Defining Your Ideal🏆

Excerpt from "The 4-Hour Fizeek"

Fitness stories are like elbows. Everyone has one (some have two). I will spare you some long winded, overly dramatic “I was fat and unhappy, UNTIL I found this one fitness SECRET! BUY MY PROGRAM. CONSUME MY PRODUCKT.”

I will do you the courtesy of being mercifully brief.

For me, learning to build my body was a part of becoming a man. That journey is not unique to teen developmental years, but can be embarked upon at any point in a man’s life. Physical manhood is the stage at which you begin to encounter and cultivate your power, your vitality. I have no taste for the “what is a man/masculinity” debate. I’m happy to let other parts of the internet fight that one out. If you don’t have some grasp of it intuitively, I’m sorry, you’re probably not going to make it.

As Marcus Aurelius wrote,

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

We are so back

My Story In Two Paragraphs

Between the ages of 14 and 16, I went from a chubby undisciplined stoner to a wrestler and lifter obsessed pushing and mastering myself. At age 15, I was 190lbs. At age 16 wrestled at 148lbs (-42lbs in one year). Was that healthy? Probably not, but moderation is for pussies. By my senior year of high school, I was the captain of the wrestling team wrestling at 172lbs at a height of just over 6ft. At age 21, I won my first MMA fight at 178lbs and got my Brazilian jiu jitsu blue belt at 185lbs. At age 27, I got my BJJ purple belt at 195lbs (I once bloat bulked up to 207lbs, my heaviest weight).

Today, I hover in the low 180s with six visible abs, good vascularity, and very respectable gym strength. I am a purple belt in jiu jitsu, I teach country swing dancing two nights per week (a physical mastery pursuit outside the gym), I climb mountains in my free time, hunt, fish, and can pick up most casual sports with proficiency (golf, tennis, soccer/football/basketball, dancing). Here is what I look like today in the latter years of my 20s:

The specifics of my story may not be particularly relevant to you, what is relevant is the process. First, I got my first sense of physique and aesthetics. 

When I started out, thinking about and looking at physiques made me uncomfortable. This is natural. My first exposure was a big brother figure gifting me Arnold’s Encyclopedia Of Modern Bodybuilding when I was 15. The book is a great primer and intro to all things bodybuilding, (though I wouldn’t advise using it as a training bible). The book, written by Arnold in his prime, contains a history of bodybuilding, exercises, and physiques, lots of them, of enormous steroided bodybuilders.

Beyond the pages of modern bodybuilding, my aesthetic tastes were also strongly influenced by my passion for classical art and the sport of MMA. I decided early on that whatever I was trying to become, not just physically, but as a man, was not a 280lb bodybuilder. I defined my aesthetic ideal differently from mainstream fitness, unconsciously at first. I wanted to look like a classical statue AND perform at a high level in my sport (wrestling, later BJJ and MMA). I wanted to look like Doryphoros (image 1) and compete like GSP (image 2).

My Early Ideals

I was in high school in 2013 when Georges St. Pierre was the best fighter in the world. He was jacked and aesthetic, rumored to walk around lean in the low 190s. He was fast, strong, and athletically capable (one does not become UFC champion through strength alone). He looked like he was carved out of marble. Well proportioned, with a high strength to weight ratio gained from hard work in a sport that required him to limit his size to compete in a weight class. Through study and practice I’ve learned that principle, maximizing strength and performance for your given size is the KEY pillar for performance and aesthetics. It is the weight class.

Any sport with a weight class (Wrestling, BJJ, MMA, Boxing, some powerlifting) requires you pack maximum physical potential into a certain size/weight. 

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In A Nutshell, the stronger you are for a given weight the better you will look aesthetically. This is called “Relative” or “Proportional” strength and it is a key lens through which to view aesthetic development. The higher your Proportional Strength (strength in Proportion to your weight), the better your aesthetics. Looking good, being strong, and being functional are not separate, they are all the same thing.

See my guide Chin Up Nationalism, a guide to achieving +90lb weighted chin ups, for more on this.

The basic male physique goal you often hear, “I want to get shredded, but not like, not too huge” reflects this inborn aesthetic taste. To appear vital and physical, but not excessive in size or mass.

So, you need to define your goal. I cannot help you with this. 

The first thing you’re going to need to do is take stock of your mediocre genetics. 

Ask yourself, What is a reasonable goal for your physique? Most guys cannot and will not ever look like Solbrah, no matter how much they try. I’ve hung out with Sol a few times. He’s a 6’4 naturally lean tall guy, it’s a certain look he cultivates and power to him, he does it well. A 5’8 Italian manlet trying to look like Solbrah will end up as frustrated and dissatisfied as a big boned corn fed German milk maid phenotype lass from the Midwest in her high waisted yoga pants who would sell a kidney for an Emily Ratajkowski thigh gap.

I'm an Anglo with a thick torso. I have trouble getting my abs to show. That said, my back is enormous, my arms develop well, and I can be proud of my shoulders. Look at yourself honestly and define an aspirational aesthetic based on your strengths and weaknesses. Your mindset and vision will play a nontrivial role in how your body develops.

Me, in a pudgier phase, next to Solbrah and Logfitz, 2021.

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So, here are three exercises to get a “bad first try” at targeting parameters for your Ideal.