Shadowing Practice: The Best Full UPPER BODY Workout For Max Muscle Growth (Science Applied) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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okay welcome everyone to a new episode of the science applied
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series in this video we're going to be hitting a full
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upper body workout as day two of our new upper lower split
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and these workouts are based on my new upper lower size
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and strength program however the program itself is more specific in terms of progression, periodization, and variation from week to week,
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whereas these workouts are meant to be more generalizable while still being effective and challenging.
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So today's workout is gonna be day two of six, and just jumping right in, even on upper body days, I think it's important to get your full body warmed up,
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and you wanna break a light sweat before doing any lifting to reduce risk of injury and improve performance.
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So I'm doing five minutes on the incline treadmill here, and after that, I'll do a dynamic stretching routine, which I'll play in fast motion here,
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but I can cover that in more detail in a future video if that's something you guys would like to see.
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So from there, we're going to jump into the barbell overhead press for two sets of four reps.
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Now, something I've always found with the overhead press is that people tend to hit failure quite suddenly on these.
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And what I mean by that is you can be doing six or seven reps fairly easily, and then out of nowhere, you just can't get that eighth rep up.
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So I think it actually makes sense to keep the RPE
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quite high on the overhead press since leaving even like two
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or three reps in the tank here won't actually feel that challenging at all.
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And rather than blasting this movement with a lot of rep volume, we're going to be progressing by adding one set every week.
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So in week one, we'll do two sets of four, three sets of four in week two, and then four sets of four in week three before returning to two sets of four,
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but with more weight in week four.
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Now one thing I've been working on myself with the OHP
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is really pulling my head back out of the way by lifting my chin up, I found that I have a tendency to want to move the bar forward to clear my face
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and then bring it back in an arc, whereas what I should be doing is really tilting my head back
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so I can move the bar up in a perfectly straight line.
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Okay, up next we're moving on to three sets of six reps on a wide grip pull-up.
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Now I've mentioned research from Doma and colleagues here before, which basically found that while there was no significant difference in the lat activation between a pull-up and a pull-down,
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the pull-up did come out on top for the biceps and the spinal erectors, which give that appearance of back thickness all the way up the spine.
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So I think that both a pull-up and a pull-down can have a place in your routine, but you could make the case that if you're leaving a pull-up out of your routine,
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you're most likely leaving some back thickness gains on the table.
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So here, since the reps are lower and we're using this as our main heavy pulling movement, I'm loading these with a 30-pound dumbbell,
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but you really just want to make sure that you're getting reasonably close to failure on that sixth and final rep.
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So if you're newer to the pull-up or at a heavier body weight, you can definitely use body weight only or an assisted pull-up machine.
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And in terms of technique, one thing that I'm working on mastering here
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is maintaining the same lifting tempo for rep six as I did for rep one.
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And this is something I think so many people miss on the pull-up.
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They'll start with a nice one second positive and one or two second negative for the first few reps.
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But then by the time they get to rep six, even though they may not be cheating too bad, they start to move up and down way faster than they did on the first few reps.
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And in my opinion, I would classify this as a more subtle way of cheating on these.
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So the next time you do pull-ups, pay close attention to your cadence
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and try to make it consistent all the way through from rep to rep and set to set.
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And if you can't do that, then consider lowering the weight.
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Okay, up next we're doing two sets of 10 reps on the close grip bench press.
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And we're doing another simple double progression here where we'll do 11 reps in week 2, 12 reps in week 3, and then 10 reps again in week 4 with more weight.
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And one of the main advantages of the close grip bench press from a physique development perspective
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is that it does target the upper chest better than a wider grip, with the majority of EMG studies showing that a narrow grip leads to proportionally more activation of the clavicular head.
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Now one mistake many people make with this movement is taking the exercise name too literally and going in way too close.
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Ideally, you want to have your wrists and elbows stacked from the rear, so just about a shoulder width grip is what I would consider to be close
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and going any closer than that is pretty much a guaranteed path to wrist pain.
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So after that, we're supersetting three sets of 12 reps on a wide grip seated cable row
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and three sets of 15 reps on an incline dumbbell lateral raise.
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So with the cable row here first, we're using a wide grip to emphasize transverse abduction and scapular retraction over shoulder extension.
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Basically, by having your arms more out to the sides, you're going to target more of the mid traps
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and rear delts than if you had your arms tucked in close by your sides with the elbows down.
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And having a closer grip and tucking your elbows down and in is really gonna turn on the lats.
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And on the flip side, flaring your elbows out and focusing more on pulling back rather than down is gonna hit the traps and rear delts more.
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And since it's relatively easy to fatigue the lats with pull-ups on their own, I think turning this movement into a more trap-focused exercise makes sense,
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especially since natural lifters tend to struggle more with trap development
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and back thickness than they do lat development and back width in many cases.
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And we're supersetting this with a lateral raise just for the sake of time
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and because there won't be too much interference between these two movements.
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And you guys know I normally do lateral raises leaning away on a cable, but holding up two separate machines at the gym a bit selfish
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so we're going to use the dumbbell variation here
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which is also still totally fine especially if you modify the exercise in two ways.
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First we're going to lean forward by about 15 to 30
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degrees either by bracing up against a steep incline bench
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or by just leaning forward by hinging at the hips without chest support.
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And the idea here is to put the line of pull
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more in the direction of the orientation of the lateral delt fibers
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while keeping the actual raise in the scapular plane
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and the other modification is to stop the range of motion about 10 to 15 degrees from the very bottom
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and this is going to accomplish two basic things.
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First, research from McMahon and colleagues showed
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that the bottom part of the range is mostly handled by muscles of the rotator cuff
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and the lateral delt doesn't really take over until later in the range of motion.
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So you can emphasize the lateral delt by simply cutting
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that last part of the bottom end out
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and there's actually no tension at the bottom anyway since the dumbbell is positioned straight down directly beneath the shoulder,
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so gravity can't act on the dumbbell to produce tension in the shoulder muscles at all.
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And if you'd like to hear some more tweaks on the lateral raise, I'd recommend checking out my capped delts technique Tuesday video, which I'll link down below.
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Okay, up next we're using another antagonistic superset of cable crossovers and rope face pulls.
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So basically we're going to set up the cables low
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and fly upward to get more shoulder flexion involved and hit more of that clavicular head of the upper chest.
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And after 10 reps of that, we're going to raise the cable up to shoulder height
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and then bang out another 10 reps to really burn out the sternal head.
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And after that, we're going to replace the D handle with a rope and do 20 reps of face pulls.
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Now, because the face pull has a relatively short range of motion, you want to use lighter weights for higher reps
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and really focus on keeping constant tension on the rear delts and mid traps.
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Here, we're just focusing on using an underhand grip
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and externally rotating at the top to hit more of the rear delts and strengthen up the rotator cuff.
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And you can think of this like doing a back double
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biceps pose where you're basically flexing your biceps from the back with each rep.
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All right, after that, we're going to finish off the workout with some bicep work.
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And here we're doing a pretty standard three sets of 12 reps on the supinated dumbbell curl.
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You guys may remember from my biceps technique Tuesday video that I recommend holding the dumbbell closer to the outside head,
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so your pinky rests more in the middle and driving through your pinky.
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And I've gotten so much positive feedback on that cue.
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It seems so many people feel their biceps engaging so much more
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and feel their forearms taking over so much less by using that cue.
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And another thing that I'm doing here is I'm finishing all 12 reps with my right side first, since my right arm is a bit smaller and weaker,
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and then simply matching the same reps with the same weight with my stronger arm after that, meaning it'll get a slightly lower RPE,
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which in theory should even them out over time.
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Now, one thing my new program has built in is a semi-adjustable weak point prioritization section,
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so you can add additional volume for whatever your specific weak point is.
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So for this workout, I'm doing some direct neck work.
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And if you've seen my neck technique Tuesday video, then you know
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that I've been using the NeckFlex head harness to do most of my neck training for the last few months.
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So I'm gonna do three sets of 20 slow and controlled reps on the crab walk neck curl, supersetted with three sets of 20 reps on the pushup style neck extension.
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And if you're interested in checking the NeckFlex out, they're actually a new sponsor here on the channel and it comes highly recommended.
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So you guys can check that out at the link in the description if you're interested.
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Okay, so guys, that is a wrap for this workout.
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Thank you guys so much for all the support on the launch of my program.
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It's so cool to see so many of you guys running the new program.
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And I really appreciate all the tags and messages on social media.
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And the feedback has been amazing so far.
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And if you want to jump in and start on the program, it's not too late.
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You can find it on jeffnipper.com.
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And I've decided that for the launch of episode number two here, I'm going to put it on sale again.
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As you can get it for $29.99.
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So that's $10 off.
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But I'm only going to leave it on sale until the end of this weekend.
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So on Monday, it's going to go back up to $39.99.
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And I probably won't do another sale until sometime in the fall.
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So it's a six day per week program, but there's an explanation of how you can modify it to a five day per week schedule
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if that works better for you.
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And the program also comes with coaching cues and video links for every exercise,
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as well as a full written section explaining the progression behind the program and a full list of scientific references.
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And it's a nine week routine, but I think 95% of my audience could easily run this for at least six months
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or so and continue making progress because of how the progression schemes are set up.
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So you guys can pick it up at jeffnipper.com at the discounted price for today and tomorrow, and I'll put a link to that over here next to my head.
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So thank you guys so much for watching.
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I really appreciate it.
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Don't forget to leave me a like if you enjoyed the video.
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Subscribe to the channel if you happen to be new, and I'll see you guys all here in the next episode.
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Let’s Practice English While Learning a Science-Backed Upper Body Workout!
Imagine you’re watching a popular fitness video with a friend, and you want to explain the key exercises and tips. The video breaks down a full upper body workout, from warming up to specific moves like the barbell overhead press and wide-grip pull-ups. You’ll need to use clear, conversational English to share details like rep ranges, technique fixes, and progression strategies. This real-life scenario helps you practice explaining complex ideas in simple terms—perfect for building your speaking confidence!
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master
- "Break a light sweat": A common way to say "get slightly sweaty" during a warm-up. Example: "I always break a light sweat before lifting to avoid injury."
- "Leave reps in the tank": Means stopping before you can’t do any more reps. Example: "Don’t leave too many reps in the tank—push yourself close to failure."
- "Maintain a consistent tempo": Keep the same speed for each rep. Example: "Try to maintain a consistent tempo, even on the last rep."
- "Target [muscle group] better": Focus on a specific muscle more effectively. Example: "Close-grip bench press targets the upper chest better than a wide grip."
- "Progression by adding sets": Increase the number of sets over time. Example: "We progress by adding one set every week to build strength."
Your Shadowing Challenge: Speak Like the Trainer!
Ready to practice? Use the shadowing technique—play a 30-second clip of the video, pause, and repeat the trainer’s words out loud, mimicking their tone and rhythm. Focus on phrases like "tilting my head back to move the bar straight" or "subtle way of cheating on these." For extra practice, use a shadowing app or shadowing site to record yourself and compare. This shadow speech exercise will help you sound more natural in English, whether you’re talking about workouts or everyday topics. Keep going—you’re getting better with every rep (and every sentence)!
Remember, english speaking practice doesn’t have to be boring. By linking it to a topic you love—like fitness—you’ll stay motivated and make faster progress. Now, hit play and start shadowing!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been working · I've been using |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if that's something you guys would like |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've always found · I've mentioned · I've gotten |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are based · are meant · is positioned |
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.