Walking the walk with a well developed physique, comparable to Chris Hemsworth from Thor
I have to come clean for a second…. I have been guilty of being a little biased on my blog. You see, I go extremely in-depth talking about strategies to get lean and chiseled, but don’t give the same level of attention to gaining muscle. This is something that I will be balancing from here on out. So you can expect to see more posts dedicated to adding muscle.
Why Have I Talked So Much About Fat Loss?
1) I’m all about the lean and chiseled look. Having muscle is only impressive if you’re walking around at a low enough body fat to actually see the muscle shape and definition. You could actually build muscle definition easily. Further, strength is only impressive when expressed in relation to one’s bodyweight. So essentially what I’m saying is that strength and muscle means very little unless you’re lean and chiseled.
2) I’ve always had the greatest difficulty getting to and staying at a low body fat. And because of this, I’ve always felt the most compelled to talk about the subject of dropping fat. In the last 5 years alone, it’s been a constant quest to hit single digit body fat and maintain it with ease. This is something I have only mastered recently and I go into great detail about this very approach in my warrior shredding program.
*Your results may vary. Testimonials and examples used are exceptional results and are not intended to guarantee, promise, represent and/or assure that anyone will achieve the same or similar results.
You Shouldn’t Underestimate The Importance Of Muscle Mass
The fact of the matter is that being ripped to shreds means nothing unless you have the right amount of muscle mass to frame your physique. This is the cold hard truth! If you’re putting in the work tracking your macros, recording your workouts and destroying it in the gym then surely you don’t want this to go unnoticed. Unless you build a solid amount of muscle, your physique will hardly standout.
At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, why are you really training? When we are really honest with ourselves, it largely comes down to wanting to be more attractive to the desired sex. You may disagree with me but fundamentally we are genetically programmed for two things; survival and reproduction. Consequently, almost everything we do can be traced back to increasing our chances at spreading our genes further. If you want to get better results with women (or men), then hey, it wouldn’t hurt to add a nice looking amount of muscle.
What Are The Advantages Of Having More Muscle?
Carrying around a solid amount of muscle is a clear indication of healthy genes and because of this, women will naturally be more inclined to have sex with you. This is why a nicely muscled and defined physique is so damn attractive! You’re positioning yourself as the absolute cream of the crop, albeit, from a purely physical standpoint. Now it does go with the saying, a great physique only gets you so far. It does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, pun intended, but if you don’t harness the right emotional state and belief system then it hardly means anything.
A guy with a great physique that doesn’t take himself too seriously (free of ego), lives in the moment (fun and spontaneous) and is strongly connected to his masculine desires (sexual) is a lethal combination. You’re essentially a women’s ultimate fantasy and invariably, women can just open up to you without feeling pressured or judged. Unfortunately, most guys have buckled under the social weight of the system, the very system that tells them a false narrative on how to act and behave to get the girl. Hide your sexual interest, be really nice and impress her by flashing money and talking about your accomplishments.
The best advice I can give you is to do the exact opposite. Be very sexual, girls love sex! Don’t be ‘nice’. Niceness usually comes with a hidden agenda, it’s not real. You’re being nice to get her to like you and so you can feel all warm and fuzzy from her validation and girls can see right through this! Be raw not nice. And last, but certainly not least, don’t be flashy. Trying to impress a girl sub communicates that you’re not enough. Instead be self deprecating. When she realizes you’re not trying to impress her at all, there will be a turning point and attraction will ramp up. But anyways, I’ve been drifting off into a long winded tangent so let’s get back to the core!
Building Muscle Has Always Been Easy for Me
Now I’ll be completely transparent, I have never really struggled to gain muscle. Then again, I’ll say right now, no one really needs to struggle to build muscle. With dieting, it’s different. Dieting is tough! We’re genetically programmed to want to eat lots of food and keep out body fat levels within a certain range. A range that doesn’t lend itself to shredded abs. This is a survival mechanism to protect yourself in case of a famine.
The human body is built for survival. Therefore gaining muscle is most definitely in our favor. If you challenge yourself week in and week out, lifting heavier and heavier loads, your body will make the necessary adaptations to better handle the task. This means a few things – a) you will become more proficient at doing the exercise. b) You will be able to utilize a higher threshold of muscle fibers. c) You will create more muscle tissue. Assuming you’re getting stronger each week, you will be improving in all three of these areas to some degree.
Now the question shouldn’t be, how does one build muscle, but rather, how does one screw up building muscle! I will address three of the biggest reasons why building muscle is so challenging for most people. Once you avoid these three pitfalls, building a highly muscular physique will be highly rewarding and will require minimal effort.
Mistake #1 – You Have Unrealistic Expectations
Most people have a completely skewed perception of how much muscle mass they can realistically gain. They want to gain 5-8 lbs of muscle per month, equating to roughly 1-2 lbs per week. This is absurd! If this was even remotely possible, you’d see life size action figures walking around everywhere you go. The reality of the situation is that gaining 15-20 lbs of muscle over the course of your first year of proper training is excellent. The most muscle I ever gained in a year was 20 lbs and this was with puberty on my side. So chances are a sizeable portion of that weight was simply driven from maturing. In the second year of proper training 8-10 lbs of muscle is fantastic. Then after that, 5 lbs per year is great!
Most people don’t want to hear this! They don’t want to accept it. They think that if they work their butts off, take all the supplements in the world and eat 12 meals per day they can gain 20 lbs of muscle in a matter of a few months. Yeah right! The good news is that it doesn’t take 50 lbs of muscle to look awesome. Stay lean and gain 15-20 lbs of well placed muscle and I guarantee that you’ll look fantastic. If you want to go for the Greek God look, you’ll likely have to put on about 20-25 lbs of muscle onto your natural frame while staying under 10% body fat.
If you don’t first accept that gaining muscle is a long term process then you will have set yourself up for failure. After a few weeks or a couple months, you will get frustrated at your lack of progress and you will fold your hand. This is truly a shame! My advice is simple – learn to love lifting! Love the journey! Love pushing yourself in the gym and making progress. Love the feeling of lifting heavy and conquering the weights. Let the muscle be a side benefit. If all you focus on is gaining muscle, you will get bored and quit.
Mistake #2 – Fancy Techniques and Chasing the Pump
Building muscle is quite simple – get stronger in the 5-10 rep range on key movements. This is truly where the magic happens! Below 5 reps and volume is too low and consequently most strength gains are due to increases in neuromuscular coordination. Going above 10-12 reps means lifting light weights that don’t provide enough tension to adequately stimulate muscle growth. If you build significant amounts of strength in the 5-10 rep range on solid movements – weighted chins and dips, shoulder presses, rows, bench/incline and squats/deads, you will be gaining muscle like crazy!
I should also mention that it’s important that you take full rest periods of 2-3 minutes or longer between sets. Training in the fatigued state is inferior for promoting long lasting strength and muscle gains. The pump you get from cumulative fatigue training is temporary and only accounts for a very small percentage of your muscle growth potential.
If your workouts consist of several exercises per body part, short rest periods and fancy ‘hypertrophy techniques’ like drop sets, super sets and pump tactics then you are seriously wasting your time. Great natural physiques are built around getting extremely strong not from trying to make curling 20 lbs dumbbells really tough. A productive muscle building workout should consist of 4-5 exercises, three sets per movement, long rest periods and a note pad for recording your progress.
Mistake #3 – Time and Money
Are you spending 5-7+ hours in the gym each week, $100+ on supplements each month and precious time cooking, cleaning and preparing 5+ meals each day? If yes then take a moment to pat yourself on the back. You just turned a very simple process into a full time job. I spend three hours or less in the gym each week, eat 2-3 delicious meals per day and hardly use any supplements. In fact, the only supplement I’ve been consistent with is a cup or two of black coffee before training! And my progress and gains have been nothing short of incredible.
I’ve spent months taking ‘essential supplements’ and the only difference I noticed was a lighter wallet and a more complicated life. I prefer to get as much of my nutrition from whole food and save bank on supplements that hardly make a lick of a difference. It’s important to understand, if your life revolves around your fitness, it’s going to be hard to stick with it. Besides, what fun is that? Stop wasting time and money on things that don’t payoff. Eat 2-4 whole food meals per day, train three times per week and minimize your supplementation game. I guarantee you that you will realize better results because of it and you won’t have to miss out on life.
Furthermore, if you are in the obsessive fitness mentality then one of two things generally happen. Either you’re completely a bore to be around and let your life revolve around fitness. Or you try to balance a life with your hectic training and diet schedule and constantly slip up. This usually results in the all or nothing outlook. If you miss one workout or one meal then you throw everything up into the air and decide that you’ll start back fresh next Monday. We know how that works out.
This Is The Big News
I have just launched my new course, the Greek God Muscle Building Program. This is program is designed to allow for consistent strength gains week after week . The workouts and exercises are set up to encourage proportional muscle growth and symmetry for the Greek god look. Furthermore, the nutritional strategies promote lean muscle gains while maintaining a low body fat.
*Your results may vary. Testimonials and examples used are exceptional results and are not intended to guarantee, promise, represent and/or assure that anyone will achieve the same or similar results.
