"This means that physical traits that
imply the presence of 'mating qualifiers' are important for increasing
your stock with the ladies."
People
have a tendency to treat training for a “look” differently than
training for an athletic or a strength goal. The truth is, whatever your
fitness goals
are, it is important to structure your program in a way that allows you
to meet those goals in the shortest time period possible.
You
have a tremendous variety of tools available to you, and it’s sometimes
easy to forget that not all methods are effective for all goals.
Athletes training for their sport practice some highly specific drills;
training for
fat loss requires adjustment of nutritional strategies; powerlifters work on becoming skilled and efficient in their primary lifts.
Given
these examples, it’s easy to see that none of these scenarios would
really benefit from using strategies intended for the others. So, if
your goal is simply to build a lean, symmetrical and attractive body --
the ultimate male body -- the obvious solution is to gear your diet and
training structure toward those goals.
1- Focus On Building An X-Shaped Physique
When it comes to being physically attractive to the opposite sex, it’s
important to understand that certain body dimensions are visually
important from an evolutionary perspective. That’s why you should focus
on creating what we call an “X-shaped physique.” Developing such a body
will automatically make you more attractive to women while making you
more imposing to men.
You see, our progenitors credited desirable
traits like strength, productivity and virility to corresponding
physical attributes. While societal needs may have changed in a way that
no longer makes it necessary to have the characteristics to succeed, to
a certain extent, we carry our ancestors’ tastes. This means that
physical traits that imply the presence of “mating qualifiers” are
important for increasing your stock with the ladies.
To that end, an X-shaped physique means broad shoulders, a narrow waist and strong, well-developed calves. For
broad shoulders,
focus on core movements that allow for maximal recruitment, such as the
push press and some isolation exercises to focus on the medial delts
and increases in width, such as lateral raises.
A narrow waist is
primarily the result of a low level of body fat, obviously. However, it
is important to understand that the muscles around your waist respond
to weight training in much the same way that all other muscles do: by
growing. So while it isn’t necessary to avoid certain exercises
completely, train with the caveat that you should avoid rotational
exercises with either a heavy weight or high volume. The goal, overall,
is to develop a waist-to-shoulder ratio of about 1.618 -- the Golden
Ratio.
Now, as for strong, well-developed calves, these are not easy to come by.
Calves
are a notoriously stubborn body part to grow, so I recommend training
them multiple times per week. Work your calves first in your session,
not last. By focusing on these muscles and building a physique more in
line with what our ancestors considered desirable (and let’s be honest,
we still do), you are on the road to a sexier body.
2- Push Less, Pull More
In keeping with the above ideas, the goal of training for sexiness
should clearly include balance and symmetry. This means that not only
should you train the right way, but also that you need to make a
concentrated effort to avoid training the wrong way.
As men,
we’re highly visual creatures. As trainees, this translates into
becoming highly focused on mirror muscles -- that is, those you can
readily see in any mirror. In general, guys tend to do a lot more work
on muscles like chest than back. I cannot begin to describe the
drawbacks of this mentality. With specific regard to appearance,
lopsided training that focuses on anterior (front) muscles over
posterior (rear) muscles usually leads to pretty ugly imbalances. In
addition to this being a great way to get yourself injured, it can lead
to a round, forward-shouldered look that is not the goal of any training
program I’ve ever heard of.
In order to create a body suited for a variety of physical tasks, you need to change up your workout pretty frequently.
"
It’s
worth noting that building the ultimate male physique isn't just about
the aforementioned. Instead, we should focus more on the muscles of the
upper back: latissimus dorsi, teres major, trapezius, et al. These
muscles, developed correctly, will help pull your shoulders back,
helping to create the broad-shouldered look that men find powerful and
women find attractive.
To prevent imbalances and to help create
such a look, try to maintain a 3:2 ratio of pulling exercises to pushing
exercises. As an example, 3 sets of rows, 2 sets of
bench presses.
Following this pattern, you are far less likely to develop unattractive
imbalances. And, in addition, you will be less likely to incur injury.
And probably more likely to get naked.
If you’re already
suffering from “computer guy” posture resulting in a round-shouldered
look, you can start fixing this by incorporating some corrective
exercises into your routine. A good place to start is corner stretches
for your pecs, followed by stick-ups. Do this for 5 sets of 5 reps
before you train, and you’ll fix that posture in no time.
3- Lift Heavy At Least Four Days Per Month
The benefits of heavy training are widely documented, so once again,
I’ll just focus on the relevancy of building a bang-worthy body.
Training heavy doesn’t just make you strong; it makes you look strong.
Training in low-rep ranges (3 to 5 reps) necessitates the use of
near-maximal weight. In general, you would be working within 75% to 85%
of your 1RM.
This elicits some profound physiological changes.
Training with heavy loads leads to an increase in both neurogenic and
myogenic muscle tone, both of which are important for building an
attractive physique. First, it is necessary to recognize that for the
purposes of this writing, the word “tone” means the level of tension in a
muscle. With that understood, let’s talk about each type.
Neurogenic
tone refers to the level of tension in a muscle in a working or flexed
state. That is how “hard” a muscle is when you are training it or just
flexing it for some chick at the gym/beach/
World of Warcraft party.
Myogenic
tone can be defined as residual tension in a resting muscle. What this
really means is how hard, full and dense your muscles are when you’re
just hanging out. Rather than some artificial pump, an increase in
myogenic tone is a permanent increase in the appearance of your muscles.
Increasing neurogenic and myogenic tone also has the benefit of making muscles more visible at slightly higher levels of
body fat.
There is a lot to be said for having your triceps pop out a bit more at
10% (just imagine how they’ll look at 8%). To achieve the increases, my
clients all have at least one day per week dedicated to lifting near
maximal loads. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, heavy
training also leads to strength increases, which has obvious
implications for training in the future.
Takeaway: Lift heavy, get hard. Wait, what?
4- Mix Up Your Training
In order to create a body suited for a variety of physical tasks, you
need to change up your workout pretty frequently. Training variety keeps
you motivated and invariably leads to better results. In terms of
helping you increase your rating on the scale of sexy, the main benefit
is from a fat-loss perspective.
While you can argue that training ADD can inhibit
muscle gains
(which is only true if you are changing haphazardly with no thought to
programming), exposing yourself to consistently changing stimulus is an
excellent way to ramp up metabolism, and it consistently increases the
processes by which fat loss is made possible.
Certainly, I do not
advocate switching programs day to day. Instead, I recommend choosing
or designing workouts that have multiple training methods built into a
week.
