The "Manly Physique" Protocol

donnessa

New member
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:
  • Ring pull-up
  • Clean & press
  • KB swing
  • Push-up
Ring pull-up: Works biceps, back, core. I have gymnast rings hung from the ceiling of my home office. They're great because they offer more freedom with arm/hand position. A more neutral hand position puts less strain on the shoulders. I do fairly strict pull-ups, no kipping.

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
Basically, the pull-ups and push-ups have matching reverse ladders, inspired by the Fighter Pull-Up Program article from Pavel at StrongFirst. I could hit about 10 consecutive pull-ups before starting this, and I started my ladders at 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and increased from there. I simply matched the rep count on push-ups. Start where you're at. Even if it's 1, 0, 0, 0, 0. Even if that 1 is a negative pull-up.

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
Clean & Press
  • 5X20kg L, 5X20kg R
  • 5X24kg L, 5X24kg R
  • 5X24kg L, 5X24kg R
  • 5X20kg L, 5X20kg R
  • 5X20kg L, 5X20kg R
Swing
  • 10X24kg
  • 10X24kg
  • 10X24kg
  • 10X24kg
  • 10X24kg
Push-Ups
  • 6
  • 5
  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
Here's what I did this morning...

Pull-Ups
  • 7
  • 7
  • 6
  • 5
  • 4
Clean & Press
  • 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
  • 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
  • 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
  • 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
  • 5X24kg R, 5X24kg L
Swing (note that I previously mentioned increasing reps here, as of this morning)
  • 12X24kg
  • 12X32kg
  • 12X32kg
  • 12X32kg
  • 12X24kg
Push-Ups
  • 7
  • 7
  • 6
  • 5
  • 4
My reference on my 3x5 card used to track the day is:


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]
 
@donnessa 36 year old here, with a 9 month old. I recently switched back to 90% kettlebell work (from mostly barbell and bodyweight) in order to squeeze my workouts in before he gets up in an effort to regain my "manly physique" I've let slide the past couple of years. Just wanted to say that this sounds amazing, and exactly what I needed right now.

No critiques from me, this looks perfect. I'll probably swap out the push ups for incline barbell bench press with a constant 10RM weight, as I coming off a 100 push ups a day routine and they don't do much for me anymore, and I can just leave it set up in the basement.

Edit: Just forgot to properly say "thanks for sharing!"
 
@dawn16 You're welcome for sharing! It's been post-kids that I've reclaimed my fitness, too. It's easy to let things slip when you are focused on starting a family, supporting a pregnancy, and all that entails.

Sounds like a smart swap for the bench press, too. I'd be ready to swap out if I was doing 100 push-ups per day, too.
 
@jubilee58 I transitioned pretty much straight out of S&S into this. So it's been a continuous progression.

In terms of overall body shape, my arms and lats (two areas targeted most here) are growing. I notice my arms completely fill my sleeves in more and more of my t-shirts.

Strength as measured by capacity to do the lifts here is growing. I don't do a lot of testing of things like 1RM (sold my power rack a year or two ago) so I can't speak to that.

Overall well-being is great. The timed component makes this pretty solid for cardio conditioning, too. I'm soaked but not dead by the end of the workout.

I'm not a runner and don't like running very much. But the other day one of my kids forgot his COVID mask and realized about halfway to school. (It's about .5 miles.) I was able to run home (up a big hill), grab the mask, and run back to meet the kids as they were getting to the school (so about .75 miles while they walked .25) pretty easily. I know that's not much of a run, but when my fitness is tested I find it pretty easy to meet the challenge. I feel very comfortable and capable moving my body as needed. I also often go through the day and just notice that I feel strong.

Again, not sure how this compares to when I was on S&S because I was also making progress there (and am still benefiting from it), but I continue to feel very capable in my body.

A big part of my initial reason for switching off S&S (at least temporarily) was my rotator cuff. It wasn't terrible, but it was persistently painful. And I could feel it wasn't going to get better if I kept doing 32kg TGUs. So I needed something else to rehab and build strength in my shoulder, without straining the rotator cuff. The press with my elbow mostly forward plus the push-up with hands/elbows at my sides are great for that. And has allowed my rotator cuff to heal.

RE squats: Eh, I guess you've found a hole. But then again this was designed to give upper body strength while keeping the posterior chain tight. There's a lot of work in the glutes and some in the legs to do 50 cleans and 50 swings, and when I push a little bit to give the press momentum, I'm using the legs a bit, too. Not the same as a full squat, but it's been fine for my goals, for this program.

Also, I'm pretty active and between biking and walking a lot, plus always having bigger legs since playing hockey growing up, I'm not really looking to grow there. I definitely don't have chicken legs!

If you wanted to add squats, you could borrow the goblet squat warm-up from S&S, though I'd probably avoid the curl at the bottom if you're going straight into pull-ups after. Or find some other way to work them in. (Off days? If you're doing this MWF maybe T/Th could be squats, using the step loading approach. It might reduce your recovery in your arms if you're doing heavy squats but if they're a priority for you, it could work. Alternately, you could do unweighted pistol squats or with a smaller KB if you need it for counter-balance -- like I do.)
 
@donnessa This is one hell of a plan comrade. Reading your post was like reading my own mind, and I appreciate you putting in the time to put your plan on the web.

My only question is whether you've thought about adding loaded carries to your plan? Like a several minute smoker where you carry two kettlebells around your place. I've found it helps builds bigger traps while also targeting your biceps and grip strength. Even walking in circles feels like a full body exercise as your entire body is tensed.

Thanks for the plan! Can't wait to try it after my current program.
 
@latin2112 I haven't. Haven't really gotten into loaded carries. But I understand why some people love them. Much of what I do is about keeping it minimal, or, to choose Pavel's language, Simple.

In the other comments where folks have asked about squats, I've suggested you could find a way to work those in off days. I think you could do T/Th squats and loaded carries without being too disruptive to this M/W/F routine.

Again, this is what I've been doing that's worked for me, to meet the goals I laid out. And I wanted to preserve it for posterity as well as share it as a way of giving back to the subreddit, in part because many of my decisions around protecting/healing my rotator cuff came out of posts here.
 
@grace1 Tried it and didn't like it. One of my main goals of this program is to work the upper torso (shoulders, chest, arms) and the squat thrusters transferred too much power generation into the legs and butt (away from the desired muscles). It's a fine exercise, it just doesn't do I what I want for this program. I'll stand by this program not needing squats to fulfill my goals for it, but you could certainly do things like squat and loaded carries (per other comments) on off-days since they move the focus to other muscle groups.
 
@donnessa Nice, this seems like a pretty well rounded and well thought out program, I like it!

Do you find you run out of push up progression quickly? Could you do ring dips to turn up the intensity?

Where's the squats man? That manly physique needs some wheels
 
@dawn16 I actually find that because of the C&P my ability to do the push-ups as the last exercise here is significantly lower than at other times. And with only 30 seconds per set, it's pretty much back-to-back. If I keep progressing, I'll have to change it up. Ring dips would be intense and I couldn't match my pull-up rep counts by any stretch. And the way I do it now, I just do the same amount of push-ups as pull-ups. This isn't meant to be dogmatic. If something else works better for you, do it!

Squats response from another comment above:

RE squats: Eh, I guess you've found a hole. But then again this was designed to give upper body strength while keeping the posterior chain tight. There's a lot of work in the glutes and some in the legs to do 50 cleans and 50 swings, and when I push a little bit to give the press momentum, I'm using the legs a bit, too. Not the same as a full squat, but it's been fine for my goals, for this program.

Also, I'm pretty active and between biking and walking a lot, plus always having bigger legs since playing hockey growing up, I'm not really looking to grow there. I definitely don't have chicken legs!

If you wanted to add squats, you could borrow the goblet squat warm-up from S&S, though I'd probably avoid the curl at the bottom if you're going straight into pull-ups after. Or find some other way to work them in. (Off days? If you're doing this MWF maybe T/Th could be squats, using the step loading approach. It might reduce your recovery in your arms if you're doing heavy squats but if they're a priority for you, it could work. Alternately, you could do unweighted pistol squats or with a smaller KB if you need it for counter-balance -- like I do.)
 
@donnessa Ah yeah that makes sense I guess your strength work is the clean and press and the push ups are just filling in volume.

I tend to alternate so either horizontal or vertical pushing is given more emphasis in a particular session. Helps add variety.

Anyway, I like it, I like the principles behind the whole thing. Nice setup.
 
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