Wellcultured - Well Cultured is a men’s online magazine with advice and reviews on fashion, dating, finances, health, music, movies and many other topics, as well as a robust message board and the Well Cultured Guide, a freely editable community wiki.

Should I buy a perfect push-up or something like it? People tell me it helps hit your pecs.

The equipment in question.

Probably not.  Such tools are rarely worth the money, and you should probably spend any available cash on a gym membership instead.  Doing workouts at home is a decent way to start getting muscular, but normal pushups work just fine, and little handles will not improve your pecs enough to justify the cost.  Moreover, such equipment is readily thrown into a closet and ignored.  Just get a gym membership.

My boyfriend is rather big and muscular at 6’3″, 245lbs. He also has an *EXTREMELY* mesomorphic build. His shoulders are very wide and his legs are almost as big as his waist. He is in shape.

All he wears are t-shirts and Levi’s 550(48×34 so his legs fit) and some d-ring belt he bought at sporting goods store for $3 to keep his pants from falling down. He says the only clothes that he can find that fit are for fat people. Every time I buy him something it’s either too small in some way or looks like it’s 5 sizes too big for him.

What do I do?

Long story short: go for the stuff that looks five sizes too big for him and tailor it all down.

It sounds like your boyfriend has an exaggerated form of the V-taper that most weight lifters do — a physically attractive but sartorially difficult feature for a guy to have. This taper makes both shirt and pants shopping ridiculously difficult — for the former, everything always looks baggy, and the latter usually never fits unless you take in the waist dramatically or otherwise make extensive alterations to the thigh area.

You need to get your boyfriend a good tailor and begin to cut things down to his size. For shirts, buy things that fit him well in the shoulder/chest area and have a tailor cut down where possible. Don’t worry if the clothing is technically for fat people — for the most part, you should be concerned with fit, not where you buy the clothing. The same general rules apply to pants: find something that fits the most difficult part of his body (in this case, the thighs) and see what you can do with a tailor to accommodate the rest of his body. The rule of thumb should be that there should be no excess baggage in any of his clothing — if there is, find out where you can take the cloth in and do it.

Incidentally, if your boyfriend likes Levis, see if he can find a pair of Levis 501xx (Shrink to Fit) that fit his waist. The 501xx line “shrink[s] to fit” the wearer with subsequent washes, so in some respects they automatically tailor to the wearer’s body. If he can find a pair with a size 40 waist (there are plenty of sizes on the Levis website, ranging to up to a 46″ waist), he might be pleasantly surprised how well they’ll fit him after a few washes.

I’ve mentioned this on here repeatedly before, but I’ll mention it again: if he needs a suit, get it made-to-measure, or even specially tailored. Given your boyfriend’s size problems, you really want to make sure any suit(s) he wears really fit him, so don’t buy a suit off the rack. Thick as Thieves is a well-reviewed MTM store online that is remarkably affordable, if you’re looking for somewhere to start.

Good luck shopping!

How do I get those great “V” shaped cuts in my lower stomach near my crotch? My girlfriend says she likes them a lot. I work out a lot, but I don’t have them.

Getting that nice “V” cut is really a two step process: Weight loss and lower abdominal work.

First off, weight loss. Like virtually any other muscle in your body, nice definition comes from exposure, as in removing the layers of fat that cover the muscle in your body. Though fat doesn’t accumulate THAT strongly over the lower abdominal muscles (well, not as much as a little bit above the crotch area), it still does. Lose weight and expose muscle.

Second off, you actually need to work out those muscles. As silly and stereotypical as it sounds, the best way to do this is a good squat routine featuring both normal and front squats below parallel. While I can’t explain the entire mechanics of this in a short post (get your hands on Starting Strength), the basic idea is that a full range of motion squat with good form in two ways (which can often balance out weaknesses you may have one specific move) will build muscle and burn fat like a damn furnace.

It’s really that simple- just optimize your workout and you’ll please your girlfriend in no time.