Shadowing Practice: The ULTIMATE Guide to Aesthetics - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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looking good and aesthetic is more about just lifting weights
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and eating the right food you can be in the gym training hard doing all the right things
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and still not build the physique of a greek up there are a few key principles
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and myths that allow you to build a genuinely aesthetic physique
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and that's exactly what i'm breaking down today in this video
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all right priority number one is defining what aesthetic even means to you
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because it really doesn't mean anything it's just a subjective word of how you end up wanting to look
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so you to figure out what
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that means to you is it a classic physique is it
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a bodybuilder from the 90s is it someone who does calisthenics define what
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that is so that if you have a goal you can actually end up achieving that goal
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when you were in high school you first started i think
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how were you approaching aesthetics see i didn't overthink it
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when i was young i just wanted to be really strong
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so i would focus on compound movements
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that squat bench dead every single week no matter what
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and then i would just do accessory movements after that
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so get strong as possible in these movements and then train like biceps, arms, delts in between.
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But even when I trained delts, it was like heavy shoulder press, heavy dumbbell, barbell press.
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And it was about getting strong and then spam a lot of ways after.
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So I think when you're young and you can build that foundation of just like really good form and really good strength, it's just a cheat code.
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build proportions not just size that's what aesthetics really comes down to what people miss sometimes is
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that your eyes see shape before it sees the size an
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example this would be you see a dude a big dude
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wearing a big t -shirt looks big you can see like 175 pound dude not
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that he's saying he's small
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but wearing a tight really fitting t -shirt with like good shaped arms
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and stuff and he looks way bigger than he is just
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because of the shape that he's creating you all have to analyze your own body and see what your weak points are.
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I spent five, seven years training
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and over time I realized my legs are really growing
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because I know how to train them really hard and heavy but my arms just won't grow.
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My back isn't getting any more thickness and definition to it
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so I had to restructure my training to focus on my weak points because I was paying attention to it.
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V taper, x -frame, whatever you want to call it, actually absolutely a huge part of this and one of the things that people don't think about is your waist.
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Your digestion is one of the crucial things are that
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if you're constantly eating foods
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that don't sit with you sit well with you you're constantly bloated
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that constant stress on your stomach will cause it to distend
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and stay there over a long period of time
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and you will get a bigger waist from it you really
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stabilize your core you're keeping it tight with your training you're not doing crazy obliques
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and your food is easily digestible not only just good for your recovery
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and inflammation it also keeps your waist smaller from an aesthetic standpoint
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so the tighter your waist feels the tighter it will stay
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what's the workout today currently kind of in between phases traveling all over the place
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so today i'm just throwing in a little bit of back biceps maybe a little bit of delts
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because why not always trying to strengthen my back always want bigger biceps
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there are supplements people can take to help with their digestion
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a general digestive enzyme can help if you need it
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if you're someone who gets heartburn or has trouble digesting specifically high amounts of animal protein like meat
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betaine hcl will help you with that
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because it can help balance out your stomach acid so you can and actually digest high protein meals.
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Probiotics, if you can get it through your food, amazing, most people can't.
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But the reality is most of it comes down to just healthy habits with the way you eat.
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If you're eating out like crappy food consistently throughout the week, and you need to take a digestive enzyme to eat a little bit of chicken raisin broccoli,
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maybe there's something you need to fix.
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there's a few muscles
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that are high value aesthetic muscles depending on what you need
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personally one of them being your delts having a wide clavicle is a genetic way to be more aesthetic
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because you're wider up top
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if you don't have a wide clavicle the wider your delts are it gives you
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that illusion that up top you're wide
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and then it allows you to bring down into your waist
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so if you're someone with a bigger waist you're going to need bigger delts lats very similar thing more
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so shown from the back you have a bigger waist the
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wider your lats are the more likely your waist is going
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to look small it's all about creating big things around your waist to create
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that extreme obviously your quads does the reverse effect
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if your quads are able to sweep out from hitting the outside of your quad having
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that wide look to them again it makes your waist look smaller gives you
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that extreme so having quads
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that sweep out is super important hamstrings a little less for the silhouette
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but still super important when you're sitting having
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that hamstring drop super key typically the more knee flexion
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that you'll do like a leg curl or something the the more you're gonna hit that distal end, the bottom end of your hamstring.
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more hip extension style thing you do like an rdl deadlift
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etc the more of the proximal end higher up your hamstring you're gonna get
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so if you really want that low hang like when you're sitting
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and it kind of like droops underneath
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that it's gonna be a shit ton of leg curls calves are like the obvious one
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that we all know but i'll ignore
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because everyone's like oh it's just genetic you're gonna be stuck with the calves
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that you have to an extent yes
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but not completely don't ignore your calves another one
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that people often will let go of especially bodybuilders is going to be your erectors from the back
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if you have thick erectors coming out of you it really
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just helps lift your back off you help separate from your lat
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and it gives you a nice full set
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when you're hitting a back double bicep or some kind of back shot on stage super important peaches and honey flavors
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I can't top root beer but that's peak summer drink right there like summer flavor that one right there.
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What's your top three bomb flavors right now?
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I would say that at number three I think because I love the sweet iced tea lemonade and the root beer.
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Root beer, sweet iced tea lemonade, peach and snowy.
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That's the three.
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Big top three.
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You good?
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Good.
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Oh.
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Are you in on me?
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Yeah.
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We're both just like staring.
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Once you know what you need to grow you need to know how to grow it.
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The goal is to train for muscle not just weight
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and it might sound counterintuitive to i said in the beginning
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but when you're young things are different the goal is to get strong
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when you're young without sacrificing execution
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and then the goal is to progress in execution load still without sacrificing your form the reason that is
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so crucial is a mind muscle connection is absolutely not a
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myth people's incredible quads can often flex just their teardrops just the vastest lateralis
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and medialis like one at a time
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because they have such good connection those people's quads grow faster
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and bigger and more defined and they look better
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because their mind is better connected to them so they can access it better while they are training.
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Second part is injuries, stiffness, being tight, all of that kills your aesthetics.
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If you hurt yourself once, I tore my hamstring when I was really young, never looked at aesthetic again.
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I have a hole in my hamstring now because of that.
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If you tear a bicep and it goes up, it'll never look aesthetic again.
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So if you're not training with perfect form and preventing the possibility of injury, you're going to ruin the future of having aesthetic physique even
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if you don't get injured but you're chaining within poor range of the motion
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and your body's getting tight rolled in your fascia is getting restricted
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and into a bad position your muscle has less room to grow
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and to be relaxed and to hang and to be soft
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and the more relaxed your muscle tone is there's a word of toning a
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that is but your muscle does hold a tone at the frequency going through it
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and the more relaxed it is the more it can be full
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and look good and grow and look young and youthful
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and the more aesthetic
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that it is all right another mini pro tip
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on biceps training your brachialis as in this forearm part especially
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for someone who has a really short bicep head i .e
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myself like i have a big gap between where my muscle inserts
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and my elbow therefore the bigger the forearm might have the more you can fill
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that gap out and then the bigger your arm looks
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everyone's always like oh just like tighter contraction more bicep more bicep
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but being able to hit the long head of your tricep
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so that your arm hangs helps it feel bigger from the front
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if you want to bigger from the side having a bigger brachialis helps fill
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that gap in if you look at someone like phil heath who was just a freak
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because his whole arm was just absolutely huge
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but his arm looked absolutely insane
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because his brachialis was like out of this world you could
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like grab his brachialis on his forearm with a hand like that and it was huge.
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Now if you train like Phil you're not getting arms like
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that but you can at least look at what looks good
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and train the muscle accordingly to get a fraction of a percent towards the version of Phil Heath's arms
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which is what I told myself to justify that I'd always have small arms compared to him.
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All right so some common mistakes in this are gonna be again basic things ego lifting, momentum, half reps chasing numbers and all these things are tools
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that have a place to use but if there's a priority
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that you are leading your training towards then you're not leading towards an aesthetic physique
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if you're someone who can bench 225 half reps really fast
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for 20 reps cool now do lock out full range of
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motion subtle pause at the bottom four second negative pause press
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forward feel the muscle mind muscle connection the entire time throughout it
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that is going to build your chest in a more constructive
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long -term aesthetic way rather than just pounding it out as fast as you can
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and letting your form fall apart and potentially the energy
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so being able to leave your ego at the door
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which is a thing that you always hear in the gym
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that is one of those things that you hear too much
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and stop listening to it just remind yourself it's true i think one of the big things
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that changed in my training that helped me a lot
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and you guys can apply this too is using tempo as a variable you do a 10 second negative
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and then a one second up you could do a four Four seconds negative, four seconds up you could do a three second pause in the stretch
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and then like there's so many different ways that you can do it
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that allow you to stimulate the muscle in a different way
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and allow it to continue to grow
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and load it in different ranges of motion so that it is growing the full length of the muscle
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and all the things i've said prior to the video
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that i don't need to repeat
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if you're paying attention what about your approach changed once he
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turned pro i won the olympia at like 220 pounds
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and they increased the weight limit significantly
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so from 2019 to 2020 i had to put on a
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bunch of weight it was covid i had a really good training partner axel
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and we were training like
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so heavy balls to the wall past failure fourth reps like every single set every single workout
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and i was only like 24 years old at the time
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so my body could handle it and i was pushing pushing pushing
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and then i tried to continue doing that
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but i started to get some injuries my body was getting fatigued wasn't recovering like it could
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but essentially my mistake that i made was that i I pushed the intensity and chasing the weight for too long.
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And it led to my body having some injuries and having some restrictions
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that I was honestly battling for the rest of my career.
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And I'm still fixing now because I never had an opportunity to fully let them recover
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because I was in a professional competing season.
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So that's all I'm saying, try and get smarter before I did.
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It's not like, oh, I'm 30, I'm old now.
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My body was 25 starting to experience these things.
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So your teens, get after it, but start getting smart in your early 20s.
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Always focus on form don't be an idiot and under also understand
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that your weight can stay the same
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while making progress it is possible i was able to improve my physique in different parts of it
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while not actually changing the weight on the scale
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because i was refining what i was doing within the physique and weight limit that i had
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different season of life right now the fries are handlers don't blame me for this
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but i got some air fried gluten -free chicken fingers these things are fire live in a big city now
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and i ordered me some real food don't hate me there's really only two things
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that you need visually you need enough muscle
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and you need to be lean enough to actually see it the first thing you need enough muscle
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that means you need to start with the build phase you
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need to at least be in a high enough surplus
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that your body is able to put on muscle
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and the more stubborn you are gaining weight you may have to put slightly more body fat on
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but you do not want to use this as an excuse
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to get fat you want to eat the same foods
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that are good for your digestion next is the obvious getting
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lean you want to pull back slowly again keep your protein
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really high add a little bit of cardio not too much because
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if you're running you're going to be shrinking your legs it's
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not always going to be the same your whole life
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when you're young and you're hard gaining
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and you're working really hard to put on muscle it's going to be challenging to do
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that and to maintain it but the longer
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that you've had muscle on your body the easier it is to hold it
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but once you hit that aesthetic physique
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or at least close to it you can maintain much easier my physique right now is
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so much easier for me to maintain than
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when I was 20 years old I can be at 240 this lean
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and skip meals for two days
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and then have a bit of a surplus one day
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and be completely fine i could fast for three days
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and barely lose any muscle so the longer you have it the seasons completely change
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but you have to put in the work on the front end
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so when you're young your body's healthy there's
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so much stuff about building a foundation in this but
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when you're young you're able to put on that true foundation
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and get it at the right age then through your 30s
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you can really just enjoy training train how you want
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and maintain your aesthetic physique much more easily cardio worth touching
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on since we're talking about being lean same as anything it's
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minimum effective dose you want to do enough to get lean
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and to attribute to your health but you don't want to do
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so much that it impedes your recovery it makes your legs shrink
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or just sets you back in any other way that you're prioritizing
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that over the muscle mass that you want to be building
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so you start with something as simple as an incline walk where you're just getting some more steps
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and your heart rate's getting up and if you need more you can progress a little bit But honestly, I've gotten to three, 4 % body fat in Olympia.
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It's just simply doing an incline walk on a treadmill.
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How mean do you think people should be aiming to get?
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There's a huge difference between being stage lean and being lean enough to look good.
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And I think, as we all know, social media skews everything so much.
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People might peak throughout a month to look shredded one day, do a photo shoot, take their shirt off that.
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They have great lighting and you think that they're
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that lean all the time when they're not the amount of water sodium carbs
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that you have the night before the week before can drastically change how lean you look from water retention
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while not actually being true so
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if you look at something like a bodybuilder on stage
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that is so hard to maintain not good for your body
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and you're going to be losing muscle mass from being
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that lean whereas if you're a little bit higher than
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that you keep your muscles full
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but you're still eating body fat let's say eight to ten
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percent even for a guy you can still look good
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and maintain that year -round the body fat that I'm at right now.
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is probably six to eight week out type of body fat, probably closer to six weeks out.
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And I can maintain this like absolutely nothing.
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You wanna make sure that you are lean enough that you look good.
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You can see your abs, top and bottom abs, but not so lean that it's hurting your recovery, your sleep sucks, you're starting to get weaker.
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You don't wanna see it affect your training too much, especially if it's just the goal of looking good on the beach
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or in an Instagram picture and you're not getting on stage.
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If you guys wanna see me dive into detail on how to bulk and how to cut, I've done two specific videos tailored to each of those.
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And I'll put those on the screen
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if you want to check them out what i understand now better than ever is
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that as you evolve your training should also evolve
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when you're young you build you get strong perfect your form
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you're creating a foundation as an intermediate you're creating balance you find what your weak points are
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and you balance growth phases with lean phases with cutting phases in order to progress in the proper way
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that you want in the right forms at which you want
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and as advanced you're really refining everything the scale is not
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going to be moving nearly as much as it did
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when you were a beginner
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but you're perfecting things like your digestion your ranges of motion
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preventing any kind of injuries you're fine -tuning every type of
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variable you can from tempo to rest to ranges of motion
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to exercise selection to phases of strength versus hypertrophy versus high
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versus low volume all the different things are put together like a beautiful song
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that just makes sense phases throughout a year your diet your
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training your assessment your rehab all this stuff just flows into
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the same goal of attaining an aesthetic physique what kinds of
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things were you focusing on in the last few years of competing
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that you weren't earlier in your career the biggest thing
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which is not glorious at all honestly was preventing and fixing injuries
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that had accumulated over the years i couldn't just get in
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and do whatever i wanted i had to have specific phases throughout the year post olympia allowed recovery
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and then i allowed myself to fix my injuries going through rehab phase making sure
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that i was able to get strong in the next phase without hurting myself
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and i was able to use that strength to apply hypertrophy in the next ring
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and everything was just building specifically
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while also keeping an eye on what my weak points are
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and making sure i was providing each thing exactly what it needed everything was a little bit less creative
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and intense and it was a little bit more refined
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and methodical and just i had a lot of injuries
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and my body was hurt so I had to avoid making those anywhere so I could actually get to the finish line.
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The biggest mistake you can make is don't major in the minors too early.
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Beginners do not need to obsess over the final five percent.
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You obsess over the details in the future.
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At the beginning you just build the foundation and you earn the right to obsess over the 0 .1 percent of things.
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You have to be at a level at which it actually makes sense
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because you've earned it over years and years of hard work and refinement.
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And if you guys want to see the exact chest workout
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that i followed to win my last olympia click the link on the screen to watch
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that video and follow along as always thank you guys for watching i'll see you next time
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What You'll Learn
This video is a goldmine for building conversational fluency and natural storytelling skills. You’ll practice following a speaker’s train of thought as they shift from defining "aesthetics" to sharing personal anecdotes—perfect for real-world chats. Plus, you’ll learn to use casual transitions like "so," "but," and "and then" to connect ideas smoothly, just like native speakers do.
Listen For These Sounds
Keep an ear out for connected speech! The speaker often links words, like "want to" becoming "wanna" and "because of" sounding like "cuzza." You’ll also hear reductions, such as "it’s just" turning into "it’s juss" and "you’re" shortening to "yer." Notice how "I think how were you approaching" flows with a slight pause between "think" and "how"—this natural rhythm keeps the dialogue relaxed.
Say It Like a Native
To mirror the speaker’s style, focus on stress and rhythm. Emphasize key words like "priority," "proportions," and "weak points" to highlight important ideas. Copy the speaker’s casual pace—they slow down for emphasis (e.g., "five, seven years training") and speed up during stories (e.g., "squat bench dead every single week"). Try shadow speech (repeating lines right after the speaker) to master this flow. For extra practice, use a shadowing site to record yourself and compare—you’ll nail the natural tone in no time! Remember, native speakers don’t over-enunciate—let your words blend a little, and don’t worry about perfection. With "shadow speak" practice, you’ll sound confident and conversational, just like the video’s host.
Ready to level up? Grab your headphones, hit play, and start shadowing—your pronunciation and fluency will thank you!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've said · I've gotten · I've done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be stuck · be relaxed · are put |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who does · someone who gets · someone who has |
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.