Shadowing Practice: I Built The World's Most Scientific Gym - Learn English Speaking with Video

For the last two years, I've been secretly building the most scientific gym on the planet.

It's really a blank slate, bro.

This ceiling light is gonna look so sick.

I think it's really unique.

I think it gives a like industrial, like techy type vibe.

This is where I'll be training myself, but it's not just for lifting.

It's actually a full-blown muscle research facility.

So that now, in here, I'll be able to do my own scientific experiments.

I'm calling the entire place the Jeff Knippard Muscle Lab and there are four rooms plus a lobby in the middle.

There's a dark gym with more of the bodybuilding machines, a light gym with more of the strength stuff, room three is a new podcast room, and then there's my personal favorite room.

This is where all the real science will go down.

What's behind that door cost me over $300,000.

And since it's the best part, by far, I'm gonna save it for last.

So this is the lobby.

We've got this custom art piece up here on the wall.

We got the custom JN logo mat down here and behind this door is the dark side.

Behind this door is the light side.

Let's check out the light side first.

Before we go in, this is what it used to look like before.

This is gym side one, so this is going to be more of like a light toned gym, so it'll be a little bit brighter, a little more white.

And this is what it looks like now.

Before we start the tour, I just want to make it clear that nothing in here was gifted or sponsored.

I just picked out my favorite pieces from brands like Aliko, Atlantis, Prime, even an old school pre-core machine.

So the first thing you see when you walk in is the deadlift platform.

And now that I have this gym, I have been getting back into deadlifting more.

But my main exercise for my legs right now is right over here around the corner.

The pendulum squat.

So if you guys have been watching me at all, you know that I'm a huge fan of pendulum squats

and it's a really good quad dominant squat because it is super hard in that bottom part of the range of motion.

I have been using this flat out.

And also, check this out.

I got my very own Jeff Knippard Muscle Lab plates.

They're not all in yet, but I don't know.

I just love to look at these.

Speaking of the quads, this is a very, very close second.

So this is a prime leg extension machine.

And the thing I love about this one is that depending on where you load these plates, you can emphasize different aspects of the range of motion.

So if I load the plate down here, okay, on the bottom, it's gonna feel really hard in the squeeze.

So it's gonna get harder as you get to the lockout.

If you load it in the middle, it's gonna feel harder in the middle.

And then if you load it on the top, it's gonna feel hardest in the stretch.

So when I do this, I normally load two plates on top, two plates in the middle, and that'll usually do me for around 10 reps.

And not only that, this is the only machine, the only leg extension machine that I've seen that has this deep of a knee angle.

So you can get way deeper here than you can on any other leg extension I've ever seen, especially if you set the seat back.

This is hip adduction, hip adduction machines.

I actually had Jesse James West in here yesterday, and I was telling him that you can set the seat forward

if you want to get a little bit more of a stretch.

You can set the seat back if you want to improve the angle of the glute medius fibers a little bit better.

It's also super versatile.

So if you set it in here, you can do your hip abductions for the glutes.

If you set it out here, you can do your hip abductions for the inner thighs.

All right, hamstrings.

This is by far my favorite lying leg curl machine on the planet.

And the reason for that is this angle right here.

This is pretty much the closest to a seated leg curl that you can get in a lying leg curl.

So it's like, oh, why didn't you just get a seated leg curl?

Well, I did get a seated leg curl too.

But there's something about lying down, honestly, at the start of a workout that just feels better to me.

And you get so deep on this that it almost feels like your leg is going to snap in half.

And I mean that in the best possible way.

It is just an awesome machine.

And like with all Prime machines, depending on where you set the cam, you can overload different aspects of the range of motion.

I usually set it here, in between the max stretch setting and the mid-range setting.

Alright, leg press.

So this is actually a fancy leg press, so most leg presses are just linear, so you have this 45 degree angle and the weight moves up and down in a straight line.

This one actually moves in an arc, it just feels a lot more natural, and I can get nice and deep on this one.

Super smooth machine.

Oh, I forgot to show you.

This is one of my favorite pieces.

Donkey calf raise.

This, I think, is an underrated machine.

It is a nostalgia piece.

This is famous in part because of Arnold and his donkey calf raises.

But I was showing Jesse a few calf tips on this yesterday.

When you have that bent hip position, you can take some of the stress off your back, but you still have a straight leg and

so you can still get a super big stretch on the gastrocnemius

so yeah absolutely love the donkey calf

and then just to be safe you know to be sure i do also have a standing calf raise machine

and this one's really nice because this pad is so grippy

and so you can just rotate up

and down on the balls of your feet

and you'll be super secure super stable and just direct all

that tension into your calves i was actually talking to larry wheels earlier

and we're going to get him in the actual lab

that i'll show you in a minute

and do a full blown calf training study to see

if we can finally get his stubborn calves to grow using

science speaking of larry wheels we've got a full squat rack

over here as a uh ex power lifter you know i've got a got to have some free weights

but this this is probably my number one glute builder right

now i do like a one second squeeze at the top of each rep

because the hip thrust is one of those rare exercises where you're not really trying to overload the stretch, you're really just trying to engage your glutes and so yeah,

squeeze at the top of all your hip thrusts.

Alright, obviously gotta have a Smith machine in here and with a Smith machine I'm really just looking for two things.

One is a straight up and down bar path, so I personally am not a fan of the Smith machines that have a angled bar path, so I wanted one that goes straight up and down

and then other than that I just wanted one that was really smooth.

There's nothing worse than than a smith machine that needs some oil

and I've been using this one pretty much every workout too.

You guys thought that was it?

100

That's just half.

101

We still got the dark side so come on over here.

102

You guys ready for the dark side?

103

Let's go.

104

All right, so like I said, this is the more bodybuilding focus side, so we've got a little more dramatic down lighting.

105

I'm going to show you guys something really sick with the lights in a minute.

106

But first, I'm going to start with my favorite piece over here.

107

So this, This, if you don't know, is a seal row.

108

This is one of those old school movements, but I just think it's so good for smashing the mid-back.

109

So if you use this horizontal angle, you can get so much tension in your mid-traps, in your rhomboids, in your rear delts.

110

But then, what I love about this machine in particular, is you can actually change this angle.

111

So if I wanted to make it more of a lat-focused row, I could just bring the bench up and focus on driving my elbows down and slightly back,

112

and that's going to absolutely light up my lats.

113

Also, check it out, we've got custom dumbbells with Jeff Knippard Muscle Lab on them.

114

I just love these.

115

A very, very close runner-up for back training in this gym would be the prime chest supported row.

116

And so just like with the leg extension, depending on where you load the plates, you can overload different aspects of the range of motion.

117

So if you load the plates on the bottom, you can overload the squeeze, load them in the middle, load that mid part of the range, load them up on top, and you'll get more tension in the stretch.

118

Absolutely love this one.

119

Over here we've got another T-bar row.

120

I'm still trying to find a home for this one, but I don't know, there's something about like the angle and the size of this, the way that the handles flare out, it just works super well for my body.

121

Right here, so most people think this is a lower back exercise, right?

122

After all, it is called a 45 degree lower back extension, but I actually think this is much better as a glute exercise.

123

So all you need to do to turn this into a fantastic glute builder is round your back

124

and that'll force your glutes to handle more of the hip extension.

125

Like I've been doing this every week on one of my leg days

126

and I'll just do 12 to 15 reps with a plate held to my chest

127

and you will feel the craziest mind muscle connection with your glutes doing this.

128

So if you're sleeping on the 45 degree back extension for glute growth, it's time to wake up.

129

Let me show you guys some shoulder stuff.

130

Let's go here first.

131

So this is a shoulder press machine and some of you guys might be wondering, well Jeff, why did you get a shoulder press machine?

132

Doesn't that only hit your front delts and don't your front delts get all the work they need from bench press?

133

And shouldn't you focus more on your side delts?

134

Well, the other day I busted out one of the many new scientific tools from the research room with my friend Will, where we hooked electrodes up to his front delts,

135

side delts, and rear delts, and measured muscle activation of all three heads on my new shoulder press machine.

136

The results really surprised me.

137

What we found was super high activation in the front delts, as you'd expect, super low activation in the rear delts,

138

as you'd expect, but also super high activation in the side delts.

139

You actually had more lateral than front on the shoulder press.

140

What?

141

That's insane because as soon as I stopped the set, I'm like, my side delt's pumped.

142

Yeah.

143

Then I hooked the left roads up to myself and got my own measurements and found the exact same thing.

144

So I'm not saying that that's conclusive by any means, but it seems that at least for Will and me, a shoulder press is not just a front delt exercise,

145

it seems to also really activate the side delts at least more than what most people think.

146

So I'm actually a fan of including a vertical press.

147

Also for shoulders, I've got this standing Atlantis lateral raised machine over here.

148

This is one of my favorites.

149

Super smooth, such a great range of motion, and just a really good alternative to cables or dumbbells.

150

Will and I also did a little experiment for the rear delts.

151

So we came over here and we did reverse pec deck, but if you guys are regular viewers, you'll know that I don't love to do these facing the machine like this.

152

I prefer to sit more to the side and

153

that way I can get such a better range of motion for my rear delts.

154

You know, if you face the machine, you're really only able to do half reps

155

because the full range of motion for your rear delts is from here all the way back to here.

156

And so if you're facing the machine, you're only getting this aspect.

157

It would be like doing bicep curls only in the top half and completely cutting out the bottom.

158

So that's how I modify this.

159

And when we did that and we measured muscle activation, we did see super high rear delt activation as you'd expect.

160

But also I found it interesting.

161

There was very little side delt activation on this and basically no front delt activation.

162

So yeah, really good rear delt isolation exercise if you're looking to bring up your rear delts.

163

Okay, we've got a lat pull down, pretty standard here, really smooth.

164

Over here we've got a seated cable row and what I like about this one is this distance right here.

165

What that allows me to do is get a super deep stretch on my lats.

166

Over here back to chest.

167

So this is my favorite chest press machine on the planet.

168

I actually call this the Phil Heath machine because I remember when I was first getting into bodybuilding, I saw a video of Phil Heath using this machine

169

and ever since then I've just been convinced that it's the best machine for the chest.

170

And to make it a little bit more effective I actually added these fat grips just

171

so I can get a little extra range of motion at the bottom.

172

But what I might do is actually modify this seat to bring it forward a little bit more

173

because I feel like I could get just a little bit deeper.

174

But when it comes to smoothness, you just can't beat the hammer strength chest press, man. So good.

175

All right, a couple more things and then I'm gonna show you guys something I'm also super excited about.

176

Okay over here we've got a treadmill whatever.

177

This is I think honestly it's the best cable machine

178

that I could find and it's called the Nautilus Human Sport Freedom Trainer

179

and the reason I think it's so good is that it's just

180

so versatile so you can set the cables to any height you want you can move them in or out.

181

You can do any kind of exercise from low, from high, and this one I use every single upper body workout.

182

But you know what I didn't show you guys yet?

183

The lighting in here.

184

Check this out.

185

We honestly put so much work into the lighting in here

186

because I just want it to look as cool as possible on camera, and so we have a full panel in here where we can adjust all the lights individually

187

and every single light has its own dimmer.

188

Let's just say we wanted to create a spotlighting effect for just like maximum shadows on the muscle.

189

We could turn off all the headlights and then every single spotlight in here is individually controlled.

190

So I could turn them all off, except for one, and this is what I'm gonna call the thumbnail lighting.

191

Check this out.

192

I just got 5% body fat leaner.

193

It's actually insane, the difference that lighting can make.

194

But that's not it.

195

I still need to show you guys the real purpose behind this entire project.

196

This is going to be the lab.

197

Probably like some kind of muscle mannequin right here.

198

And then I think I'm going to put a sign that says Jeff Knipperd Muscle Lab.

199

This room over here is the Jeff Knippard Muscle Lab.

200

There are so many fitness questions I want to answer here.

201

Like, what if I took a set of twins and I had one twin eat a junk food only diet, and the other twin eat a clean food only diet?

202

What would happen to their body fat and their blood work?

203

Or how about this?

204

What if I took an enhanced bodybuilder and told them to stop taking steroids for six months, but keep their training and diet exactly the same?

205

How much muscle would they lose?

206

I'm also excited to test things out on myself.

207

Right now, I'm testing if I can get to single digits body fat and actually maintain it all year without going crazy.

208

And I'm measuring my body fat, muscle, hormone levels, and everything else using the tools in this lab.

209

This is a top-of-the-line DEXA machine for measuring body fat and lean mass.

210

Some DEXAs are less precise, but this one has an error margin of around 0.5%.

211

At my latest check-in for my fat loss experiment, my DEXA scan came back with a body fat percentage of 10.3%.

212

So if I lose anything more than 0.5% body fat from here, this DEXA will be able to accurately pick it up.

213

And DEXA is great for tracking fat loss, but for the muscle building experiments I want to do, it's not quite accurate enough.

214

So I also got this brand new ultrasound machine which can measure muscle thickness directly.

215

I want to do an arm experiment where I train one bicep normally, twice a week, but I train my other bicep every single day for 30 days.

216

Using the ultrasound, I'll be able to measure down to the millimeter which arm grows better.

217

So if you take this ultrasound probe, gel it up, and put it on the muscle, It'll show you exactly what's happening on the inside and how well it's growing over time.

218

So up here on top, there's a layer of skin and there's a thin layer of fat.

219

And all of this is the actual biceps muscle tissue and below that is the bone.

220

We're going to be able to do really high quality studies that I definitely want to get peer reviewed and published.

221

This isn't just for experiments on YouTube.

222

I think that there are so many gaps in the research

223

and there are so many studies that have flaws with them that I just want to make my own.

224

So now I can do that.

225

I have the ultrasound, I have the DEXA machine.

226

I can get however many subjects I can recruit to come in here.

227

Bro, it's going to be peer reviewed.

228

It's going to go in scientific journals.

229

It's going to be like doing a study, but just like this is the university, you know?

230

But if I'm being honest, pushing the scientific field forward wasn't my main motivation for building this facility.

231

My main motivation is to make high quality science more accessible and entertaining.

232

The range of motion study that I did last year in New York, comparing full range of motion to length and

233

and partials was actually the first ever exercise science study where the researchers were allowed to film the subjects.

234

And even with that permission, we still had to blur out their faces.

235

And since I'm not formally affiliated with the university, I still wasn't able to film them myself.

236

So that was a bit frustrating

237

because I felt like I couldn't showcase exactly what the subjects were doing as well as I wanted to.

238

Here, we're gonna be able to film every single subject in every study that I do, show you exactly what they're doing,

239

show you exactly the gains they make.

240

Like just imagine how much more that's going to help people connect with the science

241

when you can actually see the subjects going through the protocol.

242

Like that's never been done in exercise science ever and we're going to be able to do that here.

243

I also want to do some really big studies in here with hundreds of subjects

244

because a legitimate problem with a lot of training studies is that they have really small sample sizes.

245

Like it's normal for studies to only have eight or ten subjects.

246

So if we get a load of people in here and we just need to grab a quick and dirty snapshot, we can use this BIA machine.

247

Yeah, I'll definitely use the DEXA more, but BIA can measure body comp in about one minute, whereas DEXA takes about 20 to 30 minutes.

248

And BIA is still pretty good at tracking changes.

249

And I'm super excited about this EMG machine.

250

I want to run an EMG validation study to see

251

if higher electrical activity is actually predictive of hypertrophy over the long term, because that's not something we really know yet.

252

If it is, this will be really useful for comparing exercises.

253

And at this point, you may be wondering how I'm funding all this.

254

The Dexa machine alone costs $200,000, and it's honestly all possible because of you guys.

255

Nothing in the lab or in the gym is sponsored or gifted.

256

It was 100% funded through the training programs that you guys run on jeffnipper.com and through any of you who use Macrofactor, which, if you don't know,

257

is my smart nutrition app that uses science-based algorithms to adjust your diet to your specific metabolism, just like a coach would, but for a tiny fraction of the cost.

258

All you need to do is log your weight and track what you eat, and the app will take care of the rest.

259

I've been using it every day on my cut so far, and it's taken me from over 20% body fat down to just over 10% body fat now.

260

And I'll be honest, it's made the entire dieting process super simple.

261

When you track your macros, you can still be flexible and enjoy life without having to compromise your goals.

262

We have over 350,000 users and an amazing online community that can help you out with recipes, answer any questions you might have, and keep you accountable.

263

So go to the App Store or Google Play, download a free trial, and input code Jeff to get two weeks for free.

264

It's been so hard trying to keep this a secret for the last two years because it's been so much work, and also so much excitement.

265

And I almost forgot, the final room is the Jeff Knippard Podcast.

266

So my podcast is officially live.

267

I did my first episode with my brother Brad.

268

You guys might remember him from the experiment

269

that we did together where we both trained as perfectly as we possibly could for a full year.

270

I'll put a link to that over here next to my head if you guys want to check it out.

271

Don't forget to subscribe to this channel.

272

Leave me a like if you enjoyed the video.

273

And I'll see you guys all here in the next one.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: I Built The World's Most Scientific Gym - Learn English Speaking with Video

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?