Whether your objective is to get more dates or to improve your overall confidence in informal social situations or more networking or formal social situations getting “jacked” will help you do that, to a certain extent, but it’s not a silver bullet and you need to do more.
In your day-to-day no one can tell how lean you are
Let’s say you are fully clothed walking around in the street. When people look at you, no one call tell how lean you really are. Yes, if you have some muscle it is noticeable, or if the weather is warmer and you are wearing less clothing it becomes more noticeable. In the opposite way if you have higher body fat% it is noticeable in your face even if your clothes cover your belly. My point here is that even if you get jacked in most situations that’s not really the thing that stands out, and that’s why…
You need to have good style
Your style in most situations will have a bigger impact in how people react to you than how good of a body you have.
Again, if you are obese, good style is not going to fix that.
But if you have clean shoes and a shirt that fits you well that has a lot more impact in everyday life than say going from 18% body fat to 10% body fat (unless it really affects your facial appearance but that’s a topic for another time).
In fact going from 18%bf to 10%bf, when you are fully clothed, may have the opposite effect. You might look smaller! (again assuming your facial appearance stays the same which it might not).
All of this is to say that don’t be that guy in the gym that puts all of his effort into getting jacked. Yes he will get compliments by guys saying. “Awesome dude! I wish I was like you”, while at the same time is style being terrible. Girls are not going to notice him that way (generally speaking of course).
You also need to be able to hold a conversation
Imagine this situation: a guy that has a great physique, that has his style on point, wants to go talk to a girl he finds cute. What if he has no idea what to say and can’t hold a conversation longer that 10 seconds? What if he can’t have a normal conversation with another human being without looking like he is having a heart attack? The answer is: that guy is not going far.
He has appearance nailed down and that’s great! But that’s just an opener. That just gets the attention of someone. After you get someone’s attention you need to be able to capitalize on that. And in real life you do that with conversation. Online that’s a bit different and that’s why…
You need to have good photos
Let’s say you wanted to sell your old car online. The car wasn’t in really good shape but you changed some parts and gave it a good cleaning. You brought the car to a mechanic and it’s working almost like it’s new. Then you went and took some 20 or 30 photos with your phone, that maybe doesn’t have a good camera, with poor lighting and with angles that don’t even show the new parts of the car. How can you expect people online, just seeing the photos without knowing the car, to have a good first impression? How can you expect people to know that indeed the car is in good shape and functions properly? You can’t: because your photos suck.
If you take very few photos or none at all (I used to be guilty of that for many years) with poor conditions, meaning: maybe you only take selfies, or photos with bad lighting or from bad angles etc… you then don’t have the opportunity to put your best foot forward in a online situation.
As guys we on average take less photos and sometimes are not that comfortable asking friends to take photos of us. But that’s what is going to make a different online. Taking thousands of photos and choosing the best ones.
Conclusion
Getting a good physique is very important and the foundation for: having a better style, because the clothes fit you better; being able to hold better and more conversations, because you will be more confidence; and will allow you to have better photos, because you will just look better overall.
That being said a good physique is not enough and you need to work on all the other areas that are important for you to achieve the things you want.
Don’t be the jacked guy that doesn’t have style, can’t hold a conversation and doesn’t have photos to show his physique online.