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In Part I of this series I talked about how to take the appropriate photos to ensure a complete and objective physique assessment.  In Part II the main focus was on evaluating those photos and determining whether you should be proceeding with a fat loss or muscle gain focus.

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Today I am going to highlight in the simplest form possible what I would do with a client to bring up their lagging body parts in either a fat loss scenario (waist more than 2 inches above the ideal discussed in part II) or in a scenario where muscle gain is the priority (waist less than two inches above ideal).

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Fat Loss Programming

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Nutrition

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While my complete thoughts on fat loss are far beyond the scope of this article, I feel that the best way to create fat loss is to create a calorie deficit of 500-1000 calories per day primarily achieved with diet.  How you do this is up to you.  You can eat multiple meals per day or you can fast for a couple days per week, but this is the single most important element of body fat reduction and you MUST have a net calorie deficit over time to get lean.

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And just to be clear research has demonstrated that exercise is a very poor method for creating long term weight loss when combined with an already effective diet.  You CAN create a calorie deficit with exercise, but diet is numero uno.

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Training

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It has also been demonstrated in research that resistance exercise spares muscle while in a calorie deficit.   For this reason, this is where I feel exercise is most important when trying to lose fat.  With my clients I use diet to create a calorie deficit and exercise to spare muscle mass.

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I do use some cardiovasular exercise because of its preferential effects on visceral fat (the fat around your organs) thus reducing the waistline, but I don’t care whether you use intervals or steady state because I’m not convinced that one is vastly superior to the other at this point. 

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Truth be told, I haven’t seen that working to bring up lagging muscle groups while dieting is nearly as effective of doing it while in a calorie surplus, but I still figure it is worth some effort.  However, it is most important to remember that reducing your waist measurement is going to have the greatest effect at improving your physique at this point so this is really the primary concern.

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 The main goal for me with resistance training while in a calorie deficit, is to make sure every muscle group is hit at least once per week as some research has shown the muscle groups not trained during a calorie deficit are prone to atrophy (i.e., shrinking like a penis in a cold pool).

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Note: Don’t ask me for the reference here.  I forget it.  Sorry.

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The simple keys here are to create a moderate calorie deficit (eat less) and hit each muscle group with a minimum of 30 total repetitions per week to ensure maintenance of muscle mass. 

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Adding in a few more total repetitions (up to 60 per week) for the lagging muscle groups may offer some further improvement in appearance, but the big focus here is reducing the waist to shoulder ratio. 

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Generally I recommend no more than 3 workouts per week when dieting as I feel that recovery is not as good as when in a caloric surplus.  The main purpose of exercise is muscle maintenance at this point and the time off from the gym would probably be better spent in the kitchen.

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Muscle Growth Programming

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If you’re a little confused to see that I’m advocating muscle growth despite what I said in the first article about a limit to muscular size I totally understand.  However, remember that I didn’t say that muscle mass stops.  Advanced trainees can still build muscle, but what I am advocating is that we must accept that it will be much slower and that we should put our efforts at further development where they are most needed instead of distributing them randomly about the body with no concern for aesthetic balance.

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In short, train what is weak.  Maintain what is not.

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Nutrition

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In terms of nutrition for muscle growth and development, I feel that a small calorie surplus is needed.  Since keeping the waist measure in check is a goal, the “just eat everything and get hyooge” mentality does not apply at this stage.  I feel that a more moderate calorie surplus of 200-300 calories per day is sufficient.

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Remember that an advanced trainee probably won’t gain more than 5-6 pounds of muscle per year (if that) so if you are gaining weight faster than that and you’re not coming off of a layoff it is probably fat.  Check your waist at least every two weeks and if it has exceeded the previously discussed two inch window above your ideal you need to moderately reduce your calories until it is back where it should be.

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Training

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In terms of training, I feel that a calorie surplus allows for better training and recovery so as many as 4-5 workouts per week are possible.  I also tend to believe the notion that there are three mechanisms for muscle hypertrophy based on the most current research.  They are load, fatigue, and damage.

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Load is the result of handling weights that are greater than 65% of your one rep max.   As an advanced trainee, I tend to focus more towards 85% or greater.

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Metabolic fatigue is a result of repetitive stimulus at a lower load (as high as 25 reps per set).  This can stimulate sarcoplasmic (“non-functional”) hypertrophy to a greater extent, but it works just fine for adding size where we need it.

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Damage is the result of obtaining enough total volume from the number of sets and repetitions done to achieve  both the load and metabolic fatigue stimuli above.

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With my clients I try to aim for 30-60 total repetitions for the two most lagging muscle group two times per week including elements of each mechanism of muscle growth.  Every other muscle group gets the minimum 30-60 repetitions once per week to maintain the current size.  If one muscle is disproportionately large, it can even get less volume than this.

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Generally speaking, the upper and lower body split below has worked well for most natural trainees I’ve worked with to allow adequate recovery and repeated exposure for lagging muscle groups.

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Monday:  Upper Body

Tuesday: Lower Body

Wednesday:  Off

Thursday:  Upper Body

Friday:  Lower Body

Saturday:  Off

Sunday:  Off

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Bring it All Together

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All in all, the physique assessment strategy is pretty simple.  You need to snap some photos, evaluate your physique, summarize your results, measure your waist, prioritize your goals, and then create a plan of action.  Whether you use my methods for creating the desired result or not is irrelevant as there are certainly many paths to the same place.  I think that the real secret is to know where you’re going.

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What do you think?

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In Part I of this article I talked briefly about the very real fact that muscle mass gains slow down dramatically after you’ve been training for a few years and that you’ll eventually need to change your focus from gaining size to creating a more appealing shape if you’re to continue to move forward.

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I mentioned that you’ll need to take a series of photos for an objective assessment of where your strengths and weaknesses lie.  Today, I want to talk about the next steps in physique assessment that will lead to the development in of a program to create your ultimately aesthetically appealing physique.  So let’s get to it.

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Evaluate Your Photos
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Now that you’ve got your photos, the next step in physique is to actually evalate them.  This step is sometimes the hardest as you’ll have to look at your own pictures with an objective eye.  To do this I’d suggest you create the following list on a piece of paper.
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- Upper traps:
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- Front delts:
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- Lateral delts:
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- Rear delts:
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- Biceps:
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- Tricep long head: (Most visible on the underside of the arm in the bicep poses)
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- Tricep lateral head: (Most visible during side tricep poses)
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- Forearms
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- Lower chest:
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- Upper chest
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- Upper back width:
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- Upper back thickness:
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- Lower/Mid back erectors:
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- Abdominals: (Not looking for development here, but amount of leanness.  I don’t believe that exercise will increase abdominal thickness to the point where it matters or makes them look better.)
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- Obliques: (Mostly looking to see if these are overdeveloped and taking away from the waistline.  If there are ”love handles” here you need to adjust your diet not your exercise plan.)
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- Quads:
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- Glutes:
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- Hamstrings:
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- Calves:
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Now go through each photo one at a time and proceed through the list above muscle by muscle for each one.  In some photos you won’t be able to see certain muscles so you don’t need to make a note of this.

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However, in the photos where you can see the muscle, note whether it is lagging, proportional to the rest of your physique, or overdeveloped.
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In the end, you should have a clear picture of what needs to be addressed, what needs to be maintained, and where you can hold back.
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Summarize Your Results
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At this point, I like to create the following two columns to pull everything together so I can make sense of all the comments and notes I made above.

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Physique Strong Points – In this section list all of the muscles that are well developed and need little additional work.  These will be the spots you deprioritize in your training.
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Physique Weak Points – In this section you’ll identify the weakest points from your list above which should tell you where you’ll dedicate most of your efforts.  My goal is usually to identify the top 1-2 in most need of need attention.  These will be the spots you prioritize in your training.

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Special note:  I don’t do physique assessments with novices until the end of their first 3 months (even up to 6 months) of training.  During this time we work out movement limitations and establish the basics of lifting before proceeding to this point.

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During this time it is assumed that everything needs work and that understanding the basic lifts is more important than prioritizing certain muscle groups.  Besides, if you’re a rank novice you should but putting on mass very easily.  If you are not, you’re doing something wrong and you need to READ THIS.

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Calculate Your Ideal Waist Measurement
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I recently picked up a tip from John Barban’s product The Adonis Effect that the ideal waist measurement for males is approximately 45% of your height in inches.

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In other words, a guy who is 5’10 (70 inches) would calculate his ideal waist measurement like this:

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70 X 0.45 = 31.5 inches

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Frankly, I’m not sure if I totally agree that this is an exact number, but I think it serves as a great guide.  Record your height and calculate your ideal waist measurement.  Now measure your waist and write down the actual measurement as well.

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Establish a Priority

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At this point you have all the information you need to start making a decision about your next steps in your physique planning.

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If your waist measurement is more than two inches above the calculated ideal waist measurement you are going on a fat loss plan.  For the most aesthetically appealing physique there is some research to suggest that women find men most attractive when our shoulder circumference is 60% greater than our waist.  And since we know it is easier (or at least faster) for advanced trainees to drop fat than gain muscle, this is your target.

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While this is really worthy of another post I’ll write soon, I did swipe the waist to shoulder ratio idea from The Adonis Effect as well.  If you want to learn more you can scoop up your own copy HERE.

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If your waist is within two inches of the ideal target you can proceed towards tackling the problems above with few changes in your diet, but make sure you keep monitoring your waist at least every two weeks.  If it breaks from the two inch window of ideal, you need to reel it in.

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Now that you’ve done that…you’re ready to create your training program.

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I’ll be back Friday with Part III including some suggestions for how to bring up the lagging groups you’ve identified and how to program differently based on whether you’re in a fat loss or muscle accumulation (I prefer this term to “bulking”) phase.

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PS:  Don’t forget to share this if you’ve found it useful.  Thanks!

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Note – Part 3 can now be found HERE.

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If you’re reading this site you probably already know that your body weight can be divided into lean (mostly muscle) mass and fat mass.  This is known as your body composition.

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You’re also probably well aware that the body’s ability to store fat is virtually without limits as evidenced by the number of people who are able to achieve body weights as high as 800, 900, or even 1000 pounds.  However, what you’re probably not aware of (or at least willing to admit to yourself) is that the amount of muscle mass than can be added to your frame is defined within a tight set of limits set by your genetics.

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The good news is that during the first couple years of training you can easily expect to make great strides towards this number.  Some people can gain 20 or even 30 pounds of lean mass over this time.  But as the years go by you’ll find yourself gaining less and less muscle mass as you gradually approach your genetic ceiling.

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Granted, there are great exercise programs, nutrition plans, and maybe some supplements that can help stave off the inevitable, but eventually you’ll be gaining muscle at a snail’s pace and hitting the gym can be increasingly frustrating.

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Now Don’t Get Me Wrong
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It is possible to get bigger.  You could always eat more.  But it will probably be fat and you’ll look like shit.  Or you could use copious amounts of drugs so you can reach your ultimate level of hugeness.  After all, who doesn’t want to turn into one of the monsters that grace the covers of most newsstand bodybuilding magazines?  You know – the ones all of the women you know are fawning over.  (Note the obvious sarcasm)

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A New Perspective
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In the end, you need to face the reality that muscle mass is limited and that continued pursuit of this goal is going to leave you disappointed.  On the other hand, you can take solace in the fact that being at this point in your lifting career means you have done something right.  You’ve gained most of the muscle mass you’re probably ever going to get.  Nice work!
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Now you’re left with an incredible opportunity to maximize your potential by focusing more on your body shape than your size.  In fact, you’ll be happy to note that you don’t need to add more size because most women really aren’t attracted to muscle bound freaks in the first place.  What they are attracted to is a well-muscled, aesthetically pleasing physique.
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Hell…half of the time you don’t even have to be big at all.  Next time you’re watching TV take a look at the guys your girlfriend, wife, of BFF is drooling over.  It all comes down to having the right proportions and creating a physique that is pleasing to the eye.  It is as simple as that.

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Assess Your Physique
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Creating an aesthetically pleasing physique is just as methodical as any training program you’ve ever created.  Just like you’d get a baseline for your big 3 when creating a strength program or evaluate your tight or stiff muscles before creating a corrective exercise program, you need to assess your physique to determine your course of action for your body reshaping program.  Over the next few posts I’ll cover and outline of how to do just that using the exact method I use with my own clients.

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Get Some Photos

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The first step in a physique assessment is obtaining photos from which you can make an objective decision about what needs work and what doesn’t.  These will also serve as markers of progress so you can determine if your plan of action is working.  I suggest taking full length photos wearing only a pair of shorts so you can do a complete evaluation of your physique.  Ask your girlfriend, wife, or random homeless guy to take a total of 9 photos of you in the following poses.

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Front Double Bicep
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Start with feet hip width apart with the knees slightly bent, and pretend that you are pulling the floor apart with your feet to engage your quads.  Raise your arms to shoulder height and flex the elbow to contract the bicep. Make sure your chest is tall and shoulder blades are flared out. When flexing the arm, make sure you rotate the palm inward as though you’re trying to touch your baby finger to your ear. Also, tuck the thumb inside your palms when showing us your guns!
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Back Double Bicep
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Take a small step back with your dominant leg and making sure to be on the toe of the back leg so that you can see your calf development.  With a slight bend in both knees, thrust your hips forward and contract the glutes and hamstrings.

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For the upper body, perform almost the same movement for the upper body as the front double bicep pose.   The only difference is that you’ll pull the elbows back to get a stronger contraction in all of your back muscles.  However, it is important that you do not simply pinch your shoulder blades together.  Instead, you want to flare them away from each other and then drive the elbows back.
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Front Lat Spread
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This one is tricky and takes practice..LOTS of practice.
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Start with feet hip width apart with the knees slightly bent, and pretend that you are pulling the floor apart with your feet to engage your quads.  For the upper body, begin with your fists punched into your sides between your ribcage and pelvis. As you begin to add pressure into your sides, push your shoulder blades away from each other.
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At this point your shoulder blades are flared but your shoulders are rolled forward. Simply, puff your chest up as if I really hot woman was about to walk by (yeah…we know you do this). When doing so make sure the lats are flared out still and the shoulders are not shrugged up towards your ears.  Now, flex your arms while holding this pose to really maximize your shoulder/lat/arm ratio.
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See…I told you.  Tricky. 
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Rear Lat Spread
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Take a small step back with your dominant leg and making sure to be on the toe of the back leg so that you can see your calf development.  With a slight bend in both knees, thrust your hips forward and contract the glutes and hamstrings. 
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For the upper body, perform the same movement for the rear lat spread as you would for the front lat spread with some minor changes.  Instead of drawing your fists into your sides, use your thumbs. Holding a fist with both hands, take your thumbs and stick them into the back of the love handles.  As you begin to flare the shoulders out, slide your thumbs forward and into your sides.
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Once you are in full lat spread, instead of puffing the chest up just remain tight and flared and lean back slightly. This will activate your erectors and show your back thickness. 
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Side Chest
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Place the ball of the left foot (the foot closest to the camera) in the middle of the right (rear) foot.  Keeping both knees slightly bent, flex your left calf and make sure the hamstring is being pushed out by the right leg.
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Now place your right hand on the wrist of the left hand.  Begin by pulling your left shoulder blade back as though you are performing a row. While you are pulling the shoulder back, rotate your upper body slightly so your shoulders are almost square with the camera. Make sure to add pressure to the left wrist so you are flexing your bicep.  To show chest development on the right side, squeeze your chest over and keep your right arm tight to your body.
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Repeat on the other side.
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Side Tricep

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Place the ball of the left foot (the foot closest to the camera) in the middle of the right (rear) foot.  Keeping both knees slightly bent, flex your left calf and make sure the hamstring is being push out by the right leg.
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Place your fingertips together behind your back.  Make sure the hand/fingers of the left hand (closest to the camera) are facing up and the other hand’s fingers are facing down.  Lock the left elbow out to flex the tricep. To really show your tricep and shoulder musculature, try pulling your fingers together.
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Repeat on the other side.
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Abdominals & Thigh
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Start by having your feet hip width apart. Place your dominant leg slightly out in front with your toes pushed into the ground.  Slightly turn your foot out in this pose to show more of your inner calf development. To really make this pose “click”, slightly bend both knees and spread the floor with both legs. It is a bit difficult to do with the foot out front but if you can stick it, you will show off the full quadricep.
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Close both hands into fists and place them behind your head.  Take a breath in and as you release your breath squeeze your abs as hard as you can.  At the same time, flex your biceps and push your hands into your head.  When breathing out, made sure not to sink your chest and end up like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
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A Final Note on Photos and Posing

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In bodybuilding these compulsory poses (or mandatory poses as they are sometimes called) might primarily be used to showcase our strongest body parts.  However, you are also taking them to capture your weaknesses.  As such, make sure you take all of the photos not only those that make you look your best.
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Of course, since we’re not trying to hide imperfections or delude ourselves into thinking progress is greater than it really is, I’d urge you not to use the common “before and after” tactics like leaving your chest hairy or forgetting to shave in the “before” photos or tanning for the “after” photos.  The key here is to assess your physique as it is and to measure real improvements so that you can adjust your plan accordingly.
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And that’s it for today.  I’ll be back on Wednesday to discuss how to use those photos for an objective physique assessment and later this week I’ll talk about how to program your training once you’ve done this.

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PS: I’d like to say a HUGE thanks to my good friend Eric Daye for posing for these photos and contributing the excellent posing descriptions.  You can check out his site at www.TruBodyFitness.com.

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PPS:  This is a lengthy series and it took a lot of work.  If you find it useful, please share it with others.

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Note – Part 2 can now be found HERE and Part 3 can be found HERE.

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Okay…I wasn’t going to do a post today, but I’ve got a couple random things I wanted to get out so I’ll knock them out and let you get on with your weekend.

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1.  On Wednesday my esteemed colleague Dr. John Berardi posted something on his site that I though you could all appreciate.  Here are his 10 Things Elite Coaches Do.

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Of all of his suggestions, one really resonated with me:

“early in my career I made a fundamental mistake. I focused only on physiology books without paying much attention to an absolutely critical area of coaching: change psychology.”

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement and you can check out Johns top 6 books on this topic in his post.  I know I will.

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2.  I originally posted the link above on my Facebook and if you aren’t on there then you might’ve missed it if I didn’t remember to post it here too.  Which got me thinking…If you’re not on my Facebook just think of all the great stuff you’re missing.

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The World’s Best Core Exercise
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Some Crazy Parkour

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And, of course, The Jersey Shore Workout
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If you don’t want to miss out on all this very important content Facebook me up HERE.  Oh…I’m on Twitter too.  You can find me HERE.

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Have a great weekend!  Next week I’ll be running a multi-part series on physique assessment.  Should be fun.

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In light of my upcoming product How to Read Fitness Research at the end of March, I’ve decided that I’m going to dedicate at least some time on my blog to discussing fitness research and related topics over the coming months.

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I’m really excited about this project and I think it is going to give a lot of people freedom from being spoon fed fitness misinformation from supposed experts on the internet.  From this point on you won’t need to rely on someone else.  YOU will be able to determine for yourself whether the information you are reading is legit or a steaming pile of crap.

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Without Further Ado – Let’s get to it!

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I’ve discussed previously the topic of acute and chronic studies, but today I want to delve a little deeper.  More specifically, I wanted to share that I’ve recently had several email exchanges with a couple other bright fitness professionals talking about things like the effects of growth hormone or adipose tissue blood flow on body fat.

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The point I was sharing with these other smart folks is that even though growth hormone may increase fat mobilzation acutely or that adipose tissue blood flow may be immediately increased with some execise/treatment modalities this may not translate into real world fat loss.

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A good example of this (albeit in a slightly different area) is that certain types of exercise increase testosterone and growth hormone acutely.  And since we know testosterone (and maybe GH) increase muscle mass this might lead us to believe that the same type of exercise that acutely increases these hormones will increase muscle mass…but it doesn’t.  Muscle mass does not increase more as a result of this acute hormonal change.

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In the end, focusing on one acute measurement as an outcome might lead you down the wrong path.  And while these measurements might lead to further hypotheses to be tested (which is good), they shouldn’t be considered conclusive evidence of the effectiveness of a method. 

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For now, I think a lot more needs to be learned about GH, adipose tissue blood flow, and fat loss before we start making recommendations. 

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But in terms of research, next time you read something suggesting that you focus on a single acute measure (like fat mobilization from growth hormone), make sure to ask yourself whether it actually plays a role in real world fat loss before you change your routine.

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