Copyright 2005 by Scott Hays
Book: Built for Sex
Topic: Male Sexuality
Byline: Scott Hays

If you’ve ever spent any time at a gym, you’ve seen him, perhaps (we hope not) you are even him.

We’re talking about the guy who goes to the gym, suits up, and then goes around making chin music to everyone else in the place. Sometimes he’ll do a couple of stretches or a few half-hearted lifts or maybe take a desultory stroll on the treadmill. But most of the time, he beats his gums. And most importantly of all, he never—repeat, never—breaks a sweat.

Now you know who we’re talking about? It’s not just that he’s not serious. It’s the way he always gets in your way. Like when you’re trying to work through a few sets of weights, and he’s using the leg-press machine as a La-Z-Boy.

We’re being pretty hard on the poor guy, but only to emphasize that motivation is the key to having great sex. Every one of us, including this dope at the gym, is a collection of habits. Who we are, how we look, and how we perform in bed are in many ways products of that collection. If, for example, your particular collection of habits includes frequent trips to the kitchen between innings on TV, it’s a pretty safe bet that you aren’t in the best shape of your life. If you always have sex in the same position or come after a certain length of time, chances are you’re going to keep doing it unless you put out the energy to change. And that takes work, commitment, and a desire to change.

Unless you’re willing to devote enormous time and effort to working out, you are probably never going to have abs like the washboards you see on male fashion models. Hard work and dedication will get you fit—fitter than you’ve ever been in your life. But you won’t get that "shredded" look unless nature designed you that way in the first place.

The same is true of penis size, or how often you can make love in a night, or how often you even want to make love. Your lifestyle—how well you eat, how much you exercise, and so on—can certainly prime the pump and make you feel sexy. It can give you the stamina you need for good sex. It can make you sexy to others. But it won’t turn you into some kind of Hollywood sex-puppy. That’s not realistic. Nor, for that matter, is it necessary.

A Real Plan for Men

When we were researching this book, we talked to a lot of you guys. As you’ll see in later chapters, you had a lot of enlightening stuff to say. For starters, you told us you wanted better sex but didn’t want to work too hard. The good news is, you don’t really have to. Yes, changing your lifestyle and paying attention to the little things takes work, but you’re already closer than you think to being attractive to women and having a steamy sex life. How do we know this? When researching the book, we also asked the people who care about how you look and what you do in bed—women. You’ll find their voices throughout this book, too. They told us, again and again, that they don’t want a man who looks like he lives in a gym. That ripped male physique? It leaves them cold. What they really want is a man who cares enough about himself to stay fit, who can find his way around the kitchen without getting lost, who knows the differences between acrobatic, show-off sex and truly intimate (and hot) encounters.

Six-pack abs and bulging biceps? "No way!" a 25-year-old graduate student in New York City told us. "A guy who’s in that kind of shape spends way too much time in front of the mirror, I care about a man’s inner beauty, his charm and charisma. That’s what makes him sexy."

The Built for Sex plan is based on one simple premise: Every man, whatever his age, diet, or level of fitness, can improve his sex life by making minimal changes in his life. Take a moment to let that sink in. You don’t need to work out day and night. You don’t need to become a vegetarian. You don’t have to spend a month’s salary on how-to sex books (thought the photographs are certainly worth a look). All you have to do is find in yourself the motivation to tweak your life rather than turn it upside down.