What are the best exercises for looking good naked?
September 1, 2013 1:33 PM   Subscribe

What are the best exercises for looking good naked?

In the last 24 weeks, I have modified my day-to-day eating habits (mostly cutting sugars, soda, and sweets; and by eating smaller means), resulting in a loss of 20 pounds. I'm at 160 pounds (5'10" male), noticeably skinnier, and I feel better about myself physically than at any time I can recall. I've also permanently adopted the better eating habits I've been utilizing to lose weight.

I'd now like to next become stronger, build more muscle, and develop the vaunted "cut" look. Let's be honest, as shallow as it may sound: I want to look good naked.

I've dipped into weight training in the past five years, though not in any serious way. I used to swim twice a week (for two years), I tried CrossFit, and I used to randomly go the gym.

The sheer amount of information available in magazines and on the internet is overwhelming. Have you personally had any success with a workout regimen? Can you describe it, or direct me to a useful site or two? Worthy of note:

1. I'd prefer to be able to do a the workouts at home, though I do have access to a gym.

2. I'd like to keep workouts below an hour, but I am certainly willing to go longer if necessary.

3. I hate running, I enjoy biking, and I like swimming. The caveat with biking: it's getting colder in my area. The caveat with swimming: The hours of the pool I can access are fairly limited.

Perhaps my most important concern: How do I measure if I'm making progress? With weight loss, there's the scale, but with muscle building, what's the correct way to measure success? Obviously, there's the eye test (do I look better?), but I feel like something more measureable/scientific is in order.
posted by st starseed to Health & Fitness (16 answers total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
With weight lifting, the measure is the weight you lift—being able to consistently increase the amount you're lifting in each type of lift, which if you're serious about it, you can track with a sheet you write on. Beyond that, you could use something like calipers to measure amounts of muscle and fat in various areas of your body, or you could get one of those scales that estimate body-fat percentage (I don't know whether those work, though).
posted by limeonaire at 1:38 PM on September 1, 2013


Take before pictures.

Take measurements of your arms, thighs, etc. anywhere you want to gain muscle. This works better when you're doing it to mark progress from losing weight, but it'll also work for gaining muscle. Also measure your body fat percentage.

Eat right - you'll need to eat a lot to really gain muscle.

Lift heavy weights. Might be worth getting a trainer to ensure you don't injure yourself.

I'd get a pull-up bar that goes in your doorway or whatever. Follow a "twenty pull-up" guide/app to build your progress.

Yoga will condition you all over. You may not get huge doing it, but it'll help in the looking good naked department. Pretty easy to see progress here too, especially early on. I'd recommend a class at first.

The most fit people (men and women) that I've seen are at the climbing gym. It isn't at home, but I'd give that a try. Bouldering in particular is effective.
posted by backwards guitar at 1:46 PM on September 1, 2013


Read this.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/faq
posted by MillMan at 1:47 PM on September 1, 2013 [6 favorites]


The most objective measure in line with your goals is probably how long you manage to stick with your calisthenics routine. How do you commute to work?
posted by oceanjesse at 1:48 PM on September 1, 2013


Do yoga. You'll look good and it sneaks up on you. For instance, the other day I was looking in the mirror and noticed that my trapezoid and shoulder muscles had gotten awesome. Since starting yoga I can also breathe better/easier then I ever have before and I can almost do inversions on command.

I also run and do random calisthenics/weight training when the mood hits but I've noticed the most changes since starting yoga approximately a year ago. I do yoga of varying intensity for at least an hour a day in a studio, but it is just as easy to do at home if you have self-motivation, which I unfortunately lack.
posted by Marinara at 2:03 PM on September 1, 2013


Body mass index is about as objective a measure as you're going to get. But if your goal is to "look good", about as close to an objective a measure as you're likely to get is an opinion survey designed to embody (ahem...) your personal, subjective measure-of-goodness, with a sufficient N to produce results you can trust. I think that's going to mean either the catwalk or the local cable channel.
posted by TruncatedTiller at 2:06 PM on September 1, 2013


ExRx.net has a lot of useful information in it worth perusing, although it doesn't really have a good flow of "start here" to it. It's also got tips for designing a workout plan whether it's with weight lifting or cardio.
posted by ctmf at 2:12 PM on September 1, 2013


This is a great question, and I haven't seen any truly straightforward answers to it.

When people ask "how should I do weightlifting?" they usually get directed to the whole-body compound-exercise programs like StrongLifts or Starting Strength. Those are really good programs for strength training, and reading their literature will get you in the right frame of mind. Doing those exercises will make you stronger, and that's a fairly good proxy for health. But I'm not sure it's a great proxy for looking good naked.

I've never seen an answer specifically dedicated to "here's how you look good naked," but the closest I've seen is breakdowns of movie star workout routines (and, more importantly, their food-preparation routines as well, since as you'll quickly learn with some reading, gaining muscle mass is more of a function of eating insane amounts of calories than it is of actually working out). For example, here's an article for Hugh Jackman on Wolverine. There are similar ones for movies like Gladiator and 300. You can imagine that routines like these are actually geared toward exactly your goal. Whether the routines you find on the internet are actually accurate is another question, of course.

On a personal note, as much as I'd love to look good naked, I don't really have the resources to create 6 full meals with that much nutritional value in them every day, nor work out every day. I struggle to eat 3000 calories, much less 6000, and when I took a blood test at my eating peak, I got back too-high cholesterol, so clearly my milkshakes-and-peanut-butter strategy was lacking. And I vacillate between 1/week workouts and 3/week workouts depending on how dedicated I am. But who knows: maybe you have a better shot? More free time, more interest in cooking, heck, maybe even better genetics?
posted by Jacen Solo at 2:36 PM on September 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


Congrats on the eating plan and the feeling good physically!

I think the next stage is to define what looking good naked is for you.

To me it means that the 'big' muscle groups look strong - decent size quads with matching upper arms and chest, and a bit of the V shape back muscles. This nicely ties in with what I want from my body, that is a general sense of strength and decent capability for doing physically demanding things.

To achieve this what is currently working for me is lifting really heavy weights once or twice a week at the gym alongside a couple of cardio type sessions (playing football, running, skateboarding etc). I do a little bit of stretching and core/back work every day and generally try to keep active (walk/cycle to work etc).

Psychologically the mix keeps things varied which keeps me happy and motivated, and also seems to be good for avoiding injury.

I tried the exercise at home thing before switching to the gym at the start of this year and the gym move has definitely been positive for me personally. There's all sorts of articles about how you can basically achieve the same results at home with just bodyweight exercises, but for me there's nothing the same as doing a deep squat with a big weight pressing you down, and this is hard to do safely at home.

Also I found it much easier to motivate myself to go to a separate place with everything all set out and other people doing similar things, rather than just getting up early to sweat on my own in the living room!
posted by Albondiga at 2:51 PM on September 1, 2013


Let's be serious: Hugh Jackman and a great deal of people who look fantastic in movies do so with the aid of drugs.

Weightlifting programs such as starting strength will make you a lot stronger. On their own they are probably not going to make you look a lot better naked unless you have a pretty long time horizon - years.

What most people want boils down to a combination of more muscle and less body fat. This is actually really difficult to achieve. Natural body-builders tend to get there by lots of time in the gym, strict diet adherence, and cycles of bulking/cutting. The phrase "abs are made in the kitchen" comes to mind. You have to have done some working out to get ab muscles but ain't no one gonna see them unless your BF% is pretty low

You're going to have to do some research but it'll be worth it because we're talking about a few years of pretty hard work anyway - spending a week reading a ton of stuff about body building is not a waste of time compared to the hours you're going to have to put in.
posted by RustyBrooks at 2:52 PM on September 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm nowhere near "cut", but as a naturally skinny guy I've had success adding muscle to my frame through bodyweight exercise progressions. I gained about 10 pounds in the past three months just from bodyweight exercise and eating huge amounts of food. I used Convict Conditioning (contrived theme but useful content) but the same progressions are no secret and available for free from various sites, as an example this site. The idea is you work up to doing a one-arm pushup, one-leg squat, one-arm pullup, etc. by doing progressively harder versions of the exercises, and you measure your progress by going through these versions and # reps you can do.

If you really want to gain muscle, lifting free weights is probably the fastest and most effective route; I only throw this out there because you mentioned wanting to exercise at home. For what it's worth I've had more success in gaining muscle through bodyweight than my past forays into weightlifting, but I think it's because this time around I eat much more food and I'm more consistent (don't mind exercising, HATE going to gyms).

The other thing to consider: Low bodyfat % is just as important (if not more so) than big muscles for looking "cut". Just google for "bodyfat percentage pictures" to get an idea, like this one. A lot of powerlifters actually don't look terribly aesthetic, e.g. this guy can deadlift over 1000 pounds but isn't exactly "cut." Think about how male gymnasts look - physically small but incredibly muscular and "ripped."
posted by pravit at 2:55 PM on September 1, 2013


Best answer: When your objective is to look good naked, you're in the domain of bodybuilding, and your primary tools are lifting and diet (and drugs, if we were talking about professional bodybuilding, but we're not so we'll ignore that). It doesn't matter if you don't want to look like Mr. Olympia or you think bodybuilders look weird when they get really tan and go onstage in posing briefs -- working out for the purpose of changing the way you look is still bodybuilding.

At 5'10" 160, if you don't already look cut, you're going to have to both build muscle and lose fat. You'll be able to do both of these at once to some extent for awhile -- progress comes easiest when you're just starting -- but after a time you're going to have to focus on one or the other and start being stricter about your diet. Dieting is just as important as training in bodybuilding. "Permanently adopting the eating habits you used to lose weight" is probably not going to be sufficient, since that's no longer your goal. If you want to build muscle, you're going to eat for that goal. If you later need to shift gears and focus more on leaning out while maintaining your muscle, you're going to have eat for that goal. People who are serious about this stuff generally come up with a meal plan suited to their goal, weigh and measure their food, track their calories and macronutrients and body weight, etc.

1. I'd prefer to be able to do a the workouts at home, though I do have access to a gym.

You'll be limiting yourself seriously by not going to the gym unless you plan on purchasing a bunch of equipment. You can definitely make progress using bodyweight exercise, but that won't be as efficient for achieving visual results as if you lifted weights. If you plan on exercising with bodyweight, read around at /r/bodyweightfitness. There's a reason that no bodybuilders train this way though.

2. I'd like to keep workouts below an hour, but I am certainly willing to go longer if necessary.

You can probably get away with workouts of an hour or less at first.

3. I hate running, I enjoy biking, and I like swimming.

None of that will probably be strictly necessary for your purposes. Many people get lean almost entirely by diet, with the most cardio they do being long walks (I'm one of them).

Perhaps my most important concern: How do I measure if I'm making progress?

Your main measure of progress is indeed the mirror. You'll want to track your bodyweight too. Increasing the weight that you lift will be another important measure of progress, although for a bodybuilder, increasing weight lifted is simply a means to an end, rather than the end itself as it is for a weightlifter or powerlifter.

I would recommend reading the r/fitness FAQ and Harsh's worksheet for more detail on training and dieting principles and links to programs. This version of the Greyskull LP program is a popular recommendation for beginners and provides something of a mix between strength and bodybuilding training.
posted by ludwig_van at 4:21 PM on September 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you want to work out at home in a short amount of time, I would recommend the "You Are Your Own Gym" app. Granted, I am a woman and have a slight disadvantage when starting out in bodyweight exercises, but after a few weeks I am hella stronger and my physiotherapist has remarked on my development of muscle tone in a short period. At any rate, a good way to start while you think about what to do next.
posted by Mrs. Rattery at 5:14 PM on September 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Dance. All different types of dance. You will use your whole body and gain coordination and maybe a skill that will come in handy socially. No shame in going to a ballet or hip hop or whatever class just for fitness. Dance fitness DVDs are usually cheap or free at the library and youtube is an endless source of instructional videos.

Also, when its too cold to bike, can you go to a rink and ice skate?
posted by WeekendJen at 6:39 PM on September 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


For at-home workouts, I'd recommend getting a copy of Convict Conditioning.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:36 AM on September 2, 2013 [2 favorites]


Shovelglove.
posted by drlith at 11:46 AM on September 2, 2013 [1 favorite]


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