Are the exercises you're doing for
muscle growth completely mismatched to
your body? How do you know? How do you
adjust the technique of those exercises
for them to be matched to your body? Or
how do you replace them with exercises
that won't suck for your weird body? You
have a weird body. Let's go find out how
weird, look at some science, and show
you what to do to get jacked.
What does it mean to have a build
exercise mismatch? [music]
The idea exercises is typically in the
hypertrophy world that they target the
specific muscles you're trying to train.
But the build doesn't always match the
exercise as well as we would like. Folks
that are taller or shorter than average
by a lot,
folks with legs that for their height
even are longer or shorter than average,
arms that are much longer or much
shorter than average, and folks with
torsos that are longer or shorter than
average by a long shot can sometimes get
a pretty big mismatch where the target
muscle isn't the muscle being stimulated
the most. This can happen even when
these are super common exercises that
are even the hardcore basics. They're
supposed to work well for everyone. So a
lot of folks who don't have a great
match to the exercise can end up
spending weeks, months, and even years
plowing weight exercises that they could
have either modified or replaced to get
a better workout. First, it's just not
hitting the target muscle well. Second,
it's hitting other muscles instead.
Third, it could really be doing a number
on your joints. And fourth, even though
it sort of trains the muscle you want,
the systemic overall fatigue from having
to push that hard because the efficiency
sucks can be really, really high. There
are so many exercises and so many
different builds, how can you know if
you're mismatched? Well, we have a few
examples that are really, really common.
So let's work through some of these and
see what the situation is, if you might
be a candidate for the build mismatch,
and how we can fix it.
Squats, if you have a short torso, can
be really hard. The way to tell is you
have to bend over a zillion degrees and
basically good morning the weight,
>> [music]
>> and you don't feel shit in your quads.
Because your short torso has to
compensate so much for how much longer
your quads are than they are relatively
in other people, the center of gravity
can't be fussed with, otherwise you fall
forward or fall back. So, in order to
just maintain a center of gravity over
your feet, [music] if you have an
incredibly short torso and relatively
long femurs, you're going to have to
lean over. It's just mechanics, and
there's basically no way around it,
unless you're willing to make some
adjustments. The tech fix here is to
take a wide stance, point your toes
really, really far out. If you look at
it from the side, that decreases the
lever arm that your quads make, and thus
you don't have to lean forward as much
to compensate. The tough thing here is
that not everyone's adductors are that
flexible, and if they're not that
flexible, you're going to get one hell
of an adductor workout, but [music]
it will 100% work better for your quads,
and you get free adductor work while
you're doing it.
>> [music]
>> The other thing is to maintain a
completely vertical upright chest the
entire time, because that forces your
knees forward, make sure your knees come
forward as much as they can during the
squat. That's a huge deal to get your
quads to do as much of the work as
possible. And lastly, do not even bother
with low bar squats. High bar squats
only, cuz low bar squats make it so that
you seemingly have a shorter torso.
That's the problem you already have,
it's just going to make it worse. So,
take that bar, roll it up, pull your
shoulder blades back, put that bar
really high on your traps, super high
chest, really wide legs, toes pointed
really far out, and as you sit down,
keep your chest vertical so that your
knees open up, and they go forward, and
that way you can get way deeper for your
squat, feel your quads way more, and not
be limited by your back nearly as much.
The replacements here are pretty
straightforward. Of course, one of the
best replacements here is the belt squat
because they don't rely on your torso
being it at all in any particular
length. They just don't care if your
torso is a single point in Euclidean
space or like the longest line ever in
the universe. That exercise, all these
exercises, work essentially the same
because the bar isn't unbalanced at the
top. You don't have to use your body to
make sure you stay over your center of
gravity. That's a huge thing.
Leg press or hack squat, but you happen
to have very inflexible ankles, or
you're a short king, short queen, or
even short god. Well, there's only one
short god, and that's Jeff Nipper.
>> [music]
>> But if you're in that situation, leg
presses and hack squats might really be
a bad match up for you. How do you know
they're a bad match up? The machine
bottoms out for you, reaches its bottom
position before you get a major tension
stretch in your quads, or you can get
that stretch and tension, but you've got
to come up on your toes, which massively
limits the amount of drive and thus
muscle activation you can put through
your quads. That's happening to you on
the leg press or happening to you on the
hack squat, you probably have a build
mismatch for that exercise. There are
two fixes to all of these, including the
leg press hack squat example.
There's a tech fix that we can actually
do something about it, and you still get
to do the exercise, or there are
replacement exercises that you could do
instead. First, you could put your feet
way lower on the platform, point your
knees out and your toes out at 45°.
and you can let your knees track out as
you go down.
>> [music]
>> This can allow you to get a much greater
range of motion with your heels still on
the platform and thus go a long way
towards making this problem way better.
Weightlifting shoes are an awesome thing
that extends the functional ability of
your calves to be flexible, which can
allow you to put your feet even lower on
the platform, get even more quad range
of motion and still be able to push
through your heels. Another thing, of
course, is to have on the leg press a
pad underneath your butt {slash} lower
back so that you can change the angle
and get deeper and extend
[clears throat] yourself closer to the
pad so you can have a higher range of
motion.
On the hack squat, you can put yoga
blocks underneath your shoulders in most
machine designs. Now all of a sudden,
it's like you're 4 in taller and you can
get all the way down in most cases.
Lastly, you can yell at your gym owner
for buying shit machines because to be
completely honest, most hack squats are
pretty good but leg presses are fucking
industry-wide disaster. Most leg presses
are angled wrong, the range of motion is
cut super short, the back pad is angled
wrong. It's like a giant attempt at a
sick joke to get you a lower back
workout instead of a quad workout. Now,
you can get your gym owner get you an
Arsenal leg press, it's going to be
amazing. Put a little back pad under
that mug and you have the world's best
leg press right at your disposal. Short
of that, you might have to put up with
some dog shit equipment. If you can't
replace these exercises with anything
good, you can't modify them, they still
suck, there are other exercises for you
to do if you have a bad match up with
your leg press or hack squat. The best
fix here is to replace yourself with a
person that actually grew up to be an
adult height like me.
>> [music]
>> Wait, no.
>> [music]
>> Pull downs, but you're too tall or too
short for the setup. If you're too short
for the pull down machine, you got to
climb up like a fucking mountaineer,
which I do all the time, being a
confirmed, [music]
validated, notarized government height
4 ft 8 and 1/2. If you've ever seen me
in real life and I don't look that
short, that's cuz you've been lying to
yourself about the height as well.
You're probably 5 ft 3 in that case and
not 5 9 like you've been telling
everyone.
In any case, if you're extra really
short and it's like extra
[clears throat] really shitty machine,
what ends up happening is [music] you're
trying to pull down on the situation to
get a nice peak contraction at the
bottom by touching your chest. That
doesn't work because the machine
literally bottoms out and you end up
just doing a top end partial. The
situation stops right in front of your
face and you're like, oh, I guess that's
it. If you're really tall, you're going
to have the opposite problem. Instead of
getting that awesome deep stretch at the
top for your lats, the machine is just
going to come to a stop and you're going
to be up here with half bent elbow
going, oh crap, the literally most
hypertrophic part of the movement is
gone for me cuz I'm too tall. They get
laid too much cuz I'm tall and women
like that sort of thing.
It's a common thing I say to myself. If
you're short, you can use the double pin
trick where you put one pin into the
middle of the rack and another one the
actual weight you need to use. That
actually pre-lowers the lat pull down
bar for you so that you can wrap your
Versa Grips around it and get to pulling
and it's no big deal because you don't
have to be a fucking mountaineer or a
skyscraper climber to get the actual bar
in your hands. Another option, if you're
a shorter king, is to try to get a bar
that extends your grip. A V bar often
times has a declivity that basically is
like 3 or 4 in lower than you would do a
conventional bar. So, if you do a V bar,
not only does it stretch your lats more,
but it also allows you to tie your
Versas in without having to jump higher
than that ever jumped in your entire
life. Now, what you can also do is
lengthen partials. Okay, you have some
kind of lat pulldown machine there's
just no adjusting it. You can only pull
until eye level. That's okay, you get a
massive stretch. Keep pulling eye level
till you're blue in the face because
you're actually doing the part of the
range of motion that does the most
growth. If you're tall, try being
shorter, I guess. If that's not going to
work, we have at least three things for
you to try.
>> [music]
>> First, try the straight bar. Don't use
any of the attachments that hang lower
like the V-bar cuz you're for sure going
to cut that top end of the range of
motion. Second of all, try a wider grip.
It's not ideal cuz the stretching is
good, but at least you get a stretch cuz
you can finally not have to bottom out.
And lastly, try leaning back through the
entire movement, especially at the very
top. So, you can stay very vertical as
you're pulling, but as you come back up
to touch, you lean back a little bit
which stretches the crap out of your
back. And then as you pull down, you
pull yourself forward back into the
device. Or if you don't want to do all
that complexity, what you can do is just
lean back to begin with and stay leaned
back. I don't mean all the way back, I
mean like 15 or 30°. That can be enough,
especially with a wide grip, to get you
a nice stretch. If none of that works,
there's lots of replacing. First of all,
pull-ups adapt to every single body
mechanic. They're never wrong. Assisted
pull-ups can be a thing you use for
sure. Some machines are kinder than
others, but sometimes they work a little
better. And if you happen to be a short
king and you want a nice peak
contraction, putting some kind of cable
attachments to hang off of the assisted
pull-up machine can be a massive thing
for getting a huge range of motion and
peak contraction at the top and still
going all the way to the bottom.
Barbell curls are a staple and they're
an amazing exercise. But some people's
wrists and elbows just don't turn out
that way. You feel a crap load of force
through your forefinger, and you feel
almost no force through your pinky area
of that palm. For some folks, a much
narrower grip works better. For some
other folks, a much wider grip works
better. [music] So, if you're struggling
with barbell curls, but you want to keep
doing them, try a few different grip
widths, and you might find one that for
your particulars of your body works
really well.
Now, the replacement here is super easy.
And by easy, [music] I mean literally
the easy bar attachment to cables or the
easy bar curl bar itself. The easy bar,
be it on the inside or on the outside,
is going to feel amazing for folks that
don't have superior wrist and elbow
flexibility. Just using the easy bar can
be something you do kind of all the
time, and you could just never barbell
curl at all. If you want a barbell curl,
you can modify, but the easy bar is a
huge lifesaver.
Next, [music]
bent rows. If you have very long arms or
a very long torso, it can be a
challenge. If you have a very long
torso,
it's going to take a lot of effort from
your spinal erector musculature to keep
yourself in that upright back locked-in
position.
What you'll be able to tell is that over
the course of the reps, your back starts
to round progressively more and more, or
it doesn't, and your effort in order to
keep it not rounded is progressively
higher and higher, exponentially so,
until the very end you're not failing
cuz you can't pull the bar to yourself.
You're failing because you're so rounded
over, the row isn't working anymore
because you lost your strong posture,
and you're literally unable to pull
neurologically as hard as you could. If
you have very long arms, that's cool,
but with super long arms in a bent row,
you can run into a problem
>> [music]
>> where having to pull all the way up to
your tummy, you end up losing so much of
your leverage advantage that pulling the
first half of the row from the bottom of
the floor up is really easy. Pulling the
second half is like the worst thing in
the world, and you feel like you can
generate almost zero tension at the
belly. That's a problem because we know
that the bottom parts of movements close
to the stretch cause more growth. So,
the more tension we can impose there,
the better. But now you're taking
tension away from that bottom part in
order to be able to complete the
exercise. Every row for you is like a
cambered bar row at that point. If your
spinal erectors are what's keeping you
from benefiting from rows, I got news
for you, son. Your spinal erectors need
to be bigger and strong.
>> [music]
>> That means you need to do more
deadlifts, more stiff-legged deadlifts,
more good mornings, and more flexion
rows. So, that when you do conventional
bent-over rows, your spinal erectors are
not a limiting factor. If you can
deadlift tons, then the row
comparatively is quite easy. If you
happen to have the situation where it's
really tough at the top, you can stay
more upright [music]
in the bent row. Even a 45° bent row,
you don't have to be all the way down
parallel to the ground. That's cool and
all, but if you're at 45°, then that
makes the lock out part of the top part
much easier, go to it. The advanced
version is to start the bottom of every
rep
>> [music]
>> fully bent over, and then at the top,
rise up and touch your tummy, so that
you start at 90°, and you come back to
45. Start at 90, finish at 45. That
leverage advantage improves for you as
you come up, which means you don't have
to be limited by the ability to touch
your chest nearly as much or the ability
to touch your tummy nearly as much as
you were before. Now, for replacement
exercises, it's super simple. Any row
machine that gives you chest support
eliminates this problem almost entirely.
Definitely for the spinal erector
problem. Now, if you happen to be a tall
king or queen with really, really,
really, really long arms and a really
short torso, rows are going to be a
little tough for you. Then, what you can
do is replace rows with partial rows or
a super set of regular rows to lengthen
partials. You You as many as you can
strict until you can't touch your tummy,
reset the weight for a quick second,
pull the weight halfway up for as many
times as you can. That gives you a lot
more work in that lengthened position,
it makes it a way more stimulating
exercise.
>> [music]
>> Stiff-legged deadlifts are amazing.
But if you have really long arms and a
really short torso and very flexible
hamstrings, you can run into a problem.
And by run into a problem, I mean
literally you run into the ground before
your hamstrings are painfully stretched
under maximum load. There are multiple
fixes you can have that for the vast
majority of people will make it so that
you do not have to abandon the amazing
exercise of the stiff-legged deadlift.
One of the fixes is to proudly push your
chest up especially at the bottom.
People say they have flexible
hamstrings, but that's because their
hips are tilting. If they raise their
chest like crazy and arch them out of
their backs, what ends up happening is
the hips tilt a ton and all of a sudden
you do get a massive stretch at the
bottom.
The next fix is to [music] functionally
reduce your arm length by taking a very
wide grip. A snatch grip or a super
snatch grip way outside of everything
you would conventionally see with arm
grip on a stiff-legged deadlift can be
amazing because it takes like half a
foot off of your arms. Let me tell you
from personal experience, an extra 6 in
goes a long way. That's why I said six,
makes sense of that. Another thing is a
cue that really works well doubly
together, two cues. An arched back at
the bottom pushing your tummy out and at
the same time pushing your hips and
knees back so that your knees are
straighter. People will get really deep
in a stiff-legged deadlift, but they'll
have like 3 in of bend at their knee.
And it's like, but hold on a second, if
you push your knee back instantly your
hamstrings would feel it. Another few
ways of helping yourself is to put
smaller plates on the bar. If you put
the 25s as the biggest plates on the
bar, there's two or three inches right
there for your range of motion. If you
don't have smaller plates around or you
have just Olympic plates and they're all
the same size, you can put a platform on
and do deficit stiff leg deadlifts
because apparently you need it. That's a
big deal. The last thing is as you're
doing this technique and implementing
these fixes, the mind muscle connection
is critical because remember, your body
just cares about lifting the weight from
point A to point B. The stiff leg
deadlift for hamstring size is the
opposite of all of that. You're going to
know it's working when your hamstrings
are painfully stretched at the bottom of
all the reps and then three sets later
you can't walk for a week. That's
science. If you can't do anything here
to replace it and nothing works, you can
do good mornings instead. 45 degree back
raise done right is awesome and you can
also try Smith machine hamstring leans
because those really let you push your
knees back, really tighten up your core
and really fry the god out of your hams.
>> [music]
>> The last thing to remember
is that exercises are always and
everywhere individualized and selected
to the person. There is no exercise you
have to do. There are no must do
exercises. That is a myth. If you try an
exercise and you don't love it right
away, do not abandon ship. I would
recommend trying an exercise for at
least a program, 4 to 8 weeks, a meso
cycle's length in the RP Hypertrophy
app. Tweak it, change the technique,
change your positioning, change some
grips and see if you can get the most
out of the exercise. Sometimes an
exercise starts out feeling not so
great, but you change the way you're
pulling or pushing, you change the grips
and it ends up being a phenomenal
exercise. So my big recommendation to
you is don't be a primadonna and be
like, "Uh, this exercise isn't good
enough for me." The worst case scenario,
if that doesn't work, is that you can
switch to another movement. What
movement should you switch to? You use
the replace function in our RP
Hypertrophy app, you [music] look at the
video of the movement itself, and that's
a big deal. Having instructional videos
in the RP Hypertrophy app is awesome,
because if you think you're doing the
exercise wrong, you can double-check
real fast. Jared Feather, IFBB Pro, and
a few other folks in our newest version
doing the exercises in a super awesome
way. If you're looking a lot like them
in the exercise that you're doing,
you're probably going to be able to hit
your muscle groups way better than if
you just flub the whole thing. When
you're making tech adjustments, like
reminding yourself that your feet
[music] need to be wider and lower on
the leg press,
use the pinned notes function in the RP
Hypertrophy app, make a note, check the
check marks to pin the note to the
exercise, then every single week that
you do that exercise, the first thing
you'll see when you're logging your shit
is, "Oh, I'm supposed to be doing this
low and wide." Perfect. Thank God for
the RP Hypertrophy app, which is what I
say verbatim every morning that I wake
up. After coughing up blood, of course.
With the combination of this knowledge,
knowing and understanding your own body,
and potentially, if you're interested,
using the RP Hypertrophy app, you've got
the entire formula to grow all the
muscle that you want, except for one
thing.
Effort. That part always be on you.
Best of luck in your next workouts. I'll
see you next time. [music]