
48 segments available
He created ATHLEAN-X, YouTube’s first-ever fitness channel and spent decades training pro athletes, now Jeff Cavaliere reveals the truth about creatine, fat loss, and real muscle growth. Jeff Cavaliere is a renowned physical therapist, strength coach, and founder of ATHLEAN-X, one of the world’s most trusted fitness brands blending science-based training with real-world results. He is also the author of books such as, ‘AthleanX's Train Like an Athlete: Intelligent Training to Build the Ultimate Body’. He discusses: * The science behind creatine and how it really supports muscle growth and recovery. * Why you’re struggling to lose belly fat, and the simple fixes that actually work. * The most harmful fitness myths that keep people weak, tired, and injured. * Small but powerful changes that help burn fat and preserve lean muscle mass. * Why grip strength predicts overall health and how to train it effectively. * How “nerd neck” and poor posture can destroy your gains, and how to fix it fast. 00:00 Intro 02:05 Jeff's Mission 05:33 Training the World's Best Athletes 06:19 Motivation vs. Discipline 07:46 Advice for People Struggling to Get Started 10:17 What Motivates Jeff's Audience? 14:19 The Impact of Doing Hard Things 17:13 Are There Exercises Jeff Avoids? 18:00 Deepest Motivators for Fitness 21:32 Surface-Level Motivators for Fitness 23:09 How to Look Good Physically 24:56 How to Lose Body Fat and Get Leaner 25:46 Less Obvious Nutrition Offenders 27:29 What to Look for on Food Labels 28:55 What Jeff Eats in a Day 30:58 Eating and Sleeping Times 33:40 Getting Rid of Stubborn Belly Fat 38:32 Misconceptions About Abs 40:37 Long-Term Consequences of Steroid and Growth Hormone Use 44:27 Part Two: Training for Longevity 50:06 Top 3 Overlooked Elements of Training 52:06 Improving Flexibility and Mobility 53:56 Workout Demo: 5 Key Exercises for Longevity 59:13 Ads 01:00:13 Why These 5 Exercises Matter for Longevity 01:03:00 Most Important Functional Movement: Thoracic Spine Rotation 01:11:11 Exercises to Prevent Hunching with Age 01:14:26 Train Longer or Harder? 01:16:22 Importance of Proper Form 01:19:24 What Is Nerd Neck? 01:21:09 Common and Avoidable Gym Injuries 01:24:05 How to Do Less and Achieve More 01:26:44 7-Day Comprehensive Workout Plan 01:30:37 Sets and Reps for These Workouts 01:31:56 Growing Biceps 01:33:46 Grip Strength and Its Link to Longevity 01:39:15 Women's Average Grip Strength 01:41:47 Can Grip Strength Be Trained Individually? 01:42:19 How to Avoid or Improve Back Pain 01:47:47 Jeff's Opinion on Standing Desks 01:52:09 Jeff's Advice on Supplements 01:53:39 Creatine Benefits and Misconceptions 01:57:50 Best Form of Creatine 01:59:19 What Is the Creatine Loading Phase? 02:01:09 Are Some Protein Powders Better Than Others? 02:02:40 Foods Jeff Would Never Eat 02:03:23 Jeff's View on Melatonin 02:04:18 Is There an Optimal Way to Sleep? 📣 100 CEOs: Ready to think like a CEO? Gain access to the 100 CEOs newsletter here: https://bit.ly/100-ceos-youtube The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Get email updates: https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt Follow Steven: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Research document: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/DOAC-Jeff-Cavaliere-Independent-Research-further-reading.pdf Follow Jeff, here: YouTube - https://bit.ly/4mfLt1B Instagram - https://bit.ly/3YKF58s Athlean-X - https://bit.ly/4dnOU2k You can purchase Jeff’s book, ‘AthleanX's Train Like an Athlete: Intelligent Training to Build the Ultimate Body’, here: https://amzn.to/4j6g6Up Sponsors: Vivobarefoot - https://vivobarefoot.com/DOAC with code DIARY20 for 20% off Shopify - https://shopify.com/bartlett
"Taking creatine can increase muscle and strength, but also improve brain health and performance in sleepdeprived and high stress states. But there's some new research coming out showing its ability to..."
"the the king and the OG of online fitness training, advice, support. In terms of the mission that you're on in particular and how your perspective differs from other people out there in the market, wh..."
"what's the Mets for anyone that doesn't? So the Mets are the New York Mets professional baseball team. So I work with some of the best baseball players in the world. Had a chance to work with some of ..."
"me. When I look at someone like you and I see these bulging muscles and I see how lean you are, I it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking, well you were just born with extreme motivation and ..."
"many people that are struggling that come to you and they say, "Listen, I've got these big goals. I'm I'm overweight. I don't feel good. I've got diabetes here, cardiovascular problem here inflammatio..."
"millions of people that have watched your videos, I mean, it's actually billions of people that have watched your videos and consumed your content you must hear a lot of different types of spark. When..."
"within that as well. I was thinking about how that guy who wouldn't put that 100 pound kettle bell down for him. It it was actually about a story he wanted to tell to himself. It's something that he w..."
"Christmas and New Year's. I was I sat down with one of my best friends and said to him, I said, "What exercise and what thing do you dislike the most and we basically made a list of them and then we s..."
"things you must have figured out from all the content you've produced across all the these channels is really like the essence of what people want and and I you know because you'll see from the views ..."
"very top then? Like how does it manifest like the the title of the video or the thing? I mean the top is uh abs, biceps chest and uh and you know low back pain. I mean people actually come to me for o..."
"of broken everything you've said into three sections which is people want to look good, they want to perform in whatever that might be and they also want to be able to do it for a long time. They want..."
"start with fat and lean. Mhm. If I want to be lean like you and I want to have low body fat where does one begin? What happened with me and what I always advise people to do is start just by looking a..."
"What do you think are some of the offenders that we don't realize are offenders? I've had so many in my life even like ketchup and Yeah. I thought white rice was great. Yeah, I mean white rice is actu..."
"look for in the on the package? I always look for sugar and fat. That's what I look for. So B dietary fat there are nine calories per gram of fat versus four calories per gram of protein or carbohydra..."
"look like? I eat uh breakfast in the morning. And I have usually, again, I'll give you typical meals. I have uh oatmeal. I even put like some pumpkin in the oatmeal itself, some canned pumpkin just fo..."
"the same. I probably eat a bit too late. I train a bit too late, etc. And as I'm listening to you, I'm almost listening to myself. And I know the rebuttal is that, well, Stephen, if you went to bed ea..."
"being uh lean, one of the things people are most obsessed with getting rid of is lower belly fat. This stubborn belly fat that occurs right right there. Right there on our little mannequin here. You d..."
"misconceptions we have about abs to get rid of the body fat by doing those crunches and stuff like that doesn't work, you know? Um I think that's probably the biggest misconception. I always remember ..."
"see um older bodybuilders, like former bodybuilders, and they kind of look a bit bloated. What is that? I mean that's usually anabolic steroid use that causes that or growth hormone. Um, that doesn't ..."
"then. Um, when we think about longevity and what it's going to take for me to be live a long time but be strong into my later years, where what areas do I need to focus on training and and staying str..."
"Do you think people realize that that's so important? And do you think they enjoy it? No, I think people hate it. And I think that I mean some people like it. If you're into the practice of yoga Pilat..."
"How much work have I got to put in to become more flexible and to improve my mobility? Not not much. It just has to be consistent. So, I mean, I think if you were to devote even five to 10 minutes a d..."
"As you can see from the space I'm in you don't need a whole lot of room to be able to do these exercises. They're incredibly accessible. They're actually scalable with a low barrier of entry. So, no m..."
"transformed how my team and I move train, and think about our bodies. When Dr. Daniel Lieberman came on the diio. He explained how modern shoes with their cushioning and support are making our feet we..."
"with those workouts? Why why did you choose those workouts and what do these kind of signal? Are you saying that if I'm able to do those then there's a probability that I have the strength and flexibi..."
"Why did you bring the skeleton with you with the bow tie? Uh the bow tie. I mean, he came dressed even more than I did. I think my t-shirt, but this is Raymond. So X-ray is his full name, and then Ray..."
"that at my age? I'm I'm 30 in my early 30s now. What have I got to be doing now to make sure that when I get older I'm not hunched over and I am I do have that full range of mobility? Yeah, there's a ..."
"and is it important for me to train for a long time or for a more intense but shorter period how do you think about that yeah so I always say you can train long or you can train hard but you can't do ..."
"about um the importance of form when we're training? It's one of the things you're known for is emphasizing that form really matters. And you know, there might be another school of thought that says, ..."
"jumping a bit back backwards, but um a conversation I had with one of my friends the other day was about nerd neck and is there a consequence to the fact that we all walk around now staring downwards?..."
"made a lot of videos that pertain to injuries, common injuries that we get when we're working out and training. What are the most common but avoidable injuries, and how do I avoid them? Because I I ca..."
"a lot. It is a lot. But I mean, you could acquire the strength you need there with one exercise. You know, the function is hip abduction. So, you could do some of the sidelineing hip um uh lifting or ..."
"similar function of pushing. So, if you look at a bench press, it's pushing the weight away from you is the concentric action that you're doing. If I looked at a lat pull down, I'm pulling the weight ..."
"think just about Monday, which we had down is the push day. So that's me doing like chest and is it uh triceps and shoulders. How many if I'm training for one hour, how many reps are you trying to do ..."
"example. How often do I need to train and how intense do I need to train the bicep for it to grow? And conversely, if I just left my bicep alone, how long would it take for me to lose the muscle? Yeah..."
"um contraption on the desk in front of us. This this thing here. Yeah. A lot so many people talk to me about this device and it's it's quite strange how important people say that this device is and wh..."
"sure, but you try. Sure. But you're most certainly way stronger than me. Not in grip strength, but you're stronger than me at bicep curls, bench press everything else. Yeah. I mean it is it is this is..."
"my grip strength individually if I wanted to improve it as an individual thing where I just have to grip. Yeah, I mean you know they they one of the easiest ways to do it is with those oldfashioned li..."
"other thing I I wanted to talk to you about, which we've touched on briefly but I think is important to talk about because I don't think people realize how how prevalent it is, is back pain. I was loo..."
"what they call a mismatch disease or a mismatch issue. Um when they say mismatch issue, they mean that there's a way that we're living our lives these days that is at odds with how we were quote unquo..."
"supplementation. I've got a bunch of supplements here with me now. And there's so much said about supplementation, but if you were to give me some advice and guide me on what supplements you think I s..."
"recently, it seems. I was looking at some Google search data and it shows just how quickly in search volume creatine is increasing from the early 2020s to 2025. Now it's exploding and it's been around..."
"without. And there's lots of different types of creatine, right? There's like gummies now, there's monohydrate there's all kinds of creatines. There was over New Year's again, I was looking at um diff..."
"hydrochloride. What's all this stuff about loading? Because when I was younger, my brother was bodybuilding, he would he would tell me that you had to load up. Yeah. I you had to have a huge dosage fo..."
"about the the proteins I've got here? Are there any particular proteins that are better than others? I mean, I like to say since that's mine, that's that's better. But the, you know, the the fact is t..."
"are some foods that you would just absolutely never let go near your mouth? Like the real ones where if your kids asked or you know, you just say there's no way we're eating that. I really hate the dy..."
"I've got a little jar of it here that I found. Um, a lot of people are taking melatonin now and I've got a friend very close to me that's encouraging me to take melatonin. Do you have a view on it? My..."
"clock. Have you thought much about how we're supposed to sleep? I.e. because we talked about lower back, back pains etc. Is there an optimal way to sleep? Am I meant to sleep on my front, my back, my ..."