Today I'm going to be going over the best exercises for every muscle group and I'm not going to be doing it alone. Joining me is the Science Explained man himself, Jeff Nippard. Let's do it. The first muscle group we're starting with... Legs.
We have to. For everybody. Half the people are gone now. Yeah. How does an exercise make it into the top exercise?
Is it all based off activation or is there other criteria? Not quite. three criteria. The first is high tension and high stretch. So the muscle needs to have something to work against in the stretch position.
The second thing is it needs to feel good. So that means it doesn't give you pain. It has like a smooth, nice feel to it.
Like you feel it in the muscle more than you do in the joints. And then the third thing is, wanna guess? So, Potential for overload. That's it.
That's actually it. My man. Let's go. Okay. Potential for overload.
Okay. So you want to be able to add reps or add weight over time. The biggest muscle in the body is the quads.
And then the second is close between glutes and calves actually. The calves? Yeah.
The calves are huge. Okay. There's two big muscles in the calves, right?
Lately I've been doing a lot of Smith machine squats and I like that because from a hypertrophy standpoint, you can push it a little closer to failure without feeling that same sense of risk. We're gonna have quads and glutes taken care of with this one, okay? But hamstrings will not be taken care of at all. So when you go down into the hole, the hamstrings are stretching here, but they're shortening here.
Okay. So you're not actually getting like a full stretch on the hamstrings, and when you go up... Now they're shortening here, but they're lengthening down here.
Oh, yeah. What is your max squat now? 507. Nice.
Yeah. You beat me. Really? My all time is 501. No way.
Congratulations. Damn, okay. That's legit. I'm not ready for this right now.
You're what? I'm not ready for a 315 squat. Yes, you are.
With no belt, no knees. Yeah, also, I don't know if I'm rocking with the Vapor Maxes on squats, bro. They're just going to pop.
Nice. That's a good squat right there. Yes, sir. Bro, your quads have gotten bigger too, man. So long length partials is when you do partial reps in the lengthened aspect of the lift.
So when the squads are most stretched. So you basically only go about halfway up and then you go back down. Stop there, nope.
So you see, you have this, the tendency that every serious lifter has, which is to go too high. Stop. Go back down go back down. That's it. You're doing half reps Beautiful that's way harder than long range You can't rest of the top exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so like bend forward Those three heads get stretched here and then they contract as you come up as you would in an RDL But there's one head That doesn't cross the hip joint. So how could it possibly get worked from our RDL?
I can't You can't. But all four heads cross the knee joint. So if you do a leg curl, you will hit all four heads of the hamstrings.
Why do you think that I, Jeff Knippard, prefer the seated hamstring curl over the lying hamstring curl? Because you can load it more. No.
No. Second guess. Three and you're out.
Collab over. Does that have something to do with the height? No. No. Two.
And three. When we sit down, the hamstring is already pre-stretched at the beginning of the range of motion. Right.
Whereas when you lie down, the hamstring is not stretched at all. Compared over 12 minutes. weeks of training, seated hamstring curls to line leg curls. Which one do you think resulted in more muscle growth? Seated.
Every time? Seated. Almost, I think, around like 1.5 times the growth over 12 weeks, which is significant. Yeah.
The most interesting part of that is that the one head that doesn't cross the hip joint didn't see a difference. So that tells us that it is in fact, most likely the stretch, right? Because that head, since it doesn't cross the hip, wouldn't actually be stretched on this, would it?
Wow, yeah. You see? Yeah.
I don't make entire training decisions based off of one study, but if I had the option, I'm gonna pick this one. So Will, this is great. Do you feel your hamstring stretched here?
Yeah. Come forward a bit more. Do you feel?
You're more stretched? Oh, yeah. And do you still feel secure?
Yeah. Yeah, okay. So it's better to lean forward. It is as long as you don't... I don't find it feels awkward and you can't overload it as well.
Alright, this is gonna be award-winning. Nah, I'm not sh- A lot of people think. of the incline press as just an upper pec exercise and it's like oh no what's going to happen to my mid and lower pecs that is completely blown out of proportion there was a recent study that compared flat bench to incline bench for the lower pecs same growth For the mid-pecs, same growth. For the upper-pecs, better growth with incline.
Again, that's only one study, but it does tell us that the incline press doesn't just target the upper-pecs. It will grow your entire pec. Okay. I'm just going to check. your bar path here.
That's good. You fixed it as soon as I said I was going to check it. Yeah. Because you were pressing out in front of you and now you're going up. I'm afraid of the J hooks, man.
Yeah, I know. In terms of incline on the bench, is it like a 45 degree? Yeah, I think the 45 gives you a pretty good combination of like upper chip pack and deltoid.
Do you see that there's a benefit to using the freeway incline over? I do think it has better strength carryover than the Smith machine. That's great. Do you ever do the, uh, the partial reps on this?
I do. Do you? I've done them on almost everything. Holy shit. I would 100% put safeties on here.
I think we should. Is that a good example, you know? As you can tell, we always use safeties. Oh, wait.
It's backwards. Okay. This is going to work now. Hey.
Bro, that's really good. Yeah? Yeah! That's a strong time pass. I actually don't think I'm going to do this, bro.
I did chess like two days ago. And, um... Sure, Josh. Sure.
Yeah, I'm not. No, no. With these, I actually do like to do higher reps. Three sets for your pecs a week is actually enough to make gains for most people.
Off three sets? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You probably get about, maybe around 60% of your maximum growth potential off of just three sets. Holy shit. Per week.
this is so far ahead is like I try to get like really deep on the stretch here yeah holy shit you'll find that the cable is always trying to pull you back you're always having to play this balance act a little bit and so it disperses a little bit of the tension so you can direct all the tension into your your pecs. Oh that feels good. Yeah and if you're doing high reps it's all that more important to make sure I think you take at least one set to failure because you might find like oh I did 15 reps like I'm so tired I'm obviously done but then you push it to failure and you get like four or five more. For back, I think it's one of the rare muscles where you really do want two types of exercises.
One is a vertical pull and one is a horizontal pull. So for the vertical pull, that can be a pull down or a pull up. The horizontal pull can be basically any type of row.
I like a chest supported row. I do too. Because you're very stable.
Everything is locked in. And so you can direct all that tension directly to your back. You want to think about like rounding this out.
So like allowing your shoulder blades to pull apart and then squeeze them together as you come up. And if. If it helps you get a better contraction, it's totally okay if you allow your chest to, in my opinion. But just let it be consistent. Let's say on week one, you're always fully attached to the pad.
And then by week six, you're doing this. Like that might be a bit of that fake overload. Nice.
Those are really good. Oh my god, I'm already cramping from that set. It really does light up your whole back which is why we can do pull down or pull up.
What do you prefer? I'll let you run this one. I think I prefer pull down. Down?
Why is that? I feel like for me... like to be able to progress consistently on pull-ups is so difficult, especially because you have to weigh yourself every time. I feel like in order for an accurate overload, right? Fair.
I respect pull-ups more. Oh, absolutely. 100%. Yeah. I think pull-downs are smoother.
I find more people can like feel their back working better, but you, I think going to failure on a pull down is more fun. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that.
Let's do that. All right. So you have, you have all the grips in the world at the gym.
Yes. Which one do you pick? So if I do a wider grip overhand grip like we did on the row, I'll do a neutral closer grip for the pull downs Freaking Yao Ming ass lat pull down.
Oh, yeah, and so for these I like to emphasize the lats more with the closer grip But you're really just driving my elbows down if I was trying to target more mid traps I would kind of lean a little bit more my elbows back like this whereas if I want to emphasize lats I'm gonna exaggerate this just for the demonstration but you're almost pulling it down in front of you. Now I'm not gonna do it to that extreme. Do you see? And you can't go as heavy obviously. Now that's an extreme version so just drive your elbow basically straight down now.
So that's still gonna engage lats so much more. It sounds like you're trying to get your elbows into your pockets. Yeah that works too.
Oh I've gotten so much bigger bro, it's freaking insane. Are you bulking or cutting right now? Cutting. Are you natural or enhanced right now?
Some Turk. Some Turk. So is this kind of like...
The cable fly, where you're gonna go higher reps? I go more moderate here. I would probably go like 8 to 12. So stretch and then eccentric? From a technique standpoint, I would actually go range of motion, which encompasses stretch. then probably eccentric control.
I was actually part of a study. We found that reps between two seconds and eight seconds were basically equal. So if you do those super freaking fast reps that are just like bouncy reps, those are suboptimal.
If you do super, super, super slow reps that are like, each rep takes like 10 or 20 seconds, those are suboptimal. But anything between two to eight seconds of total rep length is optimal. As long as you're controlling the eccentric, you're probably fine.
One thing I've been doing lately? ...is actually raising the height of the cable. The cable will apply most resistance to your side delt when there's a 90 degree angle between the cable and your arm.
That's a pretty shortened position. My shoulder isn't stretched. Yeah. Okay?
Now watch what happens when I raise it up. Tell me when I get to a 90 degree angle. Yep.
There. Yep. And now you get a much bigger stretch here.
Yeah, that's nice. Really good, Will. I feel like lateral raises is one of those exercises that's extremely hard to constantly progress. You always see the same people, like it's the 30s or 35s, and there's no really going up from there. So like, what do you do?
You'd be surprised if you, I think if most people actually were to diligently try. their weights over time, they would find that they are able to add at least one rep to a set. So if you think about it, like even adding one rep to your third set, it's progression.
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You can also see a detailed breakdown of the micronutrients in your foods and the micronutrients nutrients you probably need more of. Okay. Yeah, Nelly, that's great.
Personally, my favorite feature of the app is the cyclical calorie feature. The app will automatically adjust its calories on a day-to-day basis to fit my lifestyle seamlessly. It's basically like you have Jeff with you 24-7 for a fraction of the cost. This app is premium, which means they're not going to be bombarding you with ads. They're not going to be selling your data.
And actually, it is cheaper than MyFitnessPal Premium. So I highly encourage you to check the app out. Make sure to download it or go to Macrofactorapp.com and use code WILL for a two-week free trial. Done. The rear delts got worked pretty hard on that row.
Okay. Okay, so if you wanted to get really minimal, you could just axe this. But I think rear delts are really important for a physique and they're a muscle that a lot of new lifters tend to neglect.
Reverse pec deck, the standard way you do this, you sit... face the machine and you sweep the weight out. Yeah.
But I think there's a better way to do it. If you were gonna stretch your rear delt, would you hold your arm here or would you hold it here? Here. Here, right? Yeah.
But on this machine, you actually don't get past this position unless you do this and turn side on. Oh. So now you get a pre-stretch on your rear delt and you sweep the weight out like this.
You actually get that deep stretch. Wow. ...aspect of the range of motion.
I've never seen someone do like that before. Yeah, I haven't either actually. Is this one that you would do like the 15 to 20? Uh, like 12 to 15. 12 to 15. So, so, okay, so, no. So really turn side, like, like, like really turn side on.
Oh shit. And then really stretch it across. So you feel a deep stretch here.
Oh yeah. So like, like, no, no, no, like. Like turn. Oh shit. Your toe.
Point your chest. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it.
Yeah. Okay. And then reach across.
Dude, my chest is cramping from that. Oh wow. Dude. There you go. Yeah.
See, you should feel like a big stretch there. There you go. That's great.
It looks good. I call these Bayesian cable curls the same as the lateral raises. My bicep will experience peak tension when there's a 90 degree angle between my forearm and the cable.
So the bicep is pretty short here. Yeah. Whereas, if I raise it up to hand height, tell me where the 90 degree angle happens. Yeah, there.
It's way earlier. Wow, yeah. So you get more tension in the scratch position.
Okay. Nice. Ugh.
Alright, last one? Uh, yes. So, triceps. I feel like you're gonna pick an overhead for the long head. You felt right.
Yeah. Why, why, why, uh, why do you think? It's the biggest head of the tricep. But why would going overhead be better for the long head? No, that's fine.
So the long head is the only head that crosses both the elbow joint and the shoulder joint. So it's the only one that's really impacted by shoulder position. It's the part of the tricep that will make you look...
A lot bigger from the back because it pops out like this. Yeah. And in a front double bicep pose.
It's the one that drops down, right? It's the one that drops down. Yeah.
The long head is not contracted at all. But if you bring your arm down, you'll feel. it get way harder. Yeah.
Even though you didn't do anything different at your elbow. So if we want a stretch, we're gonna achieve that by putting the arm up overhead. Okay. If we're trying to achieve a contraction, we're not gonna get peak contraction with the arm up overhead because you just saw that as you move your arm back behind your torso, so that's where the kickback would come in. Kickback.
I do kickbacks this way, I'll show you. I just kind of lean back so that I can get my arm behind my torso. Because if you think about it, this is biomechanically exactly the same thing as this.
Oh really? Oh, okay. You do this. Oh yeah.
Right? Oh yeah. Wow. A lot more.
So you can also, you can do it that way. That's totally fine in like a two-step thing. Yeah. Or more fluid. You could just do it all in one smooth motion.
Yeah. That looks great though, Will. Oh, I love this. Yeah.
Good. Good. Good. That was sick. Is that it?
Yeah. No calves, no abs? No calves, no abs. That's it? That's it.