My Visual Impact Muscle Building Review
So if you haven’t yet heard of Visual Impact Muscle Building then I’ll fill you in. It’s a workout program created by Rusty Moore (a popular fitness blogger) that’s designed to give the end user what he calls “strategic muscle gains for a visually stunning body”. In other words Visual Impact is designed to help you achieve the lean, ripped, and muscular look of say a Ryan Reynolds or Chris Evans as opposed to the huge look of a bodybuilder.
Visual Impact Muscle Building is probably the only workout program on the net that’s sole focus is to help the end user achieve the kind of look that we’re seeing become more popular in the media nowadays. The kind of look that Chris Evans had in Captain America, Ryan Reynolds had in Blade, or Taylor Lautner had in New Moon. The kind of look that most women on this planet find most attractive. It seems like just about every workout routine I’ve seen or heard of on the net is tailored to the bodybuilding community and while that’s all fine and dandy, if that’s the look you’re after, it’s refreshing to see a program that caters to the rest of the people that don’t strive to look like a bodybuilder but would instead rather have a more lean, dense look.
Different Forms Of Muscle Building?
So moving forward we’re going to be discussing the different forms of muscular hypertrophy (muscle growth) so I might as well clarify some terms while we’re at it. There’s two commonly established forms of muscle growth, sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar hypertropy. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy consists of increasing the increasing the size of the muscle cell fluid [sarcoplasm] within the actual muscle cells. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is the growth of the actual muscle fibers. Too much myofibrillar hypertrophy and you gain a lot of strength, and get denser looking muscles but not nearly as much muscle size. Too much sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and you end up looking soft and lack muscle density. Now a lot of this does come down to genetics so it’s not like you have 100% control over this but you can tailor things to a certain extent based on the rep ranges and rest periods that you use. And that’s part of what Visual Impact Muscle Building teaches you to do as well as laying out scientifically sound muscle building and fat burning principles.
So What’s This Visual Impact Stuff All About?
Visual Impact Muscle Building is a three phase periodization based workout program, and an excellent primer on effective muscle building and fat burning principles. The workout program takes 2 months per phase, so 6 months in total. What I really like about Visual Impact is that it’s excellent at actually teaching and explaining the reasoning behind why things are done the way they’re done in the workout routine which ultimately helps you think for yourself and lets you apply the same principles to other exercises you might choose to do.
Phase 1: In this phase the focus is more on Sarcoplasmic hypertrophoy. This gives the muscles a more full and round look, but doesn’t add all that much to one’s base strength levels.
Phase 2: In Phase 2 the focus is split equally between Myofibrillar Hypertrophy (which is actual muscle fiber growth), and Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This helps the user further gain muscle size while also switching the focus over to strength a bit more.
Phase 3: Then in Phase 3 the focus is on nothing but Myofibrillar Hypertrophy, and strength gains. Here you allow your strength gains to catch up to your muscle gains which also primes you for further gains if you decide to go redo phase 1.
When you buy the program you get the main ebook, which is 70 odd pages long describing the workout program, the phases, rep and set ranges for the exercises and other tips on how to really tailor your workout to look the way YOU want to look. You also get a 200+ page book with picture and text exercise demonstrations showing a wide array of exercises that you can choose from for each phase. Then there’s the printable workout chart that shows the exercises you’ll be doing, and the set and rep schemes you’ll be using so that you can actually take that with you to the gym and use as a reference.
My Take On It
I think Visual Impact Muscle Building is a great workout program, with a specific layout of how to get the kind of body most women swoon over, from the exercise selection, rep and set schemes all the way to the theory and science behind it. As a personal trainer who’s trained over 300 clients at this point I think the actual workout is great and the principles are applicable across the board. The one thing I will say that’s missing from the program is a more in depth look at nutrition and how it plays a role in the process. He certainly does discuss nutrition and it’s cool to see that the author completely agrees with me on the effectiveness of intermittent fasting but his book doesn’t really discuss nutrition as much as I think it should be discussed. But nutrition is a whole other beast in it self and you can’t expect someone to cover EVERYTHING in one book, at least not effectively. Anyway, you can get a copy of Visual Impact here, and it’s got a 60 day money back guarantee should you decide it’s not for you. But in all honesty at under 50 bucks it’s less than half the price of one personal training session with me and the value you’re getting is pretty high. I’d say that what you can get out of the book, if you actually take action and do it (keyword: take action), is priceless, and it can save you loads of wasted time reading tons of stuff on the internet and trying countless workout routines that just don’t work. Instead just get Visual Impact and do it right from the get go.
Read MoreRyan Reynolds Workout Routine for Blade Trinity, Green Lantern, and X-Men – Diet Included
With a ripped physique that makes ladies swoon and has men around the county envying him, Ryan Reynolds has become the owner of one of Tinseltown’s most famous physiques. This young actor completely morphed from romantic comedy starring roles into the chiseled abs, and significantly more muscular body he sports in the action packed Blade: Trinity franchise.
The Men Behind Ryan Reynolds Workout Routine – Bobby Strom and Darren Chapman
As you may well expect most Hollywood stars hire the top Personal Trainers, Chefs, Nutritionists, and even Massage Therapists (for recovery) and have all the accommodations one could possibly need to achieve the bodies they need for the big screen. Accommodations that the average Joe or Jane can either not afford or not have access to. Not to say that you can’t achieve the same with a strategic workout plan and an effective diet, but the average person can’t expect to get the same kind of results doing exactly what these celebs do because most of the time we don’t have the same resources. Such as a personal chef who will measure out our meals to perfection or a sports nutritionist who’s supplying the chef with meal plans that have the exact specifications required to achieve our goals or a massage session after every workout to insure proper recovery.
Anyway… Bobby Strom and Darren Chapman can almost be said to be the men behind the Ryan Reynolds workout.
Bobby trained Ryan and worked with him to create the physique he sported to play the role of Deadpool in X-men, and in preparation for Green Lantern.
Darren Chapman on the other hand prepared him for his original transformation in Blade Trinity when he first showed the masses what he was capable of with his physique.
Ryan Reynolds Workout Routine for Blade Trinity, X-Men, And Green Lantern
From scenes where his arms flex from swinging samurai swords down to the part where he’s shirtless after he becomes the villain Deadpool in X-Men it’s obvious the man put some in some work to achieve those results.
In fact he had to gain 20 lbs of pure muscle while simultaneously cutting fat to achieve the look he had in X-Men Origins. Of course he had 6 months to do it and the help of trainer Bobby Strom but it’s a notable feat nonetheless and one that I think many can realistically duplicate with the right workout and exercise selection.
Ryan followed a split routine where he would work one major body part per day and would train 6 days a week with Sunday off. A typical bodybuilding split which I personally find to be far from optimal for the average Joe but nonetheless you can’t argue that it didn’t work for him.
He dedicated one day each for training his chest, back, shoulders, arms, and legs and he claims he trained for 2-3 hours per day leading up to shooting the movie. Once again I find that training that long is far from optimal for the average person. In fact most people would quickly overtain and cease to see results if they trained that much unless a vast majority of it was cardiovascular work. Even then, that much cardio would definitely stifle one’s muscle building ability.
Ryan also cut out all cardio in preparation for his films being that he was naturally skinny and didn’t want to expend any energy on anything but building muscle. That’ usually what naturally skinny hard gainers have to do since they tend to find it much harder to put on weight than your average Joe and consequently tend to loss it really easily.
He also started every workout with ab work because,believe it or not, it used to be a weak point of his. He’d usually do sets of weighted sit ups or lying leg raises with a dumbbell placed between his legs.
Ryan Reynolds Diet For Chiseled Abs – A Workout Is Nothing Without The Diet That Accompanies It.
You can't expect to get abs like these if you eat like shit.
If you haven’t yet figured it out. You’re not going to get a body like Ryan’s without watching what you eat. That’s why Ryan would have 6 small meals a day spread out every two to three hours. His diet was heavy on protein, with moderate helpings of complex carbohydrates (oatmeal, veggies) , and healthy fats (avocado’s, almond butter). He also routinely used high protein meal replacement bars and protein shakes.
So How Can You Do The Same?
What you have to realize is that for a lot of these Hollywood stars there’s millions and millions of dollars riding on the fact that they’ll be in top shape by the time shooting for the movie starts. That’s a lot of pressure, and millions of dollars would surely make anyone get off their ass and hit the gym hard. Combine that with the luxuries that these guys can afford (chef’s, nutritionists, trainers, consistent massages) and you can start seeing a more realistic reason as to why they tend to have such phenomenal results.
Like I’ve said before though most of these male Hollywood stars are not all that muscular in comparison to many of the guys that frequent your local gold gym. They just happen to be a lot leaner. Keep hanging around this space and you’ll be giving guys like Ryan a run for their money in no time 
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The Taylor Lautner Workout Routine – “New Moon” Star Gets In Awesome Shape For Movie
Taylor Lautner is said to sport one of the best physiques in Hollywood today and what’s even more impressive is the fact that Taylor was able to build the 30 pounds of muscle, that morphed him into his role of “Jacob Black” in the Twilight series New Moon, in under a year. There’s also been lots of buzz to go along with it all seeing that “Taylor Lautner Workout” is one of the most searched for celebrity workout keywords on the net.
Now it’s not to say that you can’t achieve similar results with an effective workout program and a dialed in diet but when you get down to it Taylor was/is a young guy with raging hormones and with higher testosterone levels they’ll ever be in his life. He was also new to weight training in general making him extremely responsive to any weight training he would have done (they’re called newbie gains). Top that with a personal cook, nutritionist, personal trainer and good ol’ hard work and you get what you see here:
So What Is The Taylor Lautner Workout Routine All About? And How Did He Do it?
In his new found aim to go from scrawny to brawny for his new role, Taylor decided to enlist the help of Jordan Yuam. Personal trainer and owner of Jordan’s Virtual Fit Club.
According to Men’s Health and Jordan Yuam here are some of the principles that helped Taylor Lautner achieve his dramatic transformation:
- Pushing the limits – If you want to start building muscle you’ve got to start getting used to lifting heavier weights. Jordan Yuam made Lautner lift weights that were 40% heavier than his regular 10 rep max. For example if you bench press 160lbs for ten reps then you should strive to lift 225 and with the aid of a spotter lower the weight very slowly (My bit: Not the best idea and not necessary unless you’re a more advanced lifter). These are called negatives. This kind of training (slow negatives) is very taxing and it’s recommended that you limit it to 2-3 sets of 5 reps every 2nd week.
- Vary your training volume – As it was said your body’s got to get used to lifting heavier weights to start packing on some more muscle but going heavier isn’t always the best idea. If you really want to make more progress you should regularly vary your repetition count and the weights you use. This is to make sure that your body doesn’t get accustomed to a particular weight to the point that you stop progressing. (My bit: I don’t believe this applies in all situations). The more you make your muscles adapt to different stimuli the more they grow.(My bit: In my opinion you should keep the rep range no higher than 12 and keep bumping up the weight until you can no longer bump it up. Then work on increasing your reps back up to 12, then back to bumping up the weight and so on and so forth. Constantly “changing it up” only helps in certain circumstances but for the vast majority of people the protocol I just outlined should work best….moving on…).
- Create more tension – In Taylor Lautner’s workout routine free weights were highly favored but they have some drawbacks such as the fact the tension isn’t constant throughout the full ROM or range of motion. That’s why Jordan often hooked large rubber bands to barbells or dumbells Taylor lifted and anchored them to the ground so that they would create tension through the full ROM (range of motion). This makes the muscles work harder due to the increased tension and thus muscle growth is accelerated.
- Cuting back on cardio – Taylor cut back on his cardio almost completely while bulking up. For your average naturally skinny, hard gaining male, heavy cardio can great diminish one’s ability to gain muscle (My bit: for those who struggle to gain weight “no matter how much they eat” cardio should be relegated to walking. For everyone else it’s fine so long as your not doing long cardio workouts and your not doing them too often [there's more effective cardio methods then that]).
- Don’t overwork your ab muscles – Abs are usually the cornerstone of a great physique so lots of guys tend to work their abs as often as they can. Unfortunately, that’s why lots of guys don’t sport abs like Taylor’s. Abs like other body parts or muscles have to rest following a tough workout and just as other muscles on your body constantly working them is counterproductive and just leads to over training. Jordan Yuam had Lautner work his midsection thrice weekly with various exercises that worked his entire core area. One of Taylor’s favorite ab workouts was a superset of hanging leg raises and reverse crunches, stopping and holding the movement at peak contraction for 7-10 secs between each rep.
- Make time to recover – What you eat and how you exercise are only 2/3′s of the equation. The other 1/3 is adequate rest. Without it your liable to over train, slowing down your progress or even bringing it down to a screeching halt. Taylor made sure to take off every 3rd day and he never exercised more than 5 days a week.
My Personal Opinion On The Taylor Lautner Workout Routine
Well it’s not really Taylor Lautner’s workout that we have it’s more like the principles that his trainer applied to him to help him achieve his goals, but yeah I actually agree with the majority of what’s been said. Most of them are solid principles that will definitely help. Unfortunately while principles are great they’re nothing without structure. For a more structured routine that’s highly effective check out my post on Visual Impact Muscle Building.
Read MoreThe Kellan Lutz Workout Routine
So if you haven’t heard of this guy then that’s cool cuz’ I hadn’t heard of him until about 2 weeks ago when I saw him on the cover of a Men’s Health magazine.
This dude’s had some minor roles in CSI, he’s done commercials, modeling and starred in the Twlight movies. No wonder I hadn’t heard of this kid. I’m not judging if you watch those Twilight movies though… I’m just not a fan.
Although he hasn’t gotten as much attention as say Taylor Lautner, the dude has a pretty tight physique, and it’s obvious he’s busting ass to make it happen. But I will say a physique like his is definitely attainable by most, injury free males so long as they put the pedal to the medal and dial in both their workouts and nutrition.
Like a lot of other fit male celebs Kellan doesn’t seem to have much in the way leg mass. At least not anywhere near what he’s accomplished with his upper body. It’s fair to say this type of physique cam be achieved with a workout consisting of some heavy horizontal (bench press/incline press) and vertical (military press) pressing, pullups, barbell rows, curls and abdominal work with HIIT thrown in a few times a week.I’d throw in some one legged squats just for good measure and to prevent you from having absolute chicken legs.
As usual I scoured the interwebz to find out what’s been published about how he did it and I found out that he’s very strict on his diet and is a total health nut. According to Men’s health his workout consists of the following circuit done back to back up to three times with a rest in between each completion of the circuit:
The Kellan Lutz Workout According To Mens Health:
-Reverse Crunches x 20 repetitions
-V-Ups x 20 repetitions
-Barbell Front Squat to Press x 12 repetitions
-Push Up x 12 repetitions
-Incline Barbell Bench Press x 12 repetitions
-Explosive Push Ups x 12 repetitions
-Dumbbell Lunges x 12 repetitions
-Goblet Squats x 12 repetitions
My Opinion On The Mens Health Kellan Lutz Workout:
Bullshit.
I very seriously doubt that he did circuits like the one mentioned above to gain the muscle he currently has. For one simple reason. Circuits are great for cardio and they’re great for metabolic conditioning, they might even be ok for strenth training but only up to a certain point. Only a newbie is going to make any significant muscular gains off a routine like that. To build muscle to the degree that he has you’re going to have to build up your strength and with the little rest given in circuit type workouts you end up getting winded and metabolically challenged way before any individual muscle has had enough strain put on it to induce a significant enough response to induce muscle building.
So What Would I Do?
The example workout I gave at the beginning of the post would be a great step in the right direction. But an even greater step would be to check out Visual Impact Muscle Building for an even more in depth look at how to build a body like Kellan’s. From the cardio all the way to the weight training.
All right folks. That’s it for today. As usual I’ll be back soon with more celeb workouts and tips on how you can get as lean as humanely possible while building muscle.
Sammy at Male Celeb Workouts here, over and out.
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The 7 Commandments Of How To Get A Six Pack Or How To Get Abs For Dummies
Six pack abs… We all want them. Few of us have them. Depending on your genetic make up it might seem almost impossible to get them. While for others it seems like they were born with them.
Now when it comes down to it there’s a few things that might be standing in your way of achieving a six pack (depending on where you stand right now) but the most important factor that determines whether or not you will have a ripped six pack of abs is your body fat levels… Straight up. You could be a skinny bean pole and if you’re lean enough you’ll have abs (granted that’s not the ideal look most people are shooting for). On the other hand you can be extremely built and have lots of muscle with thick, strong abdominal muscles but they won’t show regardless if they’re still covered in fat. Of course strengthening and building your ab muscles is also important but in order to have visible abs you’ve got to be lean and that part comes down to nutrition (read: intermittent fasting). This article covers the basics of everything you need to know how to get a six pack from nutrition all the way to working out.
As an aside you might want to have a look at Rusty Moore’s “Abs Blueprint” it’s a free 44 pg e-book that you can quickly download on resistance training for abs and it includes a 7 part video series on dieting, cardio, and supplements for fat loss and ultimately abs. The cool thing about it is the whole thing is free (e-book + video series). Anyway…
Having said all that I absolutely know that you can get a six pack in a relatively timely manner if you really want it bad enough. So without further ado…
The 7 Commandments Of How To Get A Six Pack or How To Get Abs For Dummies
The 1st Commandment: Thou Shall Lose The Body Fat!
You may not consider yourself fat and you might even have less fat on you than most people walking this green earth but you wanted to know how to get a six pack so if you’re of average musculature then you’re going to have to get down to at least 10% body fat for them to begin to be noticeable and down to 7% for them to really start looking good.
Despite the plethora of garbage fat loss advice you might find on the net. There’s only a few fat loss methods that have proven to be effective across the board, while still promoting good health (very important). For the purpose of this post I’ll keep it simple. It’s going to come down to two things. A good (paleoesque as I like to call it) diet, and HIIT cardio (done in a specific way I have my clients do that’s way more effective than traditional HIIT cardio programs). HIIT being: High Intensity Interval Training.
With that in mind let’s move on to…
The 2nd Commandment: Thou Shall Control Thine Carb Intake
Sticking to the theme of fat loss you’re going to have to make some dietary changes if you want abs of steel. A simple protocol to follow is to stick to nothing but lean meats, fibrous veggies, fibrous fruits (GOOD: Berries, Apples,Figs – BAD: Mango’s, Pinnaple, Honeydew, Peaches) and conservative portions of nuts. Meaning you’ll have very little in the way of carbs. Now i realize this can be a bit hard at first but believe me it gets much easier with time. Intermittent Fasting is also a great approach to fat loss that if done correctly (and that’s very important) can both spare muscle tissue and accelerate fat loss. Not to mention the fact that intermittent fasting can help reduce carbohydrate cravings making your life just that much easier.
Now I’m not saying that you have to exclude all the delicacies of life but you do have to make a little sacrifice here (less so if you do intermittent fasting).
Another easy and very effective tactic is to have a carb cutoff late in the afternoon/early evening. That way you can eat carbs like you usually do during the day except you’d cut them off around 5 or 6pm and not have any carbs until the following morning. That way you’re not consuming carbohydrates during the hours that they’re less likely to be used and thus more likely to be stored as fat.
The 3rd Commandment: Thou Shall Control Thine Calorie Intake
Still on the topic of fat loss is the subject of calorie cutting. Not everyone reading this article is in need of calorie cutting. In fact some guys actually need to bulk up. But for those who have a bit of pudge holding them back from six pack abs calorie cutting can sometimes be what’s needed. Before even considering calorie cutting I usually start by having my clients try intermittent fasting. For many that’s all they need to shed the fat. But when you’ve done that and you’re still not losing the fat then it’s usually because your calories are high during your non fasting hours. Be aware that some foods are more calorically dense than others and despite the volume that they take up they are chock full of calories. Examples of calorie dense foods are:
- Peanut butter (almond butter, macadamia butter or any other kind of butter for that matter)
- Nuts
- Avocados
- Crackers
- Chips
- Pizza
- Sweets (candy, cakes, sugar cereal, ice cream)
- Anything fatty
So as you can see even foods that we normally consider to be healthy (ex: nuts, avocados) can be very calorie dense. And while these foods might contain health promoting nutrients you still have to be careful to not over indulge in these foods as it’s very easy to get in loads of calories without even being aware of it.
The 4th Commandment: Thou Shall Intermittently Fast
Now as if I haven’t spoken about intermittent fasting enough, I’m going to talk about it a bit more. The basic premise of intermittent fasting is that you fast intermittently… As obvious as that may sound that’s really all there is to it.Where it gets complicated is that there’s loads of various fasting protocols all with varied levels of effectiveness in regards to fat loss. Some say that you should fast 20 hours a day and only eat 4 hours out of the day while others think you should fast for 16 hours and eat for 8 hours of the day. I’ve tried plenty of protocols on both myself and my clients over the ears and hands down the most effective protocol is this one(link coming soon).
If you really want to know how to get a six pack or how to get abs that really turn heads intermittent fasting is your ticket.
The 5th Commandment: Thou Shall Perform HIIT Cardio
HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) pretty much entails performing shorter cardio sessions that consist of short bursts of work that raises your heart rate followed by “active recovery” wherein you slow down and allow yourself to recover while still in movement (or completely resting if you’re still quite out of shape).
This form of cardio is much more effective than the LSD (long slow distance) type cardio you see being espoused so frequently. There are plenty of studies to prove this but more importantly I know this to be the case because I’ve helped a couple of hundred of people lose weight first hand (I’m a personal trainer FYI) and I’ve seen how much more effective HIIT is than almost any other form of cardio. I recommend doing doing 3-5 HIIT sessions a week depending on how intense you are able to push yourself and how much weight training you’re doing.
The 6th Commandment : Thou Shall Workout Thine Abs
This one is a total no brainer. No shit you’re going to have to workout your abs. Working out your abs isn’t going to solve all your problems though because despite how thick, strong and well developed your abs are they aren’t going to show unless you’re lean enough. Despite that it helps to train your abs because when they’re well developed they tend to start showing earlier and they just plain look better than underdeveloped six pack abs that only show because they’re on an extremely skinny frame. I recommend you train your abs heavy (of course heavy is relative to how strong you are) and in the 10-15 rep range. Taking your reps higher than that, as many people do recommend, only ends up delaying potential strength gains that could be had and only serves to cause sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (your muscles ability to hold fluid in the sarcoplasm) vs myofibrillar hypertrophy (actual muscle tissue growth). Some of my favorite ab exercises are hanging leg raises (as see in the picture above), and Dragon Flags, sometimes known as body levers (demonstrated in the picture below):
The 7th Commandment: Thou Shall Lifteth Heavy Weights
Now you don’t really need to lift weights to have abs but having a more muscular body helps with not only attaining a more attractive body but it also helps you lose fat and keep fat off. When you carry more muscle your body tends to burn more calories at rest therefor speeding up your metabolism and making it easier for you to lose fat. Now depending on your individual goals how you structure your weight lifting routine could vary so I won’t go into that too much here but do know that it will help you lose fat faster and thus speed up your path to a six pack.
Conclusion
There you have it “The 7 Commandments Of How To Get A Six Pack or How To Get Abs For Dummies”. I just gave you a rough guideline of just about everything you can start doing today to begin your path towards abs of steel. Like everything in life information can only do so much so get your ass up and get to work! And don’t forget to pick up your copy of “Abs Blueprint”. You might as well…it’s free.
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