Continuously striving to obtain an optimum level of physical fitness is an essential part of living the swinging life. While personality, intelligence, and an interesting backstory count a lot in the game of attracting potential partners, being as physically attractive as reasonable will exponentially increase your chances of success. Swinging, in essence, is a playful cashing in on your primal urges … and people tend to prefer having sex with people who they are attracted to.
This doesn’t mean that you need to fit into size two jeans or have a six pack of abs … No, not at all — the swing community tends to be extremely body positive. But I will tell you that the fitter you make yourself the better you’re liable to feel, the more confident you will be, and the more fun you’re likely going to have.
The motivation for being fit while swinging is many fold: sex is a good motivator to exercise and exercise leads to being healthier overall. While I tell myself in the gym that I’m training to look good at the swing club on Saturday night or the erotic resort in the summer, I know deep down that the real benefit is being healthier, which improves all aspects of life.
Like swinging, fitness is a lifestyle. It’s a habit. For some, it becomes an obsession. It’s something that you just do everyday, like brushing your teeth or checking your email, and getting to this point is by far the most important thing — far more important than how many sets or reps of whatever exercise you do. But this takes time. Keep at it and soon the habit will lock itself in and lifting will become something that you crave rather than something you loathe or need to force yourself to do.
That said, what I outline below is my exercise philosophy and an outline of the routine that I’m currently doing. There are as many ways to workout as there are people lifting, and feel free to adapt any of this, take advice from others, and build a workout that’s good for your body type and goals. I wrote this for absolute beginners, so if it’s a little below your intellect or level feel free to skip ahead.
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Muscle anatomy
You don’t need a phd in anatomy to lift weights, but knowing the terminology of a few key muscle groups is going to be necessary. The chart above is a good place to start, however, keep in mind that the scientific names are often slang-ified. For example, quadriceps (thighs) are called quads, the latissimus dorsi are called lats, the trapezius muscles are called the traps, the deltoids are called delts, the gluteus muscles are called glutes …
How often should you work out?
As I mentioned above, more than the exercises you do and how you do them, the biggest factor in fitness success is consistency. The body loses additional muscle mass vastly faster than it takes to gain it, so working out like mad for two months and then missing a few weeks is going to keep sending you back to square one. That’s discouraging. So devising a plan that can become a regular part of life is essential — whether that means two days or five days a week.
When you first start something you’re going to feast on the endorphin rush. You get a new gym membership, some new sneakers, start following some new fitness influencers, join some new social media communities, start going to the gym everyday and your synapses are firing off in all directions. You’re doing something new. It’s exciting.
But eventually working out will lose its shiny new coating and real life will start to kick in — you will have to work, have family stuff, feel like you’re tired, and may get discouraged that results aren’t coming fast enough. If you build an endorphin mountain you’re liable to fall off the cliff, and getting back on top won’t be easy to do. You may have the time to be in the gym for six days a week right now, but will you be able to keep this up six months from now? Probably not. So start slow and work into a routine that fits your lifestyle that is sustainable long-term.
In the beginning, I say aim for two to three days per week in the gym and then two days of lighter workouts at home or doing calisthenics in a park, running wind sprints, hiking, biking, playing a sport, or doing a martial art. Don’t try to destroy yourself right away. Instead, let the obsession build.
Bodies also need time to recover — especially when first starting out. You need rest days to obtain gains. Working out breaks down muscle fibers, resting builds these fibers back up bigger and stronger.
How should you organize your workouts?
Many people take hardline positions when it comes to working out, thinking that their way is the best. But it is my impression that just so you’re going to the gym consistently, working hard, focusing on the optimal exercises and doing them with proper form then most exercise routines are going to produce similar results.
Splits
One common way of organizing workouts is by working out certain muscle groups on certain days. For example, on day one you will do chest / back; day two, legs; day three, arms / shoulders, etc … Examples of split routines.
There is nothing wrong with splits, and I actually worked out like this for years, but I’ve since moved on to doing full body routines.
Full body routines
The initial reason why I started doing full body workouts was because my work and travel schedule is kind of erratic and I was having difficulty completing my weekly split routine — and when I would miss a muscle group I would often go two weeks before hitting it again. I now don’t worry about missing days or muscle groups, because every time I go to the gym I exercise everything.
But the longer I’ve been doing full body workouts the more some other benefits became evident. By not doing so many sets each day per muscle group I no longer get those annoying little joint and tendon tweaks. I’ve also found that I get better gains, have better definition between muscles, and have lost more fat. There is a science to this.
Basically, full body workouts keep muscle protein synthesis elevated for each muscle group throughout the week, whereas doing splits means that each muscle group is only elevated for 12-24 hours post workout before returning to baseline. This means I can keep my body in a perpetual state of building new muscle, everywhere, all the time.
Another benefit of full body workouts is that you don’t have to rest as much between exercises, as you can go from chest to back to quads to hamstrings to shoulders to arms … and then by the time you get back to chest you’re ready to go again.
Pragmatically speaking, there is another benefit of full body workouts: there are more options for exercises that you can do at any given time, so you spend way less time waiting for machines in crowded gyms. If someone is on a machine that I want to use, I just go and exercise another body part while waiting. Or if some jackass decides to make the leg extension machine his personal Instagram scrolling station for an entire workout session, I can just say screw it because I know that I can just return do the gym and do leg extensions the following day.
How to workout
Sets and reps
When working out, a rep (repetition) is one unit of an exercise that is performed. For example, one pushup, one pull up, or one bench press … Each rep of an exercise has two phases: concentric and eccentric. The concentric phase is the one that works the target muscles — in a pull up, for example, it would be the motion where you pull your chin up over the bar. The eccentric phase is the release of tension on the target muscle or the process of lowering the weight in the direction of gravity. I.e. lowing back down from a pull up.
A set is a collection of reps performed one after another until either the target number is reached or you can’t do anymore.
While there are a zillion conflicting pieces of advice on the optimal amount of reps per set, I tend to think that this is mostly just noise. If you’re doing rep ranges between five and 30 you’re going to build muscle. What matters is that you take each set to absolute failure — the point where you absolutely can’t do anymore reps.
I usually aim to do 5-15 reps per set and three or five sets per exercise.
If I’m doing five sets, I usually arrange the weight in kind of a “pyramid” fashion. I will start out with a lower weight where I can do 10-15 reps, then increase the weight and do 6-8 reps, and then increase the weight again so that I can only do around 5 reps, and then I work my way back down the pyramid, doing the same weight as on the way up.
If doing three sets, I will start heavy and then work my way down, doing more reps as I go.
Do a full range of motion
While there are methods of working out where you only work one segment of a lift, I think that overly complicates things and doesn’t lead to the best results. I suggest doing a full range of motion per rep, where you stretch the muscles out as much as possible at the top of the rep and the contract them as much as possible at the bottom.
Optimize resistance on the eccentric phase
To get the best workout possible don’t just release the weight on the eccentric phase and leave it to the whims of gravity. No, lower the weight slowly and gently, keeping muscle tension on it at all times.
How to breath
Like with most strenuous physical activities, how you breath impacts how you will perform. When it comes to lifting weights, on the eccentric phase of a rep breath in, on the concentric phase breath out.
Work opposing muscle groups equally
Movement at joints follows a simple formula: one muscle pulls the joint one way and an opposing muscle pulls it the other way. When working out, it is of optimal importance to exercise both sides of each joint equally to stave off injury and to obtain the best results. So if you push with a benchpress make sure you pull with some rows, if you do a bicep curl be sure to do a tricep extension, if you do leg extensions be sure to do hamstring curls.
Base your exercise routine around opposing muscle groups, always doing the same amount of exercises per side. What’s good about exercising like this is that you can go from working one side of a joint to the other with minimal rest in between.
The best exercises to do
The best weight lifting exercises to do is, of course, very subjective, but I tend to focus my workouts on big compound movements that stimulate multiple muscles groups and then sprinkle in some key isolation exercises to top things off.
The following are the exercises that I usually incorporate in my routine, arranged by muscle group.
Chest
Barbell bench press
The barbell bench press should be a staple in just about any workout routine. It focuses on the entire pec region while also hitting the anterior delts (the front of the shoulders) and the triceps. It also really works some stabilizer muscles. I always do barbell bench presses at the very beginning of my circuit … mostly because I really like doing them.
Machine bench press
While I view the barbell bench press as superior, I also sometimes do machine bench presses. These come in many different styles, from ones that you do on your back to ones that you do while seated. The advantage of these is that it allows you to really pile on the weight and go to absolute failure without needing to worry about dropping the bar on yourself — which is helpful if you don’t have a spotter. These also really allow you to concentrate on the contraction as you don’t need to think about re-racking the bar or whether you have enough in you to complete the rep. I also believe that they may be a little easier on the joints and tendons.
Flies, machine
I prefer doing flies with a machine rather than free weights because most machines allow for continue tension through the rep, whereas when you do this with dumbbells you lose resistance at the top of the rep due to weight being transferred to your bone structure.
Single arm dumbell press
I really like the single arm dumbbell press because it allows for a longer range of motion as I can really drop the bar down below the plane of my chest on the eccentric phase and really elongate the pec before contracting. I mostly only do this exercise on days when I’m working out at home, as I prefer to spend gym time on equipment that I don’t already own.
Chest band presses
This is another exercise that I do at home or when traveling, as I can take my resistance band anywhere. It provides a different type of stimulation on the muscle because the load increases through the rep. Ideally, you want to devise a workout routine that works your muscles in a variety of different ways.
Pushups
While I often only do pushups when traveling or randomly. I feel as if this is one of the most integral exercises you can do. It’s good for those times when doing other things between gym sessions — such as watching a movie or right before bed. You can almost literally do pushups anywhere.
Back
Rows
There’s usually a variety of different types of row machines in each gym, and while I don’t have anything against any of them, the one that I prefer is the chest supported seated row. I just feel it more when doing this exercise and can really isolate and squeeze by lats at the top of the contraction.
Lat pulldowns
This is one of the foundational muscle building exercises. If your gym doesn’t have at least one lat pulldown machine then you should probably find a new gym. Make sure you use a wide grip and pull the bar down while kind of pushing your chest out and contracting your shoulder blades together rather than using your arms.
Bent over dumbbell rows
This is another old school exercise that can be done both at the gym and at home. Again, concentrate on moving the weight with your back rather than arm, making the muscles around your shoulder blades do most of the work by pulling it in towards your center line.
Pull ups
While they seem too basic to be worthwhile, pull ups are one of my core exercises. I do them nearly every day in some capacity. Make sure that you push your chest out and squeeze your back together at the top of the rep and extend all the way down at the bottom, fully extending the lats. Also change up your grip from time to time, alternating between a normal grip, wide grip, and underhand grip.
Legs
Leg extensions
While not really a compound exercise, I really like leg extensions. They really give your quads a pop and do a lot to balance out the appearance of your full physique. When doing leg extensions I put the seat in the all the way back position so I’m almost laying slouched on the machine, as this allows for a fuller range of motion.
Leg press
For quads:
For glutes:
The leg press is probably my favorite leg exercise. There are two different exercises that I do with it which targets different muscle groups. The first is the leg press for my quads, where I will put my feet close together near the bottom of the platform. The other is the leg press for glutes / hamstrings, where I will put my feet at the top of the platform spread apart.
Deadlifts
The deadlift is another foundational exercise that everyone should do. It builds size and strength in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings (big legs are sexy for both men and women!) as well as increases grip strength and works the shoulders and core. As the famed strongman Jón Páll Sigmarsson once proclaimed, “There is no reason to be alive if you can’t do deadlift.”
Romanian deadlifts
RDLs are a type of deadlift that’s … kind of like a half deadlift. But rather than this being a hack of an exercise this actually has a role and function. By concentrating on pivoting forward at the hips you really work the glutes and hamstrings. And as the motion is very similar to humping, this is one of the best exercises for sex.
Squats
While RDLs definitely increase sexual performance, squats are probably the best exercise for sex, as they drive blood into the pelvic region and works, well, your humping muscles. However, they are one exercise that I rarely do. My reasoning for this is simply that I don’t like how it feels in my spine when I squat, and that includes when I use a smith machine. I mostly use quad / glute leg presses and deadlifts as a substitute for squats, and that seems to work fine. Although if squatting doesn’t bother you, I highly recommend that you do it.
Glute bridge / hip thrust
With barbell:
With machine:
Hip thrusts are another good exercise for building banging glutes and increasing sexual fitness. As a rule of thumb, if an exercise looks like humping it’s probably good for humping.
Hamstring curls
Hamstring curls are the counter exercise to leg extensions. If you work the quads you gotta work the hammies. I don’t freak out with this exercise too much though as I also work the hamstrings with deadlifts and leg presses.
Calf raises
Your calves are the part of your leg that people are going to see the most, so you may as well chisel them.
Arms
Bicep pull downs
According to Mike Mentzer, this is the best exercise for biceps, and I have to agree. Humans evolved from aboral primates, and your muscle structure is still very much built for climbing. Bicep pull downs stimulate the biceps in a way that’s very similar to climbing a tree.
Bicep machine curls / bicep concentration curls
Although most people don’t seem to do them anymore, I still like bicep concentration curls. It’s an old school exercise that my dad taught me when I was a kid that has just kind of stuck with me. Although I sometimes use machines to do this as well.
Standing bicep curls
Standing bicep curls are one of my staple exercises. I often do them as the first part of a superset with machine curls.
Tricep push downs
I do tricep push downs as part of almost every routine. Sometimes i do them with a straight bar, sometimes with a rope.
Dips
Calisthenic dips are a part of my regular warm up routine and around twice per week I will do machine dips as well.
Shoulders
There are three muscle heads in your shoulders: the anterior (front), lateral (side), and posterior delts. A well-rounded workout routine will work all three heads equally. Failing to do so will result in uneven development and potentially in injury.
However, you will notice that I don’t do any isolated anterior delt exercises, and that’s because I feel as if I work these muscles adequately through other exercises.
Lateral raises
Lateral raises work your side delts, and can be done both with dumbbells or with a machine. I use both and don’t really have a preference for either.
Posterior deltoid dumbell raises
I try to do exercises for my posterior delts as much as I do for my lateral delts. My exercise of choice is to sit on a bench and bend over and flay my arms out with dumbbells in kind of a reverse fly.
Overhead press
I do various types of overhead presses — sometimes with dumbbells, sometimes with a barbell, and sometimes with a machine. I mix it up depending on what I feel like and what’s available in the gym.
Arnold presses
I really like Arnold presses because they work all sides of the delts in one exercise. There’s also something about them that just feels good.
Abs
People tend to work out their abs differently than other muscle groups, with sets of 100+ reps, or even not at all, thinking that their abs will show just by getting lean. It is my opinion that the abs should be worked out just like everything else, with heavy sets of 5-15 reps. Yes, your abs can get big and ripped. Yes, big and ripped abs are sexy.
Abdominal crunch machine
I love the abdominal crunch machine, but they vary greatly in quality. If your gym has a few options, try them all to find the one that gives you the best contraction. You want your midsection to feel as if it’s going to explode. Be sure to try to get the longest contraction possible by extending your back all the way back during the eccentric phase.
Weighted decline sit ups
This is another exercise that I really like because it allows the abs to stretch out during the eccentric phase of the rep which gives you a fuller range of motion compared to other ab exercises.
Hanging leg raises
This is a good exercise for the lower abs. I do these as part of my warm up routine. Try to move your legs up as high as possible and position your body in a V at the top of the concentric phase.
Dirty 30s
This is a good and simple workout for abs for days that you don’t go to the gym or if you feel you want to put in a little extra work on your mid-section.
How to make a routine
Now that we have our exercise methodology and a list of exercises, it’s time to construct a routine. I am not a professional bodybuilder and I don’t participate in strength sports, so I take a rather laid back, fun approach to working out … I don’t fret if someone is using a machine that I want to use, I don’t force myself to do exercises for body parts that are sore, and if I’m not feeling it or have other things to do I’m not opposed to occasional abbreviated routines.
I usually start my circuit by running sprints for a few blocks on my way to the gym. I don’t jog, as I feel as if jogging canibalizes muscles, tanks testosterone, is hard on the joints, and is … well, boring. Instead, I run as fast as I can for as long as I can, walk and rest a little, and then do it again. I act like I’m in the wild running from a bear or something. In all, I maybe do this for 10-20 minutes. Running fast is also a good skill to have that could potentially save your life someday. Humans were made to sprint.
After that, I go to the gym and do a warm that usually consists of pull ups, dips, and leg raises. Then I go into my weight lifting routine …
For this, I aim to pick 1-3 exercise from each muscle group and incorporate them into my circuit on any given day. What exercises I pick largely depends on what I feel like or what I’ve done on the previous day, as I try not to repeat the same exercises two days in a row. I usually do two chest exercises, two back exercises, three leg exercises, two shoulders, 1-2 biceps, 1-2 triceps, 1 trap, and two abs. I feel as if this adequately hits each muscle group and keeps them stimulated and growing without being overtaxing on any of them.
Ideally, I try to workout for two days in a row and then rest for one, but travel and my work / life schedule can get in the way of that, so I basically just go to the gym whenever I can, ideally going three or four days per week. When I don’t go to the gym I will workout at home (I have a bench and some free weights), run sprints, walk for a long distance, or simply do fun physical activities (like orgies and gangbangs!), work, or a sport.
Conclusion
In this way, working out has become a fundamental part of my life that is almost inseparable from anything else that I do. When I don’t exercise for a couple of days I start feeling weird, as if something is missing. It’s become a habit … or, some could say, an addiction. But I like to think of it as training — not for a sport but for going out to the swing clubs and resorts with my wife, which is something that has become a fundamental part of our relationship.
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