There's nothing wrong with doing things because you want to look good

There is a fashion, among men, for workout programs that consist exclusively of heavy compound lifts, focusing on the legs more than the arms. This leads to men who have large gams and relatively slim upper bodies. The goal is large amounts of functional strength, shunning aesthetics. Personally this is not my goal. I like being functionally strong, but I also like having pretty arms and shoulders. And I get better results at the gym when I don’t pretend otherwise. I feel more enjoyment, and work harder, when I think, “aha, here I am, producing a more chiseled figure that I will be pleased to inhabit,” and fit in vanity-focused dumbbell stuff in with the big barbell lifts. Shunning aesthetics doesn’t mean you are focusing on what is practical. It means you are ignoring aesthetics, which is a highly practical subject. For most people, it is simply a hallucination to believe that squatting 300+lbs is more functional than looking good and squatting 200lbs. At a certain point you are stron

There is a fashion, among men, for workout programs that consist exclusively of heavy compound lifts, focusing on the legs more than the arms. This leads to men who have large gams and relatively slim upper bodies. The goal is large amounts of functional strength, shunning aesthetics. Personally this is not my goal. I like being functionally strong, but I also like having pretty arms and shoulders. And I get better results at the gym when I don’t pretend otherwise. I feel more enjoyment, and work harder, when I think, “aha, here I am, producing a more chiseled figure that I will be pleased to