To reach our goals we need balance on almost everything in this life. Here, lets talk about what refers to physique itself. How do your arms compare to your chest? Are your legs underdeveloped in relation to your torso? It is common for beginners. especially when they train by themselves. to - ignore the legs and just train the upper body and arms. Lets face it, leg work is tough, squatting up and down with a weight on our back is okay for the first four reps, but the last ones are really hard.

When you have an underdeveloped area, or a body part that is not responding well to training you have to put more thought into building up that area. I always say that we have to fall in love with our weak area, dwelling on it to such an extent that we build a whole new motivation to bring n up to par. Merely performing a couple of extra exercises for an underdeveloped body part will not get the job done.

Sometime ago (in the 60's or 70's) body symmetry and proportion didn't figure highly. The main concerns were to be big and cut resulting in a freaky look with thirty five inch thighs and shoulders looking like mountains.

Maximum size and cuts are still desired, but so too is symmetry, we will train in line that gives you what the human body should look like. I train my clients in a balanced fashion to achieve a balanced physique.

First of all variety refers to the need to incorporate other things into our lives besides working out, our mental processes need more than one kind of stimulation. Now, in the gym, variety applies in a couple of other ways. First, exercises themselves should be substituted for each other frequently. The body thrives on change and diversity. Typically, it takes all about three work-outs for the body to become totally familiar with the routine, so those who incorporate liberal substitutions will progress far faster.

Motivation to keep going to the gym and keep training with vision and enthusiasm is vital. If you perform the same old routine week after week, month after month, you have nothing to look forward to.

Every exercise we perform "hits" the body in a different aspect to every muscle group. By changing an angle of a bench, or steering our weight through a different arc, you can stimulate new areas into growth. A whole new set of fibers are stimulated when you change the order and the selection of exercises. It's when you don't change things around that you develop the basic body. the kind that power lifters have -good bulk but very little symmetry or separation.

Over the years I've developed an armory of exercises for each body part, tried and tested movements that I consider to be of the best quality. There are, of course, literally hundreds of weight training exercises, but our personal armory should consist of three or four exercises for each day. So the next time you work on that area I will make a new selection. Sometimes only angles will change, and other times the exercises will change drastically.

Training with the same exercises for weeks, months, you are depriving you muscle of being "hit' from a large variety of angles.

I also stress variety in talking about number of repetitions. For the most part, we will train with a range of 6 to 25 repetitions, but keep in mind that stretching and contracting are more important than heaving or bouncing.

The major component of my personal training philosophy can best be summarized by the word 'feel". Walk into any gym in the world and you will see someone slinging a bar- bell around, performing a curl with-out the faintest idea of what he is doing. He is just trying to heave as much weight as possible, grunting and groaning, giving himself a hernia trying to get the weight up. 

Basically the whole point of working-out is "muscular contraction". If as they say, there is a "secret of the champs" that's it. So there is no secret any more, is there? One more time: "if you don't feel the muscle, you can't grow the muscle". 

Feeling the contraction is one of the most important aspects of training. That's why I instruct my beginning clients to perform rehearsal work-outs (using extremely light weights, perfect slow-mo form and high repetitions) to open up the muscle-mind pathways and foster an awareness of muscle-contraction point.

You must avoid thinking of weights as either heavy or light. Heavy versus light is a false dichotomy that leaves many trainers feeling dismissive and that cause them to adopt a program lacking in at least one important respect. Properly applied, every poundage has a use.

If you think heavy weight training is the only way to grow, you are dead wrong. In fact, periods of light weight training along with moderate and heavy work-outs can help bring about dramatic changes in your physique. Perhaps you don't know, but light training can be tough, physically as well as mentally. The key to developing the mind-muscle link is focus. To pick up a 25 pound dumbbell and do a concentration curl is easy, yet it is entirely different thing to pick up that same 25 pounds and keeping your arm in the optional plane of motion and not cheating, force the biceps to work hard through the entire range of motion and make each rep a powerful peak contraction.

Always remember: Balance, Variety, and Feel with the techniques and supervision I will be giving you is the method to get there -the most proportional and perfectly developed body possible.

*This information is part from "Men's Fitness", "Beyond Built", and my point of view including 12 years experience training myself and others.