For just a moment, imagine this:

You’ve achieved your goal physique. The level of muscularity and leanness that you desire is now a reality. Feels good to think about. Doesn’t it?

Now, let me ask you a question…

Having achieved your desired physique/fitness goals, in this hypothetical scenario, what does your life look like?

What is the vast majority of your time (outside of vocation/work) dedicated toward now that you have what it is that you, so diligently, have been working towards?

Is it dedicated toward having a social life/dating pursuits, career/business pursuits, spirituality, or are you simply still spending most of your time in the gym, almost every day of the week, and having fitness and nutrition take up the majority of your mental space?

The reality of the situation for many people who do manage to get in incredible shape is that they wind up becoming slaves to the gym and restrictive, unnecessary diets and eating patterns.

In short — the rest of their life, outside of the gym, suffers…

This begs the question: If having a great physique means sacrificing all the things that make life meaningful for you, is it really worth it?

The answer to that question, of course, would be a resounding “no.”

Obviously, you still don’t want to give up on your fitness goals, and that is not what I’m suggesting, but if you wish to actually create a life in which you can, both, have an incredible physique AND live your best life, then you need to adopt an approach that is conductive to both.

The fitness industry makes it seem like this is impossible — that you can’t get in great shape without spending excessive amounts of time, energy, and discipline in the gym. I’m here to tell you that this is BS.

In fact, you can build a great physique with only 2-3 workouts a week, with only 30-40 minute long sessions. You can also maintain a relatively lean physique while incorporating foods like chocolate, ice cream, and pizza into your diet (within reason).

You see — working out 5 days a week, for 1.5-2 hours each session, and eating a bland, boring diet can work, but it requires hurculean discipline, is not worth it, and simply is NOT necessary.

Most people can’t even stick to these types of fitness and diet regimens. Due to these types of 5-6 day per week workout routines and bland diets being the popular idea of what getting in shape entails, most people don’t even start pursuing their fitness goals because it just seems too hard. It’s a shame really…

People who do stick to these brutal mainstream fitness regimens, long-term, (the minority), often, wind up sacrificing valuable time and energy that could be directed elsewhere.

You see — the last thing you probably want is to be that one-dimensional person who’s life is centered around the gym. I know it’s the last thing I’d want…

So if the typical mainstream exercise regimens are a no-go, when you wish to have a life, what should you do?

Well, the first thing is to understand what causes you to have a great physique. There are two main components…

1) Adequate Muscle Mass and Strength Levels

In order to have a great physique, you obviously will need a good base of muscle mass in both your upper-body and lower body. Specifically, you will want to emphasize muscle groups, like your upper back, shoulders, chest, and arms, while keeping your lower body, at least, in proportion.

The most efficient way to gain adequate muscle mass is by increasing strength via progressive overload (doing more work or lifting heavier weights over time). Focusing on a few sets of key compound exercises (like the bench press, barbell overhead press, weighted pull-up/lat pull-down, and squat) in a moderate rep range (5-12 reps) tends to be the best way to gain strength and muscle predictably.

Of course, working in higher rep ranges and doing more volume (sets and reps) generally can work as well, but it often requires you to spend more time in the gym and can be harder for some people to recover from. For the purpose of spending LESS time in the gym, it is best to focus on increasing intensity (weight lifted over time) rather than increasing volume (sets and reps).

If you pick a few key compound lifts per workout, and do a few hard sets of each exercise, focusing on adding a rep or more weight each workout, as well as adding in a handful of isolation exercises (like curls, lateral raises, leg extensions, skull crushers, etc), you’re pretty much golden.

To further demonstrate the type of workouts that are conductive to strength and muscle gain — I’ll provide a sample routine at the end of this post. Feel free to try it out 🙂

2) Reasonably Low Body Fat Percentage

In order to really have your muscles “pop,” you need to get to a reasonably low body-fat. 10%-15% body fat is usually low enough to look great in clothes and on the beach. Cut down leaner than 10% and you will look small in clothes, and likely suffer side effects like low libido, lethargy, and poor workout performance.

Contrary to what many people believe, intense cardio isn’t essential if you wish to get lean. Reducing calories and/or portion sizes is really what is required in order to lose body fat. Ensure you get at least 0.7g per lbs of body weight in order to maintain as much muscle mass as possible while cutting.

Workout and Diet Framework For a Sustainable Routine

Once you know that gaining strength and reaching a reasonable body fat percentage are all that is required for a good-looking physique, you can craft your regimen in a way that allows you to, both, get lean and gain strength, while having fitness fall into the background of your life. Once you adapt to the regimen, it almost feels like you’re running on autopilot. Seriously!

In order to gain strength, you can work out 3 times per week. whether you want to do a Push-pull-legs 3 day/week split or an upper-lower 3 day/week split (week 1: upper/lower/upper, week 2: lower/upper/lower, week 3: upper/lower/upper, etc) is ultimately up to you and your preference.

I encourage you to do no more than 5 or 6 exercises total per session and no more than 3 or 4 sets, maximum, per exercise. Ensure that the first exercise or two are compound movements and that the following exercises are isolation exercises. Compound movements like the squat and bench press are going to be responsible for 90% of your muscle and strength gains, so they should take priority. The isolation exercises are like the icing on the cake, whereas the compound exercises are like the cake itself.

Your workouts should take no longer than 30-40 minutes to complete with this style of training…

As far as the diet is concerned, you need to determine what your current physique is like and whether you need to gain weight or lose weight. If cutting fat is the goal, you need to figure out what your maintenance calories are (bodyweight in pounds x 15 usually is a good estimate) and eat 300-500 calories below maintenance every day, aside from a refeed day or two per week where you eat at or slightly above maintenance calories. If gaining muscle the goal, then you need to eat 200-500 calories above maintenance calories daily.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, you should ensure that you get at least 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight daily as well. This is much lower than the 1-1.5 grams per pound of body weight touted by fitness authorities, but it is sufficient for natural trainees. Excessive protein will NOT cause you to gain muscle any faster! The 1-1.5 gram per pound suggestion was mainly a marketing gimmick spewed by the fitness industry to increase the sales of protein powder supplements.

Counting calories may be somewhat tedious, but once you have a general idea of how many calories are in most of the foods you eat, you develop the ability to somewhat accurately, “eyeball” how many calories are in most foods. Additionally, once you get used to counting calories, you’ll find it really doesn’t occupy as much of your mental space over time. It becomes somewhat intuitive.

On the note of counting calories, do not be afraid to fit some “junk food” into your calories like chocolate, ice cream, cinnamon buns, etc. As a matter of fact, I encourage you to do so. Fitting in some of your favorite foods ensures that your diet is sustainable. Just make sure you get an adequate amount of nutritious food in your diet as well. Balance is key here.

Lastly, on the topic of counting calories, I’d like to say that it is ok if you don’t hit your calorie target exactly. The goal is to be in the ballpark of your targeted caloric intake for the day. Don’t stress 🙂

Sample Workout Routine — Try It Out!

This routine may seem minimalistic in nature, but it will yield excellent results over time. It consists of 3 workouts a week, but every workout requires focus and intensity — something that is hard to bring to a 5-6 day routine or 3 day high volume routine, in which the main goal is simply surviving the workouts as opposed to hitting personal records.

This routine requires effort while you’re in the gym, but is short, effective, and makes having fitness fall into the background of your life so much easier.

Workout A: (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps)

• Flat Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
• Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
• Lying Dumbbell Skull-crushers: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Rope Pushdowns: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Lateral raises: 3 sets of 15-20 reps

Workout B: (Back, Biceps, Rear Deltoids)

• Weighted Pull-ups (or lat pulldowns): 3 sets of 5-7 reps (for lat pulldowns, 3 sets of 8-12 reps)
• Bent-Over Barbell Rows: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
• Barbell curls: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
• Incline Dumbbell curls: 2 sets of 8-12 reps
• Rear Delt Flyes: 3 sets of 15-20 reps

Workout C: (Legs)

• Barbell Squat: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
• Romanian Deadlift: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
• Bulgarian Split Squats: 3 sets of 6-10 reps per leg (optional — if you like pain ;))
• leg extensions: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• hamstring curls: 3 sets of 8-12 reps

Note: when you reach near the top of the rep range, say 9 or 10 reps in a rep range of 8-10, add 2.5-5lbs to the barbell or 5lbs to each dumbbell. Otherwise, try and get another rep.

And that’s the routine… Pretty simple and basic — I know.

In reality though, if you’re adding reps or weight, each and every workout, then you will surely be making more progress than you would on a routine with more volume or frequency where there is no real progression model or focus on progress generally…

Of course, there are many different set and rep schemes than just typical straight sets, one of my personal favorites being reverse pyramid training (RPT), but I will cover that in another post. Regardless, straight sets work fairly well and are time-tested.

Conquer Your Fitness Goals but Don’t Let Your Fitness Goals Conquer You…

To wrap this up, I want to say that if you enjoy high volume 5-6 day per week routines, then, by all means, do them (heck, I’ll occasionally do a 5-6 day routine for a month or two sometimes). This post is mainly pointing out that they are NOT essential for you to build a great body and get in great shape.

There are many people whose lives suffer because they feel obligated to be in the gym nearly every day and are under the impression that they can’t even have some birthday cake because it’ll interfere with their diet. Fitness and health should be about balance, not relentless restriction.

Additionally, many people have jobs that are very demanding and can find it nearly impossible to get to the gym every day. In this case, the above sample routine may be a good fit.

Instead of making our lives fit into the gym, we should strive to make the gym fit into our lives by whatever means possible. If you can only get into the gym 1-2 days per week, you can still make gains doing 1-2 full-body workouts.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough and the number one determining factor of whether you will see results is consistency.