What Makes a Great Body

Keys to Building a Dapper Fit Body

Building muscle is great, but you need a plan of attack. This is not a bodybuilding website in the traditional sense of the word. No offense if you are into today’s bodybuilding realm, but that is a very different world than what Dapper Fitness is about. A big difference at this website is to look Dapper, to do what we need to do to build lean, dense bodies, and have a natural amount of “good looking” muscle. In order for that to happen, there a few things you need to know.

Topics to be covered:

• Body proportions (good looking muscle)
• There is one key area to build muscle (aesthetic hack)
• One element that is often overlooked
• What method of training should be used

The proportions of the male body are very important. For that reason there are some differences in the way we need to train. The Dapper Fit body is not just about getting huge. It’s about having a natural amount of properly proportioned, good looking muscle, and dressing damn well!

The Goal of Strength Training

The goal of strength training should be to alter our proportions in order to make the shoulder-to-waist region look more powerful. Meaning, keeping a taut lean waist, while increasing our shoulder girdle and upper chest size to the proper proportions. There are other key areas to develop that I will write about soon, but the shoulder to waist aspect is the most important.

The way to accomplish this is to get strong enough to develop the muscles of the upper body, and to keep the body weight down to keep a trim waist.

Greek Gods & Roman Statues

A simple Google search of Greek Gods or Roman Statues will show off the broad shoulder to taut waist beautifully. The ideal physique was crafted and developed during that time. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who didn’t think the body of a Greek God was visually appealing. This is a key emphasis here at Dapper Fitness. 

How Do We Get There

• Train for Strength. Getting stronger as a natural (drug free) lifter is the key to developing the ideal physique. Getting stronger is a process, but with hard work and patience, you will develop lean, dense, long lasting muscle.
• Train Consistently. The human body is very adaptive to stimulation, and lack thereof. You need to be training regularly or progress will stop.
• Proper Form. You need to push yourself hard, since we are asking our bodies to do something against their nature. But, we need to not just get stronger, we need to get stronger with proper form. Fitness is a long term game, so staying injury free is a top priority. Proper form is vital.

To find more detail on building muscle, see this Article.

Lean Waist

A very important, if not the most important factor of proper proportions, is the waist: it needs to be close to the natural waist size for your particular body type and height. A very good starting point is to take your height in inches, and multiply by 46%.

Example: A 5’10 male should have a waist of around 32 inches.

5’10 = 70 inches

70 x 46% = 32.2 inches

Figure out your ideal waist size. Measure your current waist. It’s best to measure first thing in the morning. This will give you a good idea if you need to lose belly fat, or if you can go into maintenance mode.

Sprinters, Boxers, and MMA Look Really Athletic

A good example of athletes that usually need to be lean, yet very strong are Sprinters, Boxers, and MMA. They need to be agile and powerful. Therefore many of them have very aesthetically pleasing bodies. Lean taut waist, broad full shoulders, and high levels of strength.

A good example of where the shoulder to waist aspect changes the physique for the worse is the non weight class fighters. Think of the heavyweights, they do not have to worry about their weight so a lot of them carry unwanted weight in the waist region. They develop a non athletic looking body, and lose the key proportions.

You want to build, lean, dense muscle in the proper areas and proportions. But we also need to keep the weight at an appropriate level to keep the waist lean and taut. There are so many different ways people try to control weight — low fat diets, low carb diets, paleo, Atkins — the list could go on forever. But at the end of the day, energy balance is the most important factor.

I personally use intermittent fasting to supplement my eating and control my energy balance.  It’s been the simplest way to control my weight that I have found. For the past two years it has allowed me to maintain my body weight as I desire, without giving up any of my favorite foods. Look for an article soon covering intermittent fasting.