If there’s one extremely common phenomenon that I witness amongst almost everyone that I come across, it’s that people love to focus on small details instead of aiming most of their attention to the things that truly matter. Focusing on small, insignificant matters often gives us the impression of being productive, while in reality, we’re just being busy. This happens in all areas of life, including the gym. When you walk into any gym, most of the average people there are performing unproductive fluff work. That’s all you’ll ever see them doing and that is the exact reason why their physiques don’t change.
There’s a principle called the 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto’s principle. It states that 80 percent of the total results you get, is directly linked to only about 20 percent of the actions you take. According to my experience, this isn’t any different in fitness. Therefore my mind is blown that in this day and age, people still aim their precious energy and focus on the things they should consider as details.
If you want to walk around looking like a replica of a Greek statue, training hard isn’t enough. You should also train smart. There are a gazillion different exercises available to target every muscle group from 50 different angles, but is that an efficient way to train? You’ve guessed the answer… NO! What if I told you that you can squeeze out 80 percent of all the muscle gains you’ll ever make and take your physique to the next level by only focusing on getting extremely strong, relative to your bodyweight, at only four exercises. Read that again. You can totally transform your body and go from an average, out of shape slob, to looking like the captain of the football team with only four fundamental exercises. These exercises will give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to reaping the rewards of your efforts. When working hard meets working smart, magic happens.
There are a couple of core features that define an aesthetic, lean, masculine physique that catches the eye. To know where we have to aim our focus towards, we must be aware of what they are and how to strategically adapt our training to achieving the perfect proportions in these specific areas. The most important elements of what make up an amazing looking male body are:
● A masculine, square, armor plated chest
● A powerful, wide, dominant back
● Strong, broad, capped shoulders
● Lean, athletic, strong legs that are proportionate to the upper body
These are the key areas that need to be developed properly to transform your body into that of a Greek warrior. To get a visual image of this kind of physique, think about Brad Pitt in Troy.
Our training will require us to work hard once we get to the gym and start lifting, but training smart is even more important. Remember that 80/20 rule? Instead of spending hours on end in the gym each and every day, trying to perform every available exercise under the sun, we will make our training more efficient by picking a handful of exercises that will target all the essential muscle groups we need to develop to rock the physique we want. By getting insanely strong on these specific movements, gaining muscle will be an easy task and you’ll actually look forward to go to the gym because you’ll not only look better, your athletic performance will go up in general because of the increased strength, muscle mass and neurological adaptations.
The four key lifts you need to focus on are…
The bench press
The bench press is a powerful, horizontal pushing exercise that if performed correctly, will translate into insane strength gains and slabs of muscle on primarily the chest, front deltoids and triceps. When performed with a shoulder width grip or slightly wider than shoulder width grip, the chest gets a total beating out of a good bench press session and will be stimulated for optimal growth around the whole chest area. Getting your numbers up on this lift, with proper technique in a medium rep range, will lead to you sporting an amazing, well developed, masculine chest.
The (weighted) chin up
The weighted chin up is the king of the upper body pulling exercises that will give you the V taper effect. This single lift will take care of your back development by building a pair of strong, wide lats, a powerful upper back and even your biceps and core will take a serious hit. Once you get stronger and are able to perform 8-10 chin ups with proper form, don’t hesitate to add weight to the exercise. Once you work your way up to performing 50% of your body weight for 5 reps, your back will explode. Forget about rows as a primary back developer, the chin up is where its at!
The overhead press
The first thing people visualize when they try to think about an attractive male physique is a pair of strong, broad, boulder shoulders. Good shoulder development symbolizes male strength, athleticism and heath. To achieve a look where you too sport a strong pair of shoulders, becoming strong on the overhead press is essential. While the bench press and weighted chin up already do an amazing job at stimulating a lot of the musculature in the shoulder girdle, the overhead press just has an effect on your shoulders that no other movement can give you. Besides that it’s just the raw essence of lifting and strength training… picking up a heavy weight and putting it over your head!
The split squat
Finally to complete our physique and match our upper body musculature, we need to develop a pair of strong, athletic, but not overly bulky legs. Incorporating the split squat to your key lifts is the perfect way to achieve this mission. The split squat can be performed with a barbell or dumbbells and is amazing at stimulating all the right areas of the lower body musculature, with a focus on the quads and glutes. Since it is a single leg exercise, your vastus medialis (tear drop muscle around the knee cap) will have to work harder than during a traditional two legged squat and will give your legs a more balanced and proportionate look. This movement will hit your leg musculature hard without putting excess stress on your spine, which is a fantastic way to avoid injuries and stay in the lifting game for a very long time.
The message of this article is: “Train hard, but especially smart!”. 80-85% of your results will come from getting really strong and efficient at fundamental compound lifts. Why would you waste your precious time and energy on suboptimal, time wasting workouts if they don’t significantly contribute to the look you desire? Obviously, it’s OK to add other exercises into your training routine if you wish to maximize your potential and bring up lagging areas. You can add in direct arm work, calf work, hamstring work and rear or side delt work if you wish to develop your physique to its maximal potential and create the perfect proportions.
However, I can guarantee you this one thing: if you’re short on time, you don’t want to spend your life in the gym or for whatever reason you just want to get the majority (read: 80-85%) of the results you’ll ever get out of working out, then you shouldn’t hesitate to focus on getting beastly strong on these four fundamental exercises in the 5 to 10 repetition range. These lifts are the basis you must respect to make a significant visual change in your body composition. As a fantastic side benefit, your strength and overall athletic abilities will massively improve as well.
Kevin Mahjoubi