The PERFECT Push Workout (PUSH | PULL | LEGS)
The perfect push workout is a component of a push, pull, legs workout split which is one of the most common training splits for building muscle and strength. In this video, I’m continuing the perfect workout series and bringing you the perfect push workout to build a bigger chest, shoulders, and tri
What’s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. You asked for it and I’m bringing it, the perfect push workout out, complementing our perfect pull and legs work outs in our PPL series. Guys, look, I understand that perfect is subjective right, in the eye of the beholder. I mean, even Jesse’s been called perfect, but then again, that was his mother.
When we look at creating a perfect workout, no matter what it is, you have to understand there’s a lot of selection’s that go into that. I’m making my bold selections here and putting them into this workout for a reason because I believe it’s going to work to help you to build muscle. That being said guys, I want to break it down for you step-by-step and show you not just what we’re picking, but why we’re picking it so you can get the gains that you’re looking for. Okay, so now a quick refresher for those that are unfamiliar with the PPL split, it’s Push, Pull and Legs. On the Push that you’re training your pushing muscles generally your triceps, shoulders and chest.
And on Pull day, you’re training your biceps and back, noting that there are a lot of back muscles and we’re accounting for those in that workout. And, of course, you have your legs on a specific day as well. And the way we’re going to actually break this down in this PPL split is by starting with a Pull workout, follow it with a Push workout, which is what we’re going to show today and then go into our legs. Now, after that, you have two options. You can either repeat this cycle for six straight days of training before taking a day off and then repeating it all over again.
Or you can do what we do here, which is take these three days and then put a rest day in between and you start these three days again, followed by another rest. This is called that, asynchronous split. And you’re getting more frequent rest days in between these workouts, which allows for more recovery. But it also on the offside here is, is creating an unpredictable off day. Some people don’t like that, but I do believe that the benefits of getting that extra off day are going to serve you well.
Which brings us now to our workouts and the exercise. And that’s why I said workouts, because in the perfect pitch workout here, we actually have two of them Push One and Push Two. And the reason for that is we’re going to select exercises that actually help to complement each other from Push One to Two, but also help to stand alone with their own benefits. And I believe when we’re trying to accomplish something as big as creating muscle growth with this split, we need to have more options at our disposal. We’re going to break them down into two parts.
Part One here starts with our classic push exercise here from actually building strength as one of our main mechanisms of driving growth through overload and this is the Barbell Bench Press. And we’re going to perform this as four sets of four to six. We’re going to leave one or two reps in the tank, though not taking all the way to failure. However, it is important that as you start to fatigue, that you may have to adjust the weights accordingly to allow you to continue to fall within this four to six reps range. The next exercise, however, is one specifically designed to complement that one and then say Hi-to-Low Crossover.
And the reason why I like the crossover and I’ve talked about this in many videos before, is it gives me the chance to do what the Barbell Bench Press doesn’t, and that is to get the chest into a completely contracted state by getting the arm fully adducted across the body. Now, when we take the angle from high to low, we’re allowing ourselves to follow the fibers to hit more of the lower chest, the abdominal fibers here. But most importantly, it gives us the opportunity to get that full adduction of the hand across the chest. Good hypertrophy exercise. Good spot here at the number two spot, three sets of 10 to 12.
And now we’re going to shift the focus a little bit to the shoulders. And here I’m going to go with the Dumbbell Shoulder Press. Now, I have the opportunity here to try to do an overhead press with the barbell, but I believe that is better served as a strength building exercise that’s going to get its own day, hence Push Two. Now I’m doing the standing version here rather than the seated version. And if you watch my Iron Face-Off video, you would understand why.
When you sit down, I don’t like the restrictions that come from pushing your scapula back into the bench, which can disrupt normal shoulder mechanics. Not to mention if I can get you on your feet, I always like to take that opportunity. You perform that for four sets of 8 to 10, slightly higher up range, again, reserving the lower ranges for strength base progression in that second day. We then move on to that second exercise, following up very much the same way we did with the crossover. And this is the 1 1/2 Side Lateral Raise.
Again, trying now to focus a little bit more for hypertrophy on that middle Delt. And we could do it with this one and a half rep style that increases the time that we’re under tension in the exercise. So, we take it up fully all the way, we come down halfway and then we have to go back up to the top again. Eliminating all momentum from the movement and again, forcing the muscle we’re actually trying to get to grow to do the work. We perform this one in three sets at a higher rep range of 12 to 15.
Again, really focusing on good quality contractions, not muscle substitution that often happens with the traps and simply just momentum swinging the weight up. And then we come back, and we move to the direct tricep portion of the workout, understand the triceps we’ve been working through all the other exercises we’ve been doing so far. But in this case, we’re going to go directly at them. And we’re going to actually pair them up with, get this, a pulling exercise, a bicep exercise here on push day. Why?
Because we have an opportunity when we pair this in the entire PPL split we put together here to get some additional volume for the biceps on push day without interfering with what we’re trying to accomplish here and our pushing exercises. And that is we start with a big push exercise for the triceps, my favorite, the Lying Tricep Extension, this is going to perform for three sets of 10 to 12 to failure, and they’re going to go right into the Dumbbell Waiter’s Curl. And these are both good exercise selections here. Number one, the tricep exercises hitting the long head primarily by getting that good, stretch in the bottom position, we’re able to do something we haven’t necessarily done through the other exercises. When we push overhead or push out in front, the medial lateral head tend to get most of the work, the long head here is going to get some extra special attention through the first exercise.
Again, the Dumbbell Waiter’s Curl is also a long, hard exercise, but this time for the biceps, serving again is the perfect complement and giving us a chance to get some additional volume. Three sets of 10 to 12 on both ends of the superset. And before we call it a day here, guys, no Athleane-X workout is complete without making sure we pay a little bit of attention to bulletproofing our body to the use of some correctives, and by corrective of choice here it’s a Rotator Cuff External Rotation. Guys, simply grab a band and perform this boring but all-important exercise to finish out this workout, three sets of 15 to 20. When you do a push and workout, you’re internally rotating a lot.
The muscles on the