Transcription
Larry runs like he's 68 and needs a walker. Bro runs like he has the handbrake on.
All right, so I don't normally do reaction videos, and this is not going to be a reaction video, but this particular clip was way too interesting to not talk about because it's a great example of two very strong and muscular dudes who have two very different levels of abilities. Ashton moves like an athlete and Larry moves like a fridge. And look, no hate here because Larry is still an absolute beast in the gym. But this does highlight a pretty common trend that I see in a lot of lifters of all levels where you're able to build a lot of muscle and get really strong, but you wind up pretty useless outside of the gym.
And look, I've been there, right? Like 10 years ago when I was a competitive bodybuilder, huge mode, I was jacked, strong, powerful. But outside of the gym, I was really useless. And since then, I've had to work really hard on rebuilding myself to now where I can do a whole bunch of athletic things and perform a lot better. And I can still build a lot of muscle and get really strong, which is a lot of fun because there's only three things that I find are missing from most people's traditional strength and muscle building routines. And in this video, I'll share with you what they are and my full workout template that you can use to look, move, and feel better.
Cuz it's not to say that bodybuilding is bad, right? Because there's this whole trend out there of people saying things like, "Oh, bodybuilding is going to make you so dysfunctional and it's really bad for you and you shouldn't do it whatsoever and you should be doing all these weird circus quirky exercises that just look really complicated, but don't really stimulate any adaptation or changes to your physique long term to improve your quality of life." I love the one where people say things like, "Oh, all that muscle is not going to help you in a fight." Like, sure, it's probably not. Like, you put me in a fight. If I didn't have any fight training, I'm probably going to get knocked out. But at least if I had muscle, maybe that might deter people from wanting to fight me. And if I did get into this hypothetical fight, having some contractile tissues going to help me probably launch a better, stronger, more powerful punch. And when I still get knocked out cuz I don't know how to fight, at least I'm going to look good when I hit the floor, right?
So what we really want to do is try to understand this middle ground here where we're still doing a lot of pure bodybuilding strength because that's so so so important. But understanding what all the other missing pieces are because you know the truth is for every anecdote of guys like Mr. Mike or Larry Wheels that you know I love to share these things so they're quite humorous to look at but you'll find anecdotes as well of really jacked dudes just like Ashton doing really athletic stuff. So, what I found is you can definitely still build a lot of muscle and get super super strong without compromising your other athletic qualities and movement abilities. In fact, you can do it all at the same time and just improve everything. It's a lot simpler and time efficient than people think.
Like, anytime I share one of these workouts online here, the comments I always get are all about, oh, bro's got like 4 hours to work out or he must live in the gym and things like that. But the truth is, like I only train like 45 minutes, maybe an hour each day. It's only like 3 to 5 days a week and I've got over 100,000 people following these exact same workouts and they're getting the same results by doing the same principles.
So, when I first started working out, I made awesome progress. Most people do. It's just newbie gains. Your progress is going to look just something like this straight up. It's a really fun time, right? But around this 1 to 3 year mark around here, things still improve, but they start to slow down a little bit, right? This is the intermediate plateau, and it's perfectly normal. But around this time as well, you might also start to notice something else. As you continue to get bigger and stronger, you start to notice you're getting stiffer and slower and maybe getting more aches and pains and those recurring little injuries that never really seem to go away. And look, a lot of very experienced lifters end up this way. And it's what's happening to Larry here as well. His sprint looks a lot more like a penguin vigorously doing bicep curls. He has no hip extension, no shoulder extension, no rotation, no rhythm. It's all in his knees and his quads and that's it.
So why does this happen? And why does a guy like Ashton move so much better? And how can you make sure that no matter where you're currently at, you're able to maintain, if not improve, all these athletic abilities without spending hours in the gym?
So, we have these five core components of fitness that I talk about a lot, right? Strength, hypertrophy, power, mobility, and endurance. And when you first start lifting, something basic like a barbell squat will improve all of these qualities. You're going to get bigger, you're going to get stronger, you're going to have more power, you're going to probably have better hip mobility, and you're going to have better athleticism overall. Things like your jump, they're going to improve. This is why bodybuilding and strength training itself is such a core foundation. It literally improves everything. But after a few years of lifting, adding another 50 lbs to your barbell squat is definitely going to give you bigger and stronger legs, but it won't necessarily improve your hip mobility or improve your athleticism or improve your overall endurance. And that's where you start to get what's called this development gap. Your strength and muscle mass continues to go straight up. But the other aspects of fitness start to stay the same or they even might start to decline.
Now, surprisingly, this is not a bad thing. It's just the science of specificity. You have to spend more of your limited resources towards building muscle and getting strong. You don't devote as much time towards all those other qualities. The reason why Larry moves the way that he does is because he's devoted so much of his time and attention towards getting really strong and stiff and stable for things like his bench press and his barbell squat. He's so good at it that it's become his default state. And that strength and muscle mass carries over to a lot of other really cool things that he can do in the gym, like his plch or his 90°ree push-ups. Really impressive stuff. But the second you take him out and put him into something that requires a bit more timing, rhythm, and dynamic fluid motion, it all falls apart.
Now, he might not care about that whatsoever, which is totally fine. But if you care about it, then you shouldn't be taking this hypersp specific strength and bodybuilding approach that is so mainstream in modern-day fitness advice. Like 90% of the programs and workouts and even influences you see out there, it's all purely for muscle building and getting stronger. But there should be room for things like mobility, power, speed, and endurance in your workouts. We're not chasing this specific physical preparedness across like one or two domains of fitness. We want that broad general physical preparedness across all the domains of fitness. This is how you become a more resilient human that's strong in the gym and capable for life.
This is my hybrid bodybuilding workout template that I use to structure just about all of my workouts now. And we're going to go through it together. If you want to train with me and follow my exact workouts, you can get my programs over the description link below. But you can also use this template here to plug in your own favorite exercises.
So the first part here is plyometrics. These are movements that focus on quick snappy movements. You can do it at a lower intensity for higher reps, which serves as a great warm-up. And it's a really good way to slowly prepare your joints and tissues to receive the higher intensity stimulus that you might do only a couple of times a week where you're really trying to amplify and push your max ping and bounce as much as possible. Different movements here like pogos, skips, hops, and bounce are all really cool options. There's so many ways you can program and add variety here, and honestly, it kind of deserves its own separate video. So, if you want that, just let me know and I'll put one together for you. But all up, this should only take you about five to maybe 10 minutes at absolute most.
Next, we move into the power section. And if you feel like you've lost some of that explosiveness or that oomph behind some of your movement, this is what you need more of. Power isn't just about how much you can lift. It's about how quickly your body can generate its max force. Olympic lifts are the prime example here. And it's really surprising because like you see some of these Olympic lifters and lifting like ridiculous weights. But the truth is that's nowhere near their true max because their real metric is speed and timing and coordination. They care about the weight, but that's more a byproduct of them doing everything else really, really well. But if you're not into Olympic lifting, you can still get similar kinds of improvements in that rate of force development by using dumbbells or kettle bells or even things like jumps and throws. And honestly, just about any exercise you can think of can be modified where you reduce the weight some and just focus more on moving as explosively and quickly as possible. So, for upper body, for example, some of my favorite movements are to do things like high pulls or muscle-ups. And you can, of course, like use bands, but even things just like a lat pull down where you do it a lot more explosively. That is a really, really cool tool to be using. The goal here is not to push to absolute failure like you would on say bodybuilding stuff. You want to focus on speed and max intent. This kind of stuff should take you maybe around 10 to 15 minutes at most, maybe a little bit more if you're super super advanced.
Now, the next portions are things you're going to be very familiar with. Okay? You got your typical strength and hypertrophy stuff. For strength, you're going to pick, you know, your big compound lifts. You got your squats, your rows, your presses, your deadlifts, your pull-ups. These are moves you can focus on just getting progressively stronger over time in around that, you know, three to six rep range for maybe one to three sets per workout. For hypertrophy, just picking one or two exercises here that really just fill in those gaps and help you target your weaknesses more and build up whatever you want to build up and push them really, really, really hard. So, this strength and hypertrophy section, these are like, you know, the big meat and potatoes of the workout. They might take you around 30 to 40 minutes or so.
Which brings us now to mobility. And the truth is for most people, good strength training full of full range of motion, maybe we emphasizing that lengthened range a little bit more, is going to cover a lot of people's bases mobility. But there is one key action that's missing from most of what we do in the gym, even through a full range of motion, and that is rotation. So, I make sure to add in at least one rotationbased exercise into most of my workouts just to cover that gap at the spine. I really like the windmill as an exercise because it covers a lot of bases. You're getting good adductor and glute and all through the hips there. You're also getting a lot of bending through the spine and twisting and rotating. And you're also getting a lot of like really cool shoulder stability gains up in this like unusual position by your side and up overhead. This is also where you can add in things like extra static holds. My personal favorites are things like the long lunge hold and the horse stance hold to really get into the hips. But keep it simple, right? Just pick one or two rooms you want to work on to focus on whatever weaknesses you have in your body right now. Slot them into your workouts. Focus on that for about 12 weeks or so. Change it as needed.
Last piece is cardio. And this is something that either goes at the end of a workout or maybe on its own separate day depending on what you're doing. Like right now for me, for example, I'm doing an upper lower style split. So after my upper days, which tend to be a little bit shorter, I do 15 minutes of intervals where I'm doing 1 minute easy, 1 minute moderate, and 1 minute fast for five total rounds. That pushes my aerobic threshold quite hard by the end of it. And I do that twice a week. I also do one sprint session outdoors where I'm working on my accelerations across 20 to 30 meters. And I also do one long run each week for about 45 to 90 minutes depending on how I'm feeling on the day. And that's it.
This template here, these six components, it fits into just about any style of training you want, whether it's upper day or lower day or full body or push, whatever it is. So have fun with it. And if you're after a complete done for you plan that you can just follow along blindly, you can get my programs over at hybridbodybuilding.com. I'll be with you every step of the way with personalized coaching advice and detailed video tutorials so you'll know exactly what to do every time you work out in the gym. Check it out if you want. Thank you for sticking around to the end of this video and I'll see you on the next.