How many of you feel just like Forrest Gump? Forrest Gump could run for miles and miles and seemed so focused on running that he didn't pay much attention to where he was or where he was going. But instead of the sweaty socks and cool wind in blowing through your hair you're surrounded by dumbbells, sweaty people and someone blowing wind in your face. Too many people head off to the gym day after day and year after year only to find that they are still no closer to their goal than when they started. Let's face facts. There are an awful lot of people in the gym that we've been watching for the last several years that still look exactly the same as they did when we first saw them. The only problem here is that while you're thinking that about them, they are probably thinking the same thing about you. How about learning some new tricks from an old dog that's been at the game of physical transformations for 30 years? Well read on Forrest because you're about to stop running yourself senseless and finally reach a new destination.
In last month's feature article (October 2008), we focused on how we transform the female figure into a better shape by focusing on the proportion and symmetry issues. This month we thought that we should show you the male form and how we can alter a persons training to create different looks. The before picture below represents a client that is drug free, weighs 203 pounds and has been training hard for 8 consecutive years. While he's not in bad shape, he is nowhere near what he wants to look like and he's frustrated that the Male Fitness Model Physique is eluding him. He's been trying for 8 years to accomplish this goal by eating 4 meals a day and working out with weights 5 days a week. The after picture was taken within a year which is a very short period of time after coming into IEM and consulting with me. As you compare the two pictures do you think he looks better in the after picture than he does in the before shot? If you answered yes then you're playing with all your marbles. If you think he looks better in the before picture then you more than likely have a severe case of Macular Degeneration.
As you compare the two pictures, ask yourself why he looks better in the after picture? If you answered "well he looks better because he's leaner," then you're not alone. In fact, everyone I show these pictures will answer that question by saying it is because he is leaner. Not only is that not the case (and I'll prove it to you) I am going to point out six different things and being leaner isn't even one of them. Sure it helps to be lean, however if we took his original body and only removed the fat he would look far worse. Before I tell you the six things I see that need to be fixed let me explain that our clinic produces far more elite cover models, fitness models, pageant winners and bodybuilders than any other entity in the world. And the reason we can take a person with lesser genetics and have them beat a competitor with better genetics almost every time is found within the proportion and symmetry cycle. Just as important to eating right for your sport is the consideration you have to give to how each and every body part measures up against another. I would contend that one of the biggest mistakes people within the fitness industry make is they tend to train their whole body with the same frequency, rep and set schemes which in turn only creates a disproportionate physique either bigger or smaller than the one you started with. Here are the six things that he had to change in order to make his body look better:
Problem Number 1:
Look at his before picture and focus on the chest. Notice the over-development of his lower pectoral muscle against his upper clavicle region. Can you see how empty the upper and center region of his chest looks? Now imagine what would happen if we just took that body right there and stripped away the fat. Can you suddenly see how odd that would look? Wouldn't the sunken inner and upper chest become even more noticeable? Wouldn't you see his ribs running across the upper chest while the lower portion of the chest would become more prominent against that deficiency? Now look at the optical illusion that is created when we have him change his training to focus on the upper region while not training the lower part as much. We might of only added a quarter pound of muscle to the missing region but notice how that completes the chest. It fills it in causing the line of his chest to go right up to his neck while in the before picture the incomplete chest muscles caused the line to stop half way up his chest. Now with the inner and upper pec blending into the lower portion it completes the picture by rounding it out while creating an optical illusion that his chest is a lot bigger and fuller. In this case, I showed him a new elbow/ hand/ wrist position that caused him to hold the bar differently causing him to work only the deficient region. Like most people he had been doing tons of incline pressing movements under the impression that inclines work upper chest. That's simply untrue if your elbow/wrist movement isn't correct. How much time did it take to fill that area in you might ask? A mere 9 months!
Problem Number 2:
As you look at the before picture do you happen to notice that his neck is bigger than his arms? In this case his neck circumference is 17 which is 1 ½ inches bigger than his arm. By taking circumference measurements along with body fat measurements we can get a complete picture of exactly which body part needs more work and which ones need less. There are some sports where you might want a bigger neck than arm ratio. Sports like wrestling, football and sumo wrestling. However in the male fitness model look you don't want a bigger neck because it subtracts from your shoulder ratio. So naturally the advice for him was to lay off the neck exercises and bring up his arms.
Problem Number 3:
This problem links into the second problem. But rather than focus on his neck look at how one arm is bigger than the other arm. When we strapped a measuring tape around his arms there was a ¾ inch difference between them. As your eye looks at the human form it will dart back and forth from one side to another and while it may see the disproportionate balance your brain may not pick up on why it doesn't balance out. You just know something about the physique doesn't look right. In this case I had to show him some isolation exercises he could do to focus on his smaller arm. And each time he trained he would simply do a few extra sets to balance the two arms out. As you look in the after picture hopefully you can see that one side of his body looks like a mirror image of the other.
Problem Number 4:
As just mentioned in the last two problems, his neck girth was different from his arm circumference, but what you can't see in the picture is that his calves were too small. In male bodybuilding we want the neck, arms and calves to be the same size and to match. The same holds true for the Male Fitness Models. The only difference is that instead of a 20 inch neck, arms and calves the male fitness model's circumferences are smaller. In this case, his neck, his arms and his calves all match perfectly with circumferences of 17 inches in the after picture. Think about how bad it looks to see a bodybuilder with a huge upper body but bird thin legs. When the upper body doesn't match the lower, nothing about that person's physique will look right. Since everyone is different some guys may have to build their neck because it's smaller than their arms. And while another person may have perfectly matching neck and arms they may end up working calves three days a week to get everything caught up.
Problem Number 5:
As you compare the two pictures, focus on the waist. Does the waist look a lot smaller in the after picture? Hopefully you can see that it is smaller. But the thing that makes it look smaller than it actually is became apparent when I measured his shoulder to waist and hip ratios. By making a comparison between the wider portion of the human form (the shoulders & hips), I could show him that based on the numbers if he didn't increase the girth of his shoulders by 1 ½ inches then it wouldn't match his waist and hip ratio as we leaned him down. The optical illusion that wider shoulders will create a smaller looking waist happens because the greater the shoulder caps stick out causes the eye to move downward to the waist. As you look again at the before picture, I want you to notice that his shoulders seem to slope downward toward the outside of his body. Sloping shoulders cause him to look like he's not standing up straight. In the after picture, you can see that by using weights correctly it caps the shoulders so that they take on more of a square look. And that creates more of the V-taper that all guys want to possess.
Problem Number 6:
His back is too small and doesn't sweep outward enough to match the lower body curvature. Take a look at the before picture again. Starting at his left knee, let your eye follow the curve of the thigh up to the waist and notice when your eye gets to the waist that the small amount of fat bulges out about an inch. Let your eye continue to follow the upper body curvature all the way up until you can't see his back anymore. Now do the same thing to the after picture. Again, following the outer sweep on his thigh notice how the thigh muscle jets outward while moving inward at the waist. Now notice how there an identical curvature leading up to his back and how the lower body curvature matches identically to the upper body curvature. When these two intersections of the lower body and upper body match it draws your eye inward toward the waist. This in turn casts an illusion that the waist is tiny. Granted we did drop some fat off of his waist. However, in the grand scheme of things his waist came down just over an inch. But coupled with his shoulders being wider and his curvature matching between the upper and lower body everything comes together to create an aesthetic looking body.
Keep in mind there are a lot of different looks men can develop from altering their dietary intake and exercise. Some of the different looks males may want range from the bodybuilder (think Arnold), to the male fitness model (muscular and lean, just not as big), to the male runway model (thin, yet toned and lean). And the look you want is based on very different proportion and symmetry cycles. If this is the first time you've ever been introduced to seeing the human form from this particular vantage point then you're not alone. In fact, way too many people simply pull a workout from a magazine with no forward thinking what-so-ever as to what that program will create. As you can see from the outline above, he was not only given a new eating program to reduce his body fat but he was also given very sound advice about what body parts needed to be trained more and which ones needed to be trained less. It's not enough to just get leaner which is evident by all the people that lose weight and still don't like the way they look. Do you know what your proportion and symmetry numbers are? Do you even know what they should be? Well if not feel free to come in and work with us and we would be more than happy to show you the way.
