penandbarbell.com
by Daniel Schou
P&B
P&B
About p & B
My name is Daniel Schou and Pen And Barbell. com is an expression of my passion for physical sculpting and my aesthetic point of view.
Penandbarbell.com is your in-depth guide to a lean, chiseled and muscularly defined physique. Here you will find advices and examples that will enable you to pursue the Pen and barbell ideal, namely a body that is in shape all year round.
On Penandbarbell.com you will find articles and picture galleries targeting all these different aspects of the Pen and barbell ideal. Here you will be able to learn how to compose a workout routine that suits your goals and how to achieve an overall aesthetic look that relates to the ideal described above. You will also find useful tips on exercise technique, nutrition and workout routines. Below, following a few words regarding my own person and a short account of credits, I will elaborate on the Pen and barbell ideal, in order for you to get a more fully nuanced picture of what you can expect to gain as a regular visitor at Penandbarbell.com.
About me
I’m Daniel Schou and I‘m passionate about weight training. Working out has always been an important part of my life. More specifically I’m into strength training and qualitative muscle building. My avid and always sustained relationship to weight training has, over time, resulted in a physique that nowadays raises a lot of questions in regard to how I train, how often I train, what my nutrition looks like, and so forth. Here, at Penandbarbell.com, I will answer all these questions that I often find myself facing at the gym and elsewhere.
If you are new to this site I recommend you to start here, where I am offering you recommendations on how to kick off your own Pen and barbell experience.
Penandbarbell.com is not all about muscle - this site is about aesthetics in a broader sense of the word.
What Penandbarbell.com has to offer
The ideal that is described here is what all the advices and examples on this site aims at. This is the ideal that I myself have always trained for and that I hope to illustrate through the photos featured on Penandbarbell.com.
All the different aspects that are highlighted here will be subject to elaborated in-depth articles that you will be able to find on Penandbarbell.com.
I. Strength according to the Pen and Barbell ideal
Here on Penandbarbell.com I put emphasis on the aesthetic aspects of a well-trained physique. Weight training offers you the possibility to actually mold and form your body to your own pleasing – and this grand notion is largely responsible for my passion about lifting weights. That said, however, it must also be noted that the strength that follows from body sculpting is beautiful in itself. A body that inhabits strength will more often than not have an aesthetic edge when compared to a body that lacks this very tangible attribute.
Strength is a fascinating subject – and it is not as clear cut as it might appear at first glance. It can be defined in various different ways. Different people put emphasis on different aspects of strength. There are strongmen that can lift huge amounts of weight. There are power lifters and weight lifters that can press, push and lift incredible loads. And there are people – gymnasts being the obvious example - that can perform otherworldly numbers of push-ups, chin-ups and other body weight exercises. Both of these categories are of course impressive in their own right, but the Pen and barbell ideal aims for something else – a strength that can be summed up in 3 different parts:
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Strength in relation to body size.
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Everyday strength. This means developing the kind of strength that lasts for more than a rep or two, balancing stamina, endurance and raw strength. This is the kind of strength that will come in handy when you encounter everyday obstacles and challenges, be it carrying the groceries home from the store, shoveling snow on your driveway or helping a friend to move to a new apartment. This is strength that is always at your disposal, requiring no warm-up, no assistance and no preparation whatsoever.
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Strength that lasts. The Pen and barbell ideal advocates a workout regime that ensures the kind of strength that allows you to recover fast and to perform heavy and physically demanding feats over a long period of time.
V. A passion for training – not just the result that it promises
The whole concept of Penandbarbell.com – the very idea of mine to create this site – is built upon a deep-going affection for weight training. For me this is not about prescribing a quick fix. Instead, this site is about quality. This is about discovering the full reward of intense muscle training. the Pen and barbell ideal is about making hard weight training a natural and ever-lasting part of life.
Now that you know what Penandbarbell.com is all about I recommend you to start here:
PENANDBARBELL.COM
PENANDBARBELL.COM
PENANDBARBELL.COM
BY
D.
Schou
About Penandbarbell.com
This is Penandbarbell.com - your guide to a chiseled, strong and muscularly defined body.
Here it is my ambition to provide you with both the inspiration and the knowledge that you need in order to be able to pursue the Pen and Barbell ideal for your own benefit. The Pen and barbell ideal can in a few words be described as follows:
A body that is strong in relation to its own size.
A body that is in shape all year round, without ever undergoing excessive bulking or cutting.
A physique that is lean, sculpted and muscularly defined.
A general attitude that invites aesthetics and art to be properly linked to this sphere of body sculpting.
A passion for the training in itself – not just the results that it promises.
All texts on Penandbarbell.com are written by me, Daniel Schou. I'm also the model in all the photos which are taken by artist, illustrator and photographer Meline Höijer Schou.
Credits
All the text on Penandbarbell.com is written solely by me, Daniel Schou.
I am also the model in all the photos that are featured on Penandbarbell.com.
All the photos on this site are taken by artist, illustrator and photographer Meline Höijer Schou.
Don´t hesitate to visit her at www.MelineArt.Com whenever you are in need of aesthetic inspiration or feel the urge to plunge into the world of art.
Visit www.MelineArt.com whenever you are in need of aesthetic inspiration.
II. Being in shape all year round
Pen and barbell is about being chiseled, defined and vascular, yes, but still, in spite of all of this, it is not about how to cut or get contest ready. I favor the chiseled look, where quality always outweighs raw bulk, but never through excessive cutting or bulking. Visible abs and prominent vascularity are important parts of an aesthetically pleasing physique, to be sure, but in my opinion these factors should never be allowed to be over-emphasized. If it is not sustainable, then, in a way, it is not real. The same goes for bulking – the other end of the spectra. Adding muscle size is vital if one is to achieve a thoroughly impressive appearance, but, once again, it should not be pursued through excesses or unsustainable methods or exaggerations. I promote a workout regime and an ideal that allows for being in great shape all year round.
III. Lean and chiseled rather than just big and smooth
The Pen and barbell ideal favors a lean, chiseled and muscularly defined look over a big and smooth one. This goes hand in hand with the already mentioned strength ideals and the being in shape all year round message that I want to send.
If you absorb and follow the advices and examples offered on Penandbarbell.com you will, if you give it time and enough effort, develop a physique that is rich in sculptured details. A few examples of such details could be: visible serratus muscles, a distinct pectoralis minor, clearly outlined triceps striations and a well-developed biceps peak where it is made obvious that the biceps consists of two different muscle heads.
IV. Inviting aesthetics and art into the sphere of body sculpting
I write about weight training. Weight training (most often) takes place in a gym. Even so, you will quickly find that most of the photos featured on Penandbarbell.com are taken outside of the gym, in what I would like to call a Pen and barbell environment. There are several reasons for this. This is not just a guide on how to go about achieving your own physical goals – it is an aesthetic guide, that aims at being inspiring in a broader sense. The fact that the photos are taken in beautiful surroundings serve to remind the viewer of the fact that, no matter how passionate you are in relation to your training, life actually awaits outside of the gym walls. Achieving your goals in the gym is part of a bigger picture – it is not the full and complete picture in itself.
CONTACT
P&B
This is a Penandbarbell.com page
Founder and author of P & B
DANIEL SCHOU
All photos are taken by
MELINE HÖIJER SCHOU
The model in all the pictures is
DANIEL SCHOU