Many people attempt to get jacked, but many of them fail. Using bad training plans, bad nutrition, and bad recovery, millions of people all over the world abandon the gym, never to return, and make excuses for why they prefer a less healthy lifestyle instead.
Mainstream fitness content won’t show you how to get jacked either. Most are selling you a scammy product, or wrong information.
The key to being jacked is knowledge, particularly fitness knowledge. Finding lifting and nutritional ideas is simple, but putting them into practice while determining what works for you is difficult. There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to knowing how to get jacked.
Everyones body is different. Mesomorphs, ectomorphs, and endomorphs all have different methods of how to get jacked.
To really get jacked, you must eat right. 75% of what you do is in the kitchen.
The other 25% is what you do in the weight room. This guide on how to get jacked will help you understand both.
Getting Ripped:
If you want to be ripped, you must be completely dedicated. Lifting is a lifestyle, something that will cost time and money.
Getting jacked isn’t something that happens overnight, in fact it takes years to look like a fitness model. Of course, you can get a high quality 6 day gym workout schedule to help speed up the process.
Some people can get jacked in 3 months, but that’s still extremely hard to do.
There are tons of factors that influence how to get jacked, because everyone’s bodies are different. Some people are fat, skinny, or naturally muscular.
While one lifting program is beneficial to a bodybuilding influencer online, it could end up not being beneficial to you.
The only thing we can do is give you an outline to follow, which are the iron rules of fitness.
The Iron Rules of Fitness (How to Get Jacked)
This is how you get jacked:
- Patience
- Consistency
- Progressive Overload
- Compound and Isolation Reps
- Rep Ranges
- Build Muscle
- Shred Fat
- How Eat to Get Jacked
- Supplements to Get Jacked
If you incorporate these principles into your lifting life, you will get jacked.
Lets get started:
How to Lift to Get Jacked
Lifting is where you break down the muscles. It’s really that simple.
Every gym session should be done with the intention to break down the muscles, and repair them afterwards. This is why lifting with intensity is so important. Put on some good music to help.
If you just go to the gym to get a light session in, don’t expect to get jacked. The people who show up to the gym for 15 minutes and lightly hit the machines are small, and there’s a reason behind that.
Patience For Getting Jacked:
Understand that you won’t get jacked overnight. You won’t be jacked in weeks, and certainly not months unless you take SARMs. Even then, that’s still a maybe. Part of knowing how to get jacked is understanding patience.
Consistency For Getting Jacked:
If you want to be jacked, you have to be consistent. Consistent with hitting the gym, and consistent with eating and recovery.
You won’t see results if you go to the gym randomly 3 times a week, bulking one week, and cutting on the next.
You have to have a clear goal in mind, and a clear path.
Do you want to increase muscle mass and gain weight?
Do you want to shred fat?
Or, do you want to do both?
Whichever one it is, pick it and concentrate your forces on the goal.
Let me show you what consistency looks like:
How to get jacked with consistency.
Progressive Overload
What is progressive overload?
Progressive overload is the key to breaking down the muscles, so you can effectively repair them in the kitchen. Progressive overload is how to get jacked.
So how do you do it?
Simple- you increase weight every time. Do the same workouts (or at least hit the same muscles), but track what weight you hit each time.
Let’s say that on week one, you benched 135 for 5 reps. On week two, you should increase the weight up to 140-145.
So what lifts should you do?
Compound and isolation lifts. Let’s explain more-
Both compound and isolation lift types are how to get jacked. But there’s a method to doing them properly.
Compound and Isolation Lifts
Compound lifts are workouts that require the use of two or more joints and two or more muscles to execute the movement.
For example, Larsen Press, squats, deadlifts, pullups, and overhead presses are all compound lifts.
These lifts are so important because they provide a base for strength and mass.
In fact, if you did the workouts listed above, you’d probably have bigger beach muscles than someone who only did isolation exercises.
Isolation exercises isolate one muscle, for example, curls and tricep pulldowns.
Isolation exercises are great to finish the workout. So, if you were doing a chest/back day, you would do bench press or larsen press, and chin-ups as your compound lifts. Your isolation lifts could be cable flies and straight arm pulldowns. Isolation lifts are the finishers.
Compound exercises should be done at the beginning of the workout and isolation to finish. Structure your workouts accordingly.
Rep Ranges
Rep ranges determine what kind of muscle you build. Some will pack on mass, others strength, and endurance.
The following are the rep ranges for each kind of muscle:
- Strength = 1-5 reps at >80% of 1 rep max
- Muscle Mass = 8-12 reps at 60-80% of 1 rep max
- Endurance = 12+ reps at <60% of 1 rep max
If you’re looking to train for muscle, I recommend you do reps in the 8-12 range.
This is what will make you look jacked. However, as long as you train close to failure, the optimal rep range you can choose is one that works best for you.
You’ll want to leave reps in reserve, but not many.
Generally, if you can perform more than 12 reps, you should raise the weight; and, if you can’t do more than 8 reps, you should decrease the weight. This applies to training for hypertrophy. Hypertrophy training is how to get jacked.
How To Eat To Get Jacked
Diet is the most important factor in how to get jacked. 75% of your results come from the kitchen. A bad diet will kill your gains just waste your time. Diet is the real key of how to get jacked.
You don’t want to eat like a little girl, you have to have lots of calories to get jacked. But, you also don’t need unhealthy amounts of food that will just make you fat.
A general rule of building lean muscle is:
1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight and a caloric surplus of 200-800 calories. Protein is how to get jacked.
How Many Calories Do You Need Per Day to Get Jacked?
To get huge, a variety of elements must be considered, including activity levels, body composition, thyroid activity, testosterone levels, and so on.
You need dietary fats from good food sources such as grass-fed beef, salmon, nuts, avocados, olive oil, butter, and hard cheese for healthy hormonal balances and joint health.
I recommend in bulking phases to eat 500 calories above your basal metabolic rate.
In shredding phases, eat -500 calories a day.
Building Muscle To Getting Jacked:
The first step to getting jacked is to have enough muscle to look good. If you’re a skinny dude, you’ve got to put on muscle before you lose fat.
You can gain lots of muscle mass quickly by lifting in the 8-12 reps range.
Do your compound lifts first, and isolation reps second.
In order to put on muscle fast, you’ll have to eat a lot.
Read this extensive guide on how to build muscle.
Building muscle is done in 3 steps:
- Lift With Intensity
- Choosing The Right Workout Routine
- Eating Right
Lifting With Intensity:
Whenever I go to the gym, I notice two kinds of people. 1- the jacked chads who are lifting like it’s their last day on earth. 2- the small little chodes who lift without a purpose, randomly selecting machines and lifting like they’re half asleep.
Let me tell you- there’s a reason why one group is jacked and the other is not. You only get jacked if you lift with intensity. Yes, etch that into your brain and don’t forget it.
Either you are training with INTENSITY, or you’re not.
If you don’t go to the gym and lift with all your heart and soul, you will never be jacked.
Choosing The Right Workout Routine:
Different training programs are designed to achieve various objectives. Some are better for growing strength, while others are better for endurance, and still, others are designed to increase muscle mass. Ideally, you should go with the latter option.
If you’re having trouble gaining muscle, I recommend hypertrophy training. You can get bigger and stronger by mixing both sorts of training, and you can do it faster than if you just focused on one type of exercise.
Reps that build muscle are in the 8-12 range.
Eating To Build Muscle:
No one ever eats enough when they want to gain muscle. If you look at what most mainstream sites recommend, they say “don’t eat over 2,000 calories a day it’s unhealthy.”
Nope- most mainstream fitness advice is BS. If you want to get big, you’ve got to eat like you’re already big. You must eat more calories than you burn.
The MAIN REASON WHY MOST PEOPLE FAIL TO GAIN MUSCLE IS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT EATING PROPERLY. Seriously, when I was a freshman in high school, I recall eating around 1,000 calories each day and wondering why I couldn’t gain muscle.
If you want to gain weight, you must consume a lot of calories… And it’ll almost certainly be a lot more food than you anticipated. That’s the kind of meal I’m referring to here.
Shredding Fat To Getting Jacked
The second step to getting jacked is to shred fat. Literally every bodybuilder or fitness model is under 12% bodyfat and has 6 pack abs. They all have aesthetic physiques. Ideally, you want to build muscle and then shred fat. That’s how to get jacked.
Shredding fat is quite simple, you just have to eat at a caloric deficit.
I recommend you read the extensive guide on how to shred fat.
The best way to shred fat is to eat at a caloric deficit.
This is where you’ll actually see results. Funny enough, most of the results you get with fitness come from what you put into your body. That’s why it’s imperative you have high quality fitness supplements.
The food you eat plays a huge factor in whether you stay as a fat chump, or shred down to look like a lean Greek God. Clean foods and nutrients are essentially the answer to how to shred fat.
To shred fat, you must be eating in a caloric deficit–
A caloric deficit is when your body has less calories than its basal metabolic rate. For example, if your body required 1,800 calories to maintain weight, eating less would make you lose weight.
Tracking your calories with an app like Macros or MyFitnessPal will help you track your calories and keep them below your basal metabolic rate.
These apps will tell you your basal metabolic rate accurately, however if you want to know a rough estimate of what it is right now, take your bodyweight and multiply it by 15.
Should I Divide Up My Diet Macronutrients?
Yes, you should divide up your diet macronutrients. That’s how to get jacked.
My preferred macronutrient breakdown is:
40% protein
40% carbohydrate
20% fat
4 calories per lb bodyweight protein
4 calories per lb bodyweight carbohydrates
7 calories per lb bodyweight fat
It’s all very simple math of how to get jacked. Just grab a calculator and calculate which is right for you.
Which Supplements Should I Take to Get Jacked?
I recommend you read this guide on the best fitness supplements for an in depth analysis.
1. Creatine
Creatine is one of the best supplements of how to get jacked.
This is one of the only over-the-counter supplements that can drastically boost gym performance while also allowing you to grow muscle beyond your natural limits.
Aside from these fantastic benefits, creatine’s conversion to ATP has been demonstrated to have some nootropic characteristics.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to cycle creatine on and off during the year. 5g a day should do the trick.
Sometimes, I’ll stop for a couple weeks and get back on on creatine if I feel my stomach cramping too much.
2. Pre-Workout
Pre-workout is great to ensure you lift with tons of intensity.
This supplement should be avoided by beginners and caffeine sensitive people until they build up a tolerance. Once you get going though, pre workout is how to get jacked.
Of course, you should rotate your pre-workout use to keep your tolerance levels in check. Read my guide on the best pre-workouts to know which ones to get.
Pre-workout will give you confidence, focus, and energy that other supplements may not be able to supply.
Zeus Juice is one of the few pre-workouts that will give you a great pump with energy.