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

0:00Listen up, I need your attention for a moment. Chevy Drive Chicago has a massive opportunity for you. They're giving you the chance to win the Chevy you actually want. There's no mystery here and no luck of the draw, surprise prize. You choose the Chevy. You pick it, you win it, and you drive it. Chevy's lineup is built for whatever the road throws at you. If you need a truck that's as dependable as they come, the Silverado is ready to work hard and play even harder. If you've been thinking about making the switch to electric, the Equinox EV makes it a seamless transition. Quiet, powerful, and big on tech features.

0:32From the capability of the Equinox to the striking design of the Blazer, there's a Chevy that fits your life perfectly. Whether you want gas or electric, the choice is entirely yours. Entering is simple. Just head to ChevyDriveChicago.com to sign up. While you're there, check out the Chevy Truck Month incentives and find your local dealer. Chevy Drive Chicago, official partner of the Chicago Bears. Don't just dream about it. Go win it at ChevyDriveChicago.com. Delicious spring gatherings start at Whole Foods Market. Shop the Spring and Bloom sales event with yellow sales signs throughout the store.

1:08And serve your loved ones Whole Foods Market seafood. Always responsibly farmed or sustainable while caught. Explore vibrant seasonal flavors like their trending Mango Yuzu Chantilly Cake. Great for brunch or an after dinner treat. Speaking of brunch, check out their deviled eggs, cold pressed juices and more. Spring is in bloom now at Whole Foods Market. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

1:42Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about sculpting your shoulders, arms, and glutes, exercises, 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 called MAPS Muscle Mommy, and it's 50 % off right now. Go to MAPSMuscleMommy.com. Use the code MUSCLEMOMMY50 for that discount. Rho Nutrition provides excellent supplements utilizing liposomal technology. Now, this technology allows the compound to be utilized far more effectively. Liposomal creatine, better than creatine.

2:22Adam Schafer:Liposomal glutathione, far better than regular glutathione. NAD, you want the mitochondrial energy benefits. You want to use NAD and feel a difference. You got to use it with liposomal technology. And Roe Nutrition is the best in the industry for that. Go check them out. Get 20 % off. Go to roenutrition.com. That's R-H-O nutrition.com forward slash discount forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump to get that 20 % off discount. Today's program giveaway is the RGB bundle. If you want to win, leave a comment below this video. The first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications.

2:54And if you win, we'll let you know in the comment section.

2:56Adam Schafer:Also, Muscle Mommy, 50 % off right now. Go to mapsmusclemommy.com. Use the code MUSCLEMOMMY50 for the discount. Back to the show.

3:05Sal Di Stefano:All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

3:20Adam Schafer:Summertime 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 used to win bikini shows. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, arms, delts, and glutes are really what bring the body together, especially for women. You mentioned bikini shows like this is like, yeah, I would.

3:45Sal Di Stefano:And if I would order them, I would order them in glutes, shoulders, then arms in that order of priority. So when I trained, obviously, a lot of female competitors, and you're presenting your physique on a stage in a bikini, and the girls at one shows had especially glutes and shoulders. Those are like the – a lot of times arms will look really good when you have good shoulders. because everybody has biceps and triceps, and if you can separate that look with the shoulders, it gives a very sculpted-looking arm. And so when it came to the programming, that's what was unique about how I programmed first, let's say, like a female competitor versus a male competitor or just a normal person.

4:34Sal Di Stefano:Like when we were presenting this symmetrical, balanced physique, a lot of times these were the main focus points of how I programmed that.

4:44Adam Schafer:Yeah, they're definitely body parts that really contribute, I would say, the most to what we consider aesthetics, right? To the look that people are looking for. You mentioned the delts, really well-developed delts make the arms look good. And so that makes it real important for the upper body. And then of course glutes, that's like a big priority with people's training 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.

5:20Adam Schafer:You definitely can build it. In fact, all the muscles that we just talked about can be radically changed through the proper application of strength training. And 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 what a lot of people understand about body parts their their knowledge is typically limited to exercises like i know exercises 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 uh better results than one that's a huge huge difference i actually really enjoy this conversation

6:28Sal Di Stefano:because it is nuanced. And getting back to, and I know this applies to everybody, but why I keep drawing back to the bikini competitors is because those were all, I never got a bikini competitor who had never lifted weights. These are already people that have been lifting weights for a long time. But when I would, 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. all the things. And I have never had a client that I did not radically change the way they lifted weights.

7:08Sal Di Stefano:It was always 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 and it's all yeah how about the feel yeah a lot of times it's just uh way too many reps and they're just squeezing the muscles yes a lot of 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 nutritionally so that and we boom we just see this huge difference i'm so glad you said what you're saying what you're

7:53Adam Schafer:because when we think sculpt, we tend to think fat loss. Now, there's a component there, right? There's definitely a component there of - Very little. Not having a lot of body. The very last step. The majority of sculpting is building. Like 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, okay? And not only that, but having a little bit more muscle in your delts at the same body fat percentage automatically looks leaner. So in other words, you don't even have to get leaner if you just built your delts a little bit.

8:31Adam Schafer: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. and the building part of sculpting is what people typically miss especially women yeah because they're so typically rushed to get lean it's 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

9:02Sal Di Stefano:beginning it's like it builds out that ratio so that actually you look uh more uh thin and what they're desiring from that effect because of the fact that they built and developed these muscles that gives you that hourglass kind of figure. I mean, I would say all of sculpting is the building process. The part where you lean out or diet or cut is just revealing the work of the sculpting. It's all you're doing. It's like all the real work is done in the off season. Once you go into prep, or another way of saying that, once you decide I want to lean out, right, lose body fat, at that point you're just revealing the hard work that you did into building and sculpting the body.

9:47Sal Di Stefano:And if you're not choosing the right exercises, you're not hitting protein intake, 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 going to burn, but not giving it the tools, not doing it. And this is an area that a lot of people, both men and women get stuck here, of training in the gym four, five, six days a week, and eating really good, but then not seeing change in their body.

10:16Adam Schafer:Yeah. And along those lines, the best rule of thumb or one of the best things to focus on is getting stronger. Okay. So 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. None of that. Okay. It just means that you exhausted or tired 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, 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.

11:00Adam Schafer: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 got really sweaty during your workout. You can do all of that and look exactly the same. But if you consistently get stronger, your muscles are going to look different. Your body's 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.

11:36Adam Schafer:Most the time, you want to focus your energy on the compound lifts before you do the isolation lifts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So compound lift, there's two general categories of exercises, compound and isolation. And you could loosely break it down and say compound lifts involve more than one moving joint. And 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.

12:19Adam Schafer:Why? This is where you're going to lift the most weight. This is where you're going to 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 they give you so much in return.

12:30Sal Di Stefano:You're going to build the most muscle from those specific exercises. And then two, you want to be able to perform them effectively. And so like fatigue itself is something you don't want to factor that in quite as much. So that's why prioritizing it first, you know, you're able to eliminate that. And then whatever you have, you know, left energy wise, we're going to put into 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 ranking of the shoulder stuff because it was how to sculpt, like best exercises to sculpt your delts.

13:08Sal Di Stefano:And we put lateral raises as toward the bottom of that. And that's because it's not - It's everybody's go-to probably, that's why. Yes, and it's like - Which it's not a bad exercise. It's not, exactly. But if I'm going to rank it - Right, if I'm having, it's not going to come close to competing with the compound movement. Right. 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.

13:40Adam Schafer:In fact, they don't lend themselves well to loading very much.

13:43Sal Di Stefano:No, and then 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 how many people don't realize this and are out there probably doing all kinds of lateral raises when it would behoove them to be focused more on compound lifts that will build more of their shoulders. That's right.

14:07Adam Schafer:So generally speaking, 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 don't know this, but you could do what's called a pull down with a curl emphasis. So it's literally like a reverse grip or supineated grip pull down. But rather than focusing on the back, you're trying to do a curl as you come down.

14:38Adam Schafer:That's a compound lift for the biceps. And then glutes, you have like your squats, your deadlifts, your hip thrusts. These are compound lifts that you can load heavy to build the glutes. And then you can move into the isolation stuff. The other thing is you want to prioritize these body parts at the beginning of the workout. And you also want to prioritize them with more of the volume. So what do I mean by that? Okay, so I'll use delts because I think this is a good example. Is it a bulk of the training? Yeah. So typically when you're doing a workout, like a common split that someone may do is what's known as a PPL split.

15:12Adam Schafer:So this is called a push-pull-legs split. It's a 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 talk about the push day. Almost always in a workout, people will do chest before shoulders. Okay? Now, that generally makes sense. Generally speaking, your delts are so active in chest exercises, and the chest exercises are heavier. So like a bench press, you'll do more than you will, let's say, an overhead press. So typically, you start your workout that way.

15:46But if your focus is delts, if you're like, look, I don't care about really developing my pecs.

15:51Adam Schafer:I'm sculpting a woman's physique.

15:53Sal Di Stefano:Yes. This is where - Delts go first. Yes. Yep. I've never had a woman come to me and be like, I want to build my chest up more. It's always, if you want, 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 some of my female clients, we did hardly any chest training and put that extra volume into building adults. And you have to account for that, too, because you don't want to just do more shoulders, which is a mistake that people make is they do everything and then they slap on more volume on the shoulders.

16:31Sal Di Stefano: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 the volume in the shoulders. And so back to your point about volume matters and understanding how you organize this and where you take because just adding more shoulders because someone says, oh, this is how you should build. It's like, well, then you're doing too much. And so there's a delicate dance there.

16:51Adam Schafer: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 onto shoulders and prioritize it at the beginning of the workout. Same thing with glutes and even arms. Look, if you're looking like, I just want to, 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.

17:25Adam Schafer: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 kind of two ways you could train your body with strength training. And it's a good idea to do both. You have your heavy days and you have your light 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 is the point

18:06Sal Di Stefano:that i'm 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 gonna put extra stress on the body and really promote getting stronger which we know in turn will build muscle and then i follow that up with a lighter a lighter training sessions which now is more i'm still going through i'm It's still training, but it's more facilitating recovery and resting me up to get ready again to do another one of those RGs.

18:33Adam Schafer:And 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 ranges change would be a different way to put it. My rep range this next few weeks is 5 or 6. The 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 even if you're trying to get lean.

19:07Adam Schafer: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. 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.

19:41Adam Schafer:The other one's eating 145 grams of protein a day. Even if everything else is the same, even if the calorie's the same, so the 80 gram of protein is having more carbs, fats, whatever, 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. It does. And here's the thing with it. You can't make up protein. So you can't have like low days and go, okay, I'm going 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.