Exercise Scientist Critiques the Most Jacked 19-Year-Old (UNCENSORED)
In a Nutshell
Dr. Mike praises 19-year-old Julian Fitzgerald's exceptional natural physique—5'11", 195-200 lbs with genetically superior arm size and shape—defending him against steroid accusations due to elite West African genetics and clean skin quality, rating his natty odds 40-60% in favor. Key training advice: prioritize side delts (laterals, upright rows, face pulls 2-4x/week, 5-7 sets/session at ~15 reps) to balance massive arms without de-emphasizing them; enhance back thickness via rows with intentional rounding/arching, slow eccentrics, and isolation like lat prayers to prevent arm dominance. Technique notes include Versa Grips/Hyper Belt for grip support, chalk for benching, and mental toughness to push through burn, while critiquing single-arm pushdowns and protracting on bench for injury risk.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Holy crap. What happened to that young man's arm? He is jacked. Having a hard time comprehending that this is real, natural, and 18 years old. Is there a probability he's on drugs? Yes, that's true for everyone. I don't think that's the case. Hani's cues here of rounding on purpose and then arching on purpose are absolutely awesome for rows. It's how you should be rowing.
Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for RP Strength. Jet black is actually my favorite color, the color that they use to paint various military aircraft. Another person who's having a lot of fun is Mr. Julian Fitzgerald. At only 19 years of age, he is irresponsibly jacked. Many people have accused Julian of being obviously on drugs because he's more muscular. So, I had to put on my investigator hat and see if Mr. Julian is really on drugs and thus a giant liar, or if people are just smoking that old copium and he's actually a swell young man telling the truth.
Holy crap. What happened to that young man's arms? He is jacked. Especially his arms are jacked. Scott, how much does he weigh roughly? Do we know? 5'11", 195 to 200 at 19 years old. Okay, we'll put that in our algorithm in the head to see if he's natty or not.
He has a super gifted round full popping muscle bellies. Even for a given size of a muscle, muscles can be shaped differently. If your muscles are shaped in such a way that they really spoof out the sides, that makes them look way cooler, even if the cross-sectional area or the muscle size, the overall muscle volume is the same as somebody else's muscles who are kind of less poppy and more rectangular looking. He's definitely got the shape, which is awesome.
Whoa, Scott. It looks like he has normal biceps and then a bicep on top of his normal bicep. It's like a little peak on the peak, that golf ball-ish shape. That shape is almost entirely genetic. He has the ultimate killer app, which is gigantor sweeping triceps and mega redonkulous bicep peaks. His shoulders are great that I would say substantially less impressive than his arms. Not a dig at his shoulders. Just his arms are totally insane. Big ass forearms, which never hurts. His back looks pretty cool, too. But it's the arms doing the work.
Scott, doesn't that prove one of my long-standing hypotheses that big arms are the answer to everything? That if you have big arms, you're officially jacked. But if you don't have big arms, are you actually jacked? Yes. He's got about six more months left till he hits the big two. Nothing happens when you turn 20. It's like a pointless age. At 18, you can vote and get cigarettes. At 21 you could drink club hypnotic and Hennessy. Scott, have you ever had Hennessy? Yes. Have you ever had hypnotic? Yes, for sure. Have you ever had both in one night? I've never had them together.
That is Hani Rambod, friend of the channel. Six more months left till he hits the big two zero. Still a teenager.
Fuller, but actually you look a little more complete because your shoulders have grown. So when you're putting your arms down, they still overpower your shoulders, but not as much. You're definitely catching up. There's no such thing as having delts that are too big. But if your arms are overpowering your shoulders, recommendation: Do not deemphasize your arms. Keep growing them. Bigger arms are never the wrong answer. Just train your shoulders more and grow them.
How do you grow your shoulders? A lot of people think it's a bunch of shoulder pressing. Shoulder pressing involves the front delts a ton and then the side delts to a smaller capacity. It's a huge tricep builder as well. To get the biggest shoulders you can visually, remember almost all of your chest work involves the front delts. Almost all of your back work involves and really taxes the rear delts. The pop look from the side is really just about side delts.
Do a crapload of face pulls, upright rows of various kinds, and machine or cable or dumbbell laterals till you're blue in the face. Two to four sessions a week of shoulders, one to two exercises each time. It's not that many, but a boatload of sets and reps, an average of about 15 reps per set, but maybe five to seven sets per workout. You can do my rep match to get even more of a boost. The RP app lets you do all that and organize it super well and make sure you're not overreaching. There's a link in the description. You can do this by yourself as well, just easier with the app.
It's about volume and frequency with shoulders. I didn't say once a week and I didn't say three sets at a time. I said five to seven sets per session. Two and ideally three and even more ideally four sessions a week. That means you combine it with other workouts. But if you're getting seven sets of shoulders, mostly lateral raises of various kinds, upright rows, face pulls, and you are doing that four times a week, you are going to get shoulder growth to the fucking moon. All you got to do is eat right.
Do not deprioritize your arms because smaller arms benefit no one.
Scott, you realize aliens have not come to visit us yet? I think I have a hypothesis as to why we haven't seen aliens step off their ship and shake the president's hand. Because no president of ours has ever had arms big enough. How are aliens supposed to take you seriously when you got big little bitch ass arms? Maybe no one on Earth has big enough arms for the aliens. Maybe we'll see the aliens one day and they'll all have 28-in arms. They're like, "Why didn't you come see us?" "Why? Why would we see you? You're ridiculous."
They have the skinny neck and this giant oblong head with these big eyes and they're green. Scott, do you like the aliens that have the suckers on the fingers? They get on your windscreen and shit. But you look at it, you're like, "Oh my god, these weird skinny hands." But then the arms are super fucking jacked. All right, facts.
Quick poll. Should we randomly and for fun fire Max the editor boy or should we make Max the editor boy have sensual relations with a person of our choosing against his will? That is actually the only two options.
One of the videos that I was doing yesterday with Nate, we were talking about with Phil. Julian's like, "Who the fuck are Nate and Phil?" Was that for one of the Olympias that Phil the first one that he actually won. I made Phil not train arms all the way up until three weeks before the show.
Hani Rambod mega respect best coach of all time. Phil Heath did have redonkulous arms, but I think systemic fatigue wise it wouldn't have been a problem for him to continue to train arms normally and really spam the crap out of his delts and that would have made a big difference. I do not like deemphasizing arms. One of the hallmarks of Phil Heath's physique and why he won the Olympia as many times as he did was precisely gigantic arms. Take a look at Phil Heath's most muscular. You tell me if those triceps aren't earning their weight.
Because what it did was it created such imbalance in his body that it made him look narrower. His shoulders look way wider. And I got a little junior version of Phil here. Everything's grown, but we want to be able to really build up the back the most right now. To Hani's credit, bigger backs win shows and you can't really have a big enough back. He has to continue to train your arms. Keep going and they're just going to keep growing anyway. But definitely pour some sugar on the back.
Pour some sugar on me. Excellent song. Has actually nothing to do with sugar at all. Sugar isn't a euphemism for female attention either. It is a euphemism for female ejaculate.
I want to be able to get a lot more of that 3D thickness, lower trap. We want to get the lats wider. We want to get the back thicker. Some people that I have worked with in the past had really big arms and when they were doing back, they would pull with their arms and therefore wouldn't stimulate their back enough to grow. That definitely happens. Dominant muscles like to take over everything and they become the limiting factor and then they absorb most of the growth for everything.
How do you remediate this? Two ways. One is you try to make sure that when you are using, for example, big ass arms and they take over on back stuff or big ass triceps and they take over on chest stuff. Have a mind muscle connection that you continue to emphasize a kinesthetic awareness that you're pulling with your back and a mind muscle connection that checks in to make sure is the tension actually being felt by my back. That's a big one. It's tough to do especially for beginners.
Another one is to make sure that movements you are doing in many cases are either very emphasizing of the back and not of the arms or exclusively back. For example, if you're doing lat prayers, really that's just like your back has to be the limiting factor on that. If you're doing pull-ups, your arms can help a ton. They can't really help on lat prayers a ton. For chest, flies are going to jack up your chest one way or the other. So, if you do a crapload of flies anywhere in your program, then it's going to be a big benefit. If you do only compounds for back and chest, yeah, your arms can still continue to take over. Will your back still grow? Yeah. But is it going to grow more if you do more isolation work for it and have a stronger mind muscle connection? It sure shit will. And that stuff takes time.
Now two more. Now you see how fast you're moving upwards. Is that eccentric? Slow down. That's better. Slow eccentric. Scott, where are his Versa Grips? He should be wearing them in order to make sure that his grip isn't the limiting factor on these pulls. If he's got really long fingers and really strong forearms and not so strong of a back, he could not have a limiting factor there. But I just wouldn't bet money on that.
If he's going to get the Versa Grips, he might as well get the Hyper Belt as well, because you put on the belt, it cinches your waist, 360° of intraabdominal pressure, adjusts to every single person. It is the only belt I'm aware of that is specifically designed by myself and Jared Feather, IFBB Pro, to be a hypertrophy belt. The Hyper Belt is amazing. Made by the same fine people that make VersaGrips.
That's what I want you to focus on. Good. Pull. Good. Control the negative. That's better. Pause.
Great technique. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Now stretch and let go. Good. Good. Now I want you to arch like that. There you go. Now I want you to stretch. And I want you to arch and pull. To get that whole stretch and that big ass arch to get the dynamic movement of your spinal erectors to get the rhomboids to stretch and retract. That's the rowing stuff that gets you that back thickness.
One of my absolute pet peeves is when people analyze row technique and they're like, "Well, you just isolate, stay completely straight, and just do this cuz it's for the lats." Rows are not the best lat exercise. Why? Because they don't even let the lat come anywhere close to its halfway point of stretching. We know damn near for a fact at this point that the lengthened component of the exercise probably causes disproportionate amount of growth. Which means the really effective lat exercises are overhead work like pull downs, assisted pull-ups, pull-ups of every kind, and all kinds of straight arm work like dumbbell stuff, cable stuff, lat prayers of every kind, pullovers, etc.
Rows are an excellent back thickening exercise. They absolutely do stimulate the lats as well, but they stimulate the spinal erectors a ton. They stimulate the rhomboids, the lower and middle traps, and all those muscles that actually make you thicker. Hani's cues here of rounding on purpose and then arching on purpose are absolutely awesome for rows. It's how you should be rowing.
We're using a slight supinated grip. That looks like a comfy machine. His Panatta stuff looks sick. Panatta is an Italian company. The nice thing about this particular piece is that you can turn as much as you'd like. You can go neutral. You can go power grip. Turn handles on pulling machines are dope cuz sometimes a pulling machine is just going to either hurt your shoulders or your elbows or your wrists. You just got to pick which one and when it turns it hurts none of that.
You can use a supinated grip. The supinated grip is going to work that lower lat where he's trying to fill in. Good. Pull just like a bend over reverse grip row.
You absolutely need to train traps. And the reason why is number one, you're going to look completely unbalanced if you don't train traps. I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Mr. Hani Rambod. I don't think you need to train traps. Visually, I think traps are overrated. But let's say I was wrong. Let's say traps are goated. The best way, in my opinion, to train traps is to train the living shit out of your side delts. Why? If you do full range of motion for your side delts, even partials, your traps get recruited a ton.
People are always concerned about two things. One, my traps are taking over my delt work. And two, I need to do extra shards to do more traps. Hold on, just let them take over. And you killed two birds with one stone.
Political correctness has now erased in many child curricula in America the term two birds with one stone. It's been replaced with feed two birds with one scone. The analogy of hitting two birds with one stone means that with one unit of input, you accomplish two units of output. The analogy of feeding two birds with one scone is not the same logical structure. Because when you feed one bird with one scone, that fat fucking greedy bird eats the whole goddamn thing. But when you split the scone in two and give half to one bird and half to the other, you get one input and then half output times two, which means one output.
A shitload of side laterals and a crapload of upright rows and a shitload of face pulls. You got big traps and big delts.
Do I have the championship pedigree that Hani Rambod has? No. So, I'll just shut the fuck up. But you can eventually not train traps when your traps get big enough and your back gets big enough so that your back as you're training back, your traps kick in. But he's not at that point yet.
Stretch and squeeze. Good. Good. Stretch. Relax. Relax. Relax. Now drive up. There you go. Again. Come on. Two more. Two more. One more. Higher. Higher. Good job.
If he had the Hyper Belt from VersaGrips, he'd have a better time because of intraabdominal pressure. Was he doing one plate per side? That's not how you do shrugs, folks. Here's how you do shrugs. Every plate in the gym and then just wiggle and then look around to see if any males or females of reproductive age have given you more attention than usual. And then try to convince them that you're really strong.
Hey, it's Larry Wheels. And I'm having a hard time comprehending that this is real, natural, and 18 years old. Unbelievable.
There are many people on the internet will tell you that Julian is probably on drugs or definitely on drugs. Is there a probability he's on drugs? Yes, that's true for everyone. Is the first thing you should think of when you see him that he is on drugs? I don't think that's the case. I would say him being on drugs, knowing nothing about him, is roughly even chance, 40 to 60%.
Why? Typically, when you see 19-year-olds with gigantic arms, you just assume they're on drugs. But the assumption fails on two qualities. Number one, human genetic variation is much wider than most people comprehend. There are people out there that will train for years in the most scientific way, and their arms will never get bigger than 14 in. There are other people on the other side of the normal curve, three or four standard deviations out, which means they're one in every 10,000ish, that will within several years of training, just have 20-in arms with no steroids at all, just raw genetics.
The second thing is there is one extra factor. It's called being of West African descent. And in America, we just call that black. I've given a lot of talks. Have traveled extensively through Europe. Europeans, you guys are great. I love your chocolate flavored cigarettes especially. But Europeans don't deal with African-Americans much. They see them on the news. They see them on TV. They see them in entertainment. They see them in sports. But they can't really comprehend the one thing that matters a ton with African-Americans. They are a very talented people and their ability to be gigantic for no good goddamn reason at all is out there. So a lot of Europeans are like well clearly this Julian man must be on every steroids because in high school I've never seen anybody like this in my local academy in Munich well guess what we ain't in
Munich motherfucker we in the streets of the United States where African-Americans reign supreme and have gigantic fucking arms on occasion because they can. Just because that makes you light up the copium doesn't mean that Julian is on steroids. Julian is a devout Christian, mad respect, seems like a really nice guy, only 19 years old, pronounces to be lifetime drug-free on his socials. I've been around and know what skin quality looks like and various other textural features. It's very likely he is actually not on drugs. What does it look like when black dudes take drugs? Larry Wheels, who dwarfs Julian because that's being black and having steroid history. Julian's just got one of those things.
No offense. I fucking hate this exercise. Why get one arm tired when the other one's doing all the work? If I got two dumbbells in my hands, I'm doing both at the same time. Also because I'm lazy and don't want to be in the gym too long, spending less time training both arms together than splitting them one-on-one. Those dumbbells are very shiny and brand new, assuming to go with his brand. Great gym Larry has. Jealousy.
Those are the 70s, bro. God damn. Got the strength to match the size.
Generally, size is the biggest predictor of strength. Technical and neural characteristics and other genetic factors play a role as well. Some very jacked people can be pretty strong but not as strong as you would think. Some pretty jacked people can be way stronger than they look. Most people that are jacked are about as strong as you would expect. No misalignment here. We got tricep extensions. Great technique. Super deep stretch.
You guys see how he's got his hand on his chest with them weird fingers doing all that weird shit? That's exactly how I recommend you lift weights and generally present your hand.
I'm being a dick. Perfect.
Now I tell you what, brother. You might have big ass arms, but how much can you bench press? Is that bar covered in blood halfway through? Pretty sick, you can tell exactly where the middle is. If you have a lot of OCD, this bar could be trouble. Is that three plates? He does three plates at one point, 44 pounds town? 20 kg. Thought this was America. He wasn't even suicide gripping. It just fell out. Look at his face, that's scary. Would you not reassess the situation after that? Are all my ribs not cracked? You got to check the cock cuz somehow it could have gotten hurt. Standard, like in a car accident, instantly check the cock. If that was damaged, you might as well let the car burn up. Baller, just going right back into it. Nice recovery.
Pressing with a very close grip, he might be strongest with that closer grip because his chest is good, but his arms are amazing. That closer grip favors that arrangement. Knew a couple of super jacked black dudes with crazy big ass arms and very good but not amazing chests that did their best bench pressing with a closer grip. Bar kind of slipping, definitely recommend chalk in every set, even if you don't think you need it. Chalk is goated. When gyms say no chalk, I use it secretly. Travel with liquid chalk, amazing, low-key put it on hands. On a delayed plane, go to bathroom, put on liquid chalk, sit there.
Put a bunch of cocoa butter on the bar.
Cocoa butter is a moisturizer, keeps skin damper and not dry. My skin care routine is exist. They tell you, if you can't unwrap it by yourself, you can't handle the weight.
I've been bench pressing over 600 lb for the last 13 years. Never had a single pector.
Larry's voice has that rock shit. Serious lifting requires a serious handoff for the bench press. Who the handoff man is matters, if they don't know how, you lose 20 lbs right away. Putting tremendous load on front delt, no longer protecting pec from tear. Pec protected when scapula retracted. When protracted and benching, exposing tendons, how most pec injuries happen. Protraction hurts glenohumeral joint. Retracting exposes pec to stronger forces, trade-off for lifting more. Most not strong enough for pectoral rupture, but many get shoulder issues. Arching and retracting best for preventing shoulder pain. Larry benched 600 lb, probably knows.
Watching someone else give cues is painful, under load you just want to finish. Cues like go slower on eccentric.
You're much stronger than you think.
This is mind versus body. Body fatigued, mind pushes through. You've been at this 26 years, burn still hurts. When not used to it, people give up. Learn to push all even if you don't want to. Accept the boiling feeling in thighs. Expect it to hurt, reduces suffering. Expectation versus reality mismatch causes suffering; if you expect suck and it sucks, just pain.
Ears feel weird because of blood pressure differences, increases blood to head, causes weird ear stuff, lightheadedness, wanting to pass out. After, blood flow to legs reduces pressure, brain blood pressure drops temporarily. Brown out at gym, like on lunges, visual field black and back. Pendulum squat does that due to elevation change. Hearing thing can be a trip. Process of going to throw up, smart to stay by trash can.
Julian Fitzgerald seems like a nice young man. Don't pay attention to haters. Keep training arms big, train delts too, upper body, lower body, everything. Stay drug-free as long as possible, arguably rest of life. Can be super jacked and get loads of pussy, or compete bodybuilding, win trophies, Eric Helms knows who you are. Rate Julian blacktastic out of 10.
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