You don't need to obsess over fitness to get fit. Don't get us wrong: you need a solid gym routine to build an impressive physique. But what you do away from the weights section can be just as important, and over-complicating things can waste time and energy.
That's the message Eric Evans, who runs the Average to Jacked YouTube channel, wants more people to understand. He's learned a lot during his time getting in shape, and his approach has become a lot simpler over the years.
In the past he's worked out six or seven days a week, followed a vast array of programmes, researched the best supplements available, and tried to educate himself on the optimal exercises, techniques and approaches. But now, Evans has stripped everything back; he spends just two or three days a week in the gym, his workouts last less than an hour, and he eats well but not obsessively.
'If I could go back and simplify everything into the few things that actually matter, this is literally all I would focus on,' he said.
Here are the six rules he wants all men looking to build an impressive physique to know.
Evans' 6 Rules for Building an Impressive Physique
1. Stop Judging Your Workouts by How Much You're Doing...
... and start judging them by how much progress you're making. It's easy to feel productive in the gym by working through tonnes of volume and incorporating multiple exercises, but if the reps, sets, weights or training volume aren't increasing, then what reason does the muscle have to grow?
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'You're essentially just exercising and you're not training and there's a massive difference,' Evans says. 'If your goal is to actually build muscle and get bigger, you need to give your body a reason to adapt. So if you can incline press 22kg dumbbells for six reps today and then press 35kg for the same reps with good form a year or two later, logically you're going to have a much bigger chest.'
Nailing the basics and progressively lifting heavier can lead to noticeable results. While implementing advanced lifting techniques might speed up the process, they're not always necessary.
2. You Probably Don't Need as Many Workout Days as You Think
Doing more workouts doesn't necessarily mean faster results; at a certain point you're just adding more fatigue that you have to recover from, thus hindering future workouts.
'I truly believe three hard lifting sessions a week is going to be enough for the majority of natural lifters who just want to be strong, lean and healthy,' Evans says. 'Three days in the week is going to give you a really good balance where you can train extremely hard, you have plenty of recovery between workouts and you actually come back stronger instead of constantly carrying fatigue from one workout into the next and eventually developing all these nagging pains throughout your body.'
The split you settle on may matter less than you think, too. Evans points out that having a couple more rest days can also boost motivation. Rather than dreading another workout that week, you head into each session looking forward to it and full of energy.
3. Simplify Your Nutrition
'Just find a handful of meals that you genuinely like that align with your goals and then eat them consistently. The goal with nutrition is just to remove daily decisions because you don't want to be waking up every day trying to figure out what you're going to eat because that's what leads to impulse eating,' he explains.
That doesn't mean forcing yourself to consume things you don't really enjoy. But finding meals that suit your daily lifestyle and are generally healthy will make eating well easier to stick to. It does require a bit of planning and extra effort, but can lead to greater benefits in the long run.
4. Stay Active Outside of the Gym
Going for walks is a simple way to boost your activity without requiring any extra recovery. Daily movement generally keeps you healthier and makes staying lean a bit easier, but it doesn't need to be overcomplicated or strenuous.
While Evans suggests adding harder conditioning work if you want to or enjoy doing it, he doesn't prescribe it. Remember: not all rest days should be turned into harder workout days.
5. Stop Looking for a Shortcut
'If you have a reasonable training programme that you enjoy, you're progressively getting stronger over time, and you're eating according to your goal, there isn't really much else to figure out,' Evans explains.
Rather than constantly researching new training methods in a bid to speed up your progress, Evans suggests simply sticking to what works for you to help you stay on track. There's no shortcut to getting results, and veering away from something that allows for consistency in the hope of speeding up the process might actually have the opposite effect.
6. Think in Years
While you can make lots of improvements in a matter of a few months – more strength, reduced body fat, overall better health etc – Evans stresses the importance of doing things sustainably and not trying to rush the process. Building an impressive physique takes time, especially if you're just starting out.
'Accepting that makes fitness easier, because you stop feeling like you're behind every day. You stop trying to rush the process by going to the gym seven days or jumping on some extreme diet because you want to speed everything up,' he says.
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