How To Build Superhero Muscle

When a Hollywood actor bursts onto the big screen with some new muscle, there’s always a lot of hoopla surrounding what he did to obtain that look. The usual drivel from spaghetti-armed twat-waffles revolves around what his cycle looks like. Never mind that in some cases, like with Hugh Jackman, it took these actors years to transform their physiques into something respectable for the silver screen. And here’s a fun fact – a lean physique looks visibly larger onscreen than a gluttonous hot dog eating dad-bod. A lean 180 pounds on the big screen is far more appealing and actually looks more jacked than 240 pounds of neck rolls and love handles. I’ve talked with various Hollywood trainers, and there’s a “recipe” they all use to get their clients looking jacked for their roles. And it actually doesn’t involve growth hormone, testosterone, or clenbuterol. Sure, if the actor is overweight, the coach must work on getting him lean. If he’s needing more muscle, the goal must be to gain a few pounds of lean mass while keeping fat gain to a minimum. But there’s more to it than that. And this is what the average lifter can focus on if he’s wanting to achieve the superhero or action star look. Building the Top Shelf There are three areas of musculature coaches prioritize to get that “quickly jacked” look for their clients. It’s the top shelf of the torso: the traps, delts, and upper chest. Bringing up these areas as quickly as possible will give that “woah, he musta done a cycle!” look to their clients. When you combine that with a fairly lean physique, it pops on the big screen, and usually gives people the impression that the actor gained more muscle than he actually did. And yes, it can do the same for you. But first, you have to get your body fat low enough to show those muscles off. So before we get into the building portion, let’s talk about diet and cardio. Superstar Nutrition Believe it or not, the coaches that deal with these celeb clients aren’t surfing through PubMed to find the latest research to get their clients looking sharp. Here are the sentiments I’ve heard: “If they need to bulk up, I have them eat more and do very little cardio with a lot of heavy lifting.” “If they need to get lean, I keep all their food clean, feed them a lot of extra protein, and have them do extra cardio to get the fat off.” It’s almost like they took this approach right out of the Bro Bible… you know, the one that people slam all the time for being based on trial and error rather than studies. The truth is, bro-diets work. They don’t actually go against any science and they keep the process very simple. One other thing – the gaining phase was only implemented if the actor was lean to begin with. If not, it was accomplished before the force feeding began. Their guidelines are very much like stuff you’d read out of old muscle mags: Eat minimally processed foods and cut the junk out. Eat a significant amount of animal protein at each meal for fat loss and mass phases. Aim for five meals a day regardless of whether they’re in a fat loss or mass phase. During fat loss, carbs are minimized and kept to around the training window (before, during, and after). During fat loss phases, vegetables were increased at most meals for satiety. During a mass phases, carbs were increased, but not by a ton. Strangely enough, there was no talk of counting calories. As long as food was kept to minimally processed sources, it was simply increased or reduced in serving size for each goal. In other words, in the fat loss phase they simply reduced overall quantity of foods, rather than focusing on exact calories and macros. Before all the calorie and macro counting, this was also how Arnold and company approached their mass gaining and fat loss phases. I’m big on counting calories and macros, but I also know that if you’re simply selecting nutrient dense, minimally processed foods, you’ll often end up in an energy deficit, especially if you’re minding your portions, lifting, and doing some cardio. What About Cardio? There were a few approaches. Since there’s no fat loss benefit or advantage of HIIT over steady state moderate intensity cardio (1), they simply went with the one the client preferred. Trainers prescribed more cardio during fat loss phases and less during mass phases. It was never completely taken out during either time, just increased or reduced to reach the goal. For fat loss, a daily cardio session that was separate from the lifting was the norm. Ten to fifteen minutes of it post-weight training was commonly used during mass gaining phases. Training for the Yoked Look As noted, bringing up the traps, delts, and upper chest was the focus in all scenarios. Let’s break it down: For the Upper Chest As you might expect, trainers prescribed a lot of incline chest work. This meant incline pressing variations, incline flyes, and cable work. The two best variations here are the low-incline Smith machine press and the
Origin: How To Build Superhero Muscle