I’m not a bodybuilder. I’ll never call myself a bodybuilder either. Don’t get me wrong. I do build my body. But I’m not a bodybuilder. There’s a difference, and it’s an important difference. It’s easy to associate or categorize with one of the barbell sports simply because I’m a huge fan of barbell training (especially when stimulating your way to [...]
I’m not a bodybuilder. I’ll never call myself a bodybuilder either.
Don’t get me wrong. I do build my body. But I’m not a bodybuilder. There’s a difference, and it’s an important difference.
It’s easy to associate or categorize with one of the barbell sports simply because I’m a huge fan of barbell training (especially when stimulating your way to the solid base). Since skinny-fat syndrome is often about combating aesthetics, here enters bodybuilding land, which is a competition of aesthetics.
Don’t worry. Despite what Planet Fitness tells you, lifting heavy weights doesn’t make you a lunk unless you’re already a lunk. In fact, when training is a vehicle for Quality it’s anti-lunk. Your excuse is invalid.
But I know barbell training is often met with fear.
I don’t want to be big and bulky. I just want to tone. Is it safe? I don’t know how to do the exercises. I don’t think I can learn. I can’t squat. I just want to lose fat—is this necessary? My shoulder hurts.
As much as you might not want to hear it, some kind of resistance training is necessary, so if you don’t have a barbell, then you better at least be straining against your bodyweight.
Especially if you’re skinny-fat.
Here’s why. (Consider this a rant.)
Two big reasons for muscle building
I know 99% of the people in the world don’t want to look like a competitive bodybuilder. I’m one of them. But even if you don’t want bodybuilder muscles, you have to train to build muscle. You will never look like a bodybuilder. Ever. It takes years of hardcore training and steroid abuse.
You’ll never wake up one day and be “too bulky.” It takes a lot of time and effort to build muscle, and you won’t wake up overnight “too big” to fit through the door or put on a T-shirt. Only people that take steroids make that happen, and let’s not forget that you probably are working with a smaller bookcase. Nothing in the body happens fast.
So yes—even if you want to look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, you need muscle. The reason is twofold.
First, as skinny as Brad Pitt was in Fight Club, he still had muscle—certainly more muscle than the average person carries. If you’re skinny-fat, my promise to you is that if you use the methods outlined within The Skinny-Fat Solution, you’ll absolutely err more to the Tyler Durden side of things rather than the Ronnie Coleman side of things. As mentioned before, the only way you’d get on the latter side is with chemical assistance.
Second, as a skinny-fat sufferer, you have a terrible “frame” to your body. You can eliminate the fat part of skinny-fat, but you’ll still be left with a rather unimpressive frame—one with a narrow waist and wide shoulders. I get a lot of emails that say, “If I just lose this fat, I’d be so happy!” And I always question that because the reason skinny-fat syndrome is so mentally draining is because the proportion messes with the mind.
The pictures above are of a fine gentleman from one of the initial Skinny-Fat Solution coaching groups. From the side, he looks rather lean and has a bit of muscle tone. But from the front, he looks fatter than he really is (even though his abs are coming through).
That’s not a lot of fat around his waist. That’s just how wide his hips are, and wide hips are a common symptom of skinny-fat syndrome. You can’t change hip width. That’s bone. That’s genetics.
This fine gentleman can’t think about losing his way to salvation.
He has to think about building himself into a new body, not losing himself into a new body.
You probably have to do the same.
This is a different mindset. One not a lot of skinny-fat sufferers take. Most people cram cardio and fat loss, expecting their body image issues to be solved.
They won’t be.
The importance of muscle to shape
To see the horror of a low body fat without muscle or shape, old time physical culture nut, John McCallum, explains this best in one of his old articles, Pros and Cons of Definition, which appears in his book The Complete Keys to Progress. The quotes below are from this article.
If your muscles are big and shapely enough, then you don’t need too much definition. You don’t have to look like a skinned rabbit. You don’t want your muscle buried under a foot-thick layer of flab, but at the same time you don’t want to look like an exhibit from a medical school.
Think of wrapping yourself in saran wrap. The first layer is pretty close to the skin and still reveals the subtleties of your shape. But if you keep wrapping, eventually it’s going to even out and details will no longer be distinguishable.
The more pronounced and “carved” the object being wrapped is, the more times it can be wrapped before losing its shape and structure.
If you’re skinny-fat and you put no energy into muscle building training, you’re going to end up like the skinned rabbit. You won’t be happy with how you look unless you have a little bit of muscle. Being “skinny” is nice and all, but I doubt anyone wants to look like Christian Bale in The Machinist. Even females probably have an “athletic” frame goal, rather than a starved model goal.
If you want a graphic example of the relative unimportance of sub-surface fat to a good build, take a look at photos of the ultimate in man’s inhumanity to man—the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War.
Those pitiful people, whose existence shocked and sickened the civilized world, have as little fat as a human being could have and still cling to life. They had, admittedly, very little muscular development, but even the starving remnants of their muscular structure didn’t show through the skin to any great degree.
Good definition is affected by your sub-surface fat. There’s no doubt about that. But it’s also affected by the size, shape, and condition of the muscles underneath.
As it relates to skinny-fat syndrome, building muscle has to be a specific process to build up parts of the body that commonly wreak havoc on the skinny-fat mind. This is why my training program is all about doing things that will directly contribute or eventually contribute to an “X” physique end. Since skinny-fat sufferers have wider waists and narrower shoulders, programs should combat this.
I’m not talking about grabbing two pound pink dumbbells and going for tone either. That’s another huge mistake though, and one worthy of an entirely different essay. If you’re training to tone you’re training to fail.
When I talk about catering to the “X” physique, I’m talking about the big, good exercises that are going to add hunks of muscle to the right areas.
So what’s it going to be?
A lack of quality muscle building training kinda causes skinny-fat syndrome in itself. The majority of skinny-fat sufferers overemphasize methods for fat loss. They’ll run on the treadmill for hours upon hours, yet never touch a weight.
Mistake.
Most people in the gym dance around the machines and treadmills. This is “typical.” What exactly are “typical” results of most fitness routines people go on? Certainly nothing to be proud of. Otherwise, diet pills wouldn’t exist.
Typical “fitness” training works if you want “typical” results. Chances are you’ve seen nothing but “typical” results your entire life. And chances are what you want isn’t “typical.”
Being muscular and having a low body fat isn’t the norm. So you can’t do what’s typical and expect atypical results. You can’t be “most people.”
Walking on the treadmill isn’t the skinny-fat solution. It can be a part of the entire production, but it’s not the end.