All you need to do to get a rig for life
The fitness industry confuses things. That’s how it makes money.
Ignore it.
There’s only a few basic things you need to do to build an awesome physique. The secret is doing them consistently over a long enough time period to see results. It won’t take a week. It’ll take months. But that’s really not that long considering the outcome.
So what are these basics?
Training
Your ultimate goal should be to get strong on a handful of key movements. That’s it. Choose them, train them consistently with the goal of increasing the weight you can lift, and track your progress to ensure this is happening. You can use any program in the world, so long as you know that you are getting stronger.
Do this, and your muscles will grow. There’s simply no way you can put up a 100kg bench press without a very sizeable chest, shoulders and triceps. It’s easy to lose sight of this, but the big lifts don’t lie. Your body reflects your strength, so get strong and you’ll have the physique to show for it.
So what lifts should you work on?
Regardless of the details, you should be focused on some variation of these six movements:
- horizontal push (e.g. bench press)
- horizontal pull (e.g. barbell row)
- vertical push (e.g. overhead press)
- vertical pull (e.g. lat pull-down)
- squat (e.g. dumbbell split squat)
- deadlift (e.g. sumo deadlift)
From now on, organise your training like this:
Make a program based on one variation of each of the six key movements. Follow it for about 6 weeks, focused on steady progression in weight/reps/form workout-to-workout. Record what you lift each workout. At the end of the six week block, make a new routine with different variations of each lift. For example, if in the first block I performed a barbell bench press as my main horizontal push, now I might do a dumbbell bench press or an incline bench press for my next block. Same movement pattern, different lift. And once again I focus on improving at it over the six-week block.
The details of the program come down to training experience and personal differences. If you need help, get in contact and we can make one with you.
The important thing is that you get as strong as you can, by training hard and progressing consistently over time.
Nutrition and recovery
There are certain lifestyle factors that will aid this process of muscle growth. The biggest is what you eat. Or more importantly, how much you eat.
To make it simple, you need to:
A) Eat enough calories so that your body has baseline fuel to work with.
B) Include enough protein so that your body has the right fuel to build with.
Basically, eat plenty and include protein in your meals.
For protein, 2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight is a good starting point (i.e. an 80kg male should eat around 160g protein per day to get maximum benefit).
Don’t overcomplicate this. Add in some vegetables, water and sleep and you’ll be well on your way to growing your best physique possible. The most important thing is that you’re…
getting stronger.
On the key lifts.
That is all. Happy training.