ATHLEAN-X founder Jeff Cavaliere has carved out an impressive career helping individuals improve their fitness. In his latest endeavor on February 4, 2025, he walked through nine training mistakes and how to fix them.
Jeff Cavaliere has been around the fitness space for over a decade and for good reason. His wellness and exercise insights are backed by on-the-ground experiences but it’s not just that — he also manages to implement science-based principles he’s learned through years of studying.
Cavaliere never backs away from a challenge. Whether it’s a matter of overeating, building muscle, or simply correcting poor workout form, he makes it a point to break things down in a way that everyone can understand, regardless of the experience they have inside the gym.
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Jeff Cavaliere’s Big 9 Mistakes in Training (And How to Learn From Them)
When he talks, people listen. He boasts a staggering 13.9 million subscribers on YouTube, regularly helping people improve their daily lives with health and fitness optimization tips. In a recent YouTube video, he revealed his nine training mistakes and how to fix them.
Find an overview of the common training mistakes below:
- 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 (Stop bouncing, go heavy!)
Cavaliere says to stop bouncing on calf exercises and to always go heavy because the muscle was meant to handle substantial stress.
“If you’re doing them with any type of bouncing or fast repetitions, especially with lighter weight, your calves ain’t going to grow that’s a fact.”
“Both the gastroc and soleus insert into one common tendon the Achilles tendon. It inserts in the back of our heel. That tendon is built for highly explosive ballistic-type forces enough to propel your body through space.”
Biceps (Full extension is a MUST)
He believes a full bicep extension is critical when building the arms.
“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 every repetition,” he shared. “One of the leading factors for having these tears occur especially in bodybuilders, we remove steroids from the equation, they never fully train through a full range of motion.”
Triceps (Are you training the long head properly?)
As for triceps, Jeff Cavaliere underlined that working the long head is most important since it takes up a third of the arm.
“You need to focus on the long head of your triceps,” he shared. “It’s the biggest portion of the tricep muscle. It’s responsible for get this: two thirds of the size of the triceps which we know is responsible for two thirds the size of the arm.”
“How do we do this? Through its contracted state or through its most extended stretched state.”
Legs (Twice a week training mistake)
While training legs twice a week isn’t inherently a mistake, Cavaliere advocates for splitting the two sessions up into one that is quad-focused and the other being hamstring/glute-focused.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t do twice a week training, the best thing you can do is just split them up. 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 those two workouts done in a week.”
Chest (Why incline pressing is a game-changer)
Above all other exercises, Cavaliere maintains that incline pressing is king for developing the chest.
“I have a different approach. That is I focus almost all my effort and all my pressing on incline pressing. There’s a reason for that. Number one: 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 (Pull-ups vs lat pulldowns)
He believes body weight exercises are an excellent alternative to other movements for growing the back. In addition, he’s a major proponent of pull-ups, particularly when they have weight added to them.
“One of my favorite ways to do it [training] is with a body weight exercises and it’s the pull-up. A few things that are wrong here. 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 around your waist.”
Shoulders (Heavy pressing isn’t enough!)
Heavy overhead shoulder pressing isn’t adequate to build the body part, he also said to pay attention to sculpting other parts of the area, including the rear delt.
“These are exercises that you can perform heavy that are directed more specifically at the individual heads of the shoulder. So, yes, you might say, 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 of all the ways you can possibly do it,” he shared.
Abs/Core (You’re missing THIS for real strength)
Cavaliere emphasized that strengthening the core will allow you to excel at other exercises, making them invaluable in a routine.
“These are core workouts. 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 underrated muscle group you need to train)
Although individuals often forget about the forearms, they also help bolster the effectiveness of other areas you’re targeting during a workout.
“Having strong forearms is going to set up better-improved performance on all the bigger exercises you do at the gym.”
This wasn’t the first time Cavaliere offered some valuable information on building the body you’ve always wanted. He recently dived into his science-backed ‘get lean for a lifetime’ framework to help individuals maintain health, ideal body fat percentages, and most importantly, sustainability.
Cavaliere continues to enlighten his viewers with value-packed content available free of charge. If you’re looking to correct these types of workout mistakes, give his methods a try!
RELATED: Jeff Cavaliere Shares Best Dumbbell Exercises for ‘Bigger, Stronger, Healthier Shoulders’
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