describing keeping the elbows really really narrow that one feel like is really accessible and a lot of gyms should
yeah
be really easy to do neutral grip proximately shoulder with um and then in the event that you don't have that
oh
or you just want to set it up you know with a single cable stack you can do it you know laterally as well like i just did that today at the gym before the podcast and i get
a
a great stimulus from it
yep totally no i love i
m
love how you're taking
hm
the approach of having the accessible movement second because that definitely adds like a practical element for the listener to
yeah
um cool so moving on to lateral deltas these are the ones on the side right the ones that make you get that wide up top so that you get that
oh
small waist look that illusion so my my two favorite movements for the side dealt are the same movement one
oh
single arm and one both arms
ah
so i like to actually the single arm one is or accessible but it also happens to be my favorite so basically the key to this movement is that you get the body and the cable lined up in such a
yeah
manner that your arm traveling in the scapular plane versus directly to the side so what i usually do to facilitate this is i grab the cable behind my back so imagine me like grabbing the cable behind my back my left arm and then i walk out a couple of steps so i feel a small stretch on my side dealt and then i'll turn my body by just a little bit like this so if you're watching on youtube otherwise
yeah
i guess you're just going to have to
oh
guess that i'm turning my body about thirty degrees
okay
and then you're going to lift your arm up and
oh
what you'll find is that after you turn your body thirty
go
degrees forward from directly to the side
i
that your arm will follow suit and we'll travel thirty degrees in front of your body so
oh
that's my favorite i really really like it single arm and the on the reason that i would choose single arm in this case over the dual cable late rays is because it really really frustrates me when the cables come behind my back and the balls cross
yeah
over each other
yeah
and that's just like it's just like it distracts me so much rep to rep and one time like one time maybe a few months ago they were behind my back and the balls crossed and the clips connected to each other
yeah
so imagin in my surprise when i go to try and raise my arms up and
oh
literally nothing
oh
happens and so since that moment it's been like
okay
even a further distraction to me because i'm like constantly worried and preparing for it to happen again um so anyway i think the dual cable version is fantastic as well but but i really am am digging the single cable version right now
so this one was was hard for me to answer um
yeah
because i'll guess jump into why my first exercise i put her prone incline lateral dealt you know bell rays it is a shortened overload movement for the best you know movement of any body
yeah
part probably you know
oh
in your best interest
oh
or brian and is best interest to provide a length and overload in terms of hypertrofic
yeah
stimulus the one that
ah
and the reason i didn't is like i would say of all the body parts lateral delt probably take the longest to learn how to perform properly
hm
and like the cable ones like there's still days where i'll do some of the cable ones and i'm like i don't think i did that right today
uh
you know and some of that is to do with my lifestyle and being in new
ah
gems and in finding like setting up you know constantly learning how to set it up again but it's something like i know what i'm looking for now and i think i get it and then i'm like i don't think i did that right like you know and it does still frustrate me a little bit so in that i s like im goin to give the listener something that's pretty much full proof and that's put the depth you know put the put the bench on an incline a steeper incline stand on the back of it on the back pegs
yeah
not not pigs legs so that you it's not gonna slide forward on you when you put all your body weight into it set your chest on it and then you know lateral rays obviously not quite straight out but in the scapular plane like
oh
like brian described it's really hard to suck up keep your elbows pretty much straight don't swing it from the bottom keep your chest on the on the incline and it's like i said it's pretty hard to not to mess that one up and not get a lateral dealt stimulus there
yeah that one's kind of like a hybrid between a lateral rays and wires
yeah
i like that too
yeah i would say like that or do them seated like ever since i mean i'm about to say this and then i got to walk myself back because
m
of what i put under number two but like if you're someone who generally doesn't perform
m
you know lateral lateral raisers right or they give you issues and stuff perform them you know prone on a bench like incline or seated and you will probably find your one you have to drop the weight probably considerably in order to perform
m
them but you're mechanics should improve there
yep
ah
cool
and then
and your second one
yeah what i put so this is kind of like a cheating answer this one isn't necessarily a movement per se but it is a cast set of media
oh
dealt and the best thing that i would say is to find this go on to youtube and find
yeah
the gym at prospects you tube channel in google medial dealt cast set so that brian can you remind me of that gentleman's name again
yeah
that i can never seem to remember
yeah oh man i forgot it
is it brian it's like brian or dave or
a wait
yeah i'm so bad with names
dan
dan
dan feldman
okay okay dan so dan has an incredible demonstration of this over there he explains it really really well if you're someone who like me for years i like man i just
yes
can't really feel it in my in my lateral delt if you do
oh
this it will work it's like full proof so if you are ever looking to
yah
use that or add a little spice in there you can really only do two
ah
sets of it to max because it smokes you but it's pretty pretty easy to set up just duel cable and one single set of dumb bells so just bring the dumb bells over to the cable but that one that would be a good one
sick that sounds good i'm gonna go check that out after this as well
yeah uh
um so moving on to front delt my number one is actually not a press and i flip flopped on these because i think they were programme to think that we need to have like a compound press type movement as our primary movement so i struggled with this a little bit but ultimately i feel better and feel like i get a better stimulus doing a load of high cable raise so essentially having the cable set at the bottom or near the bottom you could change the resistance curve and make it a little more
lengthened if you raise them up to wrist tight but that's as high as you would want to go otherwise it's just it doesn't work so i usually go somewhere bete and so it's more of like a mid range overload not quite wrist tight but not quite at the very bottom and then i'll grab the
oh
balls themselves or i'll put de handles on and usually grab the strap of the d handles instead of using the actual handle itself i like to push against the strap with my hand i actually tend to do that for a lot of movements but i just realized i forgot to put arms on our list
yeah
of favorite movements
so did i
so so we'll have to make sure we put arms in there
yeah
too but but
yeh
then i grab the straps
yeah
and basically you just raise from like a wide position to a to a high narrow position and you'll get a little bit of clavicular upper peck in there as well
we
and i just love that movement and then the interior dealt press is my second and i think i prefer cables over dumb bells the dumb bells at this point just don't feel great on my shoulders in any type of like vertical pressing so
yeah
i prefer bills and then if i
oh
had to i would use don bells as a back up
so this is one where i actually
yeah
thinking back about in keeping uniform with how i did describe it i my favorite is the interior dealt press i prefer it with cables as well it's just so infrequent that i've been able to actually use it because of equipment availability
m
i had put the anterior
oh
dealt d b press you know on top spot but i do really like the cable press because
ah
you can it's so much easier and consistent to push
yeah
to like a pretty much to failure because of the nature of the cable in the you know smoothness
justin's
of the
curve
resistance profile
yeah
because the with the dumb ballets like hit that
yeah
there's nothing left like you can't grind it out pretty much where as with the cable you really really can push to failure where you get like a really incredible stimulus in that anterior dealt so lining that up it's it's really really fun
ah
to push there and then as my back up just the antirdelpdvpress even though i end up doing this one way more often but this is one where it just feels really natural and good for me this was one of those things like once we you know once you went to you pretty much introduced me to like and one and i started going down the rabbit hole of learning thing and then like oh wow doing you know a d v press this way immediate i was like this feels so much better like it was like one of the first
hm
things or i was like i
yes
really like this i just felt a lot stronger more powerful in it and i do get a good stimulus of the interior deltas and it's like a fun exercise for me to
yeah
progress but i will say you know if i had to choose one
yeah
in equipment
yeah
you know available and having like a narrow close together like duel cables like a functional trainer actually
oh
the cable version is better in my opinion
cool do you want to jump into arms
yeah let's do it so you want to start with triceps or biceps
let's do biceps the number one by far favorite movement for me is the de handle face away cable curl
yeah
um there's like not even really like a second
oh
one for me at this point that one just slays my biceps
ah
so hard and then i think that my second choice just out of the nature of choosing a movement that i think would accompany that pretty l would be like a short overloaded elbows forward type curl
yeah
so i like any sort of cable spider curl or cable concentration curl or any along those lines
yeah i would agree with number one that that has to be like the best pretty much across the board it's more lengthened everything lines up really easily you don't have to you're not really going to be experiencing
ah
much joint pain in anything there one that i like that checks the boxes for how you describe the second but is a little bit different as i like like a machine preacher with a cable
hm
stack traditional preacher curl with like you know the plate loaded easy bar it it scares me it puts a really hard stress on like my bicep tended in there doesn't feel great for me so it's the machine
yeah
is a way that i can basically get a great stimulus that can be a little bit mor mid range to shortened overload but
hm
doesn't put me in like a
yes
compromised position that i feel
yeah it's the pad underneath the tricept that creates that like super uncomfortable stretch at the bottom of
yeah
the preacher
and
girl
now what
so if you just
yeah
remove that pad it changes the resistance profile completely in shortens it instead of lengthens it
exactly oh
yeah okay sweet triceps um so my number one
yeah
for triceps and the reason that i thought oh ship we skipped arms was because every time i do my one arm cable overhead this extension i i use the d handle and then i put my hand on the strap of the d handle instead of gripping the handle itself and i really like how that lines up so when your arm is hind your head it just lines up so perfectly that all you really need to do is think about extending the elbow at the top instead of anything else like there should be
no distraction i really really like to set one up so that the cable is about just below my neck height which means it's going to be a little bit more lengthened overloaded so if you were to move the insert pin on the cable stack down then you're going to get more resistance the top and it would be more shortened overloaded which is cool too because it trains at long muscle lengths so if you want to do it at long muscle lengths and overload the short position you can kind of get the best of
both worlds um but at this time i'm currently on this like super hard lengthened everything band wagon so i'm
ye
training at long muscle length and i'm overloading the n position so i put that cable stack just behind my neck and it's the heaviest that it's going to be right at the bottom and then as you get towards the top you'll just feel a very slight drop off of i once so that you can lock out and then you'll feel you're about to rip off your lap as you're descending back down again so huge huge fan of that one and then my second favorite is liter just the perfect company it for that
one like i feel like between that and the cross cable trisipextension which you can do single arm
oh
as well so accessibility if you're in a crowded gym you don't need to have dual cables you can literally set your body up with one cable and just do that same cross the body motion and and
oh
that one is great as well and so both of those movements train the long head of the trysept which is the one that crosses the shoulder joint and probably the one that responds best to training at long muscle lengths as well and the thing with the long head is that it really only works when the arm is extended like this so you can kind of get that if you're lying down and doing one of those like skull overs on a bench you can kind of get the long head to hit as well
but it really does need your body to be in shoulder extension for for the long head to work so any time that your triceps work when you do s is like when you're doing a dumb bell press or close grip bench or basically any type of pressing movement it's going to be your lateral and medial heads that are primarily doing the work and so for that reason in my goal to be as efficient as i can with training i tend to bias most of my tricep work to the long head and let the
medial and lateral heads kind of just get worked with the pressing movements
yeah i mean i love everything you said there i agree one thing that i will do with the lengthened overhead trip extension and then that kind of like cross you know push down push back sort of one as i will super set those so i'll do the
hm
the lengthened overhead one first and then i'll drop the cable stack down a little bit to line it up better do that kick back and then put it back up switch to my other arm and that's
uh
like a very
h
simple try sep one to set up and what i have actually done is i got a pare of like i mean maybe there ankle cuffs like wrist cuffs and then i just put
yeah
the cuff like around my palm and
yep
that's like and then it's like kind of similar to like what you do except i would imagine is probably just a little bit more comfortable and that lines up so well because they need like when you grip you know a lot of people like when we grip you have the tendency to turn you wrist in you know and that kind of like changes the angle a little bit so when you have that
yeah
cuff
yeah
it's like it's just like you just extend the elbow it's just simplifies
yeah
things um and then
yeah
it takes some of that gripping out of it and then the other
yes
one that i
oh
really do like and this is probably like eighty five percent of the trisupexercises i'll do unless someone else is doing my programming and they're like no
m
aaron we're going to do this now is that kind of like over the shoulder like medial dealt type of press
yeah
um and that one i really like because i can lean into it you know and find where it really stretches and then all i do is just
yeah
like punch out in front of me you know this
yeah
one is hard to describe for if any of the listeners if you want just pick me on instagram and i'll be like yeah here's the exercise
yeah
it's when we learned it and one i don't think they have a great name for it but the cables run like right over traps and it's pretty much just like you find where they stretch really good and then you just punch forward it's almost like a pressing motion but it will beat up your triceps like really really well
so i love that one too but it is like the most inaccessible movement i have never like in my gym i can't do it in my basement and i've never actually been to a gym that has two cables like directly next to each other like
yes
you literally have to like i don't i don't i don't know where where i would even like i can't even picture what that would look like in a commercial gym
so i do it single arm
m
um or you get the daisy chains and then that gives you
yeah
enough length
okay
to not hit the back because remember
yeah
i sent you something um on instagram the other name was like who here's a version how we can do these right
yeah
the gym
yeah
a mat has two ropes i tried to set it up i couldn't even get anywhere near extension before the back of the ropes were
oh
hitting my neck so i was like
uh
they have like super
h
long ropes in that video
oh
you know a daisy chain will fix that you'll just need you know
yeah
one and then you can obviously just put it in the middle and then you get
yeah
actually like four feet you need but
that's a good call actually yea i should i should consider that as an option to
yeah
that is that is a great movement and then on the note of the cuffs um this is actually you know how like in life sometimes like something brought up and then you feel like you see it all the time right like like oh you read a book and there's like elephants everywhere and then suddenly like everything you see is elephants
yeah
um so i feel like cuffs are like that for me in the last few is like they keep showing up everywhere and then one of my clients asked me like hey can i do this movement with cuffs and then you brought up the cuffs and so i've already been thinking you know man maybe i need to start start using cuffs in these movements where i said i grip the strap of the d handle because it's it's the same idea just like as you said it almost adds a little bit more bulk and makes it a little bit more comfortable
yeah
so i think that the universe has spoken to me and this is the grand sign from the gods that i need to start using cuffs as well so i will be implementing that now
i'll send you i'll send you the pair i bought there they're super they're good
i have them now i have them already
he
eh eh
oh fair enough
yeah i just haven't been using them
okay
so yeah okay cool so
a
moving on away from arms we have quads and this is the example that i provided in the beginning where i was saying you know i'm not going to pick pendulum and hack spot as my two favorite pendulum and leg breast or whatever because they're both
yeah
squat style pressing
yeah
movements so i went ahead and i chose pendulum and leg extension and then i have the caveat that
oh
the leg extension should be able to have resistance curve adjusted for best practice like you should
oh
be able to make it short or make it lengthened and if you can't make your leg extension lengthened which i would say nine
m
eight percent of like extensions
yeah
cannot
oh
be cannot be lengthened then you should also use sissy squats so i guess that gives me like three movements sissy squad or like a reverse nordic slash body weight
m
leg extension like one where you can get the length and position of the rec fem because essentially our listeners probably know this for the most part but the rectus phemoris the biggest quad muscle that runs from the neath the hip is the only one that attaches
oh
to below the nee and above the hip
oh
so it only works when the knee is when the hip is not flexed so when you do a normal squat pattern movement your hip is also moving the rectus femoris doesn't work so in the pendulum
oh
squat we're going to get the other three od muscles um and then we'll need the leg extension and or the sissy squat to
oh
train that rectus famorus muscle
yeah so this one this one was hard for me
ah
this is something i don't think ve talked about it or brought it up but
ah
i think and i may eat my words in the future at some point which i am perfectly okay with i think
m
i prefer the hack squat over the pendulum
m
um
m
and and the whole reason i say that is i feel like it's easier to find a really comfortable bottom position
yeah
with most hack squats as opposed
oh
to the pendulum because aside from that predator pendulum so you know shout out the predator strength and in the pendulum that they created with cast a lot of them will make assumption around the angle and stuff and i've been in somewhere i'm like even the atlantis one it's not like perfect in the bottom position you know i can't if i move my feet up a little bit more it's like much kind of like glue and not enough quad but where i want my feet it will start to lift me off my heels
at the bottom um
huh
and granted if i had one in my house i would obviously like modify it to whatever suits my needs but i'd say it's i found that in the most accessible you're probably going to be able to get a hack squat more set up perfectly to find that really quality bottom position
yeah i mean i'm not going to argue that a hacspot's probably
yeah
a little bit well
oh
it's definitely more accessible and as far as more accessible to find the bottom position um that is i guess debate well i think that like my ax my pendulum squad at home is not like a nice one you know under two thousand dollars compared to the predator which is probably ten thousand in the atlantis which is like seven housand or something
yeah
but
m
the small manipulation of just putting the prime wedges on their
m
um creates the perfect
oh
pendulum for me like it feels like chef's kiss
my
perfect so
yeah
i would say it actually felt better than then the predator one to be honest so
oh
so yeah i mean i think like to your point if you had your own then of course you would you would be able to manipulate it and set it up in the manner that was perfect for you and and within a standard gym setting you're probably not going to see a pendulum anyway so it's
ye
kind of like you know they're asking what my favorite movement is like i'm going to say pendulum because that's what it is but
yeah
but to be honest like it doesn't matter if it's a pendulum or like a hack squat or leg press whichever one feels really good for you and allows you to smash the quads most effectively is going to be the best one
yeah what
oh
i have for number two i again very similar to you put a lengthened biased leg extension and then what i have in here is in parentheses rare i was ortunate that you know when i was in bolly there was this
i
gym i would go to on one day of the week just
okay
because they had a leg press that i could literally put my heels into my bunch you know range of motion that felt great and they had a lengthened overload leg extension was by technogym the range of motion
wow
on it was like absurd but i could
yeah
get a incredible quad stimulus from and i was like i want this machine so bad like i just want to find it somewhere on the internet
m
and ship it
h
to a ship ing container
m
and whenever
uh
i come back to the states
ah
um but it's just it's a game changer when you one that will target i challenge you more in that length and position and then the last thing that i thought would be a helpful adding because i know
okay
we get you know some
yeah
garage gym listeners and you know functional training type facile
oh
listeners a reverse heavy sled
ye
drag will be another probably really good quad one that will train terminal nee extension um well in in a gmequippen environment where you generally can't train terminal new extension
m
well
interesting idea like that cool moving on to hams i have two different parings here because
m
i talked about i'm thinking about this
yeah
as pairing two movements together instead as my absolute favorites so for the listeners that you may or may not know i took r d l's out of my programming for the first time all right so since cross fit i used to dead lift then post cross fit in two thousand sixteen seventeen i started doing body building and basically already else have been in my program for six straight years in some ariation um but i took them out five or six weeks ago
yeah
for the first time
oh
ever and i did this for a few reasons i can get into that in another episode but since taking them out what i've done is increased the volume of my forty five degree hip extension and even more so of my leg curls so my leg curl machine is one of those cool ones that you can adjust the resistance profile on so i do a bunch of leg curls short overloaded then i'll go into my hip extension which is inherently short overloaded but i do some manipulations through elevating the machine um through doing
lengthened only partial reps where i choose heavy as dumb
oh
bells and don't go to the actual short position at all so i kind of make forty five degree hip extension as lengthened as i can um and then i'll go back to the leg girls and i'll do them lengthened so that's my kind of sequence right now for ham strings and it tears me up it is so effective and so that is my number one pairing is forty five degree of extension with seated leg girls and then i have a second one for those of you that do not have a seated leg
girl which trains the during the longer muscle length you get the lying leg girl paired with an r d l variation and i chose the bee stands dumb bell r d l because i have never actually programmed into a cycle for myself for you know many months in a row i've kind of messed around with it for a couple of weeks here and there and every time i do i'm always so amazed and impressed at the stimulus that i can get without having to use such a heavy weight that the systemic fatigue on
the mid line and the spine and stuff is not near as significant as it is when you're doing the bilateral version so i love the bee stane dumbellardl and then i'm actually planning to add ardils back into my program in the next mess o with a b stance cable ordeal so i don't have much experience with that i've only done it once to kind of decide that i wanted to include it in my program coming up but i was a huge fan of so i'll have more updates on what i think of
that b stance cable variation down the road
i like that i think that will be really really cool any time i've done that beast dance stuff it tears me up it's like such
yeah
a it's it's like humble because you can't load it really heavy because like you're not in a really good stable you know weight or way to load it but i mean yeah it will light you up it's super underrated right there
yep
for me would i have this one was kind
ah
of hard for me where i was like i was typing you know what i feel like is right i'm using like air quotes here and then i really just had to be honest with myself like these are my favorites and i shouldn't do what is like you know right and this is kind of what school is this is exactly what you did to brian seated hamstring curl it's by far my favorite hamstring movement for for number reasons one it's not like technical to set up like you lock yourself in you can brace
yourself with your upper body and you just whatever it wouldn't be extend the flex the n i guess that would be a proper terminology right you just flex the knee and you can set it up and can figure it to where you're getting like you're training that longer muscle length and you can just beat them up without having to worry about like bracing your core really well or you know keeping a neutral spine and like all of these you know more challenging aspects that you need
to do with a with a traditional barbell hinge um and then i what i have here is a that stiff legged
yeah
dead lifts off the ground and i think that's a little bit of like ego not trying to let that
yeah
like die i do like that movement you know but
ye
i
uh
can guarantee you as i continue to age i will
yeah
train it less and less
oh
and instead what will go in that place is forty five degree you know um hip extension with dumb bells or you could use a bar bell there as well but again it's just you get the same stimulus without the like what's the word it's like a war term
oh m
it's called collateral damage right
m
without the collateral
yeh
damage of like
yeah
sapping your c n s and n you know fighting your core brace and all of these things
yep
so it's almost
yep
like it like a more wise choice with all things considered especially like that kind of collateral damage sort of thing
yeah
so
no i mean that pairing is so good together the seated like girl with the with the hippixension because it's naturally going to be a short overloaded movement and then you the the girl its chains it at long muscle lengths so yeah if you're gonna it's like i think the studies or whatever the otkowifits studies
yeah
common anecdote but it's generally going to be like a r d l with a lying leg girl or a seated
okay
leg girl with like a forty five degree hip extension are going to be like grape parings together and so i tend to find the same and i really like that
yeah
my cool the last two we have are gluts actually gluts abs and calves these can probably be pretty quick for gluteshum single leg squat pattern movements
oh
i have a rear foot elevated split squat is for sure my favorite and then any type of lunch really like a straight up dumb bell walking lunch smashes my my gluts i think you could even make it more hip dominant potentially by putting that bar on your back and doing it like a low bar style as you're lounging you're getting a bit of hip flexion there so a number of different ways you can you can do that and then i have a note here just that glue bridges and glue hip thrusts are
like an afterthought when it comes to actually building your gluts because their short overloaded movements with small range of motion and you're just going to get a lot more stimulus for your time with those single like squat patterns
yeah what i have on mine bulgarian
yeah
split squat is the
yeah
number one as much as
yeah
i this is just a personal preference i personally still like doing it with my toes on the bench or i guess t would be like the top of my toes you know
yeah
any time i've tried to do it with i like the ball of my foot
oh
there it just
yeah
it's harder for me and i will do him in a different way and what i what i will do is like you know the front foot
ah
wedge rear foot elevated split squaw i will have my ball might o s there but when
m
i'm just doing like a
yeah
traditional you know john meadows style bulgarian split squad you know contra laterally loaded and like it fucking beats me i have it in my program right now my only on my second lower it's my only exercise i do one hard set to failure and now two
yeah
weeks in a row i am unbelievably
uh
sore
h
from it
yeah i think i need to add those back in man it's been a minute since i uh yeah yeah
yeah
it's been a while
and i really i try like i just put a story up on my on my instagram like you know two days ago i really try and push my knee forward and get as much like quad you know contribution to it and it crushes my lute so that one is just like
yeah
tried and true you know if you if you
yeah
put that in and train
yeah
it hard like your butt is going to get bigger for sure
yeah yeah you and i have talked about this on the podcast that like even when you try to make it as quad dominant as possible the best you can hope for is still like a fifty percent quad
yeah
fifty percent glut type thing so
yeah
no i fully agree with you man like it's
yea
the sledge hammer
he
like if you throw in one set of those at the end of your leg day you're just that's all you need you're just done
all you need and then the other
um
one i have like it
oh
that i think could be a little bit easier to set up potentially
oh
is a deficit reverse lunch so
yeah
front foot is going to be elevated on maybe like a
yeah
four to six inch plate form i again just prefer a contra lateral load
m
i'm going to hold on to a support so i don't have to worry about balance being a limiting factor and i'm going to step backwards and lunch if you're someone who's has some patella
yeah
tendanitis type of nee problems this could probably be better option for you as well moving backwards
yeah now i like that love the deficit reverse lunge as well especially hand supported
yeah
the only problem i find with that like single dumb bell hand supported loading is you really do have to do it at the end of your work out because if
m
you try to do that at the beginning you'd have to hold like a two hundred pound dumb bell or something
oh yeah yeah
um
i'll do it in the smith machine
cool
too
so
sometimes
yes
yeah
no that's a good call as well
yeah
um moving on to ab's straight up we did our ab experiment last year you and i over the summer
m
we both decided to train abs after not training
ye
as i'm pretty much back to not training
ye
as i would say that like i write them in my program is a week and i would say i do them one out of every eight times
oh
so like i would say once a month they come up and i'm like i have
ah
ten minutes i should do some abs you know so they get really or for like four or five days and then i'm like i'm good for the month you know but the ones that i do when when i do do them are either cable crunches with like the super small range of motion really just trying to extend it the spine and flex at the spine you're not really trying to hip flexion um then curl ups which are essentially like the same exact idea as a cable crunch where you're just going to
oh
extend it the spine and flex at the spine so it's the super small range of mo and that you can do on the ground or i prefer to do them on the g h d kind of hanging off so it's like a decline and i can only do like ten raps as a macxset to failure which is perfect i don't have to add any weight or anything it's just that hard if i'm doing it hanging off the edge of a g h d um and then gar hammer crunches i don't really do them too often but i had to demo them for for a paragon v o
last week and i did like six raps and my absreliecramping up on
oh
me and everyone at paragon loves cigar hammer crunches essentially what that is is it's like a lying
yeah
leg raise button that of actually lie raising your legs which would be like hip flexion and extension um you're just going to kind of lift your legs up so they're almost vertical and you're just going to do the exact same movement of flexing your spine and extending your spine
oh
and so your legs are literally just going to be the lever the rotation point instead of your torso being the rotation point it's just going to be your legs but it's the same idea of just flex and extend the spine so it's this you know three to five inch range of motion or something like that
yeah so i have a new one
yeah
that i've actually been and i have actually been training my abs consistently i do
uh
two sets twice
yeah
per week and the thing
yeah
is there their source seventies
yeah
eh
yeah yeah
um but on the one day i have a awaited swiss ball
oh
crunch and what i really
oh
did with with my abs like i'm just going
yeah
to train i'm just going to i'm going to two movements that overload them in the lengthened position and that's what i'm going to do and the thing what i like about the swiss ball crunch is you literally just keep rolling back until your back is like completely art and they are completely stretched and then i just like well crunch up from that position and man
yeah
fucking crushes me like it crushes me i do two sets the first set i can usually get like ten or eleven the six the second sets usually around like six
yeah
and
yep
next thing i know i wake up in the morning and their toast
yep
um and
that
the
sounds like my g h d curl up
yeah
like we're
very
to get in the
very
same numbers
similar
basically
yeah but just a little bit more like back supported and
yeah
then the second one i do abel i do him with like a more of a hollow position
yeah
if you i was actually trying
yeah
to show this to a client this week and i was like pulling up google to try and show every version of them if you hit google people have their like necks arched and they're looking
uh
up like don't do that kind of like down your chest kind of create like a turtle
h yeah
shell with your back and roll out
yeah
that way and you will put so
yeah
much more of the stimulus like through your abs um and i do that i touch my
m
nose on the ground i know some people might think that's gross
ah
in the gym but it keeps me honest and i can
yeah
i can probably only do like eleven on the first set second set drops again
yeah
to like six or seven and i'm literally smoked
yeah have you tried one yet on your toes
no i just can't do it
i
i
don't
know
think i
i know
could
i
do
can't
it
do
either
it yeah i don't
amazing
think i don't even tink i get
yea
out let alone back
yeah you don't need much man you don't need much
yeah
all right so caves
oh
i
ye
have one movement basically it's the deficit single leg dumb bell calf rays hold the dumb bell in the same leg is the leg that's working other legs hanging off the side you're using your other hand to support on like a power rack beam or i actually just do him on the stairs i grab the railing of the stairs with one hand and i hold the dog well in the other hand and do my calf phrases that way and then i just for the first time last week decided to be innovative and try
a single leg deficit calf phrase holding a d handle on my cable stack so it's literally the exact same movement that i
yeah
just described but instead of using a dumb bell it's using a cable stack and i honestly don't think there's a bit of difference in the way that it feels its equally hard at every point of the range of motion and um it's just variation that maybe sometimes i'll do if i don't feel like carrying a dumb bell around with me yeah
yeah i would say what
oh
i like there is something where i'm loaded at the hip so like think like you're like your line hack right brian
yeah
i'm going to load that it's it's seated at the hip i keep my hips bent and then i'm just going to do calf races there obviously you know leverage the stretched position but i just find it like it's just simpler to execute than when like the bar is on your back or whatever because you're taking that hip you know um not support
oh
but like you're removing an entire articulating
yeah
joint from it it's just simpler
yeah and it's less fatiguing you don't have spinal loading
exactly and i personally don't
yeah
like the one where where you're pressing
ah
moves
oh
that just sucks with
yeah
me i want the pressing platform
yah
to stay rigid and what is going to move is like the weight or load at my hip or whatever so there's like
yeah
the angle you know seated ones are on ven do it on like a hack squad or whatever i just dropped the thing down you know low where you can just lean forward on it but yeah that's pretty much
yeah
what i will do nine out of ten times
yeah i'll actually change my answer and say that the deficit single leg caffres is my second favorite and that doing them on the leg press at cases
oh
gym and i forgot about him because i've only done this been able to do this once but who goes to end one and drains calves you know
yeah
but
ah
but but i did i did calf raises on the leg press machine that they have there the atlantis and it was it was perfect i mean you just yeah you get that deep stretched position you can load it up there's tons of stability the negative to my deficit single leg calf phrases that you have to hold something
yeah
so if you can eliminate even another matter and just you know lock yourself in with a back pad and just go
hm
that's even better i've tried to rig up my pendulum and my little
oh
hack squat linear sled thing to do calf phrases on it and and i can't do it it actually comes with a calf bar that you can insert into the platform and
yeah
it sits like two inches above
oh
the platform and then you can do cafphrases on it but i can't use that i don't know how anyone uses it because i can't get a stretch position at the bottom it's not nearly high enough it needs to be like four inches tall instead of like two inches or whatever but if that thing were able to do that would be perfect but
yeah
yeah i'll just stick with my single leg caffres i guess
yep yeah
cool that's all we got
so i mean today's episode was a lot of fun a little longer than normal but
yeah
a lot of body part to cover i think
yeah
i think episodes like this are super helpful i also always find funny is like how a wind we are with different things
yeah
so i think
much of our choices are based on i think our experience and what equipment we generally have access to and so my choices are very heavily influenced by the equipment that's in my home gym which as robust as it is it certainly lacks some elements that are relatively common in commercial gems
yeah but i think a lot of it's like pattern based in and knowing what you're looking for
yeah
and then manipulating your
oh
environment to allow you to
h
find that that stimulus
yep for sure
cool as always guys thank you for listening brian and i will talk to you next week
