If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump today's episode. Fellas, we're going to talk about how to sculpt your chest, back shoulders and your lower body. You know, the physique you actually want. By the way, we have a brand new workout program, Maps Upper Lower. It's a four day bodybuilding split, four days in the gym, upper lower, and then a day off, and then upper lower again. Go to MapsUpperLower.com. And if you use the code launch, you'll get it for 40% off. This episode is also brought to by TRO Scription. So TRO Scription is medical grade supplements. The company is run by doctors, by scientists, and they're not just interested in putting together a supplement company. 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Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, fellas. Today we're going to talk about how you can sculpt your back, your chest, your shoulders, and your lower body. You know the physique that you actually want, the one that looks great at the beach. We're going to break it down for you. Let's get to it. Let's go. Yeah, let's talk about the body. Just be dying for this conversation. He's like, "I can't wait till we get to the studio today." He's just thinking about building men's bodies. Yeah, about to take my shirt off. And I was like, "Dude, we should talk about this first." You know, this is actually a good conversation. It's going to be aesthetically focused. Okay, that's why Adam's poking at Justin. But you're the performance guy. Totally aesthetic. But we're going to talk about like the aesthetic point of view, right? Like how do you develop these muscles so that they make the biggest impact visually? Right? So we know what they do for function and strength, and that's all great. I think that's more important, but nonetheless, most people go to the gym or what they want. Let's say, let's be honest, so what do most people want? They want to look astrayal. Yeah, and even the people that say, "I'm in it for health, strength, longevity." But they always, in that with, and I'd like to look a little better. I'd like to lose 15 pounds. So there tends to be an aesthetical attached almost all. Almost all. I mean, it's an over-generalization, but they're absolutely exceptions to the rule. But I'd say a vast majority of everybody that I train. It's always there, regardless. They were motivated because they wanted to change the way they look. 100%. And I knew that losing body fat and lifting weights was the path and just didn't know how to do it. Yeah, and I'm going to just say this, and this goes without saying. I think everybody who's listening understands this by now, but the most aesthetically valuable form of exercise is strength training. So all exercise versus no exercise is good. So all forms of exercise are good. All of them will improve the way you look as you become more fit and healthy. But strength training is quite unique. It's the only form of exercise where I could target parts of my body. I remember in the old documentary "Pumping Iron," where Arnold Schwarzenegger is young. He's like, "It's 20s in this, but he's getting interviewed." And he talks about how bodybuilders are like sculptors and how he looks in the mirror and like a sculptor, he decides where he wants to add more clay and how he wants to shape his body. Strength training allows you to do that. So there are exercises specifically for chest and back and shoulders and for the lower body. There are ways to train your body to where you develop muscle in a way that looks more impressive visually than other ways of exercise. And so that's what we're going to kind of focus on is like, okay, what these body parts that we just mentioned, these are the big ones. But what are the best exercises to develop that aesthetic look, that give that look that people really seek when they do strength training? You know, you reference "Pumping Iron" all the time and I don't really. But that scene in particular is one that I appreciate a lot. And I think that the part of it that I think a lot of people don't see is just the patience required to be that sculptor. We want this immediate result. I want to build my shoulder so you want to go in and so you want to just do an exercise or follow one program and see this huge difference. And it just, it takes a long time to do that. And so I've such an appreciation for someone like Arnold talking about that and talking about sculpting the body because it's an ongoing process. And when you look back over months and years of consistently training, it's crazy how much you can really do that. You can really completely transform the body and how it looks. And damn near almost anything that you want, right? Like obviously you can't train to make yourself taller. But you can't make yourself wider, thicker, thinner, you know, more here, less there. Create illusions. So you know, that's really, really cool that you have the power to do that through nutrition and consistent proper training and muscle building. And so I think it's a really cool thing. But I think a lot of people just don't have the patience for it and the consistency to allow it to develop. It takes time. So we'll add this. The things that you have to tackle or contend with when it comes to strength training your body or developing it in a particular way is you don't have unlimited ability to recover and adapt. So, you know, we're going to talk about exercises that really add that visual element, the ones that really give that aesthetic look and what that is all about. But there's a lot of exercises. There are hundreds chest exercises. Why don't you just do all of them? Maybe these ones over here, which are the ones you guys are going to mention, are really good for developing the aesthetic look. Why don't I just do all of them though? And I just do every single exercise I can think of. And that's because you're limited by your ability to recover and adapt. And so you have to pick the best ones and you can't do all of them. You can only do the ones that are the best and you have to recover and adapt. You have to give your body that time and ability to do so. Otherwise, nothing's going to happen. Also, sticking with the Arnold analogies, since you went that way of packing on clay. Certain exercises pack on the most clay for you to sculpt and work period. And so, yes, there are exercises that are good for chest development. But what happens to a lot of people is they do these small movements or movements that don't pack a lot of clay on. And sure, it works your chest and it works from this angle or it hits this part or this thing. And it's different and unique. But part of sculpting and building of a Zeke like this, the first part is actually packing on a lot of that clay in the areas that you want. And then the sculpting part is that cutting the body fat and leaning out and then it's showing that. Generally speaking, a bigger muscle looks better than a smaller muscle does. And so, and that's generally speaking. Now, when you get lots of muscle size, you're already jacked, then you can play with like little tiny muscles. That's right. But early on, there are exercises that are superior to others when you are trying to body build and sculpt because you want the things that pack on the most clay. And the things that pack on the most clay, typically are a lot of the things that the exercises that we talk a lot about. And I do think this is an important point to hammer home because in the body building world and the Instagram world, a lot of people follow these pros. And these pros have already packed on so much clay that they do it. And what is unique on Instagram where it goes viral are these unique movements. Or you've never seen before. You've never seen or a new machine or a sideways chest press thing or adding bands. There's these novel. There's these novel exercises or movements or things that they're doing. And what people miss is that those people had already packed on a ton of clay from doing the movements that really move the needle. And now they're doing these novel things. And then you have this. And I say this because I was this kid. I was susceptible to this. 20, 22 years old looking at that. I was always looking chasing the new creative exercise and the newest thing that was being advertised in the magazine versus sticking to what packed on the most clay and getting strong in those lists. And that I think is such an important thing to talk about. So let's start with chest. So first off, let's talk about what makes a chest look aesthetic. So obviously muscle. Right. So you need muscle under chest for it to look aesthetic. So big strong chest looks better than a small week chest. That being said, there is a way to develop your chest to make it look more impressive when you have your shirt off. And this really points to the upper chest. So you can have two.
chest that are very well developed, but one chest is much more developed in the upper part in relation to the rest of it. And it gives it a more powerful presence, it makes it look more balanced. And it creates a bigger fuller. Yes, a big full looking chest because the upper chest is really developed. So what we want is we want an exercise that is a big bang for your buck exercise. But one that also develops a chest in a very aesthetic way. And for me, that's the incline barbell bench press or incline dumbbell chest press. That's a good compound lift, builds a lot of muscle, but it also develops the chest in a very aesthetic way because it focuses on the upper chest. I love this advice because traditionally the flat bench press is what's been hailed as the best. Not a bad exercise. Yeah, great exercise. And because of that, so much emphasis has been put on doing flat bench. And many times I was like this, I'm not sure if you guys were the same way or not, but I neglected incline because it was difficult because I couldn't lift as much. It was clear. Early years of lifting, I was embarrassed to not be able to put a wheel on the barbell. And so at that time, it took me a long time to get to there on a flat bench. The last thing I wanted to do was throw quarters on and go do the incline bench. So it was something that I neglected for so long. Yeah, that's one of the best ways to build an aesthetic chest. And so I remember, I totally remember the year that I made that goal of, okay, I'm going to no matter how embarrassing it is for me to lift this lightweight on my incline, my goal is to try and get my incline bench press up to what my flat bench press was. And it was the most growth and development and the best my chest ever looked was from that. And then I never look back. Now it's become the staple is like, I might not flat bench for a really long time, but I never miss an incline. And so what this looks like for you is when you're doing your chest workout, start your workout with the compound lift and make most of the focus on the upper chest. In fact, if all you ever focused on was upper chest, if all of your presses and flies and cable exercises were to target the upper chest, you would develop a very aesthetic looking chest. What's wonderful about what I'm saying, by the way, I know we're talking about how it looks, but there's always this side and this is just because I'm a trainer of function. And I will say this, it's also more functional. So you don't really have this kind of negative trade off where well, more better aesthetics works function incline pressing in the real world tends to be more functional and healthy for your shoulders as well. I was going to ask you guys, even from an aesthetic perspective, besides just function for like a decline chest presses, are there any value really to that? I see very little. Very little. It's a short range of motion, maybe functionality, but I like dips better. For some like that. But I mean, for chest, the focus should incline pressing incline flies and you're done. They'll build you up. Build your upper chest. What was the last time any of you did a decline? I don't. I mean, a little college. Yeah, I was probably 20. I always really, because I always 23, 24 years old, somewhere around there. You know what, drooping to it? Weird. How much weight you could put exactly? It was that was the only thing that was appealing to me was that I knew on incline or decline bench press. I could press more than anything else and that was back. And that's what I cared about was doing that after that. The results from it are so minimal. And I agree. I think that if you want to target the lower chest like that, ring dips like you love or barbell dips or even the dips. Flash mange by itself too. Cover all of that. Yeah. No. I think that's what I think about the lower chest exercises to develop an aesthetic looking chest. Now we get to back. Back's interesting because it's, we say back, right? When we say chest, we're talking about one muscle, talking about the pecs. When I say back, we're talking about a lot of different muscles. You got your lats, you got your rhomboid, you got your trapezius muscles, you have all the terras, you know, major and minor muscles. You've got a lot of erector spin aim us like you've got a lot going on there. I don't know why we call it back. We should probably call it lats and you know, something else. Basically what I can't see. But yeah, so now here's a deal. Aesthetic looking backs have two, there's two things or two components to an aesthetic back. There's width. So how wide your back looks and this is especially important from the front. Make sure waist looks smaller. So bodybuilders do something called a front, lats bread. But even from the front, if you have a wide back, you'll see that from the back, obviously. But from the front, it gives you this nice V taper. But then you want thickness and depth and you want upper back development. Nothing looks more impressive and people will debate this all day long. Bodybuilding made wide backs very popular, but I will say this in the real world, you take your shirt off your at the beach. It's the thick upper back development that gives you the aesthetic look. It just looks powerful. A wide back without upper back thickness or thickness, you know, nice lats bread, kind of cool, does not look as powerful or as impressive as somebody with developed traps and that thickness in the back. So that comes from rows and deadlifts. I even think that it does more for the V taper. I'll make that argument because you don't move in a 2D world, you're 3D. And so when you get thicker and you're waist is smaller, that's a true, you're like this from every direction. Yeah, exactly. You might getting a wide back might be good for a V taper if you were a flat, if we live in a 2D world, but you're not. You're 3D. And so if you want that true V taper look or hourglass look where you have a small waist and a wide thick back, I mean, it's deadlift. And to me, it's deadlift. That's one of the most controversial things to me to say that, which is so crazy because people are weird about it. Because the deadlift is a hip hinge movement and there's so much power that's being driven from the hips to do that. But if I have never met anybody who can deadlift good weight, a lot of weight and does not have an impressive back, every heavy deadlift or has that. And it's you get to a place where you, if you're lifting deadlifts over 400 pounds as a man and you will have, you will have a good looking back. I'll say this too because obviously bodybuilders are at the peak of aesthetic muscle building. And I've seen bodybuilders with a lot of bodybuilders, especially at the high level, have really wide backs. But oftentimes you see the thickness that's missing. I've seen powerlifters transfer to bodybuilding and they have to work on back with all the time, right? Because powerlifters do a lot of deathless, they have thick backs. But when they're just standing there, when they're lean, they look impressive. Thickness makes your back look aesthetic in the real world. You'd also sell it, so the, the pursuing the heavy deadlift translates to all the wide back exercises so well too. I never could let pull down or pull up more weight than when I got really strong with the deadlift. So that's the other part too, that the CNS piece, the just overall power and strength, you get from building a big deadlift. Not only will build this thick back, but then it will also carry over into all the traditional bodybuilder back exercises that everybody talks about that are so clutch for you. I mean, if you have, try being getting really, really heavy barbell rows and not be able to deadlift very much, you know what you're limiting, if I could be that weak ass low back, you will all build a row so much if you don't have a strong deadlift. Now, if you have a really strong deadlift, that, that guy can now hold on to a lot more weight and row. It wasn't until I could deadlift over 400 pounds to work before I could even row over 275 pounds because I couldn't hold that and row it from multiple reps until I got that strong where I could hold 400, 500 pounds. And so the carryover, not only for what you get aesthetically from building a strong dead lift, but then what you, the carryover to the other lifts are incredible too. And so I will die on that hill that the best way to building the static back is through the deadlift first. I would say your top three exercises, deadlift, your barbell rows and your pull ups and you've got all the bases covered. But the deadlift is going to give you, you get stronger than the deadlift, you'll have a nice looking back for sure. Now let's get to shoulders. Shoulders are interesting, right? It's this pretty, it's like this three dimensional muscle. It's got lots of different function, the shoulder joint, very versatile, very versatile complex. Standing shoulder press or standing overhead press will build big shoulders, but you need to do rear flex. Yeah. Rear flies for that rear delt, when we're talking aesthetics, okay? Yes, big shoulders are important. But if you don't have well developed rear deltoid muscles, which you're really only going to get through something like a rear fly, you're going to have a forward sloping shoulder look. So you'll, you've got the muscle. Very protracted. But it just doesn't look as aesthetic. When you build that rear delt, it gives you the roundness. Everybody thinks it's, it's lateral, everybody thinks it's side lateral, it's not side lateral, it's rear flies that gives you that cap to your shoulder. So you do overhead presses in your rear flies. That's going to give the aesthetic look. There's two big reasons why this is a missing component for a lot of people. One, just pure the lack of it, the lack of focus. So there's a large portion of people that just neglect to focus on the rear delts. And then there's a good portion of the people that actually do focus on the rear delts, but do it improperly. Yeah. It's like a road. When I think of a lot of the muscles that I had to try to sculpt and build for bodybuilding, the form and technique to developing the rear delts is one of the more technical ones. Right.
because it's hard to not allow the back to overtake the movement. - It's a very small range of motion. - It's a small range of motion. It looks more like a flying out than it is back. And that movement to the average eye, when you look at somebody demo and exercise, even if you're not a beginner and intermediate lifter, and you see someone doing a rear delt fly, and you try and emulate that, unless you have a good coach that's queuing you and asking how you're feeling and talking to you and it's tough for you to not allow the back to take over that movement. And that back is a bigger, stronger muscle, so it already wants to, and it'll default to that, and it'll still look mechanically correctly. - So the average not gonna develop it, right? - But it won't. And so it's one of the more technically focused movements, but once you lock in and you figure it out, on how to properly do it and hit it, man, and you build those rear delt out, it makes the back look better, the way your shirt sits on you, the whole shoulder cap, your arms now look better, because your shoulders are defined and separated. - One of the best training seasons I ever went through, and I was young when I did this, but I figured that out, was I started my workouts with rear flies, then I went to overhead presses, and my delts changed so quick, to becoming it from a weak body part to now, it's been one of my strengths. - I would say the rear del, and the standing overhead press, and I really didn't get into the standing overhead press until hanging out with Justin, because of course he does everything functionally. And really, and actually working up to where I could do a push press, so I could use a little bit of body English to push weight over my head that's never been there before. And there is something to be said about standing up, learning to push, is more weight than you've ever pushed overhead, and then being able to stabilize it there for a second or two over the head before you bring back down, the combination of those two things, and play a huge role in my shoulder development. - Now let's talk about lower body, so we get to lower body, you want muscle, don't skip this, fellas, it's so funny, I see now in social media, what they'll see, they'll be asking people, what's a turn on with somebody's body, or a turn off or whatever, and they get to young ladies and they say, "What is a turn off with the guy's body?" You know what they all say? Upper body develops skinny legs. That's like a thing, right? You gotta have legs everybody, don't skip leg chicken legs. But really two things here, I mean there's a lot of exercise for lower body, but number one, nothing beats the barbell squat, nothing beats the barbell squat. It is the king of exercises for a reason, get good at them, get strong at them, do a full range of motion, your legs will look amazing. You throw in a RDL, a Romanian deadlift for the hamstrings and glutes, you're done. Like those two exercises right there are gonna give you really nice, well-developed lower body. You're gonna have great hamstrings from the RDLs, glutes and quads from the squats. You pretty much got it right there. Just get strong, practice full range of motion too, right, that should be a part of this journey, I think, is where if you can only get to a parallel squat, getting a place to where you can do a full range of motion, deep squat, I mean, I actually blew my mind when I finally worked on my mobility, and I was able to break parallel on the squats. I noticed I got calf gains from that, I noticed I got more hamstring development from that, just by getting my barbell back squat deeper than a nine or more glute gain too. Everything came up from that, and don't be afraid to come back a little bit on weight in order to do that because full range of motion. Yeah, I got more development with a lighter weight, full range of motion, and all those muscles that I did just go in as heavy as I could and only getting down to 90 degrees. So there's a lot of value in doing that. The other thing I think is that when you talk about bodybuilding, I think it's important to bring up the frequency that you're hitting these muscles too. Twice a week is typically ideal for body parts. And what I like to do when we're talking about aesthetics and body, which is kind of cool about splitting the body up in this four day week upper, lower split, is let's say you were talking about right now, all these muscle groups are areas and I really want to develop that. I mean, on one day I might lead the workout with chest because that's the primary focus. The next upper body I might lead with rear delts or shoulders depending on. So it allows me to do-- I love that. So much more flexibility. Yes, it allows me to have that flexibility. Now, if I'm really lagging in a single body part that both days I'm probably gonna lead with that, but maybe I'm somebody who's like, I don't have this massive discrepancy, but I want to develop all that. Well, some workouts I might lead with this muscle group, other workouts I'll lead with that muscle group to really be able to put everything I got into that 'cause that's one of the best things that you can do when you're trying to get strong in a lift is just to purely lead that workout. 100%. So we have a program that's like that. It's a four day split. It's called Maps Upper Lower. And it is a body building workout. It is designed to develop a very aesthetic physique. Again, it's a four day split. You're hitting the whole body twice a week. We have a men's version and the women's version. The women's version, the program is a little bit different. But because it's a brand new program, it's 40% off. So if you want to follow something that's written out for you with exercise demos and videos, no guesswork, good programming, go to maps upper lower.com, use the code launch. That'll give you the 40% off. And you can also find us on Instagram. It's MindPump Media. - Thank you for listening 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 a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal 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 Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is MindPump.
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