Fundamental principles have been proven to help create a healthier, stronger, and more symmetrical physique. Utilize these methods and watch as your body improves significantly.
The Compelling Physique
- What qualities are most responsible for making the human physique more psychologically compelling?
- What, specifically, about a body inspires admiration and intrigue?
The answer to these questions is: symmetry and aesthetics.
What to Know about Symmetry:
Symmetry occurs when a human physique’s musculature appears proportionally developed – the back is as strong as the chest, and the thighs are as muscular as the arms.
Symmetry also refers to cohesive mobility within the human physique.
That means the joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments are flexible without any “sticky spots” that would pull awkwardly on the body and create a postural imbalance – for example, “texting slouch.”
What to Know about Aesthetics:
Aesthetics is a term used in fitness to describe the process of obtaining a more ideal body composition – the ratio of a body’s fat to muscle.
While symmetry refers more often to the scientific and objective side of muscular and postural balance, aesthetics looks to the subjective and artistic side of physical beauty and a compelling human physique.
Gender Differences for Symmetry and Aesthetics in the Human Physique
There are small differences in pursuing symmetry and aesthetics based on gender.
For example, women generally look healthier with a slightly higher percentage of body fat (their hormones require it).
Also, many women have wider hips which can look even more attractive when balanced with shoulder development.
Men are generally open to developing more muscle mass all over.
However, though there are different approaches and goals between the genders when pursuing symmetry and aesthetics, those differences are not as significant as many believe.
Fundamentally, the approach and the goals are pretty close, regardless of gender.
4 Steps to a New and Improved Physique
What follows are four steps toward creating a symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing physique that is healthy and strong.
Step One: Schedule Your Week Like a Cross-Trainer
It’s time to plan your new fitness regimen.
A common mistake many aspiring athletes make during this step is over-focusing on one aspect of exercise. They do mostly cardio, mostly yoga, or mostly weight training. But for optimal wellness, you need all three of those each week.
Flexibility for the Physique
What you do for flexibility depends on your age and your job.
If you have a desk job, sit, or drive a lot, you will require extra flexibility maneuvers to counteract a sedentary lifestyle.
Many underestimate how sedentary they actually are. It’s a peculiarity of living with modern technology.
People think of themselves as active because their minds are active.
Still, sedentary refers not to your brain but to your physique and how much natural movement the body undertakes during a typical day.
Think of flexibility as the foundation upon which all your other fitness is successfully built.
One flexibility session each week might be all you need:
- yoga session
- swimming laps
- pilates
- or mobility drills on the mat before your workout.
TIP: decide which of these you will do, and build it into your schedule.
Cardio for the Physique
If you want to be a healthy human, your circulation and lungs must be strong. That can mean doing each of these types of cardio once per week:
- steady-state cardio
- sprints or anaerobic drills.
TIP: resist the temptation only to do one type of cardio. Mix it up – you’ll get better results that way. For steady-state, sometimes go for an outdoor run, or do the rower, bike, or climber. For anaerobic, you can do sprints on the treadmill indoors during inclement weather – but in nice weather, you can go to the park – or beach – and do cone drills or the speed ladder.
Weight-Training for the Physique
Longevity is the pursuit of a healthy lifespan. One key to longevity is to prevent muscle loss that otherwise comes with age.
Weight training is the solution.
According to Dr. Terry Wahls, strength training generates the most benefits in nerve growth factors, so prioritizing weight-lifting is a good idea.
Lifting weights will help improve your mood, protect your brain, and lessen your risk of diseases – including heart problems, diabetes, obesity, and dementia.
Weight training can be done with barbells, dumbbells, gym machines, resistance bands, and kettlebells.
To achieve a symmetrical and aesthetic physique, you’ll want to weight-train at least twice or up to four times a week – depending on your objectives.
Step Two: Learn Anti-Inflammatory Meal Prep
A healthy physique is primarily made in the kitchen (even more than in the gym).
By adopting an anti-inflammatory diet, your life will change for the better.
On an anti-inflammatory diet, you will:
- build muscle tone
- shrink body fat
- evaporate brain fog
- improve joint health (your knees, ankles, hips, lower back, wrists, elbows, and neck will all feel better and move better)
- tighten your waistline
- and even your skin and hair will improve.
The trick to succeeding long-term with an anti-inflammatory diet is to get organized.
You’ll probably want to do an extensive grocery shopping run on the same day each week.
If you’re going to do meal prep, it might be helpful to choose which day of the week you’ll typically do it.
“Meal prep” is creating menu items ahead of schedule so you can enjoy pre-prepared meals throughout the rest of the week. This increases your chances of sticking to your plan.
Step Three: Adopt a New Mindset
A positive attitude is what helps new habits “stick.”
As you undertake this new goal of creating symmetry and aesthetics in your physique, be playful and nerdy about it – as if it’s a big, fun experiment.
When you encounter a problem, focus on it only long enough to find a solution – then get back on track.
If you keep a sense of humor operating in the background at all times, it will help.
Step Four: Program Your Workouts Ahead of Time
Don’t just show up at the gym and “wing it.” That’s kid-stuff-amateur-hour.
Arrive at your workout knowing what you will do and why you will do it.
How to Plan Your Workouts Brilliantly
For many people, their least-favorite part of exercising is not the doing of it; it’s the planning of it – what trainers call “programming.”
You can use this site to help with your fitness programming – it’s loaded with exercise ideas and complete workouts:
How to Match Exercises with Your Health Goals
When programming your workouts, remember to plan your bodywork symmetrically. This means:
- Train your legs as much as your arms.
- Train your back as much as your chest.
- Don’t forget to train glutes and lower-abdominals often.
Most people work their arms and chest more than their back and legs, which creates poor posture and a funny-looking physique. Also, many don’t train their lower abdominals and glutes enough, which eventually creates a weak core, poor pelvic placement, and lower-back issues.
The human body adapts to patterns quickly, especially resistance and movement patterns. Yet, many people do the same exercises over and over again – the same exercises at the same tempo using the same weights and the same equipment.
The problem with doing the same exercises is that the body stops responding. Sure, you’re still burning some calories. But you’re no longer improving the shape, definition, tone, or size of the muscles as quickly as you could be.
Blow some fresh air into your workouts! Use the list provided.
TIP: look at yourself objectively in the mirror – front, side, and back – and identify one muscle group that is under-developed compared to the others. Train that muscle group twice a week until it catches up.
Instructions
Choose the following workouts that match the muscle group you are targeting or the equipment you have available.
Leg Workouts:
Target the Glutes:
Core Training:
Torso Training:
Full-Body Workouts:
- Driveway Training
- Park Training
- Battle Rope Training
- TRX Training
- Weighted-Vest Training
- Landmine Training
- Metabolism Boosting
- Stability Ball Training
- Kettlebell Training
- Circuit Training
- Outdoor Circuits
- Home Gym Workout
- Vibration Plate Exercises
- Weight Bench Exercises
Cardiovascular Workouts:
Pilates Workouts:
- Reformer Training
- Magic Circle Training
- Wunda Chair Training
- Mat Calisthenics
- Trap Table 1
- Pilates Leg Springs (Trap Table 2)
Warm-up or Cool-Down:
Notes
These workouts – and the exercises they contain – are applicable to both women and men. They can be modified to accommodate any fitness level. Consult with your own medical doctor before making any significant changes to your movement or dietary habits.
Another tool you might find helpful is Pinterest, which now makes it much easier to program your workouts.
On the Pinterest visual-discovery engine, you can save images and videos onto Boards and Sections – to help you remember those interesting new exercises the next time you workout.
Prioritize Your Physique Ahead of Time
By readily making your new exercises available, you don’t have to stop what you’re doing mid-workout to figure out what’s next – therefore letting your heart rate drop and your psychological momentum fizzle out.
If you’re a seasoned athlete, Pinterest may be just the thing to blow some fresh air into stale workouts.
Or, if you’ve been inactive for a while, Pinterest can help you get motivated to return to the positive habit of regular exercise.
What you must not do is neglect what is still possible for you. A downward spiral into immobility does not have to be your fate. Movement begets movement, and energy expidenture can, if done correctly, result in more energy, not less. Lack of mobility only leads to immobility.”
–Terry Wahls, M.D.
If you’re not already exercising regularly, it’s essential to begin participating in new workouts.
Ideally, your new exercise programming should possess mobility drills (to keep joints supple), flexibility stretches (for shortened muscles), balance training, strength movements to develop muscle, cardiovascular and lung conditioning to better your endurance, and once in a while, include an anaerobic sprint workout to take your performance up to the next level and keep your metabolism from becoming complacent.
Consider making each of those above categories a Board on your Pinterest profile.
How I Use Pinterest for Programming My Workouts
Pinterest is a discovery engine that you access on your desktop browser or phone app.
You type in what you’re curious about, “How to Cook Turkey Bacon in the Oven,” “How to Make my Glutes Firmer,” “Best Way to Clean My Garage,” or whatever is on your mind.
Pinterest responds with an array of photographs and videos – some will answer your questions directly. In contrast, others (and this is the fun, addicting part) take you in inspiring new directions that are indirectly related to your query.
At that point, you can either click on the image for greater detail or save it to one of your Boards to look at later – or both.
Pinterest even lets you take things one step further by letting you create subcategories within your Board – what Pinterest calls Sections.
You can make your Pinterest Boards public if you want (though Board Sections are always private).
I’m on Pinterest sharing all my favorite exercises, recipes, and wellness tips – from both my site and others. You can follow here.
I have a Board called Exercises For Legs, another called High-Intensity Interval Training Ideas, and another called Mobility Solutions.
I also have a board called Upper Body Workout, which has many subsections: chest, back, shoulders, triceps, biceps, and core.
When browsing my Pinterest feed and seeing an intriguing new exercise for adding definition to the back of my upper arms, I can save that image (and the corresponding article) into the Triceps section of my Upper Body Workout Board. Then later that week, at the gym, I open up that section on my phone, and I’m ready to go. Easy peasy.
Similarly, suppose I’m browsing a fitness website like this. In that case, you can bookmark the article on one of your Pinterest Boards or Sections (either using the Pinterest Browser Button or a Pinterest Social-Share Button).
Other fitness apps and social networking sites provide you with ideas for workouts (or allow you to find others’ ideas), but so far, Pinterest is the easiest and most enjoyable way I’ve found to do it.
- Are you intrigued by using Pinterest to program your workouts?
- Do you like the idea of being able to program a workout that meets the unique needs of your current fitness level, joint immobility, or muscular imbalances?
Over 50?
Get the Silver & Strong Course:
• strategic nutrition and exercise plan
• for men and women
• for all levels and body types
• provides sequenced action steps
• includes specific lifestyle protocols
• get sculpted muscle
• reduce fat deposits around waist
• improve joint mobility
• increase stamina
The foundation of the coursebook is taking action steps toward adopting an anti-inflammatory lifestyle, particularly in regards to diet. (It’s not just about fitness.) Basically, it involve tracking calories, macros, and inflammation (in a strategic sequence) as well as removing particular anti-inflammatory foods (again, in a specific sequence). Once you achieve your target weight, you can experiment with implementing a once-a-week Cheat Day, during which you can have your favorite “offending” foods.
In Silver and Strong: Getting Fit After Age 50, I explain exactly how to craft a Fitness Comeback Plan that specifically meets the needs of your unique physique and lifestyle.