Built for Show by Nate Green

Built for Show
by Nate Green

I've never worked with a client who couldn't put on
muscle and take off fat. Every client has emerged from our training
looking and feeling better — dramatically better, in many
cases. But there's never a single pattern. Sometimes people
achieve more than I expected, and I'm happy to take credit.
But sometimes they achieve less, and if I'm willing to take
credit for the overachievers I have to accept blame when a client
falls below our mutual expectations.
What I can predict is that your success will be directly
correlated with the effort you put in. And I'm not just
talking about physical effort. You also have to change your
attitude toward your own body and your preconceived ideas about its
limitations, which is the focus of this excerpt from my new book, Built for Show. The
following is by no means a complete list of attitudes that hold
guys back, but it's a pretty good overview of the ones I see
most often in friends and clients.

Things skinny guys believe that keep them
skinny

"If I eat more calories, I'll lose my
abs."
The skinny guy with well-defined abs often calls himself a
"hardgainer." But this type of lifter often refuses to
try the most logical solution to his problem: eating enough food to
build the muscles he wants.
If you're truly a hardgainer — one of those guys
whose metabolism resembles a hummingbird hooked on trailer-park
meth — you need a dramatic increase in calories. Trust me,
I've been there. As a 145-pound 18-year-old, my fork was my
version of an American Express card: I couldn't leave home
without it.

Greased lightning: a portrait of the author as a 145-pound
18-year-old.
The good news is that the weight you gain will mostly be in the
form of muscle. That's what happens when you have a fast
metabolism. Eating more food will actually make it faster. So the
more food you eat, the less likely you are to accumulate fat,
assuming you're also following a solid and challenging workout
program. A lot of the excess calories will get burned off in this
metabolic frenzy, but enough will get to your muscles to make a
noticeable difference.
Thus, if you have abs before you start an aggressive
muscle-growth program, you'll still have them when you
finish.

"I need to do high reps to get more definition."
This type of talk makes me want to at least partially blame the
triathletes and marathon runners who use strength training as
supplemental exercise, but don't understand the basics of
exercise physiology. Performing hundreds of calf raises and triceps
pushdowns while wearing latex shorts and skin-tight shirts will not
make them or you "more defined." It gives your muscles a
nice pump, but that's all.
What's wrong with that?
The science is pretty clear on this point: A pump doesn't
make your muscles bigger, any more than standing on your head makes
you smarter. It's just a bunch of blood in your muscles
— good for your ego, but meaningless to your long-term
muscular development. It comes, it temporarily stretches your shirt
sleeves, and then it goes.
The science also tells us this about muscle fibers: They can get
bigger, they can get smaller, or they can stay the same size.
There's no mechanism that makes a muscle more
"toned" or "defined."
However, there is a simple two-step plan to make muscles appear more "toned" or "defined":

Step 1: Make the muscles bigger.

Step 2: Burn off the fat covering your muscles, if you have
any.

"I'm trying to build size, not strength."
The human body isn't stupid. If it's going to overcome
a genetic propensity toward low body weight, it needs a better
excuse than "I just want to be bigger." Strength is the
excuse. Give the muscles tasks that push their limits, using heavy
weights and smart program design, and they'll get bigger to
meet the increased need for strength.

Same guy, 45 pounds later.

I realize I'm swimming in dark waters here, given that the
title of my book uses the words "built," "for,"
and "show," in that order. The implication, of course, is
that I'm advocating anything but a
"form-follows-function" approach.
But I see no contradiction in acknowledging that all of us
reading this want good-looking, eye-catching muscle, while telling
you the best way to build it is to forget what your muscles look
like and focus instead on what they can do.

You won't regret getting more "go" in pursuit of
the "show." There's no downside to being as strong
as you look, whether you demonstrate that strength by helping your
friends move their furniture or by lifting an intimate friend onto
a particular piece of furniture.

"I do curls because I want big arms."
All of us fall into the muscle-isolating trap, to some extent.
But if you're a skinny guy, with a body that's reluctant
to put on muscle mass, you may have the most to lose when you waste
energy on isolation exercises.
Isolation exercises don't use a lot of muscle mass —
an obvious point when you consider that the goal of an isolation
exercise is to not use the muscles you aren't trying to
isolate.
But here's a not-so-obvious point: When you do a biceps
curl or triceps extension, you aren't even recruiting the most
important fibers within the muscles you're isolating.
That's because you rarely use a lot of weight when you do
those exercises. Your body's biggest, strongest muscle fibers,
the ones with the most growth potential, simply don't come
into play unless you're using heavy weights in low-repetition
sets.
I can't recall ever seeing anyone do low-rep sets for their
biceps and triceps, for one simple reason: As soon as you start
lifting near-max weights, you can't even pretend to isolate
muscles. You have to "cheat" by using less-strict
movement patterns, which brings bigger muscles into the
exercise.
So why bother trying to isolate? If you lift the heaviest
possible weights during exercises that use the most muscle mass,
you'll employ your body's biggest muscle fibers while
doing the exercises safely and correctly.

Things fat guys believe that keep them fat

"If I eat before and after workouts, my body won't
burn as much fat."
Skipping meals is the best way I know to prevent your
body from using its stored fat for energy. Counterintuitive as it
seems, regular meals, including pre- and post-workout nutrition,
will promote steady fat loss. It works the same way whether
you're lean or lardy. The more often you eat while you're
doing a serious training program, the more fat you lose.
Your body needs fuel, pure and simple. A pre-workout meal of
protein and carbohydrates will actually enhance blood flow and help
deliver nutrients to the muscles when they need it most: when
you're breaking them down by working out. Similarly, a
post-workout meal will help speed muscle growth and help you
recover quicker before your next formal (weight-lifting) or
informal (girl-lifting) training session.
That said, I'm not particularly militant about pre-workout
meals. I don't think it's a good idea to work out on an
empty stomach, so I tell my clients who like to work out in the
morning that they should eat something first. What they eat, and
how much they eat, is more of a personal thing.
Later in the day, do what works best for you. If you can't
train hard without eating something right before your workout, make
sure you have something ready to eat. If you can get in a good
workout two or three hours after your most recent meal, that's
cool. I'm not going to tell you to ignore your body and follow
some arbitrary guideline.

"I need these carbs for energy so I can have good
workouts."
Here's the flip side of the first belief: Some XXL lifters
think they have to eat like skinny runners in order to get through
their workouts. This means an abundance of carbohydrates in the
form of food (bananas, bagels), drinks (Gatorade, Red Bull), and
gels.
My advice: A guy with excess flesh should never ever eat
or drink carbohydrates unless they're accompanied by protein.
The combination of carbs and protein gives your muscles what they
need to work and grow. Carbs by themselves provide energy that, in
the absence of protein, can get stored as fat if it isn't
needed for your workout.
You could say this is a contradiction of the point I made
earlier about calories speeding up your metabolism. It's
really not. Some types of calories speed up your metabolism more
than others. Protein calories speed it up a lot; calories from
carbs speed it up only a little.
I'm not a fan of working out on an empty stomach, as I
said. So if you work out first thing in the morning, I think you
really should eat something first, even if you aren't
particularly hungry.
But at other times of day, use hunger and personal comfort as a
guideline. I don't see the point in pumping excess pre-workout
calories into your body if you aren't hungry and are only
doing it because you think you need the energy. As long as
you've eaten something in the past couple of hours, and
don't feel especially hungry, you have enough energy to work
out.
Just make sure that whatever you eat has a mix of protein and
carbs, and that you aren't adding more calories than you could
hope to burn off in your workout.

"I don't need to do squats. I'm already
big."
Right. And porn stars don't need to perform Kegel
exercises, either.
A lot of guys are naturally big, and some of them put on muscle
easily. I'm not one, and you probably aren't either, but
we both know they're out there. Despite that fundamental
difference, though, they still need to focus on the moneymaker
movements to get the results they want.
I've lost count of the number of wide-bodied guys I've
come across who skip the big-muscle exercises and instead spend
their time in the gym working their biceps, triceps, and deltoids.
I understand the temptation; if you build muscle easily, you build
it easily everywhere, including your arms and shoulders.
They forget women will notice a big gut sooner than big guns. If
you don't believe me, ask any woman you know if she's
more turned on by 19-inch arms than she's turned off by a 40-inch waist.

The beauty of the moneymaker exercises — squats,
deadlifts, chin-ups, rows, presses, cleans — is that they help
anyone, no matter how thick or thin, develop a more
athletic-looking physique. The process of building muscle speeds up
your metabolism, and in the quest to whittle down your waistline, a
faster metabolism is the best friend you can possibly have. Your
shoulders get wider while your waist slims down, and you burn off
some of the fat covering the muscles you want to show off.

Little-known fact: Your squat increases 15 percent when you wear
a Testosterone Muscle T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. (Well, it
works for Nate, at least.)

How skinny-fat guys end up with the worst of both
worlds

Some guys can have narrow shoulders, a sunken chest, and
pipe-cleaner arms ... and still carry excess flab around the
middle. I wouldn't wish "skinny-fat" on my worst
enemies.
In my experience, a typical skinny-fat guy doesn't eat a
lot of food. But what he does eat is suboptimal —
"crap," in other words — and the way he eats it is
even worse. He skips breakfast, then has fast food or Top Ramen for
lunch and dinner.
If you ask him how he spends his evenings, you'll get one
of two answers: drinking beer with his friends until the
single-digit hours, or posting on his blog until well past
midnight.
Or he might go drinking, come home, and spend the next hour or
two posting his drunken thoughts. In any case, it's bad for
his physique, bad for his health, and bad for online discourse.
There is some good news, however.
The skinny-fat guy can often make rapid progress when he commits
himself to a good program, since his body will respond to just
about any change in routine. Unlike the merely skinny guy, who
might actually be in pretty good shape, or the big-bodied guy, who
might be strong and have a lot of muscle beneath his fat, the
skinny-fat guy is almost always severely undertrained.
But let's not kid ourselves: If you're skinny-fat, you
need more than a good workout plan. Your diet probably sucks, too,
and that's a direct consequence of your biggest problem: your
lifestyle.
As Dan John says, your habits must match your goals. And if
you're reading this, changing your body is one of those goals.
So let's look at how you might adjust your daily routine to
meet it.
Your old habit: getting four to six hours of sleep per night,
leaving you looking and performing like a cross between Ozzy
Osbourne and Nick Nolte.
Despite what most of us think, the workouts you do in the gym
don't build muscle. They destroy it. The point of a
workout is to break down muscle tissue, which is subsequently
rebuilt after you finish lifting. The better you manage that
post-workout recovery, the better chance you have of emerging from
your muscle-destroying experience with a stronger, leaner, and more
muscular physique.
Just about everything you do in the hours and days following a
muscle-damaging workout will affect your recovery, including sleep.
A good night's sleep not only allows your body to continue the
repair-and-rebuild process, it gives your brain a chance to release
hormones vital to that effort.
Your new habit: a sleep schedule that allows for at least
eight hours of sleep per night.
Count backwards from whenever you have to get up in the morning
(or the following afternoon, if you're a college student). If
you have to get up at 7 a.m., that means you have to be asleep by
11 p.m. the previous night. Note my choice of words: You're
not just in bed by 11; you're in bed and asleep. Or, to
get back to a reality-based prescription, you're in bed with
your eyes closed, prepared to fall asleep.
That means that whatever reading or web-surfing or TV-watching
you feel compelled to do must be completed before 11. Every single
electronic device in your room must be switched off before 11, even
if it's just one minute before. Every light must be off. If
the power strips on your TV or computer cast a glow, you might want
to switch them off, too.
Your old habit: eating just twice per day, and being asked if
"you want fries with that?" at least four times per
week.
Two things I know for dead certain about guys: We hate being
nagged, and we especially hate being nagged about food. If
you're in college, or living the bachelor life, food seems a
lot less important to you than it does to the naggers in your life.
Your idea of a gourmet meal might be putting your microwave burrito
on a plate instead of eating it right out of the plastic. As a guy
who still heads over to Mom's house on weekends, I
understand.
Still, with a little practice, it's easy to keep a supply
of healthy and tasty food on hand, and it's easy to learn to
use that food in some quick and reliable meals. You don't have
to channel your inner Emeril; you just have to follow some basic
rules.
Your new habit: eating at least three meals per day,
preferably four to six meals and snacks.
The three-meal minimum starts with a solid breakfast no more
than an hour after you wake up. Lunch and dinner will follow at
sensible intervals. That is, if you eat breakfast at 8 a.m.,
you'll have lunch at 1 or 2 p.m., and dinner at 6 or 7.
It's also time to wean yourself off fast food. If
you're eating out at fast-food joints three or more times per
week, I want you to scale it down to one.
When you do hit the drive-through — and, let's face
it, all of us get into tight situations where there's no other
alternative — skip the fries and order another burger
instead. (That's a plain burger—meat and a bun. Leave
the bacon, mayonnaise, and secret sauce for the tourists.)
Quench your thirst with diet soda or water. These two changes
alone could take an inch or more off your waist in less than a
month.

Your old habit: chronic time-wasting activities that sap your
time and energy, and don't contribute to your health, wealth,
or sex appeal.
I'm all for doing mindless things like watching a movie for
the ninth time, surfing the 'net for pictures of Jessica Biel,
and posting my most superficial thoughts in online forums. I also
love microbrews, and chances are good that you'll find me
throwing a couple back with my friends on any given weekend.
But here's what differentiates my time-wasting habits from
those of lots of other guys my age: I know when I'm screwing
off — I recognize it for what it is — and I draw a firm
line between what I allow myself to do in my leisure time and what
I need to do the rest of my waking hours. In other words, I
don't let the fun parts of my life prevent me from getting
what I want in the serious parts.
I'm entirely in favor of occasional debauchery —
what's the point of being Built for Show if you don't
take the new wheels out for a test drive every now and then?
— and I cherish the mindless activities I allow myself to do.
If every minute of every day is devoted to reaching your goals, my
guess is that you won't know what to do with yourself once you
reach them.

The key is to identify and define your biggest TWAs, and decide
which of them are worth what you invest in them.
Your new habit: create a budget for your time-wasting or
physique-impairing activities.
First you need a list of TWAs, and how much time and money (if
any) you currently spend on each. Give each one a "relative
satisfaction" score — an activity you absolutely enjoy the
shit out of gets a 10, while something you could do without
(harassing spammers, for example) gets a 1. Finally, take a guess
at how much you could cut back on the activity before you started
missing it.

Time-Wasting Activities

Time-wasting activity	Hours wasted (per week)	Cost ($ per week)	Relative satisfaction (scale of 1-10)	How much you could cut back before you started missing it (0-100%)

Here's how a typical unmarried male might fill it out.
Let's call him "Tate," since he's a completely
fictional character and bears no resemblance to anybody I know:

Time-Wasting Activities

Time-wasting activity	Hours wasted (per week)	Cost ($ per week)	Relative satisfaction (scale of 1-10)	How much you could cut back before you started missing it (0-100%)
Beers with friends	6	$25	10	0%
Watching X-Men: The Last Stand (or any other movie on DVD or cable) for the 10^th time	2	$5	5	50%
Updating my blog	10	n/a	6	25%
Internet porn	7	n/a	Varies (depends on quality of porn)	-5%*
Chatting on the phone with people who dialed the wrong number	0.5	n/a	0	100%

* Negative value indicates "Tate" wouldn't mind
increasing this particular TWA.
From this chart, it appears "Tate" could automatically
gain four hours just by cutting back on his least satisfying TWAs.
That, conveniently enough, gives him all the time he needs for his
workouts.
You'll notice that a lot of potential TWAs are missing from
the list, including universal time-wasters like channel-surfing. I
assume everyone reading this (not to mention the person writing it)
wastes at least a little time each week flipping from channel to
channel with no particular intent to watch any particular show.
Here's my rule: You're allowed no more than five hours
a week of unfocused TV watching. And if it's a workout day,
you are absolutely forbidden to channel-surf until after
you've lifted.
My point here, just to be 100 percent clear, is not that you
need to turn into some kind of success-droid, spending every waking
hour focused on your job or your bod. I just want you to be aware
of how many things you waste time on that you don't enjoy all
that much and wouldn't miss. Once you cut back on the least
satisfying TWAs, you'll find you have a lot more time and
energy for your workouts.

The Built for Show Training System
And what workouts will you do with this extra time? I highly
recommend those in Built for Show. I've designed four
12-week programs, each with a seasonal theme.
The Fall program is a basic hypertrophy system, using an
upper-body/lower-body split.
The Winter program focuses on size and strength, the goal being
to fill out those sweaters so you look like a lifter even if
it's too cold to pull off your shirt and remove all doubt.
The Spring program shifts to total-body training, with the goal
of introducing a metabolic stimulus to workouts focused on strength
and power. You'll continue to add some size while also
whittling down any body fat you've accumulated over the
winter.
Finally, the Summer program completes the year-long training
system: You'll work harder and faster in your total-body
workouts, using power exercises like cleans and jump squats to
preserve your muscle while attacking whatever fat you have left.
You'll also get some isolated work for your beach muscles
— biceps, triceps, delts, abs — to put the finishing
touches on your physique.
You can do the programs in any order you want, of course; the
Fall program is the most beginner-friendly, while the Winter,
Spring, and Summer programs require increasing experience in the
weight room.
All of them lead you toward one goal: a body that looks strong,
fit, and athletic from any angle. When you're Built for Show,
you look just as good walking out of the room as you did walking
into it.

» Mythbusters Vol 2 by Nate Green
» Mythbusters Vol 3 by Nate Green
» Green Tea, Fish Oil :An Interview with Dr. Christopher Mohr
» Stupid Things Young Guys Do in the Kitchen by Nate Green
» Lean, Mean and Green

Built for Show by Nate Green

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