Built for Show: Four Body-Changing Workouts for Building Muscle, Losing Fat, andLooking Good Eno ugh to Hook Up

CHAPTER ONE

What a Guy Really Wants, and Why

I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to give it to me straight.I’ve heard all sorts of answers from all sorts of guys, so my B.S. detectoris finely tuned and has had quite a bit of practice. So I need you to levelwith me when you answer this question:

Why do you want to work out?

Why does any guy want to work out? Why train with weights at all?If you said “to lower my cholesterol levels,” “to touch the rim,” or “to preventosteoporosis later in life,” I’m not buying it. There’s nothing wrong with thosebenefits, and I’m sure you’ll achieve them from the workouts I’ve designed. Butcome on. You don’t lift because you’re worried about your health or your performancein pickup basketball games.

You work out so you can increase your chances of hooking up. That meanshaving the kind of physique that looks good in clothes and looks even betternaked.

I’ll accept variations on that answer. Like, “I go to the gym because my wifetells me to.” Or, “If I don’t stay in shape, my girlfriend will find someone whodoes.” I know a few guys who won’t even go to the grocery store if they don’tlook their best.

I get it. Some guys are born motivated, some achieve motivation, and somehave motivation thrust upon them. But at the root of our motivation is an understandingthat, when all else is equal, the guy with the better physique gets the girl.The combination of well-developed muscle mass and minimal body fat (whatanthropologists mean when they report that the indigenous males of a particularregion are “jacked”) is a sign of reproductive fitness. It shows that you have moretestosterone than the next guy, even if you don’t. The more primed women arefor sex, the more they notice. (True fact: Published scientific research shows thatwomen are more attracted to the manliest men when they are ovulating thanthey are at other times in their menstrual cycle.) If you’re Tarzan, she’s game.

So let’s start this relationship with some mutual candor. I wrote this bookbecause nobody else did. There was a time, not long ago, when I wanted toknow more about building my body in hopes of accumulating more frequent fornicationpoints. I wanted exactly what you want: muscles that women notice.I couldn’t find that book, because it wasn’t yet written. Instead, I learned how toachieve the goal, and in the process became a very busy personal trainer. Then Iset out to write the book I always wanted to read.

That’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you.

Whether you’re thick or thin, you want the wide shoulders and chiseledtorso that women don’t just notice, they occasionally grab. You don’t wish bodilyharm on anybody, but you’d be flattered to know that the woman who justpassed you on the freeway risked soft-tissue damage when her head whippedaround to get a better look.

At a bare minimum, you want the most attractive women in your apartmentcomplex to see you as the go-to guy the next time they need some furnituremoved.

Now that we’ve cleared the air about why you want the body you want, let’stalk about something a bit more complex: Why don’t you have that kind of body already? I’m going to assume you’re familiar with the concept of working out. IfI were a betting man, I’d wager that most of you reading this work out regularly.But if you’re like most of the guys I see in gyms these days, you’re doing workoutsthat can’t possibly help you reach your goals.

Worse, I see some of the finest young men of my generation exercising in away that will take them further away from their goals. Some of the more sharp-tonguedmembers of my profession refer to commercial gyms as “fatness centers.”Health clubs encourage you to come in and mope your way throughuseless circuits on machines that only exist as marketing tools to make strengthtraining look “easy” to the newbies. They discourage you from working hard bymaking it relatively inconvenient to do the exercises that build the most musclemass. One gym chain on the East Coast even has a rule against grunting. I’m asopposed to gratuitous noise as anybody, but how do you push yourself to getstronger if you have to worry about getting kicked out of the damned gym justbecause an exertion-related sound involuntarily escaped from your throat?

There are lots of ways to work out that don’t involve the risk of breathinghard. That’s why the health-club chains want you to do high-repetition, low weightcircuits on their shiny exercise machines. You won’t build the body youwant with those workouts, but the owners of the health clubs don’t care. They’rehappy to see you waste your time, as long as your account is paid in full.Frankly, though, I couldn’t care less about people who want results withouthard work. I’m more concerned with the guys who work hard but don’t ever getthe results they’ve earned. I see a lot of these lifters falling into three distinctcategories:

BODY BY FLEX

These are the guys who “blast their biceps” with thirty-two different exercises,following the workouts of the pro bodybuilders they read about in themagazines. They never ask if their biceps need to be blasted at all, much less withthirty-two exercises. Result? Their muscles get more blood-engorged than a tick with a rather serious glandular problem, but once the blood drains back out oftheir biceps the result is . . . deflating.

GHOST OF WORKOUTS PAST

Remember the workout program you did in high school, back when you puton twenty pounds of solid muscle your senior year, when you made third-teamall-conference? Your muscles sure as hell remember. That’s why you haven’t gottenany stronger since high school. It was probably a great workout (althoughI’ve seen some pretty crappy programs designed by high school coaches). Still,no matter how well designed the program was, a body will make only so manyadaptations to any one system of training. Without variety, there’s no challenge.Without challenge, there’s no progress.

IF IT’S NEW, IT MUST BE BETTER

It’s great to be open-minded about new ideas in training. But it can go toofar. The smartest, most successful trainers I know make endless fun of the peoplebalancing on Bosu balls while attempting to lift weights that are too light to putmuscle on the glandular tick I mentioned a moment ago. (A Bosu ball is half ofa rubber ball on top of a plastic platform. Consider yourself lucky if you’ve neverencountered one.) Unless you’re training to be an acrobat, it’s far better to workout with one or both feet on the floor, since that’s the way you use your musclesin real life.

Most guys I see end up doing workouts that are hybrid versions of all thepitfalls I just described. It’s not that they don’t have enough information. Betweenbooks, magazines, and the Internet, there’s more information than ever.And if it was as good as it claims to be, we’d all be ripped to shreds and warmingup on the bench press with five hundred pounds.

The information itself is often the problem, especially when it comes fromthe wrong sources: muscle magazines, misinformed personal trainers, Hollywood“trainers to the stars” . . . sometimes the stars themselves pretend to be fitnessexperts. The truth is that most “fitness experts” have no idea how to getactual results for actual humans.

That’s why a typical guy’s workout looks something like this:

STEP ONE: Walk into gym.

STEP TWO: Bench-press, incline bench-press, dumbbell bench-press,dumbbell incline bench-press, hop on a treadmill.

STEP THREE: Try to impress the girl on the machine next to you byflexing your pecs while you run.

STEP FOUR: Go home alone and cry.

STEP FIVE: Return to the gym the next day, only instead of twenty-foursets of chest exercises, you do twenty each for your biceps andtriceps. And instead of flexing your pecs while you run on thetreadmill, you flex your arms, making you look like you’reauditioning for a remake of Robocop.

That’s why I wrote Built for Show. If you have the motivation and desire, youdeserve a program that shows you how to reach your goals, step-by-step. You deservea system that makes efficient use of your time and energy.

I hope you get a little more knowledgeable about training when you readBuilt for Show. (I know I got a lot smarter writing it. You never know what youdon’t know until you try to verify the things you think you know.) And I’m sureyou’ll get a lot of benefits that don’t matter much to you now. You’ll build strongerbones, lowering your risk of osteoporosis. You’ll ramp up your metabolism,making it easier to keep body fat from returning, or from accumulating in thefirst place. If you have some nagging little injuries, you’ll probably find they becomea lot less bothersome.

All of those are perfectly nice side effects, like going on The Price Is Right and winning a coffeemaker as a consolation prize when you were hoping for theconvertible Mustang. My guess is that you wouldn’t be very consoled. But if youwon the grand prize, you wouldn’t complain about finding the coffeemaker inthe backseat.

Are you ready to go after that grand prize?

ABOUT THE PROGRAMS

I’ll get into this in much greater detail in Chapter 7, but right now you’reprobably curious about what you’ll be doing to get built for show. My yearlongworkout system is divided into four seasonal programs:

Fall: I hope most readers will start here, especially those who haven’t yet spenta lot of time in the weight room. These workouts introduce you to the most importantexercises, like squats and deadlifts, and focus on building a base ofstrength and muscle mass while providing enough of a training stimulus to workoff a little fat in the process.

Winter: Here you’ll focus on building pure strength, which also packs muscleon the places where women will notice it.

Spring: The goal here is to continue building your strength and muscle sizewhile also making your workouts more challenging. So you’ll improve youroverall conditioning and athleticism while burning off some fat and getting yourbody ready for display.

Summer: Now you’ll seriously attack whatever remaining fat you have withmore technically complex exercises and tougher workouts. You’ll also get to dosome curls and extensions to put the finishing touches on your physique.The system is modular, so you can start with any program that suits yourneeds and is compatible with your current abilities. I encourage most of you tostart at the beginning and continue for a year. It doesn’t matter if you end upwith your “summer” body in October or April; once you’re built for show you’llreap the benefits any day of the year.

Every guy is looking for an edge, some way to get single women his age to notice him more than they do now.

Unfortunately, most guys have absolutely no idea what kind of body automatically flips a girl's attraction switch. Nate Green does.

Built for Show is the first fitness book to address young men on the prowl. It’s not just written for them; it’s written by one of them. Green, who’s just twenty- three years old, is already a veteran fitness professional who’s been quoted in Men’s Health and Maximum Fitness magazines. Green offers four twelve- week workout programs, each with a seasonal theme. The fall and winter workouts add muscle size and strength that’ll show even under layers of clothing. The spring and summer workouts burn fat and chisel the showpiece muscles—creating a lean, cut, beach-ready physique.

But Built for Show is more than just a workout book. It also provides:

· Realistic nutrition advice to feed the muscles and starve the fat without breaking the bank or spending hours in the kitchen
· Tips on dressing right, looking the part, improving your social status, and settling into your new lifestyle
· Quick ways to assess posture, with useful exercises to fix flaws and improve self- presentation, no matter the situation.

The detailed programs include over fifty exercises, illustrated with over one hundred original photos.

Neither a weight-loss guide nor a body- building manual, Built for Show instead reveals to guys exactly what they need to build the body they – and women – want.

Read Nate Green's posts on the Penguin Blog.