The BS Behind Sculpted Muscles

Can you imagine picking up the latest issue of Fortune magazine and seeing the world's richest person holding a jar of pennies?

The message would be absurd: If you want to get rich, start collecting every penny you can get your hands on. 

Um, that might work in hundreds of years, but it's arguably the most ridiculous way you could go about the process and it's definitely not how the person holding the cover spot of that maggot there.​

This is how I feel every time I see a fitness model with lean sculpted muscles holding a little 2-pound dumbbell on the cover of a health magazine.

The chances of that model building that muscles with those little 2 pound dumbbells are about on par with that of the Fortune magazine mogul. 

Here's what we have to understand:​

When we push our muscles to do what they can not yet do, we create tiny little tears in our muscle fibers. (It's way less painful than it sounds.) When you rest and recover, these tiny tears heal and result in hypertrophy or muscle growth. Blam! New muscle. In order to show off this new muscle, we get our nutrition in check and lose whatever fat is covering it. 

This is how lean, sculpted muscles are born.

The key to that process is in the first part: "We push our muscles to do what they can not yet do." 

If you're capable of lifting 10-pound weights but you're insistent on only using those 2-pound dumbbells, well, buckle in. It's gonna take hundreds of reps before you feel any kind of burn. It's the equivalent of picking up pennies to get rich.

If we want to save time and maximize our efforts, we pick up the hundred dollar bills and invest them. Or, in this case, we push ourselves to lift heavier. ​

You may start with 5 pounds, but once you see you can do it, you move up to 7.5 pounds, then 10 pounds, and so on. ​

And the only difference between the models you see with super lean muscles and those with big, bulging muscles that might scare some women into a fear of "getting bulky?"​

That part is 100% diet.

I'm gonna say that again for the people in the back:

The only thing that determines if you get lean or "bulky" is your diet.

Pushing your muscles to do what they currently can't do is the only way to build muscle, no matter the look you're going for. Diet determines the rest.

Stop wasting your precious time picking up pennies. You deserve the hundred dollar bills.