How to Look Freakin' Awesome

[BendtheBar]

T NATION | How to Look Freakin Awesome

A few quotes from the article I thought I would share.

Despite T NATION being a bodybuilding site, the vast majority of readers aren't interested in looking like bodybuilders; at least, not the pro bodybuilders of today.

Instead, they want to look good. Sure, they want to be jacked, but they also want to look and feel athletic. They also want to be attractive to women.

Achieving a body like this shouldn't be that difficult, and yet not many trainees attain it. I believe it's because they don't have a way to really measure or quantify their goal.

Guys who just want to look awesome run into a few problems. The first is simply the lack of information specific to that goal.

...The second – and hopefully easiest – problem to overcome is the resistance. The dearth of information from traditional sources leads the trainee to look elsewhere. The most obvious place is message boards – which should be helpful – if they weren't populated by certifiable assholes.

You've seen it. Someone asks a simple question about wanting to build a body that's more like a fitness model than a bodybuilder, and he's hopelessly lambasted and ridiculed off the bandwidth.

As you must have surmised by now, the ideal comparison between these is the Golden Ratio, or 1:1.618.

Therefore, the first step in achieving a body that looks awesome is to achieve a physique where your shoulders measure 1.618 times your waist. We'll look at this in greater depth later on, but this is just step one.

[BendtheBar]

Quite a bit else I could quote, but the point was more interesting to me than the article...most people just want to look good and have some degree of fitness.

It is what is is, as "they" say...

[Off Road]

Add a little muscle, drop a little fat, and there ya go.
Of course nobody EVER stops there, we all want more and more and more.

I bought a Jeep 9 years ago and told my wife I wanted to put on a small lift and 32" tires just to make it look awesome. Well, 9 years and $50,000 later it's sitting in the garage with 38" tires, 1 ton axles, and it's so beat-up that nobody would call it awesome looking. The thing is built to the hilt but ugly as sin. It's so banged up that I can't even put the doors and top on any more. So I convinced my wife that I neded one of those new Jeeps with four doors. I picked one up on Black Friday, with a little lift and 33" tires; you know, just so it would look awesome. Those 33" tires are already looking a little small to me...

[MC]

I read the article and while I might agree that most people just want to look good, what proportions of which he speaks ARE bodybuilder proportions.

If you look on page two of the article he uses a client as an example and talks about needing to bring his arms, calves and neck up to 19" while dropping his waist to 32" and increasing his shoulder width to 51.75."

If that is not the physique of a bodybuilder, I don't know what is. Why he tries to combat that with the introduction of going after "fitness model" looks is beyond me. I don't know that I've seen fitness models with 19' arms.

Interesting.

I just calculated my waist to shoulder ratio and it is 1:1.47.

[BendtheBar]

The problem I have with this article is that the guys that "just want to look good" are generally not worried about proportions or ratios. They want some muscle and shredded abs and at the end of the day won't lose any sleep over perfect symmetry.

Most people are not like his client. They don't want an investment of 4-6 years. They want as much as they can out of 4-6 months.

Symmetry is not something recreational lifters care much about. They want a big chest, big gunz and abzors. They rarely care about wheels, trapzors and latzors.

[MC]

I think we are on the same page (and you said it far more clearly)

He makes the statement that most want to look good and then uses a long-term bodybuilding example as back up. As you said, that is not going to work.

A better article, IMHO, would have been to highlight the similarities between wanting to look good and wanting to be a bodybuilder. While most people may want quick results, in order to keep them, it is a longer-term investment.

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by *MC*

I think we are on the same page (and you said it far more clearly)

He makes the statement that most want to look good and then uses a long-term bodybuilding example as back up. As you said, that is not going to work.

A better article, IMHO, would have been to highlight the similarities between wanting to look good and wanting to be a bodybuilder. While most people may want quick results, in order to keep them, it is a longer-term investment.

Absolutely the same page.

Your point is a good one. You have to bridge that valley and explain to folks that their goals are not that different from a natural bodybuilder's goals. Perhaps they don't want traps or legs. It's their life, so live long and prosper.

A big chest and arms is still going to take a while. Other than a few freaks, no one looks good without a lot of hard work.

[kitarpyar]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

The problem I have with this article is that the guys that "just want to look good" are generally not worried about proportions or ratios. They want some muscle and shredded abs and at the end of the day won't lose any sleep over perfect symmetry.

Most people are not like his client. They don't want an investment of 4-6 years. They want as much as they can out of 4-6 months.

Symmetry is not something recreational lifters care much about. They want a big chest, big gunz and abzors. They rarely care about wheels, trapzors and latzors.

Here's some target numbers (waist and shoulders) -
30" waist -- 48.5
31" -- 50.1"
32" -- 51.75"
33" -- 53.4"

Above a 33" waist, guys with average height and bone structure wouldn't be considered lean anyway.

To break it down, what's required is a small waist more than anything else. If you have a naturally small bone structure, this becomes even easier. Therefore, step 1 would be to stay lean, which implies that the diet has to be under control. The second step would be to build the deltoids. This would involve a routine that involves a heavy dosage of vertical pressing movements, in addition to heavy pulling.

In other words, a program that entails a good amount of clean and press (entire shoulder region, provides the required shoulder circumference), pull ups and barbell rows (ensures the V-taper). Anyone who has done heavy cleans and pulls will attest that it pays to have a solid base, i.e. train the wheels. So, you end up with a routine that involves -

1. Pull ups
2. Clean and Press
3. Barbell Rows
4. Squats

I will wager that this selection, with a 5th "supporting" exercise that can be rotated between bench/dips, deads or some arm work can build a damned impressive and balanced beach body.

On a side note, he uses Steve Reeve's guide for arm measurement. Newsflash: Reeves was a bodybuilding champ, and a darn good one at that. Using that sort of guidelines will obviously lead to "bodybuilder" like measurements.

EDIT: This is also borne out with some of the examples for Hollywood, where actors like Jason Statham or Hugh Jackman, actually focus on building delts and upper back to create the illusion the fastest (rather than guns or chest).

[markievicz]

all v.good poinst above ,

one other thing i would add, which always makes me laugh ,

while in general a lot of guys just wanna look good ( and fair enough if that is their goal )
when they get a little bit closer to that "looking good" ideal that the want , they go AWOL from the gym ..... and end up back where they started...

[LtL]

The problem I have with goals like: "I just want to look a little better" is that they are not measurable and thus very easy to give up on and be slack. Depending on your motivation for training and lifting hard, you could decide that getting a little bit bigger is good enough. In that respect putting a number on it would be much better as at least then you can measure your progress. Of course then if you use their ratio, you'll end up looking like one of those pesky bodybuilders which apparently we all despise cos they don't look like that guy from Twilight

LtL