The 5 Best Exercises to Get Shredded (Full Workout Breakdown)

Today I'm going to show you 5 exercises that you can do to get shredded, starting with the chin-up and lat pulldown combo. Let's talk about supersets. What is a superset and why do we do them? Sometimes you do supersets with opposing muscle groups, for example, chest and back, biceps, triceps, quads and hamstrings. And because we are wanting to get shredded, we're going to superset with the same muscle groups. We're going to go from chin-ups to lat pulldown. And the beauty of it is we can use different hand positions. We are going to use a supinated chin-up, and we're going to be moving into a pronated lat pulldown. The reason for the supinated lat chin-up— a supinated— this is where supinated is. This is a stronger grip. And when doing a supinated, I want you to think of your upper back muscles. That's really what it's targeting. Whereas we're going that pronated position, we're going to be really targeting that V-shape, the lats of your back, creating that V taper. So let me show you the secrets to a perfect chin-up. First and foremost, when we're doing a chin-up, You want to think of this as two parts. To begin the chin-up, you want to have your arms deadlocked. So you can see my elbows are completely locked out. Now the first initiation point is where we pull our back together. You can see how I've pulled everything together, and then we extend. Now that's how you want to do— you want to think about it as a lock your arms, pull your upper back in, and then extend. Now if I'm going to do it in real time, you see the full hang and I'm pulling myself up. That's your perfect chin-up position. Now we've got a big pump in back, we're going to move straight to the lat pulldown. And again, we're going to use a pronated grip here, going from supinated on the chin-up into pronated on the lat pulldown. And again, this is going to enhance our lats and that V-shape of our body, the V-taper. So here we go. And again, when you're in the lat pulldown, really stretch forward, get the lats. You want to think of the lat pulldown as stretch and squeeze. So you can see here, I'm fully stretched, and when I pull down, I'm squeezing. Stretch Squeeze, stretch, squeeze. You can see my head is forward. I move my head forward into it. My arms are locked at the end. I pull together. Now, in this end position, I'm thinking there's a rubber ball in the middle of my back. I'm really trying to squeeze everything out of it. Every rep, squeeze like there's a rubber ball in the middle of my back. Squeeze it, stretch, pull. And the aim, you want to aim just below your collarbone. So not directly at the collarbone, but just below, squeezing everything together. Bring the elbows back. This is just one of 5 exercises that I'm going to show you in this video to getting shredded. Now, of course, diet and nutrition is a huge part to getting shredded, which is exactly why at the end of this video I'm going to give you a free copy of my fitness user manual. It contains a nutrition section which is complete with all the information that you need to know about food, as well as a nutrition guideline and full grocery list with all the foods that you need to know to burn fat and build muscle. I've used the exact nutrition methods outlined in this user manual. It's helped thousands of people transform their body. I'm Mark Ottobre, and I'm the founder of Enterprise Fitness. I've trained hundreds of first-place winners at fitness competitions, Olympic athletes, and Commonwealth Games gold medalists. So the next one is a variation on presses that you probably haven't done before. It's called mechanical drop set. And the reason why it's mechanical drop set is because we're going to keep the weight the same and we're going to be dropping the bench as we go. So I'm going to do a demonstration. You can play with this. You can do 6 reps, 8 reps, 10 reps, For the purposes of this video, I'm just going to do 6 reps. So I'm going to pick up my dumbbells and into position. I'm going to pump 6 reps out. So there's my 6 reps. I'm going to pop them down. Now here's where the fun part begins, right? So I'm going to bring this angle down to a 15-degree angle, then I'm going to do another Again, 6 reps just for the purposes of this video, but if you're doing, you know, you can do 10 reps of this, do 8 reps of this, you really get a good pump. Obviously you can use a lot more weight, but this is a great exercise, a great variation. Again, as we said before, lactic acid is your friend when you're trying to get shredded, right? And then we can drop it again. So we're on this angle here, you can see this is, this is the most mechanically advantageous angle on decon. So I'm gonna be able to rep this out, really go to failure, well past failure. So when you think of creating tension inside the muscle, when you think of this analogy, imagine I've got a towel, I put a towel into a bucket of water, and I want to wring the towel of all the water possible. That's what we're trying to do with this mechanical drop set, is trying to wring the towel of every last drop of water and squeeze the towel to get all the goodness out of the set. And that's what the mechanical drop set allows. We start at the easiest— the hardest angle with the same weight we go to mechanically more advantageous angles as we do to get as much lactate in the muscle as possible, which is going to help us burn fat. So you wouldn't normally think of this exercise to get shredded, but it is lat raises. It's not just any lat raise, it's a mermaid lat raise combined to standing lat raise. I find this one gives me a whole body pump. The reason why I love it so much is because it's constant tension, constant time under tension. It is absolute fire, ladies and gentlemen. The floor is lava. I'll show you exactly what I mean. So when you get into this exercise, We imagine the floor is lava. Now you cannot touch the floor. You got to keep the dumbbells off the floor. Keep tension. Now I like high, high reps on this. So we're going to go for 15 to 20 reps at minimum. We're going to get our shoulders burning, get the lat raises, the shoulders really get a good burn on. So I don't even know what we're up to yet, but let's do another 10. And again, the floor is lava. We do not touch the floor. We just get the tension. We get a nice pump. It's going to help our upper body, our shoulders. Get nice and detailed, get those shreds happening for whatever it is, whatever event you've got on, whether it's a festival, a wedding, a birthday, or a bar mitzvah. You want to get the pump on. All right, now my shoulders are just, just burning, right? So now we're getting to this position here. We are standing and we're going full range with it, so we're getting more range of motion as we come all the way down, throw them up A nice pump through the lateral delt of the shoulder. So we've created a lot of tension using the mermaid raise, and now we're finishing it off with the standing lateral raise. Oh, that was about, I don't know, 40 reps, but I've got a great shoulder pump. For this next exercise, I wanted to bring my client Amy along to show you the finer points. This is the trap bar deadlift special combining with a farmer's walk. But don't worry if you don't have access to a trap bar, I'll show you an alternative. So Amy's going to reach down, point to the floor, do the first 3 reps. 1, 2, 3. Then she's walking all the way down to the end, holding the bar. So this is where it starts to work, it starts to get hard, especially as you start to go heavier and heavier on this exercise. So keep walking nice and sturdy, Amy. And then as you get to the end, you're going to do another 3 reps. So this is 4, 5, 6, all the way down, all the way down. There, turn, face the other way. So on 6 reps, 7, good, 8, 9, all the way down to the end. So she's going to do 12 reps in total here, another 3 reps coming at the end. So again, her heart rate's really getting elevated now, it's getting— it's actually hard. And now finishing off with another 3 reps. Good. 1, 2, last one makes 12. All the way up, all the way up, and slowly down, slowly down. So this is a great option, great exercise when you're looking to get shredded because it combines both strength and the cardiovascular component. So if you don't have access to a trap bar, one of my favorites is the heels elevated squat. And the reason for that is there's no hiding on the heels elevated squat. All you need is to elevate your heels, which Amy's going to demonstrate just this. We use the high angle. So Amy, if you step on the, the angle here nice and high, and we're going to get the stick and you're going to put it behind your back and you're going to grab, grab the stick behind your back there. And what this stick does is it anchors the upper body into a nice tall position. And when we do that, we really have to bend our knees forward. So it's a kind of a foolproof way to really target the quads. And again, we want to be looking at movements that create as much lactic acid as possible. So Amy, go ahead, bend the knees forward, get them straight over the toes, straight over the toes, forward, forward, forward, all the way down and straight back up. So you can see this also elongates the movement as well, creating a lot more tension inside the muscle. And go again, knees forward, knees Knees forward, knees forward, knees forward. And if we really want to make it extra spicy on this, we don't go to lockout. So straight back down, straight back down, don't go to lockout. And back up and straight back down. And then we can do things, we can play with the tempo of this movement as well. So we can go nice and slow on the way down. So slow it on the way down, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. Up nice and tall, up nice and tall, and power up. And this is a great exercise. Again, it's going to create a lot of lactic acid inside the legs. You get lactic acid when it comes to burning fat, getting shredded, is our friend. And again, this is low skill because we've got our heels elevated in terms of the squat. We don't have the bar, we can do lots and lots of reps here and really get the heart rate up. Now obviously they're different, working different muscle groups. The trap bar works more of the hamstrings, whereas the heels elevated squat works more of the quad. The reason why we use these as alternatives is to create as much lactic acid as possible inside the body. But of course, ladies and gentlemen, no workout would be complete without training arms. I'm going to show you my triple 8 arm blaster. So this is going to give you the mother of all pumps. The way it works is you pick a dumbbell off the rack, pick a weight. I'm picking the 7s today. You're going to do 8 sets of 8. Now since I've grabbed these dumbbells, I'm not allowed to put these dumbbells down until I have completed all 8 sets of 8. Now what we're going to be doing is 8 curls, so, and 8 sets. So that's 1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And as soon as I finish, I have to go straight into tricep extension. So you can see this is now 8 set— 8 reps here, and I'm going to do 8 sets. So the weight starts out fairly light, obviously, but it's the volume and accumulation of the sets that are going to get you. 6, 7, 8. And as I said, I cannot put these dumbbells down until I've completed all 8 sets of 8. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Second set of biceps— triceps now. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. That's second set. Now let's pair them together. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Set number 3. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8. Third set complete. Now starting 4. 1, torches the lactic acid here. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 8.

Set number 4 complete. We're halfway there.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

That's 5. Now, it did start off light, but the accumulation of volume is what gets you here.

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 6.

Set number 7.

1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 6. That's 7.

Last set.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Now, just in case I miscounted, let's do one more. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Awesome!

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Oh, there's the 8x8 arm blaster. Let's get some good lighting. You're gonna get some gym lighting. We have a good pump on both in the biceps and in the triceps. Very, very simple to do. I stayed at the same station the whole entire time. Very, very time effective. I've done 8 sets of 8 on both the biceps and the triceps and got myself a wicked, wicked pump in the biceps that would make the gym gods— Arnold Schwarzenegger, shout out to Arnie, who originated everything— proud. The Ultimate Warrior in WWE as well. So here we are. That's how you want to grow your pythons, grow the biceps, help you get shredded, time effective, get some bicep vein going on. Get your arm pumped. Here we go, folks. That's 5 exercises to help get you shredded that you can add to your workout. And as promised, here's the link to my user manual. It's going to help you burn fat, build muscle, and help you get the body that you want. Till next time, folks, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.