Ideal physique

[diveguy]

Note: the shorts they are wearing are the length of shorts I wore in high school. Why is it that for the past twenty some odd years guys are all wearing shorts down below their knees?

I think the style began to take hold with the rising popularity of rap and hip hop. Longer shorts were the domain of ethnic urban youths. Then the shorts on NBA players got longer too, and that's all she wrote. That god-foresaken style became cool, and then unfortunately, became common, and then worse yet, became universal.

[diveguy]

I agree that the youth of today are in a sad state as far as physical fitness is concerned. Check out this video. This is how school physical fitness programs should be operated.

https://youtu.be/K318Z_5sF04

Too much time spent on video games from a young age into the teen years, then the reduction or elimination of P.E. in middle and high schools, and then too much beer in the late teens and early twenties.

[Norfcountryboy]

What would you all consider to be the ideal male physique? As for myself I'd say very lean and muscular, but not excessively muscular. I think a decent amount of muscle looks good but too much makes a man look to bulky. At least this is the look I'm working toward.

Realised I won't be able to give a straight answer [Ho ho] to this one, as I find men sexy anything to do with the male physique is full of triggers and associations. I've tried to be as objective as possible and disregard anything to do with my preferences such as eye colour or body hair.
A guy needs to look healthy and have a good posture, so for example skin condition will be as much a physique issue for me as his muscle balance. Also think the guy's bulge is important, the cock doesn't have to be visible but the whole has to have an attractive shape and no the size isn't important! It just needs to look masculine. I can't seperate aspects from the whole body, they are all linked together.
There are few no-no's for me: skinny legs is one, a stomach that sticks out is another and so is visible rib cages. So a guy can be too skinny but also another guy can be too muscley. I don't know how I define the limits but I know them when I see them. I
Potentially all men can have great physiques, there isn't one "Ideal" for me. I keep coming back to the idea of functional fitness; I think we were made for hard physical activity, it's why sustained exertion generates an subtle high. At risk of sounding like a knob the two masculine extremes of physical activity are sex and fighting, so I know a guy is in optimum physical shape when he looks like he was built for fucking and fighting.

[BJE]

I found this on the Internet.
I am not sure if this is what everyone was thinking of.
If it isn't I will delete this reply.

I would call that an immature adolescent body. Common among teenage boys but uncommon among men because if men are at least a little athletic they naturally build a larger physique and if not they become fat or skinny fat.

You changed the picture so I will modify my comment. I would not describe the guy in the new photo as an immature adolescent. He looks manly and athletic with a good natural athletic build.

[BJE]

I would say all the guys in this photo that Scottybum posted in the group speedo thread have ideal physiques. This is the look I'm going for in my own physique.

IMG_2534.JPG

[Speedoaddict]

I found this on the Internet.
I am not sure if this is what everyone was thinking of.
If it isn't I will delete this reply.

I would call that an immature adolescent body. Common among teenage boys but uncommon among men because if men are at least a little athletic they naturally build a larger physique and if not they become fat or skinny fat.

To be honest I do find that it is getting harder to tell the age of some people.
Some men and women look younger than they are.
The original picture I posted was just to emphasise the type of build the discussion was talking about. The focus was not on the age of the subject in the picture.
As soon as people start working, the wages get blown on beer and take-away food, as soon as they pass their driving test the car takes over and exercise decreases. The physique goes to shit.
I know about the junk food and lack of exercise.
But the longer you do this and do nothing the harder it is to start exercising and get back into shape. I know I myself are struggling to keep going to the gym 3-4 times a week. I have not been for approx 4 weeks now.
I completely agree with everything you have said and agree with the post further down the chain.
Not enough emphasis is put on the benefits of exercise at school and healthy eating.
For people to exercise and stay in shape can be affected by the life style they have and where they live.
Especially here in the uk.
The weather here isn't always great, gym memberships can be exspensive and the council run gyms and swimming pools can also be exspensive.
But I am not trying to justify this or my own lack of will power.

But is there really such thing as the ideal physique?
Surely beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I know about eating junk food, but it is cheap and there is lots of it.

[BJE]

But is there really such thing as the ideal physique?
Surely beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think there is one ideal physique. My question is what is ideal to each individual rather than to come to a consensus.

[sandford50]

I found this on the Internet.
I am not sure if this is what everyone was thinking of.
If it isn't I will delete this reply.

I would call that an immature adolescent body. Common among teenage boys but uncommon among men because if men are at least a little athletic they naturally build a larger physique and if not they become fat or skinny fat.

That would be the frame of one Joe Essex, an unfortunate product of reality TV in the UK, and someone whose 15 minutes of fame has hopefully passed.

[swimmy]

To me it was a decision I made at about fourteen. By that age I noticed how physically disgusting some men I knew were and vowed I would never look like that. We had health and PE in the sixties and seventies, in high school it was only mandatory in ninth and tenth grades but I took it all four years, in fact as a senior it was a two hour class. Pretty heavy.
I credit my swim team tryouts at age eleven and the eventual love of the sport that gave me a great teen swimmer bod which really lasted though my forties! Even now at 58 I still swim every night and I know I'm in far, far better shape than most guys half my age.
Why? Because I WANT TO. I ALMOST ALWAYS HAVE.
That's all.
It's not something anybody made me do, or even encouraged me to. None of my friends did it with me. I just went where it could be done and did it under the supervision of my coaches. I had another circle of friends there.
I encourage kids all I can to do likewise and above all I try to set a good example.

[BJE]

To me it was a decision I made at about fourteen. By that age I noticed how physically disgusting some men I knew were and vowed I would never look like that. We had health and PE in the sixties and seventies, in high school it was only mandatory in ninth and tenth grades but I took it all four years, in fact as a senior it was a two hour class. Pretty heavy.
I credit my swim team tryouts at age eleven and the eventual love of the sport that gave me a great teen swimmer bod which really lasted though my forties! Even now at 58 I still swim every night and I know I'm in far, far better shape than most guys half my age.
Why? Because I WANT TO. I ALMOST ALWAYS HAVE.
That's all.
It's not something anybody made me do, or even encouraged me to. None of my friends did it with me. I just went where it could be done and did it under the supervision of my coaches. I had another circle of friends there.
I encourage kids all I can to do likewise and above all I try to set a good example.

My story is that I was always a "husky" child. I got teased for being fat, which compared to many kids today I was not fat but nevertheless at age sixteen I decided I wasn't going to go through high school being fat so I started dieting, running and lifting weights. I quickly lost weight and have never been fat since. I've also been exercising continuously ever since. I stopped running but I swim, lift weights and practice Taekwondo. I also do a lot of physical labor on the job. I still wear the same size clothes I did when in high school. The jeans that I wear exclusively are Abercrombie & Fitch skinny jeans size 32 x 34 and I wear size medium t shirts. I'm 6'3" and 175lbs. and almost 53 years old. I don't know anyone my age who is not overweight and out of shape. I'm probably more fit than most men in their twenties. I've spent a lot of hours exercising but I figure that for every hour I exercise I'm adding at least an hour to my life. Probably a lot more than that so it's a good investment in time.

[BJE]

This Marcuse model looks to bulky to me. While he has a great physique, he is so big that his head looks too small for his body. He lacks ideal proportions in my view.

IMG_6571.JPG

[PugLover41]

I started working out in my early twenties and still going strong. I do credit high school PE classes with delaying my interest in exercise. Why is high school PE so awful? Even jocks hate it.

[Thom]

To me it was a decision I made at about fourteen. By that age I noticed how physically disgusting some men I knew were and vowed I would never look like that. We had health and PE in the sixties and seventies, in high school it was only mandatory in ninth and tenth grades but I took it all four years, in fact as a senior it was a two hour class. Pretty heavy.
I credit my swim team tryouts at age eleven and the eventual love of the sport that gave me a great teen swimmer bod which really lasted though my forties!

I was just wondering in what section of the country you lived in high school. In Massachusetts, where I went to high school and college in the sixties and seventies, neither school had a pool. (Very few high schools in Mass. had swimming pools at that time.) I learned to swim in a lake. They'd built a pier in the shape of a pool at the lake, but it was all rather crude. My college, a few years after I graduated, finally built a new athletic complex with a well-designed collegiate length pool. It has indoor tennis, squash/racquetball courts, and fitness equipment. When they rebuilt my high school, they still didn't install a pool. In high school, PE was required through our senior year. It was generally a waste of time.

Anyway, I think it was in my twenties that I saw a picture of someone my age who was a collegiate swimmer with a lean, defined body. I've kept that image in my mind all my life. It's been a reference point to keep myself thin and at about the same weight I was in college, 145.

[Thom]

I started working out in my early twenties and still going strong. I do credit high school PE classes with delaying my interest in exercise. Why is high school PE so awful? Even jocks hate it.

That was my experience. I don't have kids, but If I did, I'd find some way to send them to a private school with a decent athletic program, unless public school has improved since I was a kid.

When I was in junior high, because the school had a good athletic director. they started a program along the lines of La Sierra High in California. But it fizzled. High school PE was a disaster.

Here's a short clip from the sixties about La Sierra High. There's a longer clip posted by someone above. It's like something out of an alternate universe. No board shorts back then either, except the ones worn by surfers.

The La Sierra program, and Kennedy's call to fitness, faded away. It didn't last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yQth3QEXtA

[PugLover41]

Getting back to the topic at hand (as my other one is busy), I'd say Robert Conrad when he was in his prime. Maybe not as impressive today, but he had a natural, clean look. Plus he is rather short as I am!

[BJE]

His pants have swallowed his physique.

[BJE]

Comparing the above two photos the model in the first photo had his waistband about a foot lower than in the second picture.

We've dropped our pants in public a long way since the fifties.

[BJE]

One of the reasons I remove my pubic hair is so that I can wear my speedo with the waistband just above the base of my penis without having pubic hair showing.

[Thom]

Getting back to the topic at hand (as my other one is busy), I'd say Robert Conrad when he was in his prime. Maybe not as impressive today, but he had a natural, clean look. Plus he is rather short as I am!

Conrad had what was an ideal physique for leading actors in his era. Today, I think leading role actors are under a lot more pressure to develop their bodies physically. It makes me think of Jake Gyllenhaal and the time he must have spent in training for Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia

Jake Persia.jpg (76.54 KiB) Viewed 8718 times

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[speedobillyuk]

This would be my idea of ideal

richjenkinsblack3cm2.jpg

A classic body and a classic brief.