Quote Originally Posted by ProZachNation
Not to be gay or anything but Phelps has a crazy body. He looks like he is pretty lean and muscular but when he flexes it is like holy shit muscles. I would most prefer that kinda body to those dudes who look (and probably are) on roids.

Are those results gained from more sets of lighter reps type workout, or is it because he works on probably 8+ hours a day ie unachievable to the average person.
phelps' body isnt actually that impressive on the muscular side of things. any healthy man on the planet could achieve his level of muscularity on 3 hours of lifting a week. in fact, many moderately overweight men have as much muscle as he does, the distinction is in that they're not lean so it doesnt look like it. the hardest part for most people to achieve a body like his would be dieting to achieve that leanness.

getting big muscles is actually pretty easy for those of us who are not heavily ectomorphic (but even they can nom nom nom enough). if you do nothing but eat eat eat eat eat eat you will get huge muscles, but you'll also be a fatass. this is because when the body is anabolic (calorie surplus creates this) both muscle and adipose cells grow. muscle just happens to grow slower and peaks out, adipose tissue grows fast and doesnt peak.

ginormous bodybuilders are that ginormous mainly due to the ginormous amounts of steroids, igf1/growth hormone, insulin, and some other drugs they use.

via lifting, you increase muscularity by loading a high enough intensity to activate fast twitch fibers (bottom end is approximately 60% of one-rep max) and doing that for enough volume (thats a little more difficult to address from a formulaic perspective), and by eating enough/more to provide nutrients for muscle synthesis. humans vary widely with how much we have to eat to gain.

the way to get 'hard' or 'toned' is simply in being lean. you can be weak and tiny as shit, but if youre lean as shit then your body will be hard. muscle size does affect definition to a small degree, though, but not much.