Hey, what's up guys? I'm Scott from muscularstrength.com and nuclei overload
experiment number two is finally complete.
Now if you missed the first experiment,
it's going to be very important that you guys watch that video if you missed it
because in that video I talk about why nuclei overload training works and the
science behind it and I did a lot of research and put a lot of effort into that
video so that as we do more experiments,
I wouldn't have to rehash all that information,
so I'm going to post the link to that video in my pin comment below,
make sure you take a look. Now what I did for the last 30 days,
starting on February 3rd was 100 power shrugs a day,
followed by 100 barbells calve raises.
Now it's not always recommended that you do two muscles for nuclei overload
training when doing this experiment, but because I was doing traps and calves,
different parts of my body and those muscles can generally take quite a bit of a
beating. It was okay.
I didn't feel myself being over-trained whatsoever for the last 30 days.
Guys I wanted to focus on trying to see growth in my traps.
Traps have always been a weak area for me.
Calves are a weak area for me and most guys in general that especially that I
see at my gym. Like I wish I was blessed with big calves like Ricky, Ricky,
let's see those calves baby. We'll do a little of those Ricky calves.
I make Ricky wear pants to the gym whenever he works out with me just because
his calves are so nice. But anyways,
I wanted to spark some growth in these areas and we're going to take a look at
the photos first and then I'm going to go into exactly what I did and how I did
the rep and how I altered my workouts so that could still go to the gym and
train even though I was doing the nuclei overload training in the morning.
So take a look at the calves photo first,
February 3rd my calves measured about 15 and a half inches. As of today,
they're measuring 15 and three quarters. Not a ton of growth,
but still some growth. And some of you guys might be saying,
how can you get that kind of growth in a month? Well,
what I think it comes down to for areas like calves and traps,
these are areas that I have never done a ton of volume in throughout my history
of training. That's why they're problem areas to begin with. Right?
So I feel like as I continue to do these experiments,
I'm going to notice or see the most growth in areas that I didn't hit as hard as
I should have throughout my lifetime as a lifter.
And that quarter inch could also be due to a variety of reasons.
I mean I could have, I could have flexed my,
my calve in a weird way when I took the original photo versus the photo now,
so actual mass in growth, we can't say definitively,
but I can tell you guys that the measurement is a little bigger as in showing
you and just visually in the mirror.
When I take a look and I flex my calve or if I do it from the back like this and
I'll take a photo or something. I do see bits of a difference,
but remember it's only a quarter inch that's spread out around the entire
circumference of the, of the cap area.
So it's not like you're gonna all of a sudden go like this and see a baseball.
Okay. It's just not going to happen. Now for traps, however,
I did notice a pretty big difference and if you take a look at these two photos,
you can see a clear difference in my back and if you were to pan around my body,
you're going to start to see a lot more upper trap development,
you know? And that's what I was going for.
I've never really had like good separation from neck to trap to shoulders.
And that was one of the main reasons why I was doing this.
And Ricky and I were talking even before we started the video and I was
explaining to him one of the biggest difference I actually have seen or noticed
doesn't even have to do with the size of the muscle.
It's the mind muscle connection.
If you guys are to where to stand up right now and flex your bicep like as hard
as you could. Right.
It's almost like you can feel the whole muscle contracting and it feels like
there's a ball in your arm. Right? Even if it's a smaller ball, that's okay,
but you, you still can feel it. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
That's kind of what I started to feel in my traps.
Whenever I would flex my traps and do my most muscular pose like this,
I would have to like fight so hard to kind of roll my shoulders and,
and push my traps forward like this. But now when I do it,
it's almost like I get that same feeling.
I can feel the whole muscle flexing,
contracting and actually rolling forward. Ricky is now going to demonstrate how to flex
your traps. I don't know,
I don't get the mechanics of it.
As I flex them which I never really had before. So that was one of the big differences.
But another difference is even though we can't measure,
we can visually see that the traps did grow quite a bit.
It's very noticeable. And so the way the exercises works,
if you guys want to try the experiment is like this.
I did every single morning I would wake up, eat my breakfast,
do some work and about mid afternoon I would come in my gym and I would do 10
sets of 10 repetitions of a power shrug,
followed by 10 sets of 10 repetitions with the barbell calf raise and I would
super set them. So I would do 10 reps here,
I would step over and then I would do 10 reps here and then I would rest for
about 45 seconds to a minute.
And then I would repeat until I completed all my reps and it would take me
usually like 25 30 minutes max. Okay.
And the only things that changed throughout the course of the 30 days were this
on calves. It's kind of like when you do your biceps training,
when you go wider, you work the inside. When you go closer you work the outside.
Same things for calves,
so I would actually alter my stance to be wide or close.
Sometimes day to day or sometimes I'll do the first five sets of my feet
together. The next five sets with my feet apart just to try to switch things up,
make sure I was activating the entire area for power shrugs though.
Number one, I would definitely recommend picking up some of these easy grips.
This made it a lot easier for me to go through my sets a lot faster.
I'm going to post the link down, my pin comment below.
I get a 10% off the entire website over at iron bull strength.
I've worked with these guys for a while. They get a lot of really great stuff,
actually keep like their clips in my bag all the time. When I go to the gym,
they have everything you need for a home gym guys.
And another thing that I would do with the power shrugs is I wanted to make sure
that I was getting a deep stretch in my traps on every single repetition.
So I wasn't just going like this for 10 reps.
I was actually letting the bar sit down my thighs to get a real deep stretch
as I would come up, I would do my best to not push off my toes to use
so much momentum.
Even though we're doing a power shrug and the point of it is to overload.
I would try to make sure my feet were staying flat and I was coming up like
this and then controlling on the way down and you guys can see from the reps,
from the, from what we're showing right now, exactly how I did it. Um,
but just make sure if you try this method guys,
you're not bending over and then coming up,
you're not doing this. Not going to spinal flexion. That's bad.
You're kind of sitting and then pulling up like this just to get that deep
stretch.
And I did that for 30 days and I didn't really feel over-trained at all.
Basically how I would incorporate this into my daily training at the gym now
that I'm doing full body is I just didn't hit calves. I didn't need to,
I was getting plenty of calf work here. But when it came to upper body,
especially my shoulder workouts, um, I wasn't doing any types of shrugs.
I wasn't doing dumbbell shrugs or barbell shrugs at the gym.
I kind of just took that exercise and tossed it to the side.
I was still doing my overhead presses. Um,
but another exercise that I did,
because my rear delts are also a lagging area,
so I want to try to find a cool way to hit those and get a bit more trap
activation that wasn't just, you know,
from the power shrug is I did this super set and it's actually now one of my new
absolute favorite supersets when doing shoulders is I will do a lateral raise,
right?
So I'm gonna hit that middle head of the deltoid and I would do this for 10,
maybe 12 repetitions,
and then to get a bit more upper trap activation as well as my rear Delt,
I would do a rear Delt raise.
But instead of doing a traditional raise where you're bent over like this and
then coming up this way,
I was actually bending over slightly and then doing a posterior grip like that.
Right? I mean not post, not posterior
Pronated doing a pronated grip like this.
Then I was swing back and I would do one hand at a time and guys from all of the
training I was doing with the power shrugs,
whenever I would do this superset my traps,
my upper traps in my rear deltoid would just light up and it was great.
So I would recommend if you guys try the power shrugs that when you do your
shoulder training, do your shoulder presses,
do you lateral raise your front raise when it gets time for the rear raise
do that super set. It worked out really good for me. I absolutely loved it.
So overall with this training,
nuclei overload, I mean you're gonna see results no matter what you do,
in my opinion, you're going from training a muscle group.
Let's say you are doing full body. Okay?
Let's say you're doing full body three days a week.
You're still going from three days a week to hitting that muscle.
Seven days a week with a lot more volume on every single day you're doing 10
sets of 10 repetitions.
Traditionally in your workout you're going to do three maybe four sets of eight
to 10 repetitions on that body part. Even if you're doing it three days a week,
right? So it is a lot more volume.
You should see some kind of change and if anything you should see a difference
in the amount of mind muscle connection that you have to that muscle.
So I'm really excited. I want to kind of keep this going.
The next nuclei overload experiment that I want to do is going to be for back
and I'm going to do pull ups, so a hundred pull ups a day.
More than likely starting off with body weight,
but hopefully getting to the point to where I can start to put little bits of
weight in here. Even if it's five pounds, 10 pounds,
maybe 15 pounds if I'm feeling really good to start to build a bit more
strength as I'm increasing my volume because Austin Dunham is just laughing at
me,
not being able to pull 3 45s like him for sets of like five but we're going
to get there and what I'm also thinking is when I do this experiment it's just
going to be pull ups,
no other muscle groups but to kind of torture myself during my rest periods.
I'll work on my handstands so that should be pretty interesting.
Let me get to know what you guys think down in the comments section below if you
guys want to try it with me. As always,
I'm going to do a post in my forums on my website.
I'll have that link in my pin comment below as well.
But you know when it comes to fitness guys, you cannot be close minded.
There are so many different ways to achieve a goal and if what you're doing
right now isn't working, then it's time to switch it up again.
Please be sure to tap that like button if you enjoyed the video and as always,
more good stuff coming soon. See you guys.