If I was about to tell you what is the biggest mistake guys make, then it would be definitely something associated with a workout. Workout is the single one most important thing and yet 90% of guys don’t have any clue how a good workout plan looks like. Which may not come as such a surprise considering that most people are not in shape.
Here are few tips that are sure to help you to understand what to do in order to have a well-designed workout plan that can help you build a strong and masculine body.
1. Choose Just One
You simply have too many choices. I get it. Every fitness website offers a workout plan and if only one, sometimes even dozens. And that is how it works. Said simply, if you take any industry there are companies that fight over your attention and try to sell you something, hopefully something good. Those companies are competing against each other; this is why it seems like there is an overproduction almost everywhere you look. You need to be laser focused on what it is you want and be able to step away and use your logic to decide whether this product can help you or not.
I always say, get it, just try it and judge by results. If it is good, stick to it, if it’s not, move on.
I think that in muscle building the best thing to do is to try everything you can, always one thing at a time of course. And then stick to those workouts, supplements and techniques that work for you.
If you follow a new workout plan that you haven’t tried before and you won’t get any results in four 5-6 months, you shouldn’t be following this workout plan any longer. Either it’s crappy product or you just happen to not respond to this type of strength training.
So, choose just one workout at a time, but make sure it is a good one.
2. Train the Important Muscles More Often
MyBeautyGym workouts are all designed to help you build bigger shoulders, back and chest muscles more than legs or arms. The reason behind this is that those three muscles are responsible for your overall shape and more you focus on some muscles, more they grow.
So, for example you may be training your shoulders four times a week and your arms just once or twice a week.
Does training your shoulders this way seem too intensive? Well, it is not, your shoulders can handle that. Think of athletes, they train every day the same muscles, something even twice a day. Just because some personal trainer in the gym told you that you shouldn’t be training the same muscle several days in a row, doesn’t mean it’s true. If you want your muscles to grow, you need to hit them hard and often, that is the ONLY way.
If you bought 50 workouts from different natural fitness models, personal trainers, guys who sell online programs you would see that even though there is a limited amount of workout principles, you can combine them in so many ways that you would see even more intense ways of train than this. If you are not a professional athlete you will most likely never overtrain. I really doubt that you will.
You will be sore for few weeks, but that is natural, because you are putting more stress on your body and this is its way of dealing with this and giving you a feedback.
Always make your workouts around shoulders, back and chest or a get a workout plan that is designed this way.
You can even train your shoulders 7x times a week if you are advanced enough. This is just a matter of your experience and the way the workout plan you follow is designed.
This may raise a question whether you shouldn’t be also training your arms more often since you are training your shoulders four times a week. Well, I believe that for the first 2-3 years you should really focus on shoulders, back, chest and once you see the body shape you built and you have an impression that your arms are small, you can focus on them then. However, concentrate on the most important muscles first that is what will get you the body shape you want.
Must Read: 7 Skills You Need to Learn to Get in Shape
Even though arms are discussed a lot, they are not responsible for the V-shape, so it only make sense not to make them a priority. I’m not saying not to train them (and I know some guys would tell you not to do any direct arm work), I’m simply saying train them less than other muscles and yes once or twice a week is enough at the beginning where you want to focus on different muscles. Try it and you will see.
I train my arms 1-2 twice a week (5 years of experience) and I often get approached in the gym and asked on what a guy should do as far as bicep training goes. Which always surprise me a little bit, because I don’t really focus on them. This is because your arms will get trained in other exercises as well, that is just something not many people realize.
Friend of mine has never done a direct arm wok in his life and has incredibly huge and defined arms.
3. Be Patient
It always surprise me how guys think that muscle growth happens. It would be great if you could eat chicken for launch, fish for dinner, go to the gym few times and you would be ripped, but that is not reality. In reality you need to train hard, often and for a long period of time. In case that you are older than 25 and have never worked out in your life it takes twice as that time to build a noticeable amount of muscle.
I know that several people probably stopped reading already, but that is a good thing, we want to be around only those who are serious about their goals. If you are serious then you don’t care what it takes and how long it takes, because you want to achieve your goal no matter what.
If building muscles was easy and took very little time, everybody would be ripped and I mean everybody. Now take a look at yourself, your family, your friends and the people you see on the street. How many of them are in above average shape, 20%? Now, how many of these people are in an incredible shape and I mean the one that gets compliments and it is obvious that it took some serious effort in the gym to get to this shape, 5% maybe 7%?
The vast majority of people is not even in the above average group and there are only very few people that look exceptionally good. Why do you think is that? Well, the answer should be obvious. It takes a lot of effort and a painfully lot of time.
Now, I am not saying you have to work out for five years to see your chest muscles, but it takes some time, so be ready, be patient.
This differs whether you are a young guy or little bit older. Another variable is your training experience.
If you are 16 and you start working out then resistance training workouts combined with juvenile muscle growth may result in 20 pound weight gain in the next year or so. However, if you are in your late 40s and you have never even stepped your food in the gym, your results will be completely different. I don’t want scare you or discourage you, but you have to understand the process and that it might take a while to get results.
Usually the most muscle growth happens in the first year, so yes we could say that after one year of training (with a good workout!) you will transform your body immensely.
If you want to become a fitness model then that is a whole other thing. These guys have some serious experience. Most of them have trained intensely and regularly for the past 10 or 12 years and they often begun when they were in their teens, so don’t try to compare yourself to them. At least not yet.
If you are starting out, focus on transforming your physique. You can get significant results in 3-12 months. This of course depends on your genetics, your workout plan and training style.
4. Focus on Your Goal
If I got a dime each time I heard this: “Working out for the sole purpose of attracting girls or looking better than all the other guys on the beach seems like the wrong motivation. I train for myself.”
Well, guess what if your goal is not performance based like getting stronger for sport or something then you are only left with the purpose of looking better. No matter whether you admit it or not that is the truth. How my friend John Barban likes to say, you wouldn’t go to the gym if it made you look worse.
If you actually admit that you go to the gym to improve your body, be more confident, improved sexual performance, have the ability to get better looking women, then we have something to work with.
My experience is that 99.99% of guys work out to look better in order to be more satisfied with their bodies, be more confident in their own skin and ultimately attract more and better looking women.
So, it really makes sense to focus on this goal. If you want to just be fit or do conditioning it’s up to you. However, if you work out to look good, which my guess is that you do, then it’s a good idea to admit that to yourself, because this will quicken your progress hugely.
I’m going to steal something from a gentleman whose name is Eben Pagan and you may know him by his pen name David DeAngelo.
Women are attracted to:
Dominance - Over her - Over others Strength - Physical - Emotional - Intellectual Novelty-Seeking (Adventurous) Resources - Mental - Knowledge - Learning ability -Analytical ability Physical - Money - Possessions Looks
I agree with Eben 100%, maybe you do as well maybe not, which both is fine. But from what I have learned in different social interactions, what matters the most is the character (confidence, humor etc.) and the way you treat yourself (grooming, style, looks – body fat & muscle mass).
What a good looking physique gives you is the “he is cute I wanna talk to him” or “he looks good, I might have sex with him tonight” response from women.
Good looks will help you with confidence, give you more physical and mental strength.
I’m not saying you should be running around with your shirt off and screaming look at my sick-pack and then expecting girls to ask you for sex. Even though this happens from time to time (I think Craig Ballantyne had this experience). Good looking body is like open doors to a conversation with women, you don’t need to have to use some cheesy pickup lines. You can just say hi and it’s on. Watch some James Bond movies and you will know what I mean.
5. Lift Heavy & with Perfect Form
One thing is to have a good workout and another is what you are actually going to do with it. If step number one is to get a well-designed workout plan, step number two is to follow it exactly as written and make the most out of it.
You should always work out with a perfect form. There is just no excuse to have a bad technique and just pushing the weights. No, go to the gym to train not to push weight or just hang around with your buddies at the bench press station. If you are serious about your goal, train like somebody really wants to achieve his goals. Perfect technique is a must.
Once you have that nailed down, you can move up to the next thing and that is lifting heavy. Now I don’t mean lifting heavy on bench press and having a friend training his bicep with you, no not at all. The first thing I said about perfect form is true. However, sometimes guys are lifting really light and then they are wondering why the hell is nothing changing, so it’s good to know the importance of progressive resistance aka adding weights.
Your workout should be intensive enough to provide you with muscle growth. Meaning you should train really hard with some heavy weights. However, your form always comes first, so aim for heavy lifting with strick form.
You need to do both. Lift heavy and keep a strict form. A good indicator of both is that this question: “Can you do two more repetitions?” If the answer is yes, pick heavier weights, if the answer is no then you are good to go.
Good way of looking at this is that you should be able to do one more repetition, but with slightly worse form and you should not be able to do another one. This should help you choose better weights for each exercise in your workout.
6. Don’t Let Other People Tell You What to Do
This approach has several benefits. If you choose just one person (or mentor if you will) whom you are going to follow, you will never be overwhelmed. Always try to simplify things in your life. Narrowing down your options will help you to get better results.
If your goal is building a better body, then find somebody who has already achieved this goal, knows what he is talking about and follow this person, learn everything you can from him/her. Once you have chosen who this person is, unsubscribed, unfollow and stop reading and buying programs from anybody else. This will be difficult, but is for your benefit. Many guys come to me and start with “Oh I heard that this is really good, but my friend told me to do something different. And today I heard some personal trainer talking about this new technique that they read about in the fitness magazine, what should I do?”. Well, to avoid this situation do what was described above:
- Pick one person to learn from
- Unsubscribe from anybody else
- Learn as much as you can from that one person
- Take action on what you have learnt
- If you get results stick to this approach
You should add other mentors/coaches only after years of experience and having the ability to recognize good approach that you can incorporate into yours.
7. Be Ready to Make Steps Out of Your Comfort Zone
If you are not satisfied with your body and you have never been in the gym then this will be a huge step out of your comfort zone. Yes, setting a home gym might be an answer, but that is something I would not recommend to somebody who has never been training and never been to a gym.
Every time you start something new you will be faced with doubts and uncertainty. That is only natural. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that those who succeeded over and over again did what they were uncomfortable with and they kept doing it until it became a routine and a part of their lives.
This is exactly what you need to do with your workouts. It needs to become a part of your life. For example 8 or 10 hours a week spent in the gym building a better looking body. It will be uncomfortable at first, but if you get over it, the payoff is huge.
Here is your summary:
- Find one good strength training workout plan and follow it exactly as written
- Train your shoulders, back and chest more than other muscles, because these are the muscle groups that will help you build the V-shape body that is so attractive and masculine
- Muscle building takes time, so be patient
- Always focus on your goal, if you want to look better ask yourself why and once you know the answer make sure you do anything you can to achieve that
- Lift heavy, but remember that perfect form always comes first
- Have just one coach or mentor and unfollow/unsubscribe from everybody else to avoid confusion and contrary advice
- Be prepared to make steps out of your comfort zone and to do things you won’t like
