DaddyT
Iron
- Joined
- May 10, 2020
- Posts
- 5
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Visit any body building forum, r/bodybuilding or the misc and the standard, canned advice du-jour for newbies is “do the big three”. Bench, squats and deadlifts. These lifts are also the basis for programs like 5x5 stronglifts. You're a gymcel, you know all this already. What you might not know is that these programs originally existed just to get new lifters into the gym and into the routine of lifting heavy shit. They should be abandoned as soon as possible if you want to grow, but somehow they've developed into a quasi-religion.
Bench is okay (there are better, safer alternatives), but JFL if you've been lifting for more than a few months and you're still doing squats and deadlifts in 5 sets of 5 reps.
Stronglifts is a powerlifting routine. Do you want an aesthetic body or do you want to brag about your 1 rep max deadlift to your bros while looking like fried twinkie filling? Because if you keep drinking gallons of milk every day and doing heavy glute work, you will end up looking like shit and wasting your time.
Squats and deadlifts will make your glutes and your lower back thick as fuck. Do you know who likes seeing tight glutes and a strong back on dudes? Other dudes.... while they're plowing them from behind.
Also, the thicker your back and bigger your ass becomes, the more muscle you have to build on your shoulders and arms to counter-balance it. Bodybuilding is all about proportions. If you have wide shoulders and a think waist, you will look jacked regardless of your actual measurements. You ever see a dude on Insta that looks aesthetic as fuck only to find out he's a turbo manlet with a 26" waist? Yeah, you got frauded by his proportions and so did all the girls that swiped him on Tinder.
You want a skinny waist and wide as fuck shoulders. Logically there are only two ways to get there:
1. Lose fat on your waist.
2. Gain size on your shoulders.
If you're thickening your back up with endless deadlifts and squats, you have to do so much more work than the paltry 5 sets of 5 on the bench twice a week to outpace those gains.
Gymcels are slowly beginning to realize this and are dropping the ego lifts. You can see this in the rise of calisthenics which focus almost exclusively on upper body and upper core exercises. You know, the kind of training that develops wide shoulders, a thin waist, and abs. The things that 10/10 qt JBs love to crush on.
So, how do you get there?
Drop the squats and deadlifts (and the ego) and replace them with the new King of Lifts: the chin up and the pull up.
To get an aesthetic, natural v-taper, you want to be building up your lats (underarms muscles), delts (shoulders), pecs (duh) and triceps (easier to grow than biceps). Slow, controlled sets of 20 chin ups and pull ups with a slow descent/negative will give you a ton of time under tension of all of these muscle groups in the same set. If you've never done hard sets up chin/pull ups before you can expect your back to blow up like a fucking cobra in no time.
But what about leg day? I surely can't be telling me you skip leg day? Leg days is a fucking meme mostly perpetuated by skinny cunts on bb and Reddit who's grip strength can't even crack open a bottle of Soylent. Those 10/10 qt JBs don't give a flying fuck about aesthetic legs. You've been lied to. Leg day is a fucking scam.
Lift for aesthetics and save your time and energy for moneymaxing and dermarolling your NW3.
Bench is okay (there are better, safer alternatives), but JFL if you've been lifting for more than a few months and you're still doing squats and deadlifts in 5 sets of 5 reps.
Stronglifts is a powerlifting routine. Do you want an aesthetic body or do you want to brag about your 1 rep max deadlift to your bros while looking like fried twinkie filling? Because if you keep drinking gallons of milk every day and doing heavy glute work, you will end up looking like shit and wasting your time.
Squats and deadlifts will make your glutes and your lower back thick as fuck. Do you know who likes seeing tight glutes and a strong back on dudes? Other dudes.... while they're plowing them from behind.
Also, the thicker your back and bigger your ass becomes, the more muscle you have to build on your shoulders and arms to counter-balance it. Bodybuilding is all about proportions. If you have wide shoulders and a think waist, you will look jacked regardless of your actual measurements. You ever see a dude on Insta that looks aesthetic as fuck only to find out he's a turbo manlet with a 26" waist? Yeah, you got frauded by his proportions and so did all the girls that swiped him on Tinder.
You want a skinny waist and wide as fuck shoulders. Logically there are only two ways to get there:
1. Lose fat on your waist.
2. Gain size on your shoulders.
If you're thickening your back up with endless deadlifts and squats, you have to do so much more work than the paltry 5 sets of 5 on the bench twice a week to outpace those gains.
Gymcels are slowly beginning to realize this and are dropping the ego lifts. You can see this in the rise of calisthenics which focus almost exclusively on upper body and upper core exercises. You know, the kind of training that develops wide shoulders, a thin waist, and abs. The things that 10/10 qt JBs love to crush on.
So, how do you get there?
Drop the squats and deadlifts (and the ego) and replace them with the new King of Lifts: the chin up and the pull up.
To get an aesthetic, natural v-taper, you want to be building up your lats (underarms muscles), delts (shoulders), pecs (duh) and triceps (easier to grow than biceps). Slow, controlled sets of 20 chin ups and pull ups with a slow descent/negative will give you a ton of time under tension of all of these muscle groups in the same set. If you've never done hard sets up chin/pull ups before you can expect your back to blow up like a fucking cobra in no time.
But what about leg day? I surely can't be telling me you skip leg day? Leg days is a fucking meme mostly perpetuated by skinny cunts on bb and Reddit who's grip strength can't even crack open a bottle of Soylent. Those 10/10 qt JBs don't give a flying fuck about aesthetic legs. You've been lied to. Leg day is a fucking scam.
Lift for aesthetics and save your time and energy for moneymaxing and dermarolling your NW3.
