2825: How To Build Your Shoulders, Arms, and Glutes Before Summer

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We talk about sculpting your shoulders, arms, and glutes. Exercise is order, volume, we break it down for you. By the way, we have a great program for those of you that want to develop those muscles. It's called maps muscle, mommy, and it's 50% off. Right now go to mapsmusclemonie.com, use the code, muscle, mommy, 50 for that discount.

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Another time is here, we're going to talk about how you can sculpt some body parts that look great on the beach. Delts, arms, and glutes. We're going to talk about rules, we're going to talk about programming, best exercises. Let's go.

This is what it used to win bikini shows. Oh, yeah. I mean, arms, delts, and glutes are really bringing the body together, especially for women. You mentioned bikini shows. This is like, yeah, I would, and if I would order them, I would order them, and glutes

shoulders, then arms. And that order, you know, you're high already. So when I trained, obviously, a lot of female competitors in, you know, you're presenting your physique on a stage in a bikini, and the girls at one show, especially glutes and shoulders.

Like those are like the, a lot of times arms will look really good when you have good shoulders. Like everybody has biceps and triceps, and if you can separate that look with the shoulders, it gives a very sculpted looking arm. Yeah.

“And so that was, when it came to the programming, that's what was unique about how”

I programmed, first, let's say like a female competitor versus like a male competitor, or it just a normal person. Like when we were presenting this symmetrical balanced physique, a lot of times these were the main focus points of how I programmed that. Yeah, they're, they're definitely body parts that really contribute, I would say, the

most to the, what we consider aesthetics, right, to the lung, that people looking for. You mentioned the delts, really well developed delts, make the arms look good, yes. And so that makes a real important for the upper body, and then of course glutes, that's like a big priority with people's train now, glutes are important functionally and athletically

as well, strong glutes, make you fast, and make you powerful.

But well developed glutes just look good, and it's not a muscle that you can fake. You build it. And you can build it. You definitely can build it. Yeah.

In fact, all the muscles that we just talked about can be radically changed through the proper application of strength training. What I mean by proper application, a lot of what I'm talking about is programming and programming in fitness jargon, what that essentially means is the combination of sets, reps, exercises, the organization of them, the order of them, the weekly schedule, the monthly schedule,

“the larger cycles, which could be two or three months long, like that's what programming”

is. And that makes a huge difference. And with a lot of people understand about body parts, their, their knowledge is typically limited to exercises. Like I know exercise for body parts, but where you place them, of course, how you perform

them. That's real important. But where you place them, and then how you put together the entire program, makes a huge difference.

I mean, a well-written program will produce, you know, 50 to 80 percent better results than

one that's huge difference. I actually really enjoy this conversation because it is nuanced and getting back to it.

competitors is because those were all, I never got to be bikini competitor who had never

lifted weights. These are already, people that have been lifting weights for a long time. But when I would, like, so just like a normal client before I take a competitor through anything, it's like first week is just tracking what you do. I want to know how you train, I want to know what you're eating, I want to remove all the

things, and I have never had a client, so that I did not radically change the way they lifted weights. And I think it was programming. Yeah.

“And I think that's because women still, men are susceptible to this too, also.”

But I think women are sold a lot of these movements that are not the best for development. They're designed around sweating and burning calories. And it's really cool. Yeah, about the feel. Yeah.

A lot of times it's just way too many reps, and they're just squeezing the muscles.

Yes. A lot of super setting exercises, short rest periods, isolation movements. And so a lot of times I would just radically shift that and make a few other tweaks, nutrition is so that. And we both, we just see this huge difference.

And so glad you said what you're saying, because when we think sculpt, we tend to think fat loss. And now there's a component there, right? There's definitely a component there of very little, not having a little bit of the very last step.

The majority of sculpting is building. If you want shoulders that look like you work out, if you want arms that look like you work out.

“If you want glutes that look round and full like you work out, you have to build them.”

Not only that, but having a little bit more muscle in your delts at the same body fat percentage automatically looks leaner. Yeah. So in other words, you didn't even have to get leaner if you just built your delts a little bit.

Now, suddenly you've got definition and shape. This is, of course, especially true for the glutes where a little bit of body fat on the glutes looks good anyway. But it's true for all muscles. A well developed, remember, built muscle looks leaner at higher body fat percentages.

The building part of sculpting is what people typically miss, especially women, because they're so typically rushed to get lean, like if you had more muscle, it would get easier to get lean anyway. But also you're just going to look better. In those muscles you highlighted in the beginning, it's like it builds out that ratios.

Yeah.

“Actually, you look more thin and what they're desiring from that effect, because of the”

facts that they built and they all up these muscles, it gives you that hourglass kind of figure. Now, I would say all of sculpting is the building process. The part where you lean out or die it or cut is just revealing the work of the sculpting. It's all you're doing.

It's like you, all the real work is done in the off season. Once you go into prep or another way of saying that once you decide that I want to lean out, get loose body fat, at that point you're just revealing the hard work that you did into building and sculpting the body. If you're not choosing the right exercises, you're not hitting protein and take and you're

not hitting in a sufficient calorie surplus, you're not going to do that. You're in this perpetual cycle of pushing your body in all these exercises, hoping that your body's in a burn, but not giving it the tools, not doing it at stake. This is an area that a lot of both women and women get stuck here of training in the gym for four or five, six days a week and eating really good, but then not seeing change in

their body. Along those lines, the best rule of thumb or one of the best things to focus on is getting stronger. You can burn a muscle where it burns and it gets tired and gets fatigued and it gets sore. None of those are good predictors of any change in shape or definition of the muscle.

Other than that, it just means that you exhausted the muscle. A better predictor of whether or not the muscle is going to look different is strength. If you get consistently stronger over a period of time, you know, if you're training properly for a 90 day period and you've added 30 pounds to an exercise, you're going to look different.

I can't say that for if the muscle got sore this many times or if it burned really bad during these exercises or you've got to really sweaty during your workout. You do all of that look exactly the same, but if you consistently get stronger, your muscle is going to look different. Your body is going to look different.

So it's one of the best predictors of sculpting.

So that would be the first thing I would say is get strong.

In fact, if you focus on getting stronger for most people, especially for women, you're going to get great results from that. The second thing is when you're looking at your workout programming, a good rule of thumb, it's not a hard rule, but it's a general rule.

isolation lifts.

So compound lift, you know, there's two general categories of exercises, compound an isolation

and you could loosely break it down and say compound lifts involve more than one moving joint in an isolation movement, really involves one joint. So an example of this for the delts, a compound exercise would be an overhead press. I'm using the shoulder joint and the elbow joint, an isolation movement would be a standing lateral.

That's an isolation exercise. When you're doing your workout, you want to prioritize the compound lift in the beginning of the workout. Why? This is where you're going to lift the most weight.

This is where you apply the most tension, this is where you want the strength gains. You want all the strength gains to go to the compound lifts because it gives you so much to go to the most muscle from those specific exercises. Two, you want to be able to perform them effectively and so like fatigue itself or something.

“You don't want to factor that in quite as much, so that's why prioritizing it first,”

you're able to eliminate that and then whatever you have left energy-wise, we're going to put it in isolation. I'm so glad you brought this up as one of the main points because I was actually really surprised at the controversy that we got on the shoulder, the ranking of the shoulder stuff.

Because it was how to sculpt, you know, the best exercise that sculpts your delts. We put lateral raises toward the bottom of that and that's because it's not everybody's good to probably. Yes. It's not about exercise, but if I'm going to rank it, if I'm not going to come close

to competing with the compound movement, there's just better compound lifts for the shoulders that will build and grow, which again, to our point earlier, will sculpt the shoulders better than a isolation exercise, that by the way, you can't even load very much. No. In fact, they don't lend themselves well to loading for no, and then they, you, your traps

end up overtaking the movement and the point is to build these delts and this is why that movement was ranked so low on our list, but yet got all kinds of heat and I was like, oh, wow, I'm surprised so many people don't realize this and are out there probably doing all kinds of lateral raises when it would be, it would be focused more on compound lifts that will build more of their shoulders.

That's right. So generally speaking, you know, we're talking about delts, arms, which is biceps triceps

and glutes, the first exercise in your workout for those body parts should be a compound

lift and then you can follow up with isolation. So compound lifts for delts would be like overhead press, compound lifts for triceps would be dips, close to your bench press, believe it or not, there's a compound lift for biceps, a lot of people know this, but you could do what's called a, a pull down with a curl emphasis. So it's literally like a reverse gripper or supine grip pull down, but rather than focusing

on the back, you're trying to do a curl as you come down, that's the compound lift for the biceps. And then glutes, you have like your squats, your dead lifts, your hip thrust, these are compound lifts that you can load heavy to build the glutes and then you can move into the isolation stuff.

The thing is you want to prioritize these body parts at the beginning of the workout and you also want to prioritize them with the more, with more of the volume. So what do I mean with that?

“Okay, so all these delts, because I think this is a good example, say the bulk of the training.”

Yeah, so typically when you're, when you're doing a workout, like a common split that someone may do is what's known as a ppl split. So this is called a push pull legs split, it's very common way to break up the body parts. So the push day would include chest shoulders and triceps, pull day would be back biceps and then the leg day would be of course legs.

So let's, let's talk about the push day.

Almost always in a workout, people will do chest before shoulders.

Okay. Now that generally makes sense, generally speaking, you want your delts are so active in chest exercises and the chest exercises are heavier, so like a bench press will do more than you will. Let's say an overhead press.

Basically you start your workout that way, but if you're, if your focus is delts, if you're like, I don't care about really developing my pack. I'm sculpting of a woman's physique. Yes. This is where we're going to go first.

Yes. I've never had a woman come to me and be like, I want to build my chest up or it's always, if you want, this is where, this is where programming gets a little bit different with men and women, especially when we're talking about aesthetics, right, is you're going to focus on a muscle group that makes a difference, like with women, a lot of, so, some

of my female clients, we did hardly any chest training and put that extra volume in

“to building the delts and you have to account for that too because you don't want to just”

do more shoulders, which is an mistake that people make is they do everything and they slap on more volume on the shoulders. It's no, if I'm going to take from anywhere, I'm probably going to take from the chest and I'm going to add volume in the shoulders and so back to your point about volume,

more shoulders because someone who says, oh, this is how you should build, it's like, well,

then you're doing too much and so there's a delket dancer. That's right. So, you want to do more work for the body parts you're trying to develop, but that doesn't mean you just add more work to your overall workout, you take away some work from other body parts.

Your body can only tolerate so much total work or damage, okay. And if your goal is, again, to develop your delts, Adam gave a great example, take away some of the work for chest and throw it on to shoulders and prioritize it at the beginning of the workout. Same thing with glutes and even arms, look, if you're looking like, I'm not that interested

in developing my back a lot, but I want my biceps to look really good or my triceps to look really good. You might even do those before the larger body parts if the goal is to sculpt and shape a particular body part.

Then we have two ways you could train your body with strength training and it's good

I need to do both, you have your heavy days and your heavy like days, heavy days, reps are low and I'm just trying to be strong, lighter days, I'm focusing more on getting a pump, my reps are much higher, probably around 12 to 15 and I'm just trying to get good blood flow. It's a good combination or way to alternate your training or to add some kind of novelty.

And so, both of them have value, both of them run out of value if that's all you do. This is the point that I'm trying to do. Well, this really prioritizes strength and recovery.

“That's what I like about this is you have a day where I'm really focused on going heavy,”

which I'm going to put extra stress on the body and really promote getting stronger, which we know internal bill muscle. And then I follow that up with a lighter training session, which now is more, I'm still going through, I'm still training, but it's more facilitating recovery and resting me up to get ready again to do another one of those.

Yeah, another way to do this would be to do phases, so I would do a few weeks where I'm going heavy and then a few weeks where I'm going lighter or the rep range has changed, would be a different way to put it. My rep range is, you know, next few weeks is five or six, next few weeks is let's say 12 to 15. And it's a great way to keep the body progressing because the body does adapt pretty quickly

to a specific rep range if you just stay there, you have to change it all the time. Next up is look, you want to sculpt your body, you better eat a high protein diet. By the way, you better eat a high protein diet if you're trying to get lean, okay? Even if your goal is to try to lose body fat, high protein preserves muscle better than a non-high protein diet.

If you want to build, which is what we're trying to do, you definitely need to have high protein. Now, what does this look like? One gram of protein per pound of body weight or per pound of target body weight.

“So if you want to weigh 140 pounds or 150 pounds, that's how many grams of protein, you're”

going to eat on a daily basis, makes a big difference. If you're, I'll just give an example. If you have two identical women, everything's identical. Both of them, 145 pounds, one of them is eating 80 grams of protein a day. The other one's eating 145 grams of protein a day, even if everything else is the same.

Even if the calories are same, so the 80 gram of proteins having more carbs fats, whatever you're going to make up the difference, the 145 gram protein person is going to build muscle faster and better than the 80 gram protein person. It makes a big difference, does.

And here's the thing with it.

You can't make up protein. So you can't have like low days, and they're all coming to make up for it today. It's every day. It's every day consistent is when it really makes a difference. Your body doesn't store protein like it does, carbohydrates or body fat or fat.

Protein is every single day, be very consistent with high protein. You also need good sleep, trying to build and shape the body, even trying to get lean on not good, consistent sleep, good luck. You're playing this on hard mode, if not impossible mode, with portions due to no exceptions. That's right.

I mean, it's like you said like every goal, it's like these two make such a massive impact in whether or not you're going to get anywhere towards your goal. And it really needs to reflect what your training intensity is looking like too, because that seems to be the easy lever that everybody can push harder in my workout, trained to fill it, get after my workouts, but then not pay a lot of attention to how they've

been resting that week.

“And you need to learn to be, this is a lot of my coaching when I'm coaching competitors”

is like, how did you sleep last night? Yeah. Like, okay, even though today I wanted you to really get after it or change the PR, this is not a day we do that. Like it need, you need to back off, go through, we're going to go through the workout,

still we're going to do it, but then back off a little bit right now. And I think this is something that we tend to ignore. And it's like, when you are in the build in scope, you're trying to build muscle, it's so the recovery piece of this is such a large piece of the puzzle that I will scale back on intensity and/or volume in a training routine, if my client isn't getting adequate

rest because of how important it is. Often times I've had clients who were doing everything pretty well, consistent, decent

And it was a miraculous, how dramatic their body, I mean, I'm not talking subtle.

Like, it was like a subtly, got stronger and subtly, body started. It was dramatic after a few weeks of this, it was like, holy cow, what has happened to my body? Exercising, that's just the catalyst to get you towards the building process. The building process is really in the recovery in the sleep and eating.

And it's also, it's the stress catalyst, so it doesn't, it doesn't take much to send a signal to the body that, hey, we need to, hey, this person's going to do this thing lifting weights. I'll do less than you think. Yeah, and so if you are hammering that and you're not getting adequate protein and

rest, boy, you're going to really stall out. You can weigh back off the training and really focus on the protein and the sleep and boom, all of a sudden, you see that person gets stronger and atmosphere. Totally. All right, so let's list best exercises for each body part that we just talked about.

We'll include a compound, I guess, an isolation. We'll start with delts.

“I think I named one of them already, overhead press.”

Yeah.

It doesn't get better than an overhead press.

Yeah, that's your size. Now, I like standing overhead press, you could do these seated, but I do like standing because it doesn't evolve a little bit of upper back stability. It's good for shoulder mobility and honestly, all things being equal, it's just a better exercise.

Does that means you can't do these seated? You can. You definitely can. There's a lot of varieties and versions of overhead presses. You can do dumbbells, barbells.

You can do an Arnold press, a machine press, but overhead press is a must when it comes to the compound lift. I'm going to also throw a little curve ball here since we're just talking about best exercises and it doesn't fall in the category of your compound lift and that's a rear delt fly.

That's my favorite isolation. That's what I was saying. Okay, so I don't know if you're going to go into isolation. Yeah, compound isolation. Because to me, that ends up taking a high priority, even though it is counter-intuitive

or conflicting with what we're talking about with compound lifts, because of its neglect. That's right. The rear delt doesn't really get hit. It's just, it's, it's, it's, everybody does front delt type of movements or lateral type of stuff.

And when you talk about sculpting a body and a physique and the shoulder in particular, building that round shoulder makes such a huge difference. Oh, I, I, I ranked the rear, the rear delt fly higher than the side lateral. Oh, yeah. Definitely better.

“Which is, I think that's one of the things that we did in that, and that when we ranked”

the list, it got controversy. That's right. No, it's for aesthetics. That's what makes the delts look round. Yes.

100%. Biceps. I like the curl grip pull down where you're focusing on curling, as a compound lift, isolation exercise for bicep. I really, at this point, I don't care.

It could be a preacher curl. It could be, you know, an incline curl. Yeah. Actually, I like incline curls because it places the bicep and stretch a lot, but you're good with that.

Triceps, close grip bench rest is my favorite compound lift. And then overhead tricep extension, just because of the stretch at places on the long head of the tricep. And I would rank that higher than even a tricep press down for overall exercise. I would tell you.

Yeah. And then glutes, this is easy, you guys. Barbell squats and hip thrusts, like you can't get it better than those two exercises. Deadlifts are great. Seawood, Deadlifts are great.

Romani and Deadlifts are great. They're all great. Pacific squat and hip thrust. But if you had to pick two squat and hip thrusts, like you can hip thrust before you squat squat before you hip thrust, I really don't care.

But I think they're both.

“I mean, that's why we held that master class for that was because if you get really strong”

on the hip thrusts, you can get really strong and squat. Your butt's built. You're going to have a butt. You're going to have some. You're going to build a butt from that.

You're going to have a butt. Now, we have a program called muscle bombing, and it is a well-programmed strength training program within emphasis on the body parts that we just talked about. So it was written in a way to where, you know, the typical woman says, hey, these are the body parts that I really want to focus on.

And so it was written in that way where they're prioritized, both volume and priority

in the workout, and it's written like we said with the best exercise first and the supporting

ones after that. And it's 50% off for this episode right now. So it's half off. That's the whole program. You've got video demos in there, sets, reps, exercises, the whole deal.

You go to mapsmusclemommy.com. The code is Musclemommy 50, and that gets you 50% off. You can also find us on Instagram. It's my input media. We'll see you there.

Let's name to Mindpump, if your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB [email protected]. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and abolict, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by SAU, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having SAU and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

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