Your Strength Training Routine and Proportionality,
What You Need To Know
By Steven Gwillim, the founder of "R.I.P.P.E.D Weight Training™", the ultimate muscle building program.
One of the main things you need to strive for when you are at the gym is proportionality. Many times I will see guys walking around with a chest and arms that are huge, but they wear sweat pants because they don’t want you to see how they ignore their leg workouts. Give me a break with that stuff; you need to work out so your body is a matching set.
There are questions about the best way to accomplish this goal. Nearly everyone you see has some part that is out of proportion. Even some of the top dogs in the business have aspects that are slightly out of proportion. The trick to getting your body into top shape is staying with a strategic steady schedule. It’s not really a trick, but more like common sense, but you wouldn’t think so if you look around the gym.
There are a few different ways to accomplish this goal, but I think that I have found the best way. Dividing your time between your different parts is a must. When I am talking about ‘different parts’ I am meaning one day you concentrate on chest, one day legs, etc. Rotation of exercise is also key factor to keeping your body guessing at what is coming up next. For example, if you are doing bicep exercises you don’t want to do hammer curls day after day and think that your biceps are going to have the best shape ever!
You have to mix it up in various fashions. To start with, staying with the same example, hammer curls are a compound exercise, involving many more muscles than just the bicep. So, you want to do some isolation exercises to shock the muscle; jump on the preacher curls, or crank up the weight or turn your sets upside down. There are lots of ways to get that shock to your system that is going to promote maximum growth and sculpt the muscle the way you want it to be. Of course, I go into this in much more detail in my RIPPED Weight Training book.
That sort of shock to your muscles promotes better development of the muscles, but an even bigger part of the proportionality is making sure your body parts match. Do you have one bicep bigger than the other? Do you have the toothpick legs? Be honest with yourself. If you think other people are so struck with your arms that they don’t notice your legs (or your long sweat pants in the middle of summer) you are wrong. The greatest structures on earth have the best foundations. Your legs are your foundation; you need to make them strong and solid, like the base of a pyramid.
Give yourself an honest assessment and have a friend critique you. Tell them to be brutally honest and then don’t get all defensive. At least don’t let them know you are unhappy about what they say. They are doing you a favor, so be a man about it and thank them.
The thing I am really trying to emphasize here is that you are making the best you; if you are doing the right things at the gym. If you are not doing the right things, hey, if you are satisfied with looking out of balance, maybe you should find another discipline than bodybuilding. This sport is about building the perfect body. Don’t get me wrong, all bodies aren’t going to look the same. Your perfect body won’t look exactly like anyone else’s, but it will be the right one for you, if you pay attention to your proportions and make them right.
Proportionality is one of the pillars of the RIPPED system, because I think it is a foundation of bodybuilding. Next time you are in the gym take a look around and I am sure you will agree; the best physiques are proportional.
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