Who Wants to Be Mr Universe? You Don’t
And neither do I.
This article is very long. If you want to read it at your own pace later, grab it in an e-book format here.
Everything has a price. Do you wanna pay the price of having a Mr Universe body? I know you don’t. And why would you? Most women aren’t even attracted to this kind of body. By far, they prefer the athletic guys.
Now, what if I tell you that having an athletic body is at a discount price? Would you take it? Before you accept the offer, note that it is not free.
Don’t wanna pay a dime? Take the dad bod. This is free.
Graphically:
Do you recognize the Pareto Principle? Nice, because this article is all about finding the 20% of efforts that deliver 80% of results.
Look, I’m just another father with a full-time job. For me, hitting the gym every day is not an option. So, I had to optimize. I had to find these 20%, which I’m sharing with you now.
As you can imagine, these 20% came from several different sources, but the bulk came from books, like The 4-Hour Body, Bigger Leaner Stronger, The Bulletproof Diet, and Hypertrophy. I tapped on YouTube too, especially for hints on how to perform exercises correctly.
Now let’s talk results. This is my before and after:
You get what you pay for. If having a body like mine is good enough, this article is for you. But if you want more, I can’t help.
Disclaimer: I am not a certified professional. This article is the result of years of learning and experimenting. I did my best to share what worked for me in the hopes it can work for you too. Always, always consult your doctor or another certified professional before putting into practice any advice I provide here.
The discount price of having an athletic body
I’ll put it upfront: skip cardio, lift weights, eat properly, cycle between bulking and cutting.
Wait, what? Skip cardio? How dare you kill such a sacred cow? Death to the heretics!
I understand your indignation, but don’t crucify me yet. I’ll explain.
Skipping cardio
Honestly, I don’t recall the last time I did a cardio session. It must have been in my late twenties or something. And you know what? Thanks to the aerobic conditioning provided by weight lifting, I can play a soccer match with my friends. Can I stop writing this article, put on a pair of shoes and run 10km right now? No, I can’t, but I’m fine with that “limitation”.
Look, I’m not saying cardio is good for nothing. What I’m saying is that it is not necessary for building an athletic body. Put differently, it is beyond the 20%. Just not worth the price.
Don’t wanna burn in hell for having skipped cardio? OK, then do yourself a favor: choose the HIIT type and don’t do it on workout days.
Lifting weights
I know, I know. Boring, right? But I bring good news: in this quest for the 20%, I found that you only need to hit the gym twice a week and that 45 minutes suffice. Yay!
Still not in the mood? OK, what if I tell you that, once you build the habit, working out will be like teeth brushing? C’mon man, give it a try.
The 45-minute workout, explained
1. Always train your whole body
You got it right: there is no A, B and C series. Only A. You will train your chest, shoulders, legs, back, arms and abs. All in the same day.
2. Focus on compound movements
Compound movements engage a large number of muscles simultaneously. A classic one is the bench press, which is meant to develop your chest but also trains your shoulders and triceps. The other classics are the military press (shoulders), the squat (legs) and the deadlift (back). But there are more on the menu. You can replace the squat with the leg press, for example.
3. Recruit all muscle fibers
OK, this deserves some explanation.
First and foremost: to grow, your muscle fibers need to sense mechanical loading. However, they can only sense the load once they are recruited.
Your body is a very efficient machine. When you lift a pencil, you only recruit a very small portion of your muscle fibers. What this means is that only those few recruited fibers will sense the pencil load. The rest of the muscle will sense no load at all. Since the load is very low and only a few fibers were recruited, no hypertrophy will follow. But you knew that already.
Now, drop the pencil and try to lift your car. What happens now? Due to the huge load, your body will have no choice but to recruit all fibers. And more: all those fibers will sense a significant load. That’s good, but lifting cars is not a viable option, as you knew already too.
What do we do then? Among the millions of possible answers between those two extremes, this is what worked for me: use a moderate load and repeat the movement until you reach muscular failure by the 15th rep. For the uninitiated, reaching failure means not being able to complete the last rep.
Here is the gist: as you approach muscular failure, you start recruiting more and more fibers, until you eventually recruit them all. Remember that, to grow, a muscle fiber needs to sense mechanical loading, which only happens when it is recruited.
There is more: this recruitment of extra fibers is maximum during the five repetitions that precede muscular failure. Failing to perform any of these last five reps will be like doing nothing. Yes, nothing. And, as far as I know, there is only one way to know if you are five reps from failure: reaching failure in the next five reps.
Once you reach muscular failure, rest at least three minutes before repeating the exercise. Once you finish, go to the next compound movement.
You may be questioning why only two sets. Well, the reason behind this number is that you want to avoid excessive muscular damage. Reaching failure, which is necessary to maximize fiber recruitment, inflicts damage as a side effect. And while mechanical loading is all we want, damage is all we don’t want. If you damage too many fibers, your muscle growth will be impaired. So, from my experience, two sets is a good balance between training volume and damage.
4. On proper form, loads and machines
You don’t wanna be stupid, as I once was, and injure yourself badly in the gym.
The main defense against injury is executing the movements with proper form. Ask your fitness coach, see videos on YouTube, read articles and books. Just make sure you’re doing the exercise correctly.
A second line of defense against injuries is using moderate loads. The reason is simple: they make it easier for you to keep proper form, which is especially true as you approach muscular failure.
Finally, there is a third line of defense: using machines. Many people say — and I agree with them — that free weights are superior to machines. But, what happens if you are bench pressing and there is no spotter to help you in case you can’t finish that last rep? So, play it safe. Machines are good enough and good enough is what we are looking for. We want the 20% of efforts that deliver 80% of the results, remember?
Before I forget, a quick word on warming up. What I do is perform the movement with a very light load for 20 reps. Then, I increase the load a little bit and do 15 reps. Increase the load again, 10 reps. I do that until I reach a load that is close to the final one and then rest one minute. If you do it right, the whole process shouldn’t take longer than three minutes. Bye-bye treadmill.
5. A sample workout, step by step
Finally. Here it is.
- Warm up for incline bench press.
- Incline bench press. Rest 3 minutes. Repeat.
- Warm up for lat pull down.
- Lat pull down. Rest 3 minutes. Repeat.
- Warm up for leg press.
- Leg press. Rest 3 minutes. Repeat.
- Warm up for seated military press.
- Seated military press. Rest 3 minutes. Repeat.
- Biceps curl. Rest 3 minutes. Repeat.
- Triceps pushdown. Rest 3 minutes. Repeat.
- Abs
In all exercises, except abs, use a load such that you reach failure by the 15th rep.
About pace: contract in 1 sec and extend in 2 or 3 seconds. Don’t deliberately perform a very slow movement. The main reason is that doing so holds you back. And you don’t want that, especially in the last five reps.
As you noticed, I replaced the squat with the leg press and the deadlift by the lat pull down. Since they are all compound movements, this can be done. What you shouldn’t do, however, is replace the bench press with an isolated exercise like the peck deck, for example.
Talking about bench pressing, you may have noticed that I recommended the incline bench press. I did that because the flat bench press does not stimulate the upper part of your chest as well as the incline one. A 30-degree inclination will do the job. A higher angle would start recruiting more of the shoulders and less of the chest, so don’t.
You may have noticed also that I included two isolated exercises at the end, one for the biceps and another for the triceps. The fact that we are focusing on compound movements does not prohibit isolated ones. And, as a male, I recommend you do these two.
Last but not least, abs. The elusive six-pack… Who doesn’t want it? Do these two exercises, and these two only: the myotatic crunch and the cat vomit. Credits to Tim Ferriss.
That’s it. Don’t spend a minute more in the gym. Go home and don’t come back before two or three days, as your muscles will take from 48 to 72 hours to fully recover.
6. Tracking progress
Tracking progress is important so that you can see you are improving. Since your image in the mirror will not change overnight, you may get demotivated if you use it as the sole means to track your progress.
Tracking progress is also very simple. All you need to take note of is the load and how many reps to failure. Being able to do one more rep means you became stronger already, which translates to an increase in lean mass. Over time, the mirror will give you feedback too, but this will take longer. Be patient. Focus on increasing the load and the number of reps and, before you notice, women will be turning their heads.
Initially, aim for 15 reps to failure with a moderate load. As you get stronger, you’ll eventually reach 20 reps. When that happens, increase the load to get back to 15 reps. Then repeat the process.
Keep in mind that from the 15 reps you did to failure, only the last five count. Don’t miss out on them. Don’t hold anything back to get them done.
Proper eating
Please, don’t become an orthorexic. Eat that pizza on Sunday evening with your family. Enjoy a good beer with your friends. Have that occasional ice cream with your children. Just keep in mind that it is not what you do once in a while that matters, but what you do every day.
As a grown-up, you know what to do and I am not your mom to tell you to eat the broccoli. So, let’s skip that part. The only thing I’m gonna tell you is to keep your protein intake around 1.5 g per kg of body weight per day. If you are clueless about what that means in practice, MyFitnessPal can help you.
An 80kg guy, for example, would need 120g of protein per day. Below is one way of achieving that.
- Breakfast: bread, two whole eggs (15g of protein) and protein shake (15g)
- Lunch: rice, vegetables, 200g of cooked beans (10g) and 100g of chicken breast (30g) — total 40g of protein.
- Snack: small protein bar (10g)
- Dinner: same as lunch.
But what about carbs and fat? No need to fret. Unless you consider McDonald’s a grocery store, you will do fine.
Keeping an eye on carbs and fat is, in my view, beyond the 20%. What you’re gonna do is check your weight once a week. More on that later.
Protein powder
Protein powder is not absolutely necessary but it is very convenient. Not in the mood for cooking eggs in the morning? Have an albumin shake. Had pasta for lunch? Take a beef protein shake after that. Hungry in the afternoon? Whey is there to save you.
Make it convenient for you. The more resistance on the path, the easier it is to quit.
Hint: on workout days, take 30g of whey protein immediately after training to reduce the cortisol peak, which may impair your muscular recovery.
Bulking and cutting 101
First things first. When you gain weight, you bulk. When you lose, you cut.
The whole idea is to gain both muscle and fat when bulking and shed only fat when cutting. Then, by cycling between bulking and cutting, you gain more and more muscular mass. See below.
But is this really necessary? I’d say yes. The main reason is that it is much easier for your body to build muscle when you’re gaining weight.
Bulking and cutting is a tried and tested approach, but you have to bulk and cut properly for them to work.
Ideally, as a male, you would have to work on the range of 10 to 15 body fat percentage. Go, type “body fat percentage” on Google Images and check it out. Unrealistic? Yes, especially if you are a beginner. But don’t despair. I have found that working on the 15–20% range is good enough. Leave the sweet spot, the 10–15%, for when you become a more advanced trainer.
There is a lot of debate on what you should do first, cutting or bulking. In my opinion, and that’s what I did, you should cut first.
So, cut until you go down to 15% body fat. Then bulk to 20%. Repeat. As your body composition improves, try to cut to 10% and bulk to 15%. Once you’re satisfied with your body, reduce the protein consumption to 1g per kg of body weight for maintenance purposes.
Now, good news: no need to obsess about calories. While keeping the protein intake unchanged, eat less to cut and more to bulk. As simple as that.
But how much less? And how much more?
Your new best friend, the scale, will answer. If you are doing it right, you should gain between 0.5kg and 1kg per week when bulking and lose weight at the same pace when cutting. After a few weeks of trial and error, you’ll figure it out. Trust me. Even better: trust yourself.
Look, I’m trying to keep it simple here. But if you want to count calories, go for it. I see it as a bonus. It may help you lose weight like clockwork, but — let’s be honest — it sucks. I prefer to use the scale and adjust as I move.
Hint: no change is better than gaining or losing more than 1kg per week. Why? Because, if you gain more than 1kg, you tend to gain more fat. Conversely, if you shed more than 1kg, you risk losing muscle. So, stay on the safe side: gain and lose weight at a slower pace. No need to hurry. After all, chances are you haven’t cared about all this for decades and it is not a few weeks of trial and error that will make a huge impact in your life. You’re acquiring a new skill. Enjoy the learning process.
As you may have guessed, bulking is easier than cutting. After all, eating more is no sacrifice, so to speak. But, hey, being in a bulk is by no means a free pass to eat only hamburgers, pizza and ice cream for a couple of months. No, as I said, keep the minimum protein intake and eat normally, just eat a little bit more. You can still have hamburger, pizza and ice cream, but not every day ok?
Now, the harder part — the cutting. Here are two hints to help you:
1) Try the slow carb diet, popularized by Tim Ferriss. It works beautifully. I tried it myself and lost around 1kg per week. Other friends tried it and got similar results. One of the biggest challenges people face with this diet is the breakfast. If you are OK with eating beans and eggs early in the morning, you’re set. If not, see the next hint.
2) Skip breakfast with the help of the bulletproof coffee. I do a low-calorie version of it, with 5g of ghee and 5g of MCT oil, and it does the job of keeping my hunger under control until noon. Combine this with having dinner around 6 pm the day before and you’re in intermittent fasting already!
That’s all folks. As I said, having an athletic body is not free, but it is within your reach. I focused here on the 20% of efforts that deliver 80% of results. I stripped away everything that, in my view, exceeds these 20%, like counting calories, cardio and hitting the gym every day. I made it easier for you, but not easy. By telling you exactly what to do, I killed the first boss. Now it is on you to kill the other two: taking action and being consistent.
