[Music] all right what's going on guys and welcome to the new and improved push-pull leg series now unlike my last push-pull leg series from three years ago this time i'm combining the full week of training into this single video so if you want to run any of these workouts for yourself you can get after them right away you won't need to wait until the next episode comes out also i'm adapting many of these workouts from my upcoming power building 2. 0 program which i'm aiming to release at the end of the summer or early fall and that program is going to alternate between full body weeks which are more strength focused and similar push-pull legs weeks to the one here which are more hypertrophy focused also these workouts were filmed a little while back before the vaccine roll out so i wasn't able to fly out a videographer or anything like that so they're just shot by me using a tripod so don't expect any nolan level cinematography but i'll still be covering everything that you need to know all right so let's get started with the first quad focused leg day so after a quick three to four minute up using a few of my favorite dynamic stretches i'll jump into a pyramid warm-up that looks something like this if you want to pause and read and these warm-up sets are just meant to prime you for the heavier working sets to come while causing as little fatigue as possible for the squat we're doing three sets of four reps at eighty percent one rep max which comes up to 385 pounds for me now these sets aren't supposed to be super challenging especially in week one and i'd say i'm around an rpe of five or six for this first set so four or five reps in reserve and then as fatigue sets in that rpe should increase to a seven or eight by the last set now one thing i want to quickly comment on lately every time i post a squat video i get asked about why i drive my knees out on the way up whether that's safe and whether or not you should be doing it so the reason i do this is to simply get my hips closer to the bar you can see that as i'm driving my knees out my hips are being thrust forward and this helps reduce the moment arm between the load and my hip joint ultimately making it easier for me to break through any sticking point in the concentric and i do think it's perfectly safe to do as long as you're thinking about pushing your knees out only until they point in the same direction as your toes rather than pushing them out as far as possible okay up next three sets of 10 reps on the romanian deadlift and you definitely don't want to load these too heavy in week one as they can cause an insane amount of muscle damage and if you're anything like me leave you feeling brutally sore for several days so for the first week keep the weight light and focus on getting a solid stretch in your hamstrings while perfecting the technique by simply pushing your hips straight back as you lower the weight straight down and then progressively increase the load in the weeks to follow then we're doing three sets of 15 for each leg on the unilateral leg press and this is the first exercise where we're really ramping the effort up so let's bust out the old rep timer here and take a look at the last three reps on my first set of 15. so this is rep 13 which took 1.
5 seconds rep 14 took 1. 4 seconds and this is my last attempted rep which took 2. 3 seconds so based on that rep slowdown i'd say that was a true rpe of eight maybe nine for me and this is important because with the squats and rdls we were leaving a nice few reps in the tank so it's important to push the quads and glutes closer to failure on this one then we're moving on to three sets of 10 to 12 reps on the eccentric accentuated leg extension so we're aiming for a three to four second lowering phase we're also setting the seat a bit further back to get the rectus femoris head of the quads more involved since it's the only head that won't be activated much on the squat or the leg press that's because it's the only head that crosses both the hip joint and the knee joint meaning it'll be shortening at the hip while lengthening at the knee so by moving the seat back we put the hips in a less flexed position allowing the rectus femoris to contribute more to knee extension after that we're doing three sets of 10 to 12 reps on the seated hamstring curl and then on the last set which i'll show here in fast motion we're doing 10 reps to failure then dropping the weight in half and going to failure again so for the drop set i cranked out another 14 reps and i'm opting for the seated leg curl here because a new high quality study from mayo and colleagues found that seated leg curls caused significantly more hamstrings growth than lying leg curls something the mass research review attributed to the hypertrophic value of training at long muscle lengths where the hamstrings are placed under a greater degree of stretch when performing the leg curl seated now of course this doesn't mean that the lying leg curl isn't any good and i still do use it for variety but when given the choice i usually do opt for the seated variation these days okay up next three sets of to 12 reps on the standing calf raise and because my left calf is slightly smaller after each set i take the weight off and do some additional mile reps for my left leg only so in fast motion here after the main set i'll do four or five reps shake it off do another four or five reps shake it off again and then just repeat that until i can't hit four clean reps and then we'll finish off the workout with some direct ab work so i did a super set of plate weighted decline crunches where i'm focusing on squeezing my six pack to curl the weight up and long lever pelvic tilt planks where you can see that my elbows are positioned underneath my eyes and i'm squeezing my glutes to pull my pelvis into posterior tilt to make the plank more challenging and i was holding those for 30 seconds per set all right so day two is a push day where we're focusing on the chest delts and triceps and we're kicking off the workout with three sets of eight reps at 72 and a half percent of our one rep max on the bench press which comes out to 275 pounds for me and generally for anything over six reps i'll usually just do a very quick quarter second pause on the chest but the weight did feel pretty light on this day so i paused each rep a little bit longer than usual and i'll put a quick progression scheme up here on the screen if you want to pause and check that out man i don't know how people freestyle like i can't even say progression scheme on the screen like holy okay after that we're moving on to three sets of 12 on a machine shoulder press and i'm opting for a machine variation here because when taking a power building approach all the heavy free weight movements can take a toll on the joints and the smaller stabilizer muscles and so for a hypertrophy focused week i do like to include a bit more machine work because it allows you to push sets closer to failure without being quite so taxing and if you don't have machine access a good substitute would be the standing dumbbell arnold press because it allows you to hit the delts hard with slightly lighter weights up next three sets of 12 to 15 reps on the dip and the idea here is to make up for any so-called range of motion deficit from the power lifting style bench press technique so with the dip i'm getting a big stretch on the pecs at the bottom something that's been accumulating evidence in the research as a potentially important signal for growth and deficit push-ups are a good replacement here if you don't have access to dip handles after that we're heading three sets of eight to ten on the eccentric accentuated skull crusher so really disrupting the tricep fibers by using a three second controlled lowering phase and then keeping constant tension by not fully locking the weight out at the top up next is the egyptian cable lateral rays however unlike previous programs we're using a mile rep intensity technique for the last set only where after hitting 12 normal reps to an rpe of 9 or 10 we'll rest for a couple breaths go back and hit another four reps then rest for another couple breaths hit another four reps and just keep doing that until we can't get four more reps and the idea here is that on a power building approach the side delts can easily be neglected so i try to give them a bit more stimulus on the exercises that do hit them and we're finishing off the workout with two high rep sets of 20 to 30 reps on the cable tricep kickback where we're focusing on a very steady tempo of one second up and one second down now i should say overall research shows that as long as you're controlling the weight tempo doesn't actually matter much for hypertrophy however for high rep work i do like to monitor my tempo because as you get to the end of a set your form can get sloppy if you're not conscious about the execution of each and every rep all right let's move on to day three where we're hitting our more lat focused pull workout of course still hitting the other pulling muscles like the mid-back and biceps so at first three sets of six reps on the weighted pull-up and of course you may not need to load these depending on your body weight and strength level and using assistance is perfectly fine if you can't do six reps with body weight now since this is a lat focused workout you can see that i'm keeping a very upright posture allowing me to focus on near pure shoulder adduction which will light up both the lats and teres muscles of the back so keep your legs pointing straight down tuck your shoulder blades down by pointing your chest up toward the bar and go through a nice full range of motion on every rep after that we're doing three sets of 10 to 12 reps on the seated cable row where i'm using the mag grip attachment because i find it a bit more comfortable on the wrists but a neutral close grip attachment will work fine as well i'm focusing on keeping my elbows tucked into my sides and driving them down by rolling to my stomach and not driving my elbows back any further than my midline and of course even though we're queuing for lat emphasis both of these first two movements will target the mid-back to a large degree as well so after that we're doing a lat isolation move with the constant tension kneeling cable pull over and again with the higher rep stuff i'm counting each rep with a one second up one second down tempo to avoid form from deteriorating and keeping the tension where it's supposed to be on the lats and i'm not really aiming for any specific rep count i'm just going until i notice that that tempo is fading and once i can no longer do one second up and one second down i terminate the set there now after being very strict and form focused on those first three movements up next we're going to do some hammer chi curls you'll notice that i'm doing a bit more swinging than usual which allows me to handle heavier weights than if i were to stay perfectly upright with my elbows perfectly locked into place and the idea here is to just get in the zone and move some weight without overthinking it as long as you're gripping the dumbbell handle as hard as you can your forearm flexors and brachioradialis will be highly activated plus sometimes it's just fun to train like a bro however to balance things out we're hitting a strict incline dumbbell curl after this time keeping the elbow back and as locked into position as possible while focusing on supinating or rotating the dumbbells so your palms face up by driving through the pinkies this allows us to isolate the biceps much better especially now that the muscles of the forearm have been fatigued from the previous exercise okay so day four is our second leg day of the week and this time we're focusing a little more on the posterior chain so mainly the glutes and hamstrings but we'll still be doing some quad work as well so we're kicking the workout off with three sets of three reps using 80 to 85 percent one rep max and this is meant to be sub-maximal work but you should still be somewhere in the six to eight rpe zone by the third set so let's have a look at my bar path here as you can see the bar is moving straight up and straight down perfectly centered over the middle of the foot if you let the bar get too far out in front of you you increase the moment arm at the hips making the lift much harder and horizontal bar movement can also throw off your balance at the top so before initiating the lift pack your lats nice and tight and scrape the bar up against your shins as you pull after that we're doing three sets of 10 to 12 reps on the machine hack squat now higher rep hack squats can be very helpful in building up a huge work capacity in the quads and since this is our main quad movement for the day you want to really focus on allowing your knees to travel out in front of your toes and yes this is perfectly safe as long as it doesn't give you any knee pain and i'll link my video on that down below and for more carry over to the barbell squat you should mimic the same stance width and foot flare that you'd use with the barbell and i'm going to play my last couple reps raw here so you guys can get a better vibe for what kind of effort you should be using so not all the way to failure but ideally having no more than two or three reps in the tank [Music] oh and i should say if you don't have a hack squat machine you can do goblet squats instead again exaggerating that forward knee travel to emphasize the quads all right after those we're moving on to the unilateral hip thrust here we're focusing on squeezing each glute individually to move the weight and posteriorly tilting the pelvis at the top while keeping the chin tucked down then we're doing a super set of nordic ham curls and prisoner back extensions i set up the nordics on a lat pull down machine and i'm using a pull for assistance and with the prison or back extensions you want to put your hands behind your head to extend the moment arm at the hips making it more challenging on the glutes and hitting the upper back to some degree as well then we're doing three sets of eight to ten reps on the unilateral leg press calf raise starting with our weaker leg and making an effort to stretch the weaker side in between sets as well and then to round out the workout we're finishing with some direct core work this time doing the absolutely brutal weighted l-sit hold so basically place a 10 or 25-pound bumper plate on your thighs using a pull-up belt and try to hold it in that l position as long as you can even just getting 10 to 15 seconds can be a challenge at first so over time you want to try to increase the hold time up to 20 to 30 seconds with the same weight these are super challenging at the end of a workout all right so let's take a look at the second push workout of the week where we're focusing a bit more on the shoulders and kicking things off with four sets of four reps on the overhead press at eighty percent one rep max now two cues i've been emphasizing lately are arching my upper back and really tucking my glutes in to lock everything in place and make sure there aren't any energy leaks in the press this way all your pressing power is being transmitted up and into the bar as efficiently as possible then we're moving on to three sets of ten reps on the close grip bench press to an rpe of seven to eight and every time i show my close grip bench press a bunch of people note that it just looks like the regular grip and i just say that for max strength transfer the idea is just to bring your grip in about a hand's width on each side not to get your grip as close as you can so for me my normal grip is ring finger on the knurling so for my close grip i'll move that in about one hand's width on each side i'll also tuck the elbows in a bit more and keep more of a steady cadence on each rep rather than pausing on the chest although sometimes i will pause the last few reps especially if i want to make this set a bit more challenging up next we're hitting some low to high cable crossovers to target the upper pecs a bit more and one cool thing that i'm doing here is on the last set only i'll hit failure somewhere around 10 to 12 reps drop the weight by 50 and go to failure again which i'll play here in fast motion and while the research as it stands right now doesn't show much of a benefit to doing drop sets outside of potentially increasing time efficiency i still think that it's important to push yourself like this periodically especially as you get more advanced and that's because it gives you reference for what all out really means once you experience a tough set like this it can be a reminder that well maybe you haven't been pushing as close to failure as you think next we're hitting some overhead tricep extensions and the main thing you want to focus on here is keeping your elbow locked into position getting a big stretch on the triceps at the bottom and a nice squeeze at the top and where we're using cables here unlike with the free weights they'll automatically be pretty steady tension on the triceps throughout the range of motion so i prefer to use a full and complete rom here after that we're doing three sets of dumbbell lateral raised 21s and this is a new method i've been using lately where you progressively decrease the range of motion as fatigue sets in so we'll start with seven reps of full range laterals going all the way up and all the way down and then we'll do seven reps just using the top half to three quarters of the movement so we're purposefully cutting out the bottom portion and then finally we'll do seven reps in the bottom half only so this is a sort of mechanical drop set where the middle fibers might be too fatigued to complete a full contraction but still have enough juice to crank out some more partial reps because of the dumbbell's tension curve where it's quite easy at the bottom but much more difficult at the top and then i finished off the workout with some direct neckwork on this eight-way neck machine and i'll just link my neck training video down below which describes how you should approach your neck training if you don't have access to a machine like this and i still hit neck directly one to two days a week whenever i can fit it in it's not a huge priority for me at the moment but i do still try to hit a sort of minimum effective dose as i do think it's important to include all right and the final workout of the week is our second pull day where we're focusing a bit more on the mid-back now it's important to note that where this push-pull legs week is nested within my power building 2.
0 program the mid-back will be getting a huge stimulus from all the squatting and dead lifting on those full-body strength weeks so if the mid-back volume seems a bit low to you that's probably why and you can feel free to sprinkle in some more mid back work if you do find that to be the case but regardless we're kicking off the workout here with an omni grip lat pull down so basically you do set one with a wide grip then bring it into a moderate grip for set two so just outside shoulder width and then use a reverse close grip for set three and the idea here is that as your lats fatigue from set to set you get a little more biceps assistance so grip one is the hardest when your back is the least fatigued grip two should feel a bit easier and then grip three is easier still so you should be able to hit the same weight for the same reps even as fatigue builds after that we're doing three sets of 10 to 12 reps on a chest supported row now i'm using a machine here because again i find i'm able to push a bit closer to failure without the same demand on the smaller stabilizers which isn't always a good thing because you do want to strengthen those stabilizers as well but on a power building program where there's already so many free weight movements using some more machines on the hypertrophy weeks isn't a bad idea and here i'm doing these more mike israetel style where i'm really exaggerating the scapular protraction at the bottom by allowing my shoulder blades to completely come apart and then squeezing my upper back as hard as i can at the top even allowing my chest to come off the pad a bit next up are some rope face pulls where i'm targeting more of the rear delts and external rotators by pulling the rope slightly up and rotating my shoulders out rather than pulling my elbows straight back and squeezing my shoulder blades together which will cause the mid traps to take over much more now after that i'm including some optional upper trap work with the incline dumbbell shrug and i say optional because for some people the deadlift work on the full body weeks will probably be enough to grow the upper traps but for others like me who have more stubborn upper traps doing some direct work that takes them through a dynamic range of motion is important i recommend using straps for these so that your grip doesn't become the limiting factor then we're doing a little more rear delt work because it is something that i think a lot of people seem to neglect i think the rear delts are one of those smaller muscles that really benefit from isolation so here we're doing two sets of 15 reps with protracted scapulae so we're sweeping the weight out but not back at all for these first 15 reps then we'll rest for a few seconds and crank out another 10 to 15 reps but this time actively squeezing our shoulder blades together allowing the mid traps to help out this way the rear delts are getting some stimulus and you can extend the set well beyond the typical termination point by using this subtle change in cueing and then the final movement is a super set of easy bar pronated curls and easy bar supinated curls so we'll first fatigue the elbow flexors of the forearm by using the pronated or overhand grip this will take the biceps out of the curl to a large degree and then when we flip the palms up with the forearms now fatigued the biceps can fully take over now some people might just feel like their grip is giving out and find it harder to engage their biceps this way but for me as someone with very stubborn biceps this technique does help me feel my biceps working better than if i just started with the supinated curl and worst case scenario you just beef up the back of the forearm anyway which certainly isn't a bad thing and that is a wrap for this full week of push-pull leg workouts like i said at the beginning i'm aiming to release the full power building 2. 0 program later this summer or early fall and that's going to include many of the techniques that i used here on the aperture a few weeks and it'll also include some new strength variations that i've been using on the full body weeks so if you're trying to figure out your upcoming training you'd have just enough time to run through the first power building program which takes 11 weeks if you include the max test week and the deload week and then you'd finish that just in time for the new follow-up program which again is an entirely new routine but it does build on some of the progressions that we used in that first one so if you already bought the first program you'd have enough time to run through it again i personally ran through it three times or if you're looking for a new program you can pick up my first power building program at jeffnip.
