Here’s the program I used to bully my body into building an x-physique, even though my skinny-fat skeletal structure is wispier than dental floss.

My legs were muscular and strong, but they were attached to a puny upper-body. Not good. It was opposite of what I wanted my whole life.

I was a skinny-fat kid. I had narrow shoulders and a wide chubby waist. An airplane pillow of fat was caked to my midsection. I wanted to be ripped and muscular… but I didn’t want to be a huge clunky bodybuilder.

Given the choice, I’d much rather look like the Doryphoros, as opposed to Ronnie Coleman. I wanted broad shoulders that funneled into a narrow waist. I wanted an x-physique.

This “x” aesthetic was pioneered by old-time bodybuilders like Steve Reeves, Vince Gironda, and Frank Zane. Some people still consider these guys to have the best physiques of all time, even though bodybuilders of today dwarf them in absolute muscle mass.

When Frank Zane beat Arnold Schwarzenegger in a bodybuilding competition, Arnold said, “I just got beat by a chicken with 17-inch arms.”

Zane won because he had proportion people would die for. You can have less muscle and look better than someone with more muscle, as long as your muscle is properly placed. Just look at Steve Reeves.

It would seem like building less muscle would be easier than building more muscle, but, well… go to the gym.Watch what most dudes do.

You’ll see a lot of benching, curling, and shrugging. This “meathead” training neglects the muscles responsible for giving you an “x” shape.

Flat bench pressing hits the lower-chest more than the upper-chest, which isn’t good. Most dudes, especially skinny-fat dudes, already have disproportionately large lower-chests and are better off focusing on upper-chest development. Flat benching is great… if you want bigger moobs.

Biceps curls aren’t terrible, but HUGE biceps look awkward. Look at Coleman’s body. His biceps DWARF his shoulders, which is one of the reasons he looks discombobulated. For an x-physique, your shoulders need to aesthetically anchor your arm, not your biceps.

Shoulder shrugs are similar to biceps curls and flat benching. There’s nothing wrong with doing shoulder shrugs, but, if you want an x-physique, you have to make your back look wider. Shrugs won’t help with that.

Unfortunately, tradition reigns supreme. It’s easy to get wrapped up in what’s popular. I would know. When I was just getting started, a mentor of mine referred me to an insanely popular program: Starting Strength.

It was my first real dive into barbell strength training. I fell in love with the program’s simplicity, structure, and effectiveness. I was getting stronger. I was building muscle. I was making gains, but something was missing. I still didn’t like my physique.

My legs were muscular and strong, but they were attached to a puny looking upper-body.

What I didn’t realize: Starting Strength was (and still is) a powerlifting program. It’s not a physique-based program. Once I realized this, I had an idea…

I loved the simplicity, the structure, and the effectiveness of Starting Strength. So I kept the shell in tact and began making small tweaks to the program, so that it became more of an x-physique program.

And thus, Strong & Sleek X-Physique was born.

I WANT IT

Strong & Sleek X-Physique is a progressive barbell strength training program perfect for skinny-fat noobs interested in building an x-physique. The base program revolves around six different exercises:

the back squat
the Romanian deadlift
the overhead press
the 30° incline press
the weighted chin-up
the barbell row

These six exercises are “conduits,” which is to say: multi-joint exercises with a high(er) load potential. Contrasting conduits are “condiments,” which are single-joint exercises with a low(er) load potential.

Conduits are more important than “condiments.” You don’t need to do ten different types of biceps curls. You do, however, need to get stronger within the above six “conduit” lifts. This will be the DOMINANT driver your muscular progress and the most important part of building an x-physique.

Don’t be a condiment queen.

Don’t put ketchup on ketchup.

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME

If you’re a noob and you want to build muscle, you need to get stronger. You don’t have to spend every waking hour in the gym to get stronger, either. Just three days per week, with around one hour of training on each of those three days.

Here are reasonable strength standards to shoot for:

Conventional deadlift, 2xBW
Back squat, 1.5xBW
Incline press, 1xBW
Overhead press, 0.75xBW
Chin-up, 0.5xBW
Row, 1xBW

If you aren’t as muscular as you want to be, then you should be working towards these strength standards. (If you are at these strength standards and you aren’t as muscular as you want to be, summon Captain Planet.)

If you aren’t ready to commit to these strength goals, then GTFO. Strong & Sleek X-Physique isn’t for you.

I’M READY

Unfortunately, the base Strong & Sleek X-Physique program is flawed. It only exists because every exercise shares the same progression pattern, which makes it easy to explain the progression and programming methodology.

I used to be skinny-fat. I know you probably can’t do unweighted chin-ups, let alone weighted chin-ups.

This is one of the reasons Strong & Sleek X-Physique comes with a pull-up training plugin called Pull-Up Perfection. Pull-Up Perfection is a four phase training program. The progressive sequence of exercises will to help you hit your first pull-up… and more.

Pull-Up Perfection integrates seamlessly into Strong & Sleek X-Physique. Instead of doing weighted chin-ups, you do the exercises in Pull-Up Perfection that correspond to your current skill level.

I NEED THIS

If I could go back in time, Strong & Sleek X-Physique is the program I’d give to myself at the very beginning. I still use this program to this day. Not the “base” program, itself… but principles upon which the program is built will last you a lifetime.

You can parlay the programming and progression strategy into more advanced training templates once you get decently strong. In fact, included within Strong & Sleek X-Physique is an intermediate training template I used for YEARS.

This template is built around the most powerful training split I’ve ever used. It’s a four day per week split. And it’s not an upper-lower split. You know what you need to do if you wanna know what it is.

I LIKE POWERFUL SPLITS

There’s nothing magical about Strong & Sleek X-Physique. There are no special “never seen before” exercises. There are no pitches for supplements inside of the program.

Strong & Sleek X-Physique is based around consistency and boring (yet highly effective) progression strategy I often refer to as “crockpot strength.”

“Crockpot strength” is a modified progression scheme for skinny-fat dudes. I can wrap my fingers around my wrist and touch pinky finger to thumb. Small tree trunks can’t support weight like large tree trunks. We need to give our bodies more time to recover and adapt.

If you’re a “petal to the metal” kind of person, this program isn’t for you. Take your burnout and injury-prone self elsewhere.

BURNOUT IS FOR BUMS

Strong & Sleek X-Physique and Pull-Up Perfection are a digital course. When you click any of the buy buttons, you’ll be taken to my secure retailer, ClickBank*, to complete your purchase. After payment, you’ll be invited to the Lab, which is a private members-only portion of my website, where you can access every lesson on any device. This is not a physical product. This is not a downloadable product.