How to build an aesthetic physique in 2-3 years

I’ve been lifting for almost 8 years.

And for the first 5, my progress was garbage.

I kinda suspected it at the time, as I didn’t look much different, and I wasn’t getting much stronger in the gym.

But I didn’t want to look reality in the eye, so I never really looked back at my progress picture folder.

Then one day in May 2023, I sat down and went through all my old progress pics, my training logs, and my bodyweight tracker.

It confirmed what I already knew deep down:

My transformation sucked.

Especially considering how long I had been training.

After that, I decided to take things seriously. I consumed an insane amount of content to figure out what actually works, dialed in my training, and got my diet on point.

Since then, I’ve probably made more progress in less than 3 years than I did in the first 5.

Now I want to break everything down for you in the simplest way possible so you don’t waste years like I did.

If you actually follow this and get your training right, I genuinely think you could build an aesthetic physique in the next 2–3 years.

Let’s start with the thing that I screwed up most, although it’s the easiest to get right: nutrition.

1. Nutrition

Training stimulates our muscles to grow, while nutrition actually builds them.

Without the right nutrition, our bodies simply won’t grow (or very little), no matter how good our training is.

Good news is, dialing in your nutrition is very simple.

Good nutrition basically comes down to consuming the right macros and appropriate calories depending on your situation.

When I started out, I ate way too little protein. Most of the time, I ate like 100g per day. At the same time, I couldn’t gain weight because I wasn’t eating enough calories.

As a result, my newbie gains stopped very early and my muscle growth stalled for years.

Thankfully, all of that changed once I finally had enough money to buy my own groceries.

So, let’s go over how to do it right from the start so you don’t have to waste years like I did.

1.1 Macros

The most important thing to do is to consume an adequate amount of protein.

The rest is secondary and doesn’t matter nearly as much to muscle growth.

Explained simply, protein builds muscle, fats support health, and carbs provide energy.

This is what I do for my macro amounts and distribution:

• Protein: 1–1.5g per lb of bodyweight

• Fat: 0.3–0.5g per lb of bodyweight

• Carbs: Fill in the rest of my calories

If you’re more of a beginner to training, you can try going for the higher end of the protein range, as you have the most muscle growth potential, which means you can likely synthesize more muscle protein than a more advanced person.

1.2 Meal timing

You don’t really need to care about this, but if you want the extra few percentage points:

• Protein timing = 3–6 meals with evenly distributed protein evenly spaced throughout the day

• Carb timing = Most of them around your workout (before & after)

This will not increase your gains by much, but it’s easy to do, so why not grab the easy wins?

1.3 Application

Here’s how to put everything into practice:

Step 1) Find your calorie needs

To do that, use a TDEE calculator.

Determine your estimated maintenance calories.

If you already know what calorie intake maintains your bodyweight from experience, even better.

Step 2) Adjust your calories depending on your goal

1. If Goal = Lose Fat → Eat 250–500 kcal below maintenance and try to not lose more than 0.5-1 lb (~0.25-0.5 kg) per week until you’re at your desired body fat %.

2. If Goal = Build Muscle → Eat 50–250 kcal above maintenance. Don’t gain more than 0.5-1 kg (~1.1-2.2 lbs, or let’s just say ~1-2 lbs) per month.

Step 3) Determine your protein intake

Take your body weight in pounds and multiply it by 1-1.5, to get your target protein intake in grams.

For example, if you weigh 160 lbs, you could consume 160-240g of protein.

Step 4) Determine meal amount and protein amount per meal

Let’s say you wanted to eat 4 meals. That would amount to 40g of protein per meal (160g/4=40g).

Step 5) Determine a high-quality protein source for each meal

What are high-quality proteins?

• Low-fat dairy products (Greek yogurt, low-fat cheese, low-fat milk, etc.)

• Low-fat meats (chicken, turkey, lean beef, etc.)

• Fish

• Eggs

• Protein Supplements (Casein or Whey)

• Vegan sources

Pick at least 1 per meal.

Step 6) Fulfill the protein amount per meal

Consume as much of the high-quality protein sources to fulfill your desired protein amount per meal.

You don’t have to be autistic about this, one meal can have 30g and another 50g, so long as your total protein intake is high enough.

I’d suggest plugging this into a calorie tracker to really see how much protein you’re consuming. Good calorie trackers are MacroFactor, Cronometer, Myfitnesspal, etc.

If you’re consuming the same meals every day, you’d only have to do this once. (That’s how I do it. I really don’t care to consume different foods every day, which makes my routine and grocery shopping much easier.)

Step 7) Build a meal around the protein source

Just pick foods that you want to consume with the high-quality protein source.

Do this for all of your meals until you’ve fulfilled your desired macro intakes.

Quick tip: If you don’t have any ideas for good meals to consume, ask ChatGPT for recommendations.

Try to go for minimally or non-processed foods like whole grains, fruits, and veggies for carbs, and monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat sources like nuts, olive oil, avocado, and fish.

Also, you should probably try to make sure you’re consuming enough of each micronutrients. This is not important for muscle growth but important for health, longevity, mood, and energy.

1.4 TLDR: Nutrition

1. Find your maintenance calories (TDEE calculator)

2. Adjust your calories depending on your goal

   1. build muscle → +50-250 kcal (gain 0.5-1 kg/1-2 lbs per month)

   2. lose fat → -250-500 kcal (lose 0.25-0.5 kg/0.5-1 lb per week)

3. Determine your protein intake: 1-1.5 g/lb

4. Decide how many meals you want to eat

5. Divide your protein intake across those meals

6. Choose 1–3 high-quality protein sources per meal

7. Fulfill the protein amount per meal with that high-quality protein source

8. Build meals around the protein sources with high-quality carbs and fats

Use a calorie tracker like MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, or MacroFactor to plug this in.

If you eat the same stuff every day, you only have to track it once.

Easy enough, I hope.

Still overwhelmed? Just do this:

• consume 1-1.5 grams of protein per lb of bodyweight

• if you want to build muscle → consume 50-250 kcal above maintenance, and try not to gain more than 0.5-1 kg (very roughly 1-2 lbs) per month

• if you want to lose fat → consume 250-500 kcal below maintenance, and try not to lose more than 0.5-1 lb per week

That’s it.

If you were to just do this, you’d get at least 90% of the gains you could’ve gotten from your nutrition.

2. Training

Now let’s talk about training, arguably the more important part, and definitely harder to get right than nutrition (at least in my opinion).

Training stimulates our muscles to grow and determines by how much.

But it’s tricky: too little and you’re missing out on gains; too much and you’re inhibiting growth because recovery demand of existing muscle proteins can take away from the synthesis of new muscle proteins.

To grow muscle as fast as possible, we need to hit the sweet spot.

Thus, our number one goal should be to maximize the net workout stimulus.

The net workout stimulus refers to the raw workout stimulus minus recovery cost (e.g., muscle damage, fatigue, inflammation, etc.).

The higher the volume and intensity, the higher the workout stimulus.

But that’s only one part of the equation.

The higher the volume and intensity, the higher the recovery cost as well.

At first only very slightly, but it ramps up fast.

At some point, the recovery demands are so great that your body is busy only recovering damage.

That’s what’s known as the the Inverted-U hypothesis.

Early in my lifting journey my training was trash.

I was insanely motivated, but I was doing way too much to my detriment.

Looking back, if I had trained the way I do now, I think I would've reached my current physique 3x faster. So instead of taking 8 years, I would had it in 2-3 years or maybe even less.

That's how bad my old training was and how good my current system is (in my opinion, of course).

Here are a few things I was doing wrong at the time (maybe you can recognize yourself in some of these):

• I was doing a bunch of junk volume which netted my no extra stimulus, just a bunch of fatigue.

• I often found myself chasing the pump instead of progressing, especially on exercises that weren’t squat, bench, or deadlift (which leads me to my next point…)

• I overemphasized squat, bench, and deadlift because I looked up to David Laid so much, even though I would have much preferred looking jacked and being weak over being strong but looking skinny, which means my training wasn’t really aligned with my goals either.

• I rarely deloaded even though my training led to a lot of accumulating fatigue from excessive volume considering the training frequency and intensity I was running at the time. This made progressive overload quite literally impossible after a few weeks of consecutive training. And since I wasn’t deloading for months and maybe even years, I halted my progress almost entirely.

• And lastly, I didn’t focus on progressive overload nearly as much as I should have besides on the big three lifts (i.e., squat, bench, deadlift).

Combine these with my bad nutrition, and it’s no surprise my transformation was mediocre in those first five years.

Nowadays, I don’t need to deload because I’m not accumulating fatigue. That doesn’t mean I don’t experience fatigue from my workouts, but it’s so small that it doesn’t accumulate from workout to workout which makes progressive overload so much easier.

As a result, I am progressing more than ever, training is way more enjoyable than ever, I am building more muscle than ever, and all of that while training less.

(And slight spoiler: What is the number one indicator of muscle growth? Progressive overload, especially in the long-term and when doing 4 or more reps.)

In the follwing I want to go over ‘my way’ of trying to maximize the net workout stimulus.

2.1 My training style

I prioritize making my sets as stimulating as possible, then aim to perform as many of those effective sets as I can while still ensuring adequate recovery.

What does that mean?

Step 1) Make the sets as stimulating as possible

To make my sets as effective and stimulating as possible, here's what I do with regard to my training variables:

• Intensity = 0-1 reps in reserve (RIR) characterized by involuntary velocity loss

• Rest time = 3+ min to ensure full recovery between sets.

• Rep range = 4-12 (4-8 for compounds, 6-10 for accessories, you can go up to 12 if you want, I wouldn’t go higher than that)

• The target muscle should be the point of failure not any other muscle group. That means you should probably use straps for back exercises.

• Train with good form = explosive concentric & controlled eccentric. Try to maintain control at all times—no bouncing or excessive momentum.

Step 2) Do as many effective sets as possible

This is mostly subjective.

Some people’s muscle groups may recover faster than others.

At the same time, this is where prioritization preferences come into play.

If you want to prioritize chest growth, for example (as I want to), then doing more sets for your chest is recommended. But since recovery is limited, you will probably have to take away some sets from other muscle groups in return.

Imagine you have a recovery budget. You can only allocate sets to muscle groups until your budget is empty. If you want to prioritize certain muscle groups over the others, you need to take away from the volume of the other muscle groups.

Here are my current training volumes per week for each muscle group (measured in direct and indirect sets):

1. Chest = 12

2. Triceps = 12

3. Side delt = 8

4. Front delt = 8

5. Back = 6-9

6. Biceps = 6-9

7. Calves = 6-9

8. Quads = 6

9. Hamstrings = 6

10. Rear delt = 4

11. Abs = 4

So, when I measure my volume in direct and indirect sets (i.e., fractional sets), I do about 4-12 sets per muscle group per week.

Additionally, I try to stay below 14 sets per workout.

Summary:

• Intensity = 0-1 RIR (training velocity needs to slow down considerably in the last few reps)

• Frequency = 2-3 times per week

• Volume = Train with 4-12 sets per muscle group per week

• Not more than 14 sets per workout

• 0-1 RIR

• 2-3+ min rest

• 4-12 reps

This way I maximize workout stimulus and minimize recovery cost.

Important note: I’m not saying this is optimal, this is just what has been working for me.

2.2 Progressive Overload

The best sign that you’re growing muscle is progressive overload in the 4-12 rep range, especially in the long-term.

Let’s assume your nutrition is dialed in, and you don’t have chronic sleep deprivation…

If you’re having a hard time progressively overloading, then either your sets aren’t stimulating enough, or you’re doing too much.

1. If you’re not experiencing involuntary velocity loss on a given set of 4-12 reps, you’re probably not close enough to failure most of the time to stimulate your muscles to grow and get stronger.

2. If your sets are close enough to failure to stimulate muscle growth, and you’re still not progressing, then you have to be doing too much volume to recover from.

It might be a hard pill to swallow, but for the first 5-6 years of my lifting journey, I have been doing way too much volume.

My sets were hard and effective for the most part, but I was doing way too much to really allow myself to progress.

2.3 Designing your own training program

Step 1) Pick a split (frequency)

There are many to choose from, but I’d pick one where I train each muscle group at least 2-3 times per week.

Here are some splits you could do:

• Upper Body, Lower Body → 4x, 5x, or 6x per week

• Push, Pull, Legs → 6x per week

• Upper, Lower, Push, Pull, Legs → 5x per week

• Full Body → 2x, 3x, or 4x per week

• Full Body Every Other Day (FBEOD) → 3.5x per week

Personally, I do Upper/Lower 5x a week. So, 3x Upper and 2x Lower.

Step 2) Determine volume

In terms of sets per workout and sets per muscle group per week.

Personally, I don’t like doing more than 14 sets per workout and 4-12 sets per muscle group per week to maximize stimulus while minimizing fatigue.

Step 3) Volume considerations

If you have preferences or priorities you want to train more, plan to do more sets for them.

You can see how I prioritized my muscle groups above when I talked about my volume for each muscle group per week.

Step 4) Picking exercises

To make it as simple as possible, just pick the exercises you like doing the most for each muscle group.

If you don’t like the exercise, you will probably give less effort which will make the sets less effective.

Step 5) Determining exercise order

Place exercises first that train muscle groups you want to grow the most.

I would also put heavy multi-joint movements first and do isolation single-joint exercises later.

Furhter, you can consider not doing all exercises for one muscle group back-to-back, but letting the muscle group recover, and maybe train an antagonistic muscle group inbetween before hitting the same muscle group again.

Here’s an example:

I want to grow my chest the most, so I start with some sort of chest press first.

After that, I switch to a back exercise to let my chest recover and then go into a chest fly variation after that.

Step 6) Determining rep range and volume per exercise

Personally, I do 4-8 for multi-joint compound exercises and 6-10 for single joint isolation exercises.

I don’t like doing more than 12 reps because that’s more fatiguing, more annoying, I need to use less weight, and I have less motor unit recruitment at the start of the movement than when training heavier loads and lower reps.

In terms of volume, I usually do 2-3 sets per exercise, never more.

Some more considerations when designing your training program:

At the end of the day, when it comes to picking your training split, exercises, exercise order, etc. just do whatever’s the most fun for you.

The more enjoyable the program, the more effort you will train with.

Yes, even if it means doing less ‘optimal’ exercises, for example.

In the end, you’ll end up being more effective despite a possibly less ‘optimal’ training program because you have more joy, more consistency, and give more effort.

2.4 TLDR: Training

If I had to boil training down to its simplest form, this would be it:

1. Train hard (0-1 RIR, which should come with significant velocity loss at the end of each set)

2. Progressively overload (reps or weight) as often as possible on every exercise

3. Don’t do so much volume that you can’t recover

That’s it.

Hope you enjoyed this and got value from it.

P.S. if you want me to help you build an aesthetic physique as fast as possible without wasting time, you can book a call, and we will talk about if it makes sense working together → https://cal.com/jonas-hebbel/discovery-call