What To Do In The Gym To Look Better Naked

Body Weight vs. Body Composition

If you’ve ever thought, “I need to lose some weight,” what you meant was, “I want a better body composition.”

Don’t know the difference or how to do it? Keep reading.

See, hitting your goal weight won’t improve the way you look, feel, and perform.

It also won’t make you love yourself more, but that’s a topic for another day.

The physical results that the people who hire us for coaching want come from helping them change their body composition, not just their body weight.

Body composition is what you see in your birthday suit, not what you see on the scale between your toes.

Here’s a comparison photo of yours truly at the same weight, but with a different body composition:

Body Weight vs. Body Composition

So, how do you improve your body composition?

By following the Body Comp Hierarchy, duh!

Today I’ll share the Training Hierarchy for a better body comp, and Wednesday we’ll cover nutrition.

If you don’t know, a hierarchy is a system in which things are put at various levels or ranks according to their importance.

So, let’s start with the most important thing.

1 - Training Consistency

This is the most important element for changing your body composition. Whether you hire us to help you or not, you’ve got to show up for your workouts consistently.

Our most successful clients train 3 or 4 days per week, and they rarely miss workouts.

Sometimes their workouts look different because of travel and things that pop up in their schedule, but they’re willing to adapt, not skip.

If you’re skipping 1 or more workouts a week, you aren’t being consistent enough to get good results. Plain and simple.

2 - Progressive Strength Training

Most people’s instinct for results is to run more, do more HIIT, and try to burn calories.

It never works, though.

Instead, your workouts should be using dumbbells, barbells, and machines to build strength and muscle.

The “progressive” part means that your workouts aren’t random or focused on “burning,” but rather they challenge you with a focus on “building” over time.

3 - Exercise Selection

A strength training program that improves your body composition needs to have a few important exercises (or close variants) in it.

They’re called “compound” exercises because they use multiple joints and muscle groups all at once.

Squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses—done with weights that are heavy for your current ability—have some pretty serious power to change your physique more than doing only isolation moves like curls and lateral raises.

4 - Volume & Intensity

Volume = How many sets and reps your workouts include
Intensity = How hard you worked in those sets

To improve your body composition, you need to be hitting each part of your body with 10–20 weightlifting sets per week. That’s the volume part.

Those 10–20 sets need to be done at a level of effort that’s really. stinkin. tough. That’s the intensity part.

I can’t tell you how many well-meaning people I’ve seen in gyms this year doing work, but at nowhere near hard enough efforts. It’s sad because they’re willing, but they’re leaving so much progress on the table.

Having an experienced coach dial in your volume and intensity is so important—I really can’t emphasize it enough.

As you read through those 4 things, you can probably see why random workouts, more cardio, and group classes don’t work so well.

Those 4 things are the most important factors in changing your body composition, and that’s the order you should care about them in.

How about your nutrition? Surely there’s a hierarchy for that as well?

Of course there is!

Click the button below to find out what really matters. You might be surprised.