If only I was doing that sooner.

What's up, guys?

Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

How many times have you said that before?

Or something like it.

Like, “I wish I knew that sooner”, or “I wish I was doing that earlier”.

I’m going to tell you, today I’m going to dedicate an entire video to the 8 exercises

that I wish I was doing a lot sooner in my lifting career.

Not just in terms of the gains I could have seen, but more importantly, the spirit in

which I could have seen them because I wasted a hell of a lot of time.

So, we’ve got 8 things to cover here.

Without further ado, let’s get right into it.

This first exercise might be fresh on your mind because we actually covered it in depth,

here on this channel just a couple of weeks ago.

This is a variation of a lat pulldown.

This is what we call the ‘rocking pulldown’.

No, not the bad version of the rocking pulldown.

I’m talking about the one that actually delivers gains.

This is a vertical pull that still allows us to get that extension of the arm back,

behind the body.

Remember, one of the biggest limitations to the lat pulldown as it’s done normally is

that you don’t really get good extension behind the body, which is limiting the effectiveness

of the lats.

But by doing it this way we can actually overcome that.

As you guys know, I always over deliver here on this channel.

So, I’m not just giving you 8.

It turns out I’m going to give you 9 because I have another back exercise here that I really,

really wish I was doing sooner.

It’s a high pulley one-armed row.

You can see when I do this I have all the elements I need to get a better lat contraction,

and better lat activation.

I’m actually able to get my arm up way out in front of my body, getting that lat on a

stretch that nothing else really provides because my arm is not just up over my head,

but out in front.

Then I can get that rotation and extension back behind my body that we were talking about

with the rocking pulldown.

But both of these exercises, I really believe, have led to some of my best gains – even

in recent years – from doing this instead of the classic alternatives.

This next one is actually more than just an exercise.

It’s a training concept that I wish I had adopted and used a lot sooner in my training.

It’s developing my straight arm scapular strength.

I believe when it’s maximized you’re going to realize hidden strength you never knew

you had.

Especially if it carries over to some of the big exercises like the deadlift, but more

importantly by improving the stability of your shoulders.

It’s going to allow you to have a lot more training longevity by protecting and strengthening

your joints.

All you have to do is look at this guy for proof that it actually works.

This is my fitness idol, Sylvester Stallone.

Here he is in his 70s, including a heavy dose of straight arm scapular strength work in

his training.

For reasons of why he continues to inspire me, I placed an exercise on my Instagram page

that he follows, that was our example of a more advanced version of straight arm scapular

work.

That’s the headbanger pullup.

Of course, a couple of days later, who shows up banging them out?

Sly himself, doing an amazing job.

I’m telling you guys, this is tough stuff.

And here he is never backing down from a challenge.

The key thing is, you’d better start doing the same.

You can do it with a very simple, straight forward exercise here, like the straight arm

pushdown.

It doesn’t require a big cable setup.

You could do this with a band if you want to.

The key is, you keep your arms straight, you drive down, and you stabilize with the scapula.

You’ll feel this exercise working properly if you don’t feel it in your triceps.

If you start to bend your elbows and the triceps start taking over the work, then you’re

not doing it properly.

You could take this to an even more advanced level with some bodyweight exercises like

the front lever raise.

But the fact is, guys, I don’t care how you do it, you have to include straight arm

scapular work as an entire training concept into your training.

And you will not regret it.

I really, really wish I had started this a lot sooner.

Apologies in advance on this next exercise, but the best way to demonstrate it is to use

those thigh high shorts that Jesse popularized just a couple of videos ago.

Now, I promise you, I made him wash these first.

This is the glute ham raise.

The benefit of this exercise is that it’s targeting the glutes.

I have to be honest, guys.

A long time ago when I first started training I never realized the importance of this muscle

group.

But now, as a trainer to professional athletes, the glutes literally sit right up there with

the core, in terms of their importance and function.

As a matter of fact, I would argue it’s even more important than the front side of

the core muscle because they’re the ones that are trying to help us counteract that

downward force of gravity.

So, the key element this exercise provides is, it allows us to integrate the glutes and

the hamstrings, into one movement and prioritize the glutes as the main drivers, letting the

hamstrings accessorize, and help out.

What we see with this exercise, what you’re trying to do, is get the glutes to do the

work they don’t want to do.

If you haven’t focused on glute training your glutes are likely taking a back seat,

literally, to what the job is at hand.

Then that forces the hamstrings to take on a load that they can’t handle.

That’s when hamstring strains occur.

So, if you do this exercise you’re likely going to see that your hamstring injury rate

will go down, and your overall posterior chain is going to be stronger.

You have to get these two muscles to work together if you want to optimize the performance

of your lower body.

Especially if you want to start training more like an athlete.

Let’s stick with the legs.

For that matter, let’s stick with those shorts, too, as we break out this next exercise.

It’s the squat.

Before we actually talk about the fact that I’m squatting onto a pair of dumbbells,

I want you to focus on the width of my feet.

You see, I think it’s really, really important that you find the width that works for you

early on in your training and stick with that.

I was always the type to follow what the magazines said, and it was always the classic ‘feet

at least shoulder width apart, toes out, and start squatting’.

But it never felt right to me.

It always felt like my knees, which were already sore from sports, were getting more, and more

aggravated from doing that.

Until I actually started to narrow my stance.

I determined my ability to narrow my stance based on that natural jumping position.

If I was going to jump right now I’d be a lot more narrow.

A little bit inside shoulder width.

As a matter of fact, if I were to roll and do a rolling getup from the floor I would

find that my knees, and my feet would take a much more narrow stance.

So, for me, that’s what’s natural.

I encourage you to find that because if you keep trying to squat from an unnatural position

it’s only going to do more harm than good for those knees.

To take that a step further, I also wish I was doing box squats a lot sooner as well.

Because of the fact that my patellar tendons were always on fire from some of that damage

from playing sports, I was always reluctant to allow myself to really let the quads take

on the brunt of the force as I dropped down to a squat.

I would really shortchange my depth every, single time, which was contributing to more

anterior force into my knees, and only aggravating the situation.

But by providing something down there for me – as a proprioceptive feedback for my

butt on every, single rep – it allowed me to comfortably let those tendons relax, let

the quads take on the brunt, and get better results from doing it.

Back up to the upper body.

Actually, a variation of an exercise that I did do for a very long time since the beginning

of my training, but not this way.

This is the dip.

We know that the dip has the capacity to help us build our shoulders, our chest, and our

triceps.

But it’s actually got broader abilities.

It can help us develop more scapular strength and stability through our upper body, and

also integrate more of these core muscles that are right here, nearby, begging to be

trained.

So, we have a little bit of a three-way dip circuit.

It’s something I covered in our holy trinity of ab training because, yes, you’re going

to hit those muscles.

The fact that you go down into a dip, when you come up to the top you add that all-important

plus portion that engages the serratus anterior that’s going to provide the stability to

your shoulder blades, once again.

You see how important that concept is.

Then from there, if you tuck your pelvis up here, into a posterior tilt you engage the

abs.

Now when we come back down you twist a little bit, causing that oblique activation of the

obliques themselves, and then you start to involve them when you repeat the movement.

You go right, you go center, you go left; the fact is, this is still going to give you

those same benefits to all those bigger show muscles that you’re doing the exercise for

in the first place.

But adding in this critical component that’s providing that stability and longevity to

your training.

Let’s stick with the shoulders and chest here for the next exercise that, again, I

wish I had started doing a lot earlier because I like the integration that this exercise

allows.

This is a crush grip dumbbell press out.

When you think about what’s going on here, we’re trying to train the front delts, and

we’re trying to train it in a bit of an explosive manner.

But we also need – for the safety and health of our shoulders – to have that stable platform

from which we’re pressing off.