Jeff Cavaliere has hit the nine mistakes made when building muscle and shares how to fix them.
Jeff Cavaliere, a highly respected fitness expert and the founder of Athlean-X, has built a reputation for delivering science-based workout programs that are both effective and transformative. Whether you are seeking advice to take your workout routine to the next level or find out what supplements will be most beneficial, Cavaliere is a great source of knowledge.
[RELATED: Jeff Cavaliere’s Full Workout Routine]
During a recent video, Cavaliere targeted nine mistakes made when building muscle and shared thoughts on how to fix them.
Jeff Cavaliere’s Muscle-Building Mistakes
- Calves – Stop bouncing, go heavy
- Biceps – Full extension is a MUST
- Triceps – Are you training the long head properly?
- Legs – Twice a week training mistake
- Chest – Why incline pressing is a game-changer
- Back – Pull-ups vs. Lat pulldowns
- Shoulders – Heavy pressing isn’t enough!
- Abs/Core – You’re missing THIS for real strength
- Forearms – The underrated muscle group you need to train
Calves
Jeff Cavaliere began by discussing calf workouts. While many bounce when performing different exercises, Cavaliere explains that it’s important to train heavy and that the muscle is built to handle stress.
“If you’re doing them with any type of bouncing or fast repetitions, your calves aint’ going to grow. That’s a fact. Both the gastroc and soleus insert into one common tendon, the Achilles tendon. That tendon is built for highly explosive, ballistictype forces enough to propel your body through space.”
Biceps
When training biceps, it is important to get that full pump and make sure the muscle is being trained properly. Cavaliere shared that this is done with full extension.
“There is one thing lacking in all the years I’ve been building my biceps up and that is not fully extending my elbows on my every repetition.”
Triceps
There are three heads of the tricep and it is important to hit each one properly. Cavaliere continued to discuss the importance of the long head, since it takes up alarge part of the arm.
“It’s the biggest portion of the tricep muscle. It’s responsible for, get this, two third of the size of the triceps, which we know is responsible for two thirds of the arm size.
How do we do this? Through its contracted state or through its most extended Stretched state.”
Legs
Jeff Cavaliere urges those to split leg days between quads and hamstrings. It is possible to get two workouts done in one week if done this way.
“Anterior and posterior training. What that means is focusing on your quads in anterior training and focusing on your glutes and hamstrings in your posterior training day. You can get two workouts done in a week.”
Chest
There are many chest exercises that are beneficial to use during your workout but Cavaliere highlights incline pressing to develop an even stronger chest. There are two major reasons why he focuses on incline pressing during chest day.
“Number one: a greater range of motion. The second thing is it’s also the one that’s going to contribute to the area of the chest that’s most likely to be underdeveloped even in people that have more developed chests. The lower chest is sort of almost developed in people who do any type of chest training.”
Back
Many bodyweight exercises are used to crush back and Cavaliere targets pull-ups.
“One of my favorite ways to do it is with a bodyweight exercises and it’s the pull-up. People pursue pull-ups if they do in terms of how many repetitions they can get. The mistake there is while it’s valuable in some regard, it’s not the only thing.
You need to turn that exercise into a compound strength builder, mass builder at some point in your training by adding some additional weight.”
Shoulders
Jeff Cavaliere acknowledges that many gym goers focus on heavy pressing when training shoulders but there are other important areas as well. This includes rear delts.
“I do a heavy pressing exercise and it feels great. That’s awesome. check that box but it’s not enough. you have great opportunities to build those muscles up and overload them with exercises that can do that. Rear delts right off the bat, doing a seated row with heavy weight is one of the best ways to build your rear delts.”
Abs/Core
When breaking down ab/core training, it is a major way to excel in other workouts as well.
“One of the things that you can do to improve the outcome of all the exercises you perform is to strengthen your core. What that means is including exercises like carries or including exercises like a palloff press.”
Forearms
The final body part, which many people forget about, is forearms. Strengthening this area can help get a better overall performance when weightlifting.
“Strong forearms are going to set up better-improved performance on all the bigger exercises you do at the gym.”
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