Anyone who trains for aesthetics most likely knows about Zyzz. Although he died at the young age of 22 in 2011, he left a legacy behind.
This legacy was the aesthetic lifestyle.
The whole point of it is that you must look extremely aesthetic (usually shredded) and go partying on a daily basis. The body allegedly allows you to pick up hot women, and gives you social status that non-aesthetic people can never hope to achieve.
Zyzz used to say that when you have aesthetics, you can get away with anything. Being aesthetic also makes people admire the physique, which sparks jealousy in all who don’t lift weights;Hence the quote ”u mirin brah?”
Of course, it includes the usage of heavy drugs as well (which is why many of these people die young) but nonetheless if you want to look like Zyzz I can help you do that.
Now, I am aware that Zyzz used performance enhancing substances (and a lot of it too), but the good news is that his physique was actually attainable naturally. This means that with a few years of hard work, you too can look like Zyzz.
This is not an exaggeration either.
Heck, I remember the first time I saw his physique. I was absolutely amazed.
Nowadays I look at his body and think to myself ”Holy crap, I actually did it. I have managed to look similar to Zyzz”. So I will be the first guy to tell you that his physique is not that hard to attain.
As a matter of fact, Zyzz was not that big, and pretty much had a bro physique. All you really need is a low bodyfat percentage, and have very specific muscles developed. (more on that later)
Therefore, just like in my Dmitry Klokov article, I will be following the same type of structure and analysis in this article of Zyzz.
I’ll break down everything you must know about building a body like Zyzz so that you too can look like him.
First, I will examine all of his his weak and strong bodyparts such as the chest, shoulders, traps, back, arms, midsection, and legs, and how those muscles developed through his style of training. With each muscle group, I will provide general guidelines on how to achieve similar muscular development.
Then, after analyzing his muscles I will compile all the information into one complete program. It will be a 4 week full body concurrent training program, 100% customized on how to look like Zyzz. It is highly specific to Zyzz’s weak and strong muscle groups.
Usually, I make my programs for 12 weeks, but since this is a free article filled with goldmines of information, it will only be 4 weeks. Besides, the program is repeatable, and if I made it 12 weeks that would be like giving you a free product.
All that aside, I am confident that you can acquire Zyzz aesthetics if you listen to what I have to say.
So, are you ready to become aesthetic as fuuuaaarkkkk?
If so, let’s get started.
Analyzing Zyzz Muscles
Since Zyzz was originally a skinny World of Warcraft nerd, this would obviously affect his body transformation.
That is, some of his muscles would become impressive, while others would be quite average. I will analyze all of this for you.
I will now break down what muscles appear visually strong, and which muscles look visually weak.
This section is extremely important for understanding the 4 week program that you will get at the end.
Let’s discuss his upper body first, and then legs.
Zyzz Chest
Since the chest is everyone’s favorite muscle, we will be talking about that first.
In the case of Zyzz, his chest is actually really developed.
His upper pecs are sculpted to perfection to the point where you can barely see his collar bones, and his lower pecs have that squared masculine look rather than having droopy balloons.
He truly has an aesthetic chest.
This makes complete sense, as Zyzz looked up to old school bodybuilders like Frank Zane who emphasized the importance of having an aesthetic chest.
In fact, the entire physique of Zyzz is crafted off the idea of symmetry and balance. He never wanted to be the mass monster, which is why his entire look is so appealing to the eye.
Back to the chest. If you look at the training clips that he did release during his lifetime, you will notice that he did lots of incline dumbbell pressing, low cable crossovers and incline dumbbell flyes.
These exercises all produce a terrific stretch reflex in the whole chest, while simultaneously providing emphasis on the upper pecs.
In other words, all of the chest work that Zyzz performed was focused towards the upper chest.
Therefore, we will mimic what he did in this program.
This will be possible through incorporating special exercises.
Now, check out this clip where Zyzz fails to bench press 130kg for a 1RM.
This should make it extremely obvious that Zyzz was not a strong guy, and that it does not take that long to replicate his strength.
It would take about 2 years at the absolute max to bench press 130kg. Therefore, as a worst case scenario, it will only take you 2 years to acquire a chest like Zyzz.
Remember, Zyzz did not have a huge chest, only an aesthetic one.
Our focus is not to become a powerlifter, but to acquire that squared masculine chest with those upper pecs popping. That is what Zyzz had.
So just remember folks, every time you train your chest there needs to be focus on the upper chest region. Obviously, we will include some lower pec work in there too for the sake of balance, but it will not take priority.
Zyzz Shoulders
For a guy that was on a lot of gear, Zyzz’s shoulders were not that big.
To be honest, I was quite surprised myself upon looking for pictures.
I couldn’t find any where his delts looked overly 3D.
And I don’t mean to say this in a rude way. I am just telling the truth.
Zyzz did not have the biggest shoulders.
They were decently sized, but nothing crazy for an enhanced guy.
However, he did have some good pound for pound strength on his vertical presses. There are clips of him doing 50kg each arm on the dumbbell shoulder press.
Nonetheless, it should not be that difficult to get the shoulders of Zyzz.
They should hypertrophy automatically just by getting decently strong off incline presses.
However, since Zyzz was doing 50kg on the dumbbell shoulder press, we will certainly use that as a general strength standard.
Luckily it should not be that hard to achieve given the fact that Zyzz only did half reps on this exercise.
We will do the same by incorporating heavy partials.
An alternative would be to use accommodating resistance, but there won’t be any of that in this program.
Zyzz Traps
If there is one thing that is often talked about on bodybuilding forums (especially the misc) , it’s Zyzz’z traps.
His traps were actually really well developed, to the extent that they were disproportionately larger than everything else on his physique.
Zyzz was already a tall man, and the traps only made him look taller, because it gives the illusion of narrow clavicles and lats.
Nonetheless, because you are looking to achieve a physique like Zyzz, it will be very important that we focus on traps training.
Unlike his chest and shoulders, developing traps like Zyzz is going to take a lot of hard work.
This is because his traps were exceptionally developed, and he was on lots of gear.
As a drug-free lifter, the only way to replicate such trap development is by getting very very strong at shrugs.
For traps like Zyzz, you want to be shrugging 500lbs for reps at a bare minimum.
600lbs or more would be even better.
Since the traps need all the work they can get, we will also include special exercises like farmer walks, upright rows, and olympic pulls.
By getting strong on all these movements, you can get similar trap development as Zyzz, but without the gear.
Zyzz Back
It’s weird, because although Zyzz had great traps, his back really sucked balls.
There is literally zero width to his back.
No thickness in the spinal erectors either.
Only his upper back/traps is good.
This makes sense, because Zyzz was not very strong at rows or pullups.
Instead, you see him doing face pulls as if it was the best back exercise in the world.
(See 0:37, 0:59, and 2:06)
This was not the best investmentonhis part, especially considering the fact that he was tall and now looked even more narrow.
Nonetheless, this is better for you, because it will mean less work in the pulling department.
At the same time, you will be able to hammer your traps even harder, which should make it easier to get that upper back that Zyzz had.
It also means that you won’t need much spinal erector work, therefore there will be no use for good mornings, hyperextensions, or deadlifts.
Back training is going to be easy and fun for once!
Zyzz Arms
Of course, Zyzz had nice arms.
His biceps, triceps, and forearms were all very developed.
With that stats that were available, we know that his arms were at least 17 inches.
I am going to estimate 17.5 at his peak.
This arm size makes sense, given the fact that his physique is very bro-like.
Many times, Zyzz was seen doing lots of dumbbell curls, triceps extensions supersetted with close grip bench press, and heavy partials that you previously saw before.
This all contributed massively to his overall arm size.
Therefore, this program is going to have a heavy focus on bicep and triceps work.
Also, I want you to keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have 17.5 inch arms to look like Zyzz.
This is because Zyzz was 6”1 in height.
That means if you’re only 5”5, then having 15.5-16 inch arms will probably look like 17.5 inch arms on a tall guy.
So keep that in mind before you start thinking to yourself ”Damn it, now I need 17.5 inch arms!”
It’s all relative, okay? You must ALWAYS take your height into consideration.
Zyzz Midsection
Since Zyzz was all about the aesthetics, it makes sense why his midsection was so sculpted.
His serratus, obliques, upper abs, lower abs, and v abs are all very developed.
His waist size is also small, and his bodyfat percentage is low.
Therefore, to achieve a midsection like Zyzz, it requires that you train your abs from all angles.
You want to train specifically like a gymnast, and not a bodybuilder, strongman or powerlifter.
Otherwise, the abs will get too thick and wide, which will ruin the aesthetic midsection.
Moreover, your nutrition is going to have to be really really good if you want to maintain this low bodyfat percentage.
Having a midsection like Zyzz requires that you are at least 8-10% bodyfat, which can often times be very hard to do as a natural.
It may also cause health problems such as increased blood pressure and erectile dysfunction.
So make sure that if you diet down this lean, that you get frequent check-ups from a medical professional. (see medical disclaimer)
I’d also recommend that because you’re natural, you should stay closer to 10% than 8% bodyfat. You will minimize health risks this way.
Nonetheless, being 8-10% bodyfat in addition to having all the muscles of the midsection developed is what will give you that Zyzz look.
Zyzz Legs
Now we get to final part of analyzing Zyzz’s muscles, namely his legs.
First of all, I want to say right off the bat that Zyzz did not have large legs.
Nor were they particularly strong.
In fact, besides the clips of him doing leg extensions, the only real leg training we have of Zyzz is him squatting 225lbs.
This is extremely weak, and can be attained in less than a year of training. I have hundreds of people running my novice program who can outsquat him.
It may sound like I am hating on Zyzz, but I am not.
In fact, his strategy of minimizing leg size accentuates the rest of his body, which is perfect for aesthetics.
Plus, he really wanted to wear skinny jeans.
Nothing wrong about that, right? He wanted to stay in style!
Just realize, however, that if you plan on tackling the Zyzz physique, you will not have very big legs.
You will have lean, sculpted, and average sized legs, but they will not be big like a strength athlete.
In particular, if you look at Zyzz’s legs, you will notice that he had great quad and VMO development.
His calves, glutes, hamstrings, and adductors were quite small though.
For this reason, I suggest that you avoid heavy squats and deadlifts, and overall posterior chain work.
That, plus doing lots of unilateral leg work while keeping the leg training volume relatively low should be enough have legs that look like Zyzz.
You may still gain mass, but at least it will be minimized.
In other words, your legs will not get huge and bulky like a bodybuilder, strongman, or powerlifter.
Final Discussion
Now that we have all the information we need, it’s time to compile everything together into a well-organized program.
The program will be executed in a full body concurrent training style, which means that you will be performing full body workouts 2-4x a week, while frequently rotating exercise selection.
We do this to prevent accommodation and build overall strength and hypertrophy.
Plus, there’s a lot customization that goes into building the Zyzz physique without steroids, so we must make sure that we attack this look in every possible way.
Anyhow, I now present to you a 4 week custom program that will give you Zyzz aesthetics.
You obviously won’t look like him in 4 weeks, but if you keep repeating this program you should start seeing some noticeable results with time!
So without further ado, here’s the program.
PS: If this program helps you out, leave a comment down below!
WEEK 1
Incline Pause Bench Press 1-3RM OR 4-10RM + 3 Back-Off Sets/Triple Dropset
2-Board Press 3×3
Low Cable Crossovers 4×15
Triceps Pushdown 3×20
Power Shrug 5×5
Dumbbell Upright Row 3×10
Face Pulls 3×15
Dumbbell Preacher Curl 3×10
Hammer Curl 3×10
Pistol Squat 1-3RM
Sissy Squat 3xAMRAP
Hanging Leg Raises 3×20
WEEK 2
Weighted Dips 5-10RM + 3 Back-Off Sets/Triple Dropset
Incline Dumbbell Bench Press 3×15-30
Incline Dumbbell Flyes
Elbows-Out Extensions 3×8
High Pulls 5×2
Farmer Walks 5×30-60s
Reverse Pec Deck 3×15
Preacher Barbell Curl 3×8
Incline Curls 3×12
Low Pistol Box Squat 1-3RM
Reverse Lunges 3×5 (per leg)
Russian Twist 3×50
WEEK 3
Paused Overhead Press 1-3RM + 3 Back-Off Sets/Triple Dropset
Reverse Grip Bench Press 3×5 (in power rack with safety pins)
Pec Deck 3×10
Reverse Pushdowns 3×20
Barbell Shrug 5×15 (use straps)
Dumbell Pullovers 3×10
Rear Delt Flyes 3×12
Alternate Curls 3×10 (each arm)
Barbell Curl 3×50
Bulgarian Split Squat 5-10RM + 3 Back-Off Sets/Triple Dropset
Single-legged Leg Press 3×5
L-Holds OR Planks 3×30-60s
WEEK 4
Incline Close Grip Bench Press 1-3RM + 3 Back-Off Sets/Triple Dropset
Landmine Press 4×8
Seated Cable Flyes 3×10
Overhead Barbell Extension 3×8
Seated Barbell/Dumbbell Shrugs With 3s Squeeze 4×12
Cable Upright Row 4×10
Half Rep Dumbbell Shoulder Press 3×10
Machine Preacher Curl 3×12
Cable Curl 3×15
Hack Squat 4-10RM + 3 Back-Off Sets/Triple Dropset
Jumping Pistol Squats 3×10
Dragon Flags or Hanging Leg Raises 3×10
FIN
PS: If you haven’t seen it already, you need to now.
