Over the years at You Live Life Well I have trained lots of wonderful men and one of their main requests is to look even bigger than they are already. I mean body builder style. We’re talking about asking me how to get a body like Arnold Schwarzengger. But in 2015, who really wants to look like a gym monkey with medially rotated shoulders and a short neck! Which do you prefer? From my experience and gossip with female friends, most of us don’t like that look. We tend to prefer athletic, toned, healthy looking men that aren’t secretly injecting steroids or obsessing about their bods more than us girls! We would rather snog Bradley Cooper or Jamie Dornan than get cosy with a big slab of gym-meat!
“Train like an athlete, not like a bodybuilder” Unless you are competing, or you need to bulk up for Rugby or some other contact sport, I would not recommend aiming for the body builder look. If you decide that you really do want to bulk up, then make sure you train your overall body so that it looks balanced. Don’t just focus on most men’s favourite exercises that simply pump up the chest and biceps, and might leave you looking like you have chicken legs! This level of inbalance can lead to lots of problems later on in life. Train like anathlete: work your legs, strengthen your back, develop serious core strength. There is nothing sexier than a strong set of legs and a well defined back and abs in my eyes.
What works best for men and women? Think about it… nature tells us that the most attractive women have curvacious child bearing hips, and men look their best when they have developed a triangular upper body. So, men do need to concentrate a little more on the upper body, without neglecting their legs though, while women should put some focus on the lower body. I recommend, 60 percent upper body for men and 40 percent lower body where as with women it would be the reverse. If you are a girl wanting to find out the best way to build your butt and legs you might want to read my article How to Build Curves in All the Right Places.
If you want that sleek athletic look then you also need to add some variation into your routines. Try taking a hot yoga class, do a martial arts class or playing a sport that moves all the muscles in your body. Repetative weights only build muscle in isolation. The lean sporty look comes from functional development of the muscles that actually move your body in the ways it was meant to move. So if you really want to look your best, then get to work on something other than bicep curls and bench presses.