2897: How to Build Glutes, Quads, and Shoulders (The Body Women Actually Want)

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 Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast approaching over half a billion downloads. That's right. This is Mind Pump today's episode. We're talking to women, had a build a glutes quads and shoulders. By the way, we have a brand new Maps program. Maps upper lower. It's a four day muscle building split. We have a women's version in it where we emphasize lower body glutes and delts in the program. It's 40% off because it's a brand new program. Go to maps upper lower.com, use the code launch, get 40% off. And this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Ro Nutrition. So Ro Nutrition uses liposomal technology. So they have compounds and supplements like cretin, glutathione, NAD, all great, all proven to work. But here's what makes Ro Nutrition different. 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Lots of our clients were women and we know what they want to focus on. Overwhelmingly, women like to build their glutes, their quads, and their delts. So we're going to talk about that today. How to build those areas essentially, how to build the body that women actually want. Let's get to it. I don't even argue it's even more popular today than even when we were training. It is. It was popular then, but I feel like it's even more popular. Well, what's more popular now is that women want to build these areas. Yeah, they would describe it in ways back then that we knew and we got to build it, but they were afraid of saying that. I think that's, I feel exactly. That's the sentiment I felt was that I think that they wanted the same things, but I think it wasn't socially accepted for a woman to build muscle. But the things they wanted were things like glutes and sculpted shoulders. They just didn't say it that way. I think it's, I mean, muscle mommy is an example of this and CrossFit helped push this. I think that it's invoked to get strong. And so now I think it's communicated this way more often. And what we're going to talk about today really is about how to organize your workout routine to build those areas the most. So like you're going to the gym, you're working out and you're like, look, I want to get fit. I want to look like I work out. And these are the areas that I really want to stand out the most like my glutes, my quads, or let's just say lower body. And then shoulders for upper body, which we'll touch on because sometimes women don't realize it's they want to build shoulders. And if things like they want, sculpted arms and reality, it's the shoulders that give that look that they're looking for. Yeah, I want to make it clear to you, even though this episode is geared towards women, all these same rules apply to a guy that is trying to focus on certain body parts. And I think this is a mistake that both men and women make when programming. I think what typically happens is you decide that oh, there's a body part or an area that I want to work on or sculpt and we just slap more of that stuff into a already routine and don't realize that how counterproductive that can be. Yeah, it's good. And glad he said that. So so let's take a step back. So we're a lot further today than we used to be in the sense that we just have to convince women to lift weights to get the body that they want. And I don't think we need to do that anymore. I think everybody knows. In fact, I was just talking to a friend of mine. They're they they're totally revamping the 24th sun hills, one of the ones that we all work in and they're moving so much of the footprint towards weights. Yeah, like so much. And so a lot of gyms are changed to footprint to accommodate for a growing demand and strength training and it's made it's mainly because women are lifting weights guys always lift their weights. Yeah. And so when you're when you were talking about workout programming and I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds because we can't get in the weeds with this but workout programming refers to the program itself and what constitutes or with the program consists of exercises sets wraps tempo and then how the interplay between all of them is how each one affects the next one in terms of order of the of the exercises in the day. The days how they organized the weeks how the organize and it takes into a lot of things. It takes a lot of things into consideration, including recovery balance and how the body moves. And so what Adam referred to is referring to is that people a lot of people don't have a good understanding of programming. So they'll just say I want to this more of this body part. I want to do more for this body part without understanding the interplay between all the other things. And so it ends up happening to go nowhere. And so the reports that people will often come to us with is they'll say, but I'm doing all these exercises for my glutes, nothing's happening or I'm doing all these exercises for my lower body nothing's happening and we'll say well let's look at your total program and then we can see the mistakes once we correct them boom the body responds again. So number one in the workout itself, you want to prioritize the body part. What does that mean? Train it first. Okay. So let's say you're doing upper body workout. So like a traditional good kind of you know, you know, tested in true muscle building split is an upper lower split. Like a, in fact, we have a maps program, we just came out with that's maps up a lot. It's very classic tested effective general split right where you're working upper body one day lower body on another day. Well, an upper body day typically looks like this. If you're training your upper body, you typically start with either chest or back. And so the idea with traditional workout programming is to start with the largest body part when you have the most energy and then move down the line to the smaller body parts as your energy starts to win. And this not only makes a lot of sense, it actually works for the most part. Now here's where you kind of flip that out of set. If your goal is to focus on your delts, then train your delts first. Even though your delts will be fatigued by the time you get to chest. So you're not going to be a strong in your chest presses. If you're more interested in developing your delts than your chest, then you hit your delts first. And the data supports this entirely. So bodybuilders and athletes have known this for a long time. Bodybuilders have talked about this for a long time. But now we have data to show that what you train first in the workout tends to get the greatest adaptations. And as you go down the workout, you start to get lower and lower. Yeah, the most recruitment process it it definitely prioritizes those body parts that you you signal like right away in the beginning. So then you know, the rest of the workout is definitely firing on all cylinders. I realize how common of a mistake this was for so many people. Again, this was one of the many things that was revealed to me when I was competing again, I went into competing thinking that these are the most elite people when it comes to diet, programming and training and stuff like that. So I would I assumed would be some of the most knowledgeable people, but one of the things I remember I'll never forget actually this because I came off of a show and shoulders were like my focus on the next round was like, OK, I want to really build my delts. I had from reviews from the judges that I had compliments on my chest and back and it's just like, OK, those were had been prior areas of focus for me. I'd be lifting with a buddy of mine who was also a competitor and we were starting on an upper body day, we're lifting and I was went straight to shoulder presses to start and he's like, what are you doing? You always have to do that after. Yeah, yeah, why would you why are you doing this before we bench press and I'm like, oh, my focus is shoulders. Yeah, but then you're going to be so I don't care. I'm not trying to make any more gains right now on the chest. I'm trying to bring my shoulders up to match my chest in this situation. And the look on his face was just like so confused like that's no, that's not what you do. And it's just like, well, yeah, you do if that's the focus, you know, it was like. But so to me, that was it was so glaring because again, I'd assume that somebody at that level who is, you know, being judged for their physique knows the best way to sculpt it better than the average consumer. But that may go, oh, wow, okay, I mean, he wasn't following bad advice. He was following traditional program advice. Yeah, it just wasn't, hey, I want to prioritize. And it's not and it's not it's not something that is going to make him obviously he was competing in and being judged. He's still already the 1% and so you had a great physique. But I've told you guys many times I think part of the thing that I had as an advantage going into this even though the big disadvantage was I didn't have a coach, I didn't have a team. It wasn't really into the sport. I didn't know what I was doing for the first time, but I understood that I understood diet nutrition. nutritionally well understood. programming really well. And so at least show over show, I saw all these, I'd see improvements because I programmed that way. It was like, okay. And before I'd start, it wasn't like I'd get back to routine and the only thing that would happen would just be on a diet was like, I had a plan. And every show looked after every show, it looked different. It would be feedback I got from the judges. And so my programming never looked exactly the same as the last. It was, I'm making tweaks now because this is the feedback I'm getting from the judges. And so I had to try and present this. This is why this kind of, I mean, understanding this is really training like you're a sculptor. Like you're looking at your body, like it's a piece of clay and you're developing the areas that you want to focus on, which is great thing about strength training. You can really change moldable the way that your body looks. And again, going back to delts, delts for women, this is true for men too, but especially for women. When women develop their delts, it gives them the physique that they typically are looking for when it comes to upper body. They typically want this kind of sculpted look to their arms. It comes from delts. They want to have a smaller looking waist that comes from delts. It gives them better looking posture. So it's delts before back, delts before chest, delts before anything on an upper body day. And so you prioritize it in the order of the day in terms of just to touch down that again for the men. I know this is a very female focused conversation, but this was also very surprising to me because I was so heavily focused on arms for most of my life. I think for both men and women, the delts are what make the arms look better. Those are the signs you're looking for. Somebody who says, I want better arms. That's delts. Build your delts. Because the delts create this beautiful separation. Because everybody, we all have muscle. There's not a single person walking around that doesn't have a bicep, doesn't have a tricep, doesn't listen. Something was removed or lost or whatever, right? For the most part, we all have them. If you get lean enough, it'll reveal them. One of the best ways to have great looking arms is have great developed delts because it separates the bicep and the tricep and it gives it that illusion and that look. And so I highly recommend somebody who wants nice arms, whether you're a female, saying I want toe nice arms or you're a dude who's saying I want big, you know, I want big arms, you know what, I got the best, the most big arm compliments when my arms were an inch and a half smaller than what they were right there peak, but it was when my delts were the best and most revealed. 100%. All right. Now, that's not the only thing. So work it out. Put it first in your training day. Okay. But that's not the only thing. Here's the second part. Everybody screws up on. Shift the volumes. Right. Here's what you don't do. You got to take them somewhere. You don't take your normal workout that you've been doing with your total volume and then just add more volume to a body part that you want to train. That's a great way to get no progress. That's a great way to over train your body. Your body can only handle so much volume. And volume is how many sets you're doing reps and the total amount of weight that you're lifting. You have to shift the volume. Now people are afraid of doing this because they're like, well, if I take volume away from my back, if I think it's from my chest and move it towards my shoulders or if I take volume away from these other areas and move it towards my lower body, I'm going to lose muscle in those areas. Natural. And the data is incredibly clear on this. The amount of training volume required to build a muscle is significantly higher than the amount of volume that's required to maintain. It's way different. You guys, in fact, the data, it's crazy. It's like so much you could reduce way more than we even normally do. It's like it's some studies show one fourth the volume. Other studies have showed as little as one ninth. The volume. So in other words, take all your training, cut it down to 25% and you'll keep the muscle that you've already built. And that's the some of the data. Some of the some other data says you can cut it down even more. I've experienced this myself. Like I could cut it way down and I'm training way less and I don't lose any muscle. So shift the volume. So if you're a woman and you're listening right now and you want to build more glutes and quads and shoulders, will you take volume away from the other areas and move it to these but don't just add training volume or just add more on top of more because that's how your body gets over one doesn't produce. Well, yeah. And somebody might be asking why is that? It says every every bit of this, right? We always talk about how you know exercise is good for you, but it still is a stress. That's right. And you're in every bit of volume of training, right? That you do. So every set and wrap and amount of weight you move, add stress to that bucket. And once it gets to a point where it's completely filled and you overspill, it becomes counterproductive. The body is now stuck trying to just recover from all this volume and stress. It doesn't allow it to recover adequately and then adapt and build and strengthen. And so you want to make sure that that's balanced out and you would rather be on the lower end of that stress bucket than to risk overfilling it and overspilling because then that's where the results are. And so I think even like the way we've programmed the upper lower like there's still you're still getting decent volume on that. You could even go lower if you if you wanted to based off of what all the studies are saying to your point that it takes that once you've built it, it takes very little to maintain that muscle. And so you're always better off like okay pulling away from some of these other muscle groups that you're like okay I know that that's developed on me. I really want to develop this other. Well then it's really scale back on that and put the energy and focus on the thing that you want. Yeah when you look at how volume affects muscle growth, it's kind of like a bell curve. So you'll increase volume, get better gains. Then there's this really short peak and then you do more and you get less gains. So sometimes people like why added volume and I still got more gains you didn't get as many as you could have. You're on this side of the curve and many people go so far as to they work out they get sore, they work out they get sore, they work out they get sore, no progress. What's going on? Way too much. Your body just can't adapt. Next up this is an important thing to understand and it's still a message that I need to communicate more consistently to women which is this. The key to building muscle is getting stronger. It's the best correlate to building muscle especially in the first five years of your training. So what does that mean? If you're training your glutes or your quads or you're focusing on your delts, the compound lifts that work those areas like barbell squats or hip thrusts or overhead presses get stronger in those exercises. Don't even worry about getting stronger in other exercises in fact. Remember remember we're shifting the volume. I don't care how much stronger you get in your barbell row. I don't care how much stronger you get in curls. I don't care how much stronger you get in some of these other exercises. What I would care about if glutes, quads and shoulders was your was your focus is how much can you hip thrust? How much can you barbell squat? How much can you overhead press? If you get stronger in those those areas will build. It's like clockwork. Yeah and you're mentioning the biggest movers the big compound lifts and those categories. And so if you really emphasize what's going to get me the strongest for that particular muscle group and it's usually those compound lifts and you're going to prioritize that. That's what you're going to focus on. I think too I can't help but think of like a group training classes as well where a lot of the emphasis is like the entire body and then people will add in to your earlier point. They'll just add in the volume of like well I'll just add some like lateral raises. I'll do something for my shoulders at the end when in fact if we shift our focus we do those compound lifts and then we trade out volume. You're going to have much better results. Think about it this way. What's the heaviest lift you can do for the body parts that you're trying to develop? That's the one you should focus on. So if you're a woman listening right now I guarantee you you could hip thrust more than you can for any other glute exercise. You could do all kinds of abduction and glute kick back right up but the hip thrust is where you'll be lifting the heaviest weight. You can do lateral raises and rear lat- you know laterals and all but you're not going to be able to lift as much as you can overhead press. Focus on the heavy lifts get stronger in those. Watch those body parts develop. Getting strong beats, the pump, the burn, the feel. Yes. And I think that's where the mistake is made. There's this idea that when you do exercises for a body part and because you feel it more in that area it's working more of that area or it's a better exercise. This is where I think people make the mistake. This is why glute kickbacks and lateral raises because they burn and they feel it in the spot in the area where somebody might go do a barbell back squat with 185 pounds and they're back and be like I don't really feel much in my butt but let me tell you that is putting way more muscle on your butt. Totally. Then your you know 50 kickbacks are doing all day long and so that's what it's getting strong in those core lifts is far better than the burn than the pump and feeling it in that muscle. And so that's how your workout should be prioritized is starting to work out with those big lifts, caring about what did I lift last time I did this. Can I stack on another five or ten pounds and continuing to perform that. You know it's funny about that Adam it's so funny because you have a lot of just to back up what you're saying you'll have a lot of women that lift weights and then you'll have some women that power lift. You know consistently speaking who has better developed glutes the women that power. Of course. And they're not even they're not trying to feel the muscle they're trying to just get strong. They could care less about feeling a muscle they're just trying to squat more and female powerlifters tend to have incredibly developed glutes because they're strong. Which brings us to the next point and this one I have to just I always have to hammer this home you guys. Look if you're trying to build anything you got to eat to gain that's it you're not going to build if you're eating to cut it's just not going to happen it doesn't work that way you have to eat to gain so if I'm trying to add muscle to my glutes quads and shoulders I should expect to see see my weight go up on the scale. How am I adding muscle if the weight isn't gonna go up? Don't be afraid of gaining. Look, if you're doing, if you're following a program like maps up or lower and you're like, I wanna build round glutes, I wanna have a nice lower body, I wanna have some nice delts. It's a nine week program. If by the end of it you get stronger and you gain six pounds on the scale, congratulations. You've built those areas. If by the end of the program, the scale has not moved or gone down, you probably didn't build anything. And you have to eat in order to gain. So feed your body, hit the protein targets, eat the calories, otherwise it ain't gonna happen. There is a large percentage of people listening right now that understand that hip thrust, that squats, that dead lives, that these movements are great for building the butt. Yet they can't understand why they haven't built their butt. This is the main reason. It's because they're in a caloric deficit or barely maintenance at some points. And/or also doing things like cardio. And they are doing all the right things, lifting wise, but they're not feeding, they're not giving the body the material to go build the tissue. So I don't care if you have the best programming in the world, you lift all these lifts perfectly if you're living in a caloric deficit and you're always trying to cut or lean out. - No, I do nothing. - You are not going to build. So you've got to, and so you've got to be in a surplus, you've got to eat calories, and you've definitely got to eat your protein consistently. Because that's probably the other piece to the eating part. Because maybe someone's like, I do try and eat more calories, but then they're in a calorie surplus, but then they're inconsistent with hitting their protein intake. So it's hit your protein intake consistently, and being a calorie surplus, and then do all these right lifts and get strong. - I can't tell you. I've had so many female clients in the past that were really consistent with their workouts, and see their programming, everything looks good. - All I did. All I did was increase their calories by 700 to 800 calories. It's like magic. - And it was like magic. They were like, I can't even believe how easy that was. - The beauty of this too is that the legs, the butt, or the biggest muscles of your body, and when you add five or seven pounds of scale, which sounds so scary to some people, especially my female clients, but you add five to seven pounds of muscle to someone's ass for their legs, for that metabolism is roaring, and boy does it make. - By the way, you don't look like you gained five or seven pounds. You just look like you have rounder glutes. - Yes. - And better clutch. - And then your metabolism is roaring, and it makes the cut process. - That's true. - So maybe you're listening right now, and you're like, yeah, but I feel soft, and I don't wanna add more weight to scale. I wanna lean out, and then I wanna build my butt. You're far better off, go build the butt, go build the shoulders, build the metabolism, increase the calories, even if you don't like where you're at body fat percentage wise. It's a better strategy to go build first. - And then 'cause it'll make the cutting process far easier. - So now lastly, this is just the trainer on us, which is this. Okay cool, I wanna build my glutes, quads, and delts, that's all I'm doing them. I'm not training the body parts. - Yeah. - Don't do that because the body still needs balance. Okay, so you can actually stop progress by creating such an imbalance that your body refuses to build more muscle, and it'll do this. It'll do this when imbalances get glaring, either because you injure yourself or because your body's not moving well. So although we did say shift the volume, you still wanna do some exercises for your back, and your chest, and your hamstrings, and your core. You still wanna train for balance. So don't go extreme with what we're saying, and avoid everything else, and only train glutes, quads, and shoulders. And again, I'm gonna mention this one more time. We have a new maps program called Maps Upper Lower, and this program does have a women's blueprint in there that's available, where the programming is exactly what we're talking about, and it is emphasizing the lower body and the delts, taking into account all the things that we talked about, and it's a brand new program, so it's 40% off. It's a four day split Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, off Thursday, Friday, or you can move it around. Four day split, designed to shape and sculpt your body. It's mapsuporlower.com, use the code launch, that'll give you 40% off. You can also find us on Instagram, it's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. - Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. 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 Superbundle@Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for 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 in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at Mind Pump Media.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.