Longtime lurker, first time poster. My name is Roy and I do kettlebells. 
What follows is my self-designed protocol for building a more "manly physique" -- that I've been running for the last 3 months to good results.
\"Manly Physique!\"
[note: my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek in calling this "Manly Physique," but there's a reason why you clicked]
If we're really honest with ourselves, one of the big reasons we do fitness is because we want to "look good naked." Don't know whose marketing team came up with that slogan first, but they nailed it.
And research has found that women tend to find men most attractive when they have this version of a "manly physique"... A V-torso, smaller waist, bigger shoulders, and nice arms. Strong but not swole. Swimmer or crossfit body. Or, better, a kettlebell body!
(Bonus, that also tends to be a healthy body if you don't take anything to extremes.)
Getting this body mostly involves managing your food intake, plus strengthening your arms, shoulders, upper back, and core, plus keeping that posterior chain nice and tight.
The great news is that when you do this using kettlebell and bodyweight exercises similar to what I've laid out below, you also have very capable overall fitness and strength, and can move your body easily.
So I developed a KB/bodyweight workout plan with these goals in mind. And have been running it for about 3 months and loving it. It's very sustainable, and I'm seeing continuous development of that "manly physique." (I can't NOT put that in quotes.)
At 38, I probably have the overall most "Manly Physique" I've ever had, even compared to when I played hockey as a teenager.
The exercises:
First, this is based on Pavel/StrongFirst principles, especially Simple & Sinister. I was doing Simple & Sinister for a while, and hit a wall tied to having a recurring rotator cuff issue (flaring up because of throwing a football, but TGUs weren't helping). So I also needed something that would get the results while allowing the rotator cuff to heal. (Definitely helped by posts in this subreddit.)
It's 4 exercises, done in this order:
Clean & press: Clean works almost everything, press mostly works triceps, shoulders, and core, some lats. I keep my elbows in front of me on the press to protect my shoulders. I'll admit I tend to do a little push-press to give the bell momentum, especially when adapting to increased weight.
KB swing: Works almost everything. Hardstyle all the way. Get your technique right.
Push-up: I use handles due to an old wrist injury. For the shoulders, I also keep my hands down more toward my side, so they look more like tricep push-ups. I play with weight distribution from set to set though to target different parts of my chest.
The sets/reps per exercise:
This is designed to prevent lactic acid buildup and DOMS. While also increasing strength on KB lifts plus reps on bodyweight. It tends to work. I'm pretty much never sore after this training, only after other exercise.
The main principles used in the programming are:
To increase rep count on the reverse ladders, you start by adding 1 to the smallest set. Then you add 1 to the next set up (working backwards), and the next. e.g. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 becomes 5, 4, 3, 2, 2 becomes 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, etc. [Bold to show change.] Aim to increase as often as you can, when you feel you could probably hit another rep. This was every day early, but has slowed to every 2-4 workouts recently. Then again, I started at 15 pull-ups per workout 3 months ago, and I did 29 this morning.
For the clean & press, I do 5x5 sets for each arm. 5 sets of 5 reps each, alternating left and right (for 10 sets total). Each workout, I start with a different arm -- if I start left this time, I start right next time.
I do step-loading as taught in S&S 2.0. Which means every 4 weeks I increase the weight of one of the sets (both hands). Increase set 2 first, then set 3, then 4, then 5, and finally set 1. So at first if it's 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, the first increase would be 20kg, 24kg, 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, then 20kg, 24kg, 24kg, 20kg, 20kg.
(Side note RE equipment on hand. My main bells are 16kg, 20kg, 24kg, and 32kg. I have one each so no 2-hand work. Also, in stepping from 24 kg to 32 kg on C&P, I may do 8 week steps instead of 4 due to the 8 kg vs 4 kg jump.)
For the swings, I do 5 sets of 2-hand swings, 10 reps per set. (Although today I played with 12 reps per set to increase volume. Considering doing the 10,000-swing challenge and want to maybe work up cardio capacity a bit beforehand.) Likewise with swings I do step-loading every 4 weeks. I can do a lot bigger bells on 2-hand Swings than on Clean & press, so the weights are different.
Putting it all together:
Here's a sample of an early workout, based on where I was at at the time.
Pull-Ups
Pull-Ups
7 O
53 O O
53 O
7 O
7 O
53 O O
70 O
7 O
6 O
53 O O
70 O
6 O
5 O
53 O O
70 O
5 O
4 O
53 O O
53 O
4 O
5:34 6:00
Notes about this: This workout tracking is hand-written so very minimalist. Columns, in order, are: Pull-up, Clean & press, Swing, Push-up. Yeah, I use pounds not kg when tracking it for myself. Each O is a circle I can check off when I'm done. The times at the bottom are start and end times. And I enter everything into a spreadsheet when I'm done. I also draw a small tick mark at the top of the top left or right circle for clean & press, for whatever hand I'm starting with.
This is a couple lines from my spreadsheet tracking the daily workout. Color-coding represents KB weight.
For time:
Now to the TIME part... While I'm all for leaving space between the sets, I'm often doing this right before my kids get up in the AM so I want to get it done in limited time, too.
So, I figured out I need about 2 minutes for each pull-up set, 1 minute (per hand) for each clean & press set, 1 minute per swing set, and 30 seconds per push-up set. Notably, after the last pull-up, I only give myself until the end of the minute.
And I'm basically running this like EMOM (every minute on the minute) with the pull-ups being 2 minutes and the push-ups being 30 seconds.
That means I'm consistently done with the above in 26 minutes.
Finally, recovery & deload:
Short-term recovery: I find that 3 days per week is working for me, for this, for now. You might be able to do it 4-5 days per week, with the potential that it could actually take longer to increase strength but you'd burn more calories. I do this M, W, F before the world wakes up, and feel great for the rest of the day (and throughout the week).
Long-term recovery: I mentioned above that I'm increasing weight every 4 weeks. That's not the entire picture. I found when doing that consistently following S&S 2.0, I experienced accumulated fatigue that hampered my long-term progress.
So I've built in deload weeks. After 3 weeks on, I do 1 week in deload/active recovery.
I don't increase my pull-up or push-up rep counts during this time, but I also don't decrease them. I just keep doing what I was at.
For the C&P and Swing, I do drop down a bit in weight, but maintain rep/set counts. Noting what my most recent weights were at, last week's recovery week was C&P with 16kg bells (from mixed 20&24) and swings with 24kg (from mixed 24&32). The big deload for me is in the C&P. I'm not pushing myself hard on the 2-hand swings, so I don't deload as much.
After my deload week, I increase the weight on C&P and Swing as explained above, and can resume increasing reps on Pull-ups and Push-ups as I am able.
Overall reflection:
This is a very sustainable workout. It's been meeting my general goal of improving my "Manly Physique" and building strength as evidenced in which bells I can handle for which exercises, as well as my rep counts on pull-ups especially. I haven't meticulously measured, but I do think my body fat percentage has dropped slightly.
My rotator cuff has gone from a persistent 2 on a 0-10 pain scale to a 0, over about 2 months. While consistently doing lifts that work my shoulders.
If there's a downside, it's that after about 90 days I'm getting a little bored. Still think it's a great protocol, plan to keep doing it for the immediate future, and will keep it in the rotation (like S&S 2.0 is in the rotation). But I'm also finding myself drawn to maybe taking a month off soon to tackle Dan John's 10,000-swing challenge, and perhaps returning to this afterwards.
I will answer questions as I can, and let me know if anything is confusing enough to be unusable. Also let me know if you're going to do this.
tl/dr: I know it's long, but it's way shorter than S&S for an entire protocol, so just read the freaking post.
[edit 1: added pictures, edit 2: moved pictures for visibility/so they weren't buried @ the bottom]
What follows is my self-designed protocol for building a more "manly physique" -- that I've been running for the last 3 months to good results.
\"Manly Physique!\"
[note: my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek in calling this "Manly Physique," but there's a reason why you clicked]
If we're really honest with ourselves, one of the big reasons we do fitness is because we want to "look good naked." Don't know whose marketing team came up with that slogan first, but they nailed it.
And research has found that women tend to find men most attractive when they have this version of a "manly physique"... A V-torso, smaller waist, bigger shoulders, and nice arms. Strong but not swole. Swimmer or crossfit body. Or, better, a kettlebell body!
(Bonus, that also tends to be a healthy body if you don't take anything to extremes.)
Getting this body mostly involves managing your food intake, plus strengthening your arms, shoulders, upper back, and core, plus keeping that posterior chain nice and tight.
The great news is that when you do this using kettlebell and bodyweight exercises similar to what I've laid out below, you also have very capable overall fitness and strength, and can move your body easily.
So I developed a KB/bodyweight workout plan with these goals in mind. And have been running it for about 3 months and loving it. It's very sustainable, and I'm seeing continuous development of that "manly physique." (I can't NOT put that in quotes.)
At 38, I probably have the overall most "Manly Physique" I've ever had, even compared to when I played hockey as a teenager.
The exercises:
First, this is based on Pavel/StrongFirst principles, especially Simple & Sinister. I was doing Simple & Sinister for a while, and hit a wall tied to having a recurring rotator cuff issue (flaring up because of throwing a football, but TGUs weren't helping). So I also needed something that would get the results while allowing the rotator cuff to heal. (Definitely helped by posts in this subreddit.)
It's 4 exercises, done in this order:
- Ring pull-up
- Clean & press
- KB swing
- Push-up
Clean & press: Clean works almost everything, press mostly works triceps, shoulders, and core, some lats. I keep my elbows in front of me on the press to protect my shoulders. I'll admit I tend to do a little push-press to give the bell momentum, especially when adapting to increased weight.
KB swing: Works almost everything. Hardstyle all the way. Get your technique right.
Push-up: I use handles due to an old wrist injury. For the shoulders, I also keep my hands down more toward my side, so they look more like tricep push-ups. I play with weight distribution from set to set though to target different parts of my chest.
The sets/reps per exercise:
This is designed to prevent lactic acid buildup and DOMS. While also increasing strength on KB lifts plus reps on bodyweight. It tends to work. I'm pretty much never sore after this training, only after other exercise.
The main principles used in the programming are:
- Lower-rep sets
- Reverse ladder on body weight exercises
- Step loading for kettlebell weight
To increase rep count on the reverse ladders, you start by adding 1 to the smallest set. Then you add 1 to the next set up (working backwards), and the next. e.g. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 becomes 5, 4, 3, 2, 2 becomes 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, etc. [Bold to show change.] Aim to increase as often as you can, when you feel you could probably hit another rep. This was every day early, but has slowed to every 2-4 workouts recently. Then again, I started at 15 pull-ups per workout 3 months ago, and I did 29 this morning.
For the clean & press, I do 5x5 sets for each arm. 5 sets of 5 reps each, alternating left and right (for 10 sets total). Each workout, I start with a different arm -- if I start left this time, I start right next time.
I do step-loading as taught in S&S 2.0. Which means every 4 weeks I increase the weight of one of the sets (both hands). Increase set 2 first, then set 3, then 4, then 5, and finally set 1. So at first if it's 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, the first increase would be 20kg, 24kg, 20kg, 20kg, 20kg, then 20kg, 24kg, 24kg, 20kg, 20kg.
(Side note RE equipment on hand. My main bells are 16kg, 20kg, 24kg, and 32kg. I have one each so no 2-hand work. Also, in stepping from 24 kg to 32 kg on C&P, I may do 8 week steps instead of 4 due to the 8 kg vs 4 kg jump.)
For the swings, I do 5 sets of 2-hand swings, 10 reps per set. (Although today I played with 12 reps per set to increase volume. Considering doing the 10,000-swing challenge and want to maybe work up cardio capacity a bit beforehand.) Likewise with swings I do step-loading every 4 weeks. I can do a lot bigger bells on 2-hand Swings than on Clean & press, so the weights are different.
Putting it all together:
Here's a sample of an early workout, based on where I was at at the time.
Pull-Ups
- 6
- 5
- 4
- 3
- 2
- 5X20kg L, 5X20kg R
- 5X24kg L, 5X24kg R
- 5X24kg L, 5X24kg R
- 5X20kg L, 5X20kg R
- 5X20kg L, 5X20kg R
- 10X24kg
- 10X24kg
- 10X24kg
- 10X24kg
- 10X24kg
- 6
- 5
- 4
- 3
- 2
Pull-Ups
- 7
- 7
- 6
- 5
- 4
- 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
- 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
- 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
- 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
- 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
- 12X24kg
- 12X32kg
- 12X32kg
- 12X32kg
- 12X24kg
- 7
- 7
- 6
- 5
- 4
7 O
53 O O
53 O
7 O
7 O
53 O O
70 O
7 O
6 O
53 O O
70 O
6 O
5 O
53 O O
70 O
5 O
4 O
53 O O
53 O
4 O
5:34 6:00
Notes about this: This workout tracking is hand-written so very minimalist. Columns, in order, are: Pull-up, Clean & press, Swing, Push-up. Yeah, I use pounds not kg when tracking it for myself. Each O is a circle I can check off when I'm done. The times at the bottom are start and end times. And I enter everything into a spreadsheet when I'm done. I also draw a small tick mark at the top of the top left or right circle for clean & press, for whatever hand I'm starting with.
This is a couple lines from my spreadsheet tracking the daily workout. Color-coding represents KB weight.
For time:
Now to the TIME part... While I'm all for leaving space between the sets, I'm often doing this right before my kids get up in the AM so I want to get it done in limited time, too.
So, I figured out I need about 2 minutes for each pull-up set, 1 minute (per hand) for each clean & press set, 1 minute per swing set, and 30 seconds per push-up set. Notably, after the last pull-up, I only give myself until the end of the minute.
And I'm basically running this like EMOM (every minute on the minute) with the pull-ups being 2 minutes and the push-ups being 30 seconds.
That means I'm consistently done with the above in 26 minutes.
Finally, recovery & deload:
Short-term recovery: I find that 3 days per week is working for me, for this, for now. You might be able to do it 4-5 days per week, with the potential that it could actually take longer to increase strength but you'd burn more calories. I do this M, W, F before the world wakes up, and feel great for the rest of the day (and throughout the week).
Long-term recovery: I mentioned above that I'm increasing weight every 4 weeks. That's not the entire picture. I found when doing that consistently following S&S 2.0, I experienced accumulated fatigue that hampered my long-term progress.
So I've built in deload weeks. After 3 weeks on, I do 1 week in deload/active recovery.
I don't increase my pull-up or push-up rep counts during this time, but I also don't decrease them. I just keep doing what I was at.
For the C&P and Swing, I do drop down a bit in weight, but maintain rep/set counts. Noting what my most recent weights were at, last week's recovery week was C&P with 16kg bells (from mixed 20&24) and swings with 24kg (from mixed 24&32). The big deload for me is in the C&P. I'm not pushing myself hard on the 2-hand swings, so I don't deload as much.
After my deload week, I increase the weight on C&P and Swing as explained above, and can resume increasing reps on Pull-ups and Push-ups as I am able.
Overall reflection:
This is a very sustainable workout. It's been meeting my general goal of improving my "Manly Physique" and building strength as evidenced in which bells I can handle for which exercises, as well as my rep counts on pull-ups especially. I haven't meticulously measured, but I do think my body fat percentage has dropped slightly.
My rotator cuff has gone from a persistent 2 on a 0-10 pain scale to a 0, over about 2 months. While consistently doing lifts that work my shoulders.
If there's a downside, it's that after about 90 days I'm getting a little bored. Still think it's a great protocol, plan to keep doing it for the immediate future, and will keep it in the rotation (like S&S 2.0 is in the rotation). But I'm also finding myself drawn to maybe taking a month off soon to tackle Dan John's 10,000-swing challenge, and perhaps returning to this afterwards.
I will answer questions as I can, and let me know if anything is confusing enough to be unusable. Also let me know if you're going to do this.
tl/dr: I know it's long, but it's way shorter than S&S for an entire protocol, so just read the freaking post.
[edit 1: added pictures, edit 2: moved pictures for visibility/so they weren't buried @ the bottom]