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Work Out What You Want First

Different Body Types

There are millions of books for you to read on health and fitness with many of them being actually extremely good but there are few people who have drastically changed their lives and physiques after reading them. This is not down to the content of the book or article that you have read but instead it is down to you and what state of mind you were in when you read the book. I am not going to try and get inside your head to work you out or try to tell you exactly what you need to feel satisfied in yourself, but instead you must work out what your reasons for embarking on a body transformation journey or hiring a personal trainer are.

We all have our reasons even if the outcome we want is the same. If you were to come visit me in my London gym looking to start the Warrior Workout 12 week body transformation program the first thing I would ask is “why have you come in to see me?”, the usual reply is “because I want to get fit” and of course that is obvious. However, it is then important to ask “what is number one thing is that you want to achieve from your body if you could have anything you wanted at a click of your fingers?”, as this is what you really want.

What you want may seem unachievable in your mind as a 40 year old man who works 50 hours a week, so you end up setting weak and easily attainable goals that you are pretty sure you can achieve. I very recently had a guy come into the gym, he was extremely overweight, had back pain, neck pain and to be honest he looked absolutely exhausted. When I asked the question “Why have you come to see me?” he said that he would like to lose a bit of weight and have a bit more energy.

To me that is just a boring and vague goal that I could have him achieve in 24 hours so how could anyone get psyched up for such a generic answer? How can I ask him to change his eating habits, turn down a free croissant or flip a tractor tire around the car park over 12 weeks all on the back of a meaningless wish to lose a BIT of weight? It just does not work which is why you need to put more thought into your reasons before you decide to plough ahead with a goal that could inevitably be the reason you fail.

As an example of a much clearer and more motivating goal I will show you what Dave (not his real name) decided was his goal:

“To drop 20kg of fat and get the body I had when I was womanising at university. To have no more pain anywhere and say yes to a friend if they ask me to join in a 5 a side football match without feeling embarrassed”

Now that is a goal worth fighting for in my opinion and the reason he lost over 20kg of fat and says he feels better at 45 than he did at 25. All this was achieved in just over 14 weeks of training a maximum of four times a week and still enjoying the odd weekend beer.

In my opinion as a personal trainer working in a city like London getting a great body is a very simple process if you understand all the aspects. It is a bit like building a house, as the most important thing you have to do first is make sure the foundation is solid in that your reason behind making all these changes in your lifestyle is strong enough to actually make you implement all the steps to reach your goal. If your foundation is weak then it does not matter how good the work is you put in is because the structure will fall when the going gets a little tough.

The best and most successful goals involve the escape of pain. By this I mean we are normally motivated more by stopping some kind of uncomfortable feeling than we are by trying to do something purely for pleasure. An example of this would be visiting the dentist, if we wanted to get a whiter smile it might take us a little while to find a good priced laser whitening clinic or we might wait till a deal got a little sweeter before we went ahead, but if one of your wisdom teeth really started to cause you pain you would be on the phone to an emergency dentist and cancelling all other engagements in order to get it fixed.

Try to make the reasoning behind your new fitter lifestyle a little closer to avoiding pain either emotional or physical than just to feel good on the beach. Think about the things you are missing out on because of your expanding gut or sore back, remember that off the cuff remark your wife said about you putting on weight or remind yourself of how self conscious you felt when you had to take a sun lounger next to the guy with the great abs. What is the reason that you found the Evolution of Man site or that you joined a gym in January? Take just a few minutes to think about it, give it some real weight and write it down somewhere you can look at it when you need motivating.

So now you know why you want to get fitter, what is your main goal? But remember saying to get fitter means nothing as there are so many parts to it. Do you really want to look fit or be fit? Obviously you want to look amazing and be in a great state of health but in my findings it seems that actual health always seems to be behind the aesthetic reasons to get training.

These findings have led me to focus most of my advice on achieving a great looking body rather than aiming it towards lowering cholesterol or relieving back pain. However, I think it is important to know before you go deeper here that my whole approach to helping you to great birthday suit is to make you fitter over all aspects because although it is possible to look really fit whilst not actually being fit, that is not how I work and never will be.

I am as aesthetically orientated as the best of them but after speaking with fitness models in the past I totally disagree with most of their methods to get that magazine cover physique for the masses as it usually leaves them weak and not ticking many of the fitness boxes at all. Basically although I expect every man who follows our advice to have the main goal of looking damn good you will also get the pretty cool benefit of being a well rounded athletic man as well………nice!

Okay so you want to look better but you need to work out what you mean by better as for some it may be to put on weight and others to lose it. Everyone is different but we can all be boxed into different categories to give a better directional approach to what we do. There are three main body type categories that determine how you should approach your goals and throughout this book I will be giving direction to all three as they all need to take slightly different routes. One size does not fit all here although there are some aspects that will work for all. Take a look below to see where you are:

Ectomorph – This is the skinny guy who has always been thin and struggles to put on muscle only to lose it if he skips one meal. Some would call him lucky as he can literally eat anything without getting fat. This can be a very frustrating body type as it is a struggle to get a strong manly looking frame, but it is more than possible. Typical sports they excel in are – long distance running, jumping events and tennis.

Ectomorph Example

Mesomorph – Probably the easier body type to change as the mesomorph will find he can drop or gain weight relatively easy if he really puts his mind to it. A medium build and usually quite good at most sports because of the even distribution of attributes. Most sportsman have this body type from football, track and swimming.

Mesomorph Example

Endomorph – Fat loss is usually the goal for this body type as he has a larger frame that tends to put on extra mass very easily. It is usually very easy for an endomorph to put on weight in the form of fat and muscle but a real struggle to reach a lean weight. Typical sports they excel in – Rugby, strongman and power lifting.

Endomorph Example

These informal descriptions should find you somewhere among them but if they do not just try this simple trick to add a bit of clarity so we can move on and get started. Lightly encircle your wrist with the opposite thumb and middle finger then look at the result below:

Fingers do not touch = Endomorph
Fingers just touch = Mesomorph
Fingers overlap = Ectomorph

You will be a mix but aim to concentrate most of your efforts on either one or the other.

Note down your body type, think about your goals be it fat loss, muscle gain, improved fitness or something else entirely and then start making tracks.  Read more of our blogs or give us a call anytime