 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk all about the three most important steps you should take to sculpt the ultimate physique or to sculpt your ultimate body. So we started by talking about what that looks like. There are standards that are considered aesthetic, but of course it's different from individual to individual. We talk about why it's so important to get connected to body parts that you want to target and sculpt. We talk about how you can pick the right exercise. Then we go down and break down per major body part what those exercises are, which ones you should do for each of those body parts. Then we also talk about how to program, how to write your workout around sculpting your body around body parts that you want to develop. So we talk about how to prioritize them, what kind of frequency that looks like, like how often you work them out, exercise order, and we talk about intensity, how hard you should work them out. It's not just about harder, by the way. There's a smart way to apply intensity. Now before the episode starts, you need to know this, this episode as of the time it airs, you have 48 hours left. There's only two days left for the 50% off maps aesthetic sale. Now maps aesthetic is the program designed for people to help sculpt and shape their bodies. This is the only maps program that's individualizable. So you go in there, you pick the body part that you find that you need to work on the most, plug it in to the focus sessions, and that's part of your workout. So here's how you get the 50% off. Go to mapsblack.com and use the code black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0, no space for the discount. Oh, that's a thing that you said, huh? You're not serious. Unveil the body. He's not serious. He's just a bullshit. You're going to get down to 17% body fat. That's impossible, so. You're going to be very svelte. Fucking asshole. You're sitting on realistic goals. Bro, you can't get Halloween, bro. You make me feel insecure about myself. Good. I need you to be thick. You feel that for a while. I realize what happened. I have to hold a certain standard because I started getting fatter. You guys are like, fuck it, the game's on. There's no limits. Gloves are off, dude. Some random person dropping into mind pumps like, this is a fitness podcast, right? If Doug and I get fat, we're all the, we're all the fit people. Oh, it's the old guy. That's the producer. As soon as Doug starts eating candy, we're dead. Hey, do we, do we even need Justin for this one? Of course. Oh, he's on this podcast. He's going to be on this episode. For sculpting the ultimate. Yeah, for sculpting the ultimate. I know things about this. Do I lie to them? Maybe not all the time. No, actually, I think that there's a, all joking aside, the, the, the things that we're going to talk about in this episode about sculpting the ultimate physique, really you can apply these principles to anything. Cause as an athlete, even Justin, don't you identify weak body parts and figure out ways to prioritize them to, or not body parts, but weak patterns a week to prioritize them. So you can always see parallels and similarities between functionality and performance. And yeah, it's a very similar mentality. Like if you see something that you want to, that there's a deficiency there. Like I do see that there's a way that could build and develop a muscle further than if that was my focus, I would totally want to know how. Well, there's a reason why when we used to do the assessments on new people to the gym, right? That one of the questions is like, you know, what body parts do you want to focus on? Because almost everybody, okay, comes in and they have areas on their body that they want to change. Whether that be their stomach, they want flatter or they want more definition in their arms, or they want more round shoulders, or they most commonly build their butt, you know, or their inner thighs. Like so, even though we have obviously debunked spot reduction, the idea of spot building is a real thing. Right. Yeah. Spot reduction is a myth. It's a myth. Spot building, though, is true. 100% true. Spot reduction is the belief that you can burn body fat from target areas. You can't. Your body largely burns body fat from where you are genetically predetermined to burn body fat from. So typically, here's a rule of thumb. The first place you put it on when you gain weight is typically the last place that you'll lose it. Okay. But when it comes to building, you better believe you could target build. I could pick a part of my body. And depending on how I train that part, if I do a good job, I can accelerate its development in comparison to the surrounding area of body parts of my body or to the rest of my body. I can pick a body part and turn it from a weakness into a strength. Now, before we get into that, I think it's important to kind of identify what when people talk about ultimate physique, when we talk about aesthetics, when we talk about what looks good, why do we even think things look good to begin with? Like, why is it that studies will show this, by the way, that there are general broad agreements across cultures in terms of what's considered aesthetic. For men, it's a hip to excuse me, it's a waist to shoulder ratio. For men, a wide shoulder to small waist ratio is considered attractive in all cultures. In women, it's hip to waist ratio. In fact, in some parts of the world, ideal size for women, when they pull people is could be much heavier than it is on the other side of the world. I mean, they can differentiate by 30 to 40 pounds. But what they find that's consistent is to hip to waist ratio. And what scientists have done is tried to identify like, why do we find these things attractive? And really, it all boils down to fertility. The ideal hip child bearing hips. That's it. The ideal hip to waist ratio in women, when they've studied women who have this ratio, their odds of successful healthy childbirth are much higher. And men, a nice shoulder to waist ratio means lower body fat, better mobility, better performance, higher testosterone levels, higher sperm counts. So although obsessing about aesthetics, probably not a good thing, there is some truth as to why we find things to look good or look bad and why balance. This is the most important thing. Balance and symmetry is one of the most consistent things. Well, that's where I was going to go because you always go the evolutionary way and talk about this. And I talk about one of the first times I remember watching, I think it was the documentary that I was watching when they did this. And it was, there's actually a mathematical equation for beauty. And really what it is, is symmetry in the face. And that's how they determine like, oh, this person on a scale of one to 10 is a 9.7 based off of the symmetry of the distance between their eyes, their nose, their lips, all those things. And I think that same rule applies for the body, from left to right and top to bottom, that the more symmetrical you are, the more appealing it is to the beholder. And I know that beauty is in the eye beholder, but I also think that there is some truth to that it's appealing to the majority when you have symmetry. And balance is a little different than symmetry, right? Balance is referring to the, what would be considered the ideal proportions of the body. So imagine somebody who only ever does curls and has really, really big biceps, their arms probably won't look aesthetic because it won't be balanced out by their triceps. Imagine someone who only ever works out their chest, but never trains their back. They would have a well developed chest, but their balance wouldn't be very good because instinctively, we know what a balanced body should look like. I remember when I was a trainer early on in my career, I had a lady that came and wanted a body fat test, and I took her body fat measurements, and her bicep skin fold was higher than her tricep skin fold, which never happens. There's a natural balance to body fat stored in the arms, where the tricep stores a little bit more than the biceps, just like men will store more in their midsection. She had liposuction. She had liposuction. And I remember asking her, I said, this is strange. I said, have you ever had liposuction? She's like, how do you know? I said, well, your skin fold measurements are not in the normal natural proportion or balance. So balance is also very important, not just being symmetrical and making sure that the right to left look good together, you know, muscular wise and up in the top to bottom, like you don't not, you know, you don't avoid leg workouts and just work out your upper body or vice versa. It's also about balance. It's muscles in proportion to each other. And that's, that's really what the basis of bodybuilding is supposed to be. And I know bodybuilding, modern bodybuilding is extreme. And most people don't want to look anything like a pro bodybuilder, but its roots and its origins are based off of this ideal of proportion that was identified among well balanced athletes and especially by the Greek and Roman sculptors who would sculpt these, you know, beautiful sculptures of naked bodies. And when you look at them, you know, they would try to figure out, why do we find this look to be so attractive? A lot of it had to do with, with balance. Now, before we get into developing your body, here's a number one, regardless of how well developed your body is, if there's a lot of body fat on your body, you're not going to be able to see your aesthetics. You're not going to be able to see that, that ultimate physique. So that's the number one, you want to have a relatively lean body, so you can kind of see what your work is. Now, to that point, though, it's interesting you went that direction because I actually was just messaging back and forth with a old client friend of mine. And, you know, she's on her fitness kick right now. She's competed before. And she's, she's put on quite a bit of body fat in the last like year or so, just a new career moved a lot of stuff going on with her fell off the wagon, like many people do. And she had put on a quite a bit of body fat and she's been back at it again. And so she's, she's sending me like her updates on her photos of what she looks like. And one of the things that I complimented on her, of course, recognizing to what she's going through, I'm going to beat up on her and she already knows that she's carrying more body fat than where she's been before. But one of the things I noticed and, and this is true with myself and with many clients that I've seen that have put a lot of good work on, on building an aesthetic physique and sculpting their body and lifting weights for a long period of time. Even when you end up putting some body fat on, it looks better. It does. It's displaced nicer. It's totally true. You know, if you've done a good job of building your glutes up and your chest and your shoulders and your arms, even when you get a little softer and you carry that winter coat on, the way it's actually formed on your body, it's crazy how much better it looks than the, like we talked about the other day, the skinny fat. Fat with muscle looks better than just body fat. It does. And women, it looks like, it looks like more like. Yes. Yes. And in men, you just look stronger. No, I'm glad you brought that up. You know, focusing on how to build your body. I think it's such an important thing to focus on in terms of aesthetics. And we've made the case on the podcast over and over and over again, why building muscle is a strategy. It should be a strategy among anybody, regardless of what your goals are, whether it's to burn body fat or to gain weight or improve mobility. It should be one of the focuses because more muscle developed the right way is just better for you overall. But from an aesthetic standpoint, hands down, that's it right there. Hands down, there's nothing like sculpting your body with nice, well-placed muscle, functional muscle. That will do more for your physical aesthetics than almost anything else you can do for your body. And Adam, you brought up a good point. Even if you're overweight, having muscle underneath that makes you look a lot better. This also reminds me of another question that we got recently too about, you know, how do you guys stay motivated in the gym when, you know, you've been lifting for, you know, several decades and, you know, it's like you've probably done just about everything and workout routine. Like does it get bored and old and how do you keep yourself enjoying the process? And body sculpting is one of my favorite ways to do that. Like to say like, hey, this quarter or, and that's why I kind of fell in love with the chasing the body building thing was I didn't know how much I was going to like it, but I really enjoyed, hey, show after show, I would get critiqued and told this, you need to improve this, you need to work on that. And then I would have to use my, my knowledge, use my experience and to go back to the drawing board and program like, okay, what should my program look like in order to change the way my body looked? It was a lot of fun. It was fun to know that I had control to manipulate the way that my body was shaped and looked. That's why I like the term sculpt, because it's like a sculptor. It's not as easy as taking clay and packing it on over here and shaving off clay over there. It definitely takes hard work, but with resistance training done properly, and especially the way we're going to explain in this episode, you can shape and sculpt your body. And of course, there's limitations, but you have a lot of room to play with. What were some of the first body parts you had to work on? I know towards the end, when you and I were, when we started Mind Pump, towards the end, you made like your back a focus and your calves a focus. Was it like that from the beginning? Like, what did you start with? And no, no, for me, the original was my chest and then my shoulders. And with, and then from my shoulder was actually then my rear delt. So it got even more specific. And then it went back. And then calves were the last one, because in Men's Physique, it matters somewhat, they see them. So you don't want to look like you don't train them at all. But I also knew that they didn't carry as much weight as everything else. And I was training them enough to, you could tell I trained them, they just didn't look impressive. So that was the last piece probably that I started to put a lot of energy and focus on. And a lot of that was from show feedback, like I would do a show and, you know, and before like I got into even competing, I went and I hung out with some of my buddies, Johnny Sebastian and Omar Ventura, who I think Omar, especially on the posing side of Men's Physique and Bodybuilding, I think he's one of the most talented in the industry. I mean, he's just him and Johnny, the routines, there's a lot of pros out there that their routines came from Omar and them. And one of that is he's just got a great eye for looking at your strengths and your weaknesses. And so I would go over their house and practice some of my posing, and they would break down like, Hey, you really need to work on this or develop more of that, or, you know, and so then I would go back to the drawing board and start to develop it. But man, it's a really cool thing when you take the principles that we'll talk about today, and you start to apply it into your routine, and you get to see the change. It feels empowering. Very. It really does feel empowering. Well, the first thing that you'll notice, or that we notice, I should say as trainers, that tends to be true with most people who have a weak or lagging body part. And that's where we're going to start because when you're trying to build and sculpt the ultimate physique, you're probably going to be working with initially lagging body parts, body parts that may not be developed to your satisfaction in proportion to the rest of your body, whether it be your quads or glutes or your delts or your chest. It's probably a body part that you're like, gosh, this body part just doesn't match the rest of my body. And typically one of the main reasons why that is is because you have a poor, and by, okay, I'm going to use a term that we use in training that really scientifically speaking may not have a backing, but from a training standpoint, it makes perfect sense. You're not well connected to your weak body parts. Now that don't mean you're paralyzed from it. You don't have a neurological connection to it. But when it comes to utilizing that weak body part in effective exercises and feeling it really work and squeezing it and contract and contracting it well, you're just not as connected to it as other areas of improvement process to that. And that's like a lot of bodybuilders call it the mind muscle connection. And you know, like it, there is a way to enhance that process. So if you don't feel a muscle getting involved in a lift, to really, you know, put work in that direction and make sure your mechanics are right, make sure you're in good posture, make sure you have the right angles established, you're really emphasizing, you know, the squeeze where you're supposed to be squeezing, there's lots of like, technical ways to handle and address this. So then you could start to actually build and develop those muscles even further. Yeah, a lot of people sometimes too, they'll think, well, I'm connected because it gets sore. So when I work out, let's say I have a, let's say my chest lags, you know, when I do bench press, my chest gets sore, I must be really connected. Not necessarily that's getting sore. Soreness isn't necessarily a good indicator that you really have good control, good mind muscle connection to that muscle. If it's the fact that it's a lagging body part that right there will tell you that that's probably the case with you. So regardless of whether or not it gets sore or not, you're probably not able to really get that muscle to do what you want. And one of the best ways to do that is to use isolation type exercise. Well, I used to love to give the analogy or explain to clients to kind of get this message across that we actually all have the capability to do this. There's people that have had to do this because they don't have hands or they don't have arms and they've learned to do everything with their feet. They can write with their feet, they could play the piano with it. You have the ability to connect to your feet and articulate your toes similar to what we could do with our hands and do some of the things that you can do with your hands with your feet. At least much more than we all have. Exactly. So in other words, we're all connected to our feet. Everybody right now, if I said, you know, wiggle your toes, they could come somewhat wiggle your toes, but the connection is really weak compared to what it could be. If you put a lot of energy and effort into getting better connected and training those muscles, that mind muscle connection to be able to do that and what you could do, you build your mind. That same principle applies to the person who comes to me and says, I want to develop a part of my body. And right now you have an okay or a poor connection. And more often than not, the areas that are lagging, and I've been, Pekolski talks a lot about this because he's a big obviously body builder sculptor guy. You know, always the muscle that is underdeveloped on you is also one that you are poorly connected in comparison to other muscles on your body. So that's normally one of the root causes. You're just, you don't have a great strong signal there in comparison to other places. So that is the foundation is we have to first get better connected to that no better way than doing that to your point. Sal is these, you know, isometric or isolation type exercises for that area. It's the squeeze. The squeeze makes a big difference. So isolation exercises, if you compare them head to head to compound movement. So isolation exercises typically use one joint. So like a curl would be an isolation exercise for my chest. A fly would be an isolation exercise. A compound exercise for my chest would be a bench press compound exercises head to head build more muscle. That's true. However, it's much harder to connect to a target muscle with a compound exercise than it is with an isolation exercise. So here's why isolation exercises shine. If you're lacking a mind muscle connection to a muscle, if it's a lagging body part, isolation exercises can be a phenomenal way for you to feel and squeeze and isolate that muscle and focus on the squeeze more than anything. There's different, you know, different portions of of a muscle contracting different, different ranges of contraction. There's the stretch, the mid range and the squeeze. The squeeze is where you're going to learn to connect where you get it in its shortened position and a whole to squeeze this is where isometrics really play a big role. This is this is so valuable. This is the reason why there's those exceptions to the rule out there that we actually do see some of these body builders and physiques that are incredible and they don't do compound lifts. It's not that it's better to not do it or you don't build as much muscle by neglecting compound. It's that it is so important that you connect to specific muscles that you're trying to develop in order to develop them and you can put that much energy and effort into these exercises and still build a pretty damn good physique. Now, why is this, why is this true? Well, when I'm you, when I'm doing a compound movement or a big gross motor movement, meaning I'm using a lot of muscles, there's a lot of different ways my body can avoid using my target muscle, which it's probably already developed a pattern of doing so. So if I'm doing a bench press, it's not just my chest that's pressing the bar up. It's also my shoulders and my triceps. And if my chest is weak, if I'm not connected very well to my chest, the odds are I am using a lot of or mostly shoulders and triceps. This, this is true for any exercise. And so isolating my chest doing a fly would mean that kind of take the shoulders and triceps out of the movement. Now I'm forcing myself to use my chest to its fullest capability and again, focusing on the squeeze. Now, once I get connected to it, doing an exercise like a bench press now becomes a completely different experience. So isolation exercises are exceptional for this. Do you guys think that this is part of what makes up the, you know, quote unquote, genetic freaks is more so that they have this, this beautiful connection to all their muscles that is very balanced throughout their entire body that really causes this symmetrical natural look before they even start to touch weights. And then when they do start to touch weights, their body just is like a symphony, just like the person who the, the first time they, they played the piano, their fingers just moved right. And then they just, they were made to do that. I think that's true. I think that's true for all athletes. Right. Like, do you think that like the, the, the bodies that we see, they're just are so impressive. Part of that is the genetic gift that they have is the communication to all the muscles. So well that the first time they got under a bar and performed a squat, their body like evenly distributed the weight it was supposed to. And it's your body moved the way you definitely see that with a lot of athletes too. Like our quarterback was like, you could literally teach him anything movement wise. And he would pick it up instantaneously. He was like the best bowler. He was the best water skier, you know, like it didn't really matter. It was just like, he's just so naturally inclined to kinesthetically learn something. And so it was like this, like you said, that, that, that sort of communication throughout his body was just like on another level. Yeah. I think it's true for all athletes. And I think high level bodybuilders are in that same category. They just, they're more connected to their body. And then there's a feedback, right? Here you are naturally connected to your body a little bit better. Then the muscles start to get bigger. And here's the wonderful thing about sculpting your body as the muscle develops, you start to get more connected to it. It's easier to connect to a big muscle than it is to connect to a small muscle. I'm not comparing different muscles. I mean the same muscle. Like if I have a big chest versus a small chest, my ability to connect to it, it's easier. I remember when I first started working out, as I started to develop back muscles for the first time, that made it much more easy for me to feel them when I was doing a certain exercise. I want to be clear too, because I used to hate the word isolation exercise when I was a trainer. Because they're really isolated. Exactly. So I do want to make that clear as we're talking about this. It's impossible to isolate a muscle. There's no such thing. And it's definitely impossible to isolate a part of a muscle. So when we use the word isolation, I think it's an easier way to explain things. And that's what we really mean is you're putting the most emphasis. The most focus is that direction. Yeah, the most focus or emphasis that you can in a specific area or in a muscle. But the truth is the body works together and it's impossible to just take one muscle and not work a group of other. Now, here's where correctional exercise also shines. Sometimes your inability to really connect to a muscle isn't partially because that muscle itself isn't firing well, you have poor recruitment patterns. It's also a mobility issue. And sometimes working on mobility and getting yourself to move through deeper ranges of motion with better connection overall helps you connect to those target muscles. This is where correctional exercise, this is where I've used correctional exercise for people. If you don't feel your glutes when you squat, sometimes getting yourself to be able to just squat better, really is all you need to really start to feel the glutes. And that means you may do exercises that you may think are not just specific to the glutes. Things like the 90-90 or the combat stretch, which are neither one of those movements really is a glute targeting exercise. You can make the argument that 90-90 hits the glutes a little bit. But now that your mobility is better, now you're getting the squat and the form is a little bit better and you can start to feel it more where you need to. Yeah, you notice that when you go further in range of motion. Sometimes it's like as miniscule is like the last inch. That's where you really say, oh wow, then there's the sensation that you feel that your muscles hadn't felt before. And it's a lot of times unlocking that process requires that bit of attention and mobility in the joint. Well, that's kind of the chicken or the egg argument, isn't it? Yeah. Like they're kind of one of themself. It's like which one came first? Did you did you have a poor connection therefore caused poor mobility and then it just progressed and got worse or the other way around? I mean, they're one of themselves. If you have really good range of motion, really good mobility, the likelihood that you're going to be better connected to the muscles that surround that joint that support it in going through full range of motion is probably much higher, right? Now, here's the other thing about getting connected to your muscles. The weight that you use is arbitrary. Who cares how much weight you use? All about feel. It's all about feel. So if you're going to the gym and you're doing exercises to connect to your weak body parts, forget about the weight. In fact, oftentimes, heavy weight is harder, makes it harder for you to connect to those target muscles because those muscles are weaker and your body will compensate. So sometimes going to the gym and saying, wow, okay, I'm going to cut my weight 50% all of a sudden. Oh, now I can feel my mid-back or my lats or my glutes or my quads. Slow down your negative. This is one of the best pieces of advice that I could give anyone and wherever you're currently at in your negatives, right? Or on the eccentric portion of the exercise. That's where you're lowering the weight. Right. The easiest part of the exercise. Most people just drop it down or go relatively fast, two to three seconds tops. Double that four to six seconds. So what a great way. First of all, when you're lowering the weight, the negative, the eccentric portion of an exercise, your body can handle about two to three times the load that it can on the positive part of the exercise. So it's a lot easier for you. So what a great time for you to really slow down the process and try and feel it where you're supposed to. And I think this is missed a lot. And when I watch the way people train inside the gym, it's rare that I ever see somebody do a solid four second count on a negative. And there's something that says you can't do or five or a six second, especially when trying to connect, especially when you're, you're following the principles that you, you were just alluding to salads, which is weights arbitrary. So if weights arbitrary, it doesn't matter. Lighten it up big time. Now mess with your tempo and mess with the tempo and slow it way down and really resist the way down. And then when you come all the way to the top, squeeze at the top and hold that isolated contraction for two or three seconds, that's really going to enhance that connection. It's all about the feel. And I'm glad you brought up the negative because it's easier to connect to a muscle on the positive than it is on the negative. So what I mean by that is let's say I have a poor, let's say I'm working on my lats. Okay. Let's say I'm working on the part of my back that's called my lats and they're just, they're lagging and I want to develop them because I'm sculpting my body and I just don't feel them that much. I'll do pull downs and pull ups, but I just don't feel them working that much. So then I go and I get in the lat pull down machine, I put real lightweight and I slow the hell down. When I do the squeeze and I'm connecting to it, now when I'm raising the bar up and I'm doing the negative, when I'm letting the cable pull the bar up, if I can continue to stay connected to my lats on that negative, whoa, will I develop a connection to that muscle? Because oftentimes the negative is where we, it's like, well, I got the connection on the squeeze, then I let the weight go up. No, no, no, stay connected throughout the entire range of motion, including and especially the negative. And remember, what you're doing with this is this, you are teaching your brain and your body to connect to that muscle. We're not necessarily hammering the muscle to send it to make a build. We're just, we're paving the way, if you will. We're building the highway for what we're about to do with the next couple tips. But if you don't get connected, nothing else matters. If your glutes aren't firing well when you're doing squats, I don't care all the glute exercises and great compound lifts and all that stuff that you do, it's gonna be very, very, what'll end up happening is you'll develop all the other muscles around it. If you have a poor chest connection and you don't connect to your chest and you do a bunch of presses, you'll get big shoulders and triceps. And I think we should explain that because people don't understand that, right? Well, I'm doing chest exercises like crazy. Why wouldn't it? Well, that's because your body always will take the easiest path. So it's gonna go the default pattern. So if you've, when you push, if you primarily push, like a lot of people do, unless you've trained your chest correctly for a long time, most people, when they go to push anything, they push with their shoulders and their triceps. Even though the chest is a bigger, stronger muscle to help you push something, we naturally default to this kind of rolled forward position and the shoulders and the triceps, which are smaller muscles, take over the movement. So even if you do these chest exercises, you know, three, four, five times a week, if you're doing them incorrectly and you're not connected really well to it, then all those other muscles that are used to taking over will take over and they'll just become really dominant. And then it actually makes it worse. Then it makes it even more challenging to try and develop that. And this is common. You get clients all the time that would be really frustrated at all the chest exercises or all the glued exercises they were doing to develop that area, but yet it just wouldn't grow. And what had happened is they just get these overdeveloped quads, you know, if they were trying to build the butt and that's why they end up over developing the quads, or they get these overdeveloped, you know, front delts because they're trying to build the chest up. That's right. Now, once you're connected, once you can start to feel and squeeze and control and connect to that lagging body part, once you can get a really good pump in that body, that's another part by the way, try to get a good pump in your lagging body part. I've noticed this time and time again with clients, once we get to the point where the client can get a good pump in the weak or lagging body part, then I know that they're connected. But once you can do all that, you got connected, you get the squeeze, you can do the negative portion of the rep and feel the muscle, you get a good pump, you're very connected to it. The next thing you do now is you go to pick the right exercises. You have to pick the right exercises because the isolation movements that we talked about, the correctional exercises that we talked about are great to connect, but when it comes to building the most amount of muscle, the compound lift, now this is where compound lifts are the best. They shine. Right, once you're connected to your glutes, nothing's going to build better glutes than a squat or a hip thrust or a dead lift. Once you've connected to the glutes with your maybe one-legged leg bridges and your dog peas and your isolation type exercise where you can feel the glute connecting, once that happens, now go to the compound lifts because those build the most muscle and this is true for all the body parts. And there's two big reasons, and correct me if I'm wrong or there's more that I'm not thinking of, but it's load and CNS benefits. It's more demand. Yeah, if you're trying to build your glutes, I don't care how good you get it at dog peas or kickbacks, you'll never be able to load it with 200 pounds and do it. Just never be able to do that. And the demand of putting that much load on the body, the demand it puts on the muscle, the primary mover, the glutes in this case, and the CNS, the firing system that tells the body to move, the demand that it puts on those two things, you just can't get that in isolation exercises. And that's what makes it superior, but only if you've done your due diligence by getting really connected to the muscle. So what are the best exercises? Well, they're typically compound lifts. You can do it free weights tends to be more, they tend to be superior. Generally speaking, this isn't always true, but they tend to be superior when it comes to building muscle. These are your deadlift and deadlift variations, your squat and squat variations. These are your overhead press and their variations, your rows with your barbells and dumbbells, your bench presses, your split stance exercises, like your lunges, your Bulgarian split stance squats. Those exercises I just mentioned right there really encompass some of the most effective muscle building exercises that exist, period. Well, what if we did this? I think this would be fun to have some dialogue around this right now, and I'd like to hear what you guys think. Since we're talking about, we've talked about the first step and the importance was the isolation exercises, and then the second biggest thing and key is to do the best compound exercises for these muscles. Let's go through each major muscle in the body, just the major ones, right? And let's talk about our favorite isolation exercise to help people get connected to the muscle. And then let's talk about what we think is one of the best bang for your bucks exercises to go to the compounds once you're good and connected. Perfect. So chest, we'll start with chest first. I think a phenomenal isolation exercise to connect would be a cable fly or a dumbbell fly. Now, I like a cable fly a little bit better because the cable allows me to have more tension in that squeeze portion. I would agree with that, especially on the eccentric. So the part where you're bringing it back to, it helps emphasize the stretch and then you're actually resisting that weight as you're coming back to the rack. So I'm going to take that one to the next level. One of my favorite things to do with somebody who struggles to get connected with their chest and is a fly is to lie them down on a foam roll with the foam roll running down their spine. Like a half foam roll or even a full one. Yeah, full foam roll. So it's supporting your head. So your head is on it and it runs all the way down to your hips and the foam roll is down your spine. And why I like this, and then I grab a really light dumbbells again, weights arbitrary, we're just trying to get connected here, really light dumbbells and then they do flies there. Why I like this is because of what gravity does in my favor here. Most people that struggle getting connected to the chest, one of the primary reasons why they struggle with that is the rolling the shoulders forward and then the shoulders taking over the movement. When you lie down on a foam roll like that, where the foam roll is down the spine, it actually gravity folds your shoulders down and back naturally, just laying there. And so it puts you in an optimal position to already be better connected to the chest. And then I do the movement you guys are both talking about, which is a fly, which is probably the best isolation movement for your chest. Totally. That's my favorite. Now for a compound lift, the big muscle building exercise you can do for your chest once you're connected. Well, you can't beat the bench press or the incline press. I say both those, either with a barbell or dumbbell, there really is no better general exercise for building the chest muscle. And I think we all like the end. I think we've talked on the show a couple of times and I think we've all agreed that we even like the incline better than flat. For aesthetics. I would say for aesthetics. I think it just puts you in a better position. Yeah, I would make the case for both. I would make the shoulders. Yeah, I would make the case that Justin's alluding to right now, which is for puts you in better position because the angle of the bench and then again, gravity pushing the shoulders back and down. So I like to teach that exercise more. And then to your point, Sal, I think that it's a game changer for the way it develops your upper chest. I mean, and that really brings someone who wants to build their physique up. Yeah, it looks more impressive. Definitely. The way and even if you think that the bottom of the chest, the hang is an area that you want to focus on, I think you'd be surprised by how much that will be improved by actually building the upper part of the chest. Sure, sure. But both generally, right? Flat and inclined. They're going to be the big muscle builders. All right. So let's go to the back then. So we're going the opposite side of the body and isolation movement for the back. You know, I like to do a lat isolation exercise, either a straight arm pull down or a dumbbell pull over again, really focusing on the stretch and then the squeeze at the bottom of the movement to connect to the lats. That's one of my favorites. How about you guys? A lat pull down with the cue of the chest up to the bar to me was one of the best ways to get somebody connected to their back. In fact, you know, we just talked about that on a recent episode, and I counted probably at least five or six DMs that I got today from that tip alone. Oh, wow. And of course, it's when we, I think we all agreed, and we've all trained hundreds of people that that is one of the most common challenges with people that are doing the lat pull down or back exercises in general, just not being able to connect to it. And that single cue, I think I know personally I've helped hundreds of people. So and you guys, I'm sure the same thing. So I love to teach the lat pull down. I pull that bar down to where it's still about six to eight inches away from the chest. I stop them there and then I cue the client from there, lift the chest up to the bar. And that really teaches that that that importance of being able to retract that scapula engage those lats. And once you really understand that, I feel like it carries over really well into the other movements. No, I mean, I like both of those two. And if I was to go more functional, I would say pull up, but like maybe assisted on a degree. So it's not so intense. You could focus a little bit more on the eccentric part. So as I'm lowering it down, I could try and really connect to that process. But I mean, like a lat pull down, you're going to be a lot more isolated in that situation. Now, as far as a compound muscle building exercise, pull ups, Justin, you just mentioned those. I like that for that. I think I think a pull up is one of the best just back building exercises. And then a barbell row, barbell row to deadlift. Yeah, going more deadlift. And I know, and I'm in there, I'm for sure biased a little bit in this because it anytime I have a paradigm shattering moment in my lifting career, personally, it always definitely makes me a little biased about it. Like it just, I done everything under the sun for my back. And I had a pretty decent back already. And to think that this late in my career that I could, I made the shift that I made as far as the development of my back, nothing, nothing did what like deadly even, even a great good ass barbell row and great pull ups and get don't get me wrong in phenomenal compound lifts and 100% could be argued one, two and three and you could flip flop, but fucking a the debt, the getting good at debt. And again, I think that goes back to the original point that I made that it's the two biggest things are the sheer weight that you can do. And then the demand on the CNS and nothing, okay, no pull up, no row is going to come close to the weight that you can load on a deadlift. And then the demand on your CNS on the deadlifting comparison, those two. So for me, that's the biggest bang for you. Now shoulders will talk about shoulders. I like for isolation, any kind of a raise, whether it be a lateral raise or a front raise or a rear fly or a rear raise, all of those are great isolation exercises for the shoulders. Now here's the deal. If the weight's too heavy, very easily can turn into a back exercise. So light, go light, slow down and feel the shoulder contract at the top. My hands down favorite connection exercise, lateral to the sides, those are my favorites. This is a difficult one for me to answer because the thing that I like to teach, it's not an isolation exercise. But I feel like it helps people isolate their shoulders and not cheat on anything else. And that's the z-press. And I mean, go so light. And I know that's a considered a compound lift because we've got multiple joints involved. But do it like super, super light and bring it all the way down to your chest. And why it kind of feels like an isolation exercise for me is because you're completely eliminating the lower body, you can't arch the back and cheat. It's one of those exercises that the shoulders have got to do all of it. And then the holding at the top, which I could make a case now that I'm thinking about that like, and I know Justin might go this direction, is the overhead carry. It's a squeeze. Yeah. And isolation exercise like that. And that's why I feel like you get a little bit of that with the z-press. I teach it with full range of motion, exaggerate the holding at the top and stabilizing at the top and coming all the way down. Personally, for me and clients that I've taught, nothing has helped them get better connected to their shoulders than that single movement. Yeah. I do like that. I also like kettlebell presses that I incorporate rotation with, mainly because you're getting all the extension of the elbow, the wrist, everything is involved in that spiral line. It's a very functional feeling exercise, but at the same time, it's really emphasizing the shoulder and its action. So I like it because it evenly distributes that force better on the joints. I don't feel like a lot of times, if I'm doing too much overhead pressing even with dumbbells, and I'm in like that fixed position, I tend to get a lot of more stress there in the shoulder. And so this is a way that I can sort of distribute that more effectively and then also get the same benefits of overhead shoulder presses. Well, all overhead presses and the versions of that. But Sal's right. If I'm trying to isolate a part, I guess the shoulders a little more complicated and not as direct as straightforward as talking about the chest or the arms or something like that because it's a multi-fast joint. So it's going to move in different planes. So if I was, I would have to break the shoulder up and say, what are we trying to focus on? And to your point, if it's like somebody who's rear delt and especially rear delt, to me, I think very few people that are trying to develop the shoulders are lacking a front delt. If you've been lifting, right? If you've been lifting, most people have a decent front delt toy just because again, if you pushed anything in your life at all, you are using your front delt a lot of the where most people I think are neglect or have underdeveloped is the rear delt. And so a really light rear delt fly and we have a YouTube video that I did with Jordan Shallow where we break down the mechanics of that. I think that is one of the most underrated movements. One of the things that even the people that do that movement, most people do it incorrectly. And they engage too much of their traps and their rhomboids involved in that movement. And so learning to do that properly get very connected to the rear delt. And that I think will help most people try to develop the shoulders. As far as building them overall though, all overhead presses are great. Barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, all those versions, overhead presses are outstanding. Even seated, they're all phenomenal. But you know, you bring up a good point. When it comes to, you know, picking the right compound lifts, when we're talking about certain body parts, certain body parts, most of the exercises are isolation to begin with, in particular the arms. Now you can do compound exercises for biceps and triceps for sure. But the vast majority of exercise that exists for biceps are going to be isolation in which case, what we talked about earlier in this episode, really just apply that more than anything, slow the rep down, focus on the squeeze and really, really, really connect. All right, next body part, I think we should talk about as glutes, very popular body part to focus on these days. The funny thing about that is, you know, I remember I was, I've been training long enough to remember when women would come in to say, what makes my butt smaller? And then all of a sudden it turned into what makes my butt completely bigger. Funny thing is, I trained them the same either way. I focused on sculpting it, shaping it, and then they were happy with the way they looked. Glute isolation exercises. I like single leg bridges. I like being able to squeeze the glutes at the top. I like that this is where I will do things like a dog pee exercise on hands and, you know, on hands and knees, where I bring the leg out to the side and squeeze. I also like the kickbacks I do with the leg. And then believe it or not, 90 90, if done properly is a really, really good way to isolate different parts of the glutes. Do you actually do those? Knee banded floor bridges. So, and it kind of kills two birds with one stone to Sal's point of doing the 90 90 and then the single leg bridges by throwing the band around the knees and fighting the band from closing the knees. So pushing the knees out while you're on the floor doing a floor bridge, it forces you to incorporate the entire glute because one of the common mistakes of just doing a floor bridge is the default of people's knees collapsing inward. And yes, the part of the glutes getting engaged, but you're missing out on that good old side butt that most people are looking for. They give you the heart shape that a lot of people are looking for in their butt. So banded the knees, the knees banded will help incorporate that while also isolating the rest of the glutes in the floor bridge. Now, we did also did a great YouTube video on this. This is the one that I believe I did this one. And I think it's important how you do this. So if you are if you have lower cross syndrome, so you have this kind of anterior pelvic tilt, and you have this excessive arch in your low back, which is very, very common. And you just go into a floor bridge, you will still default by arching the low back and your hip flexors taking over a lot of the movement. And so it's really important that before you go up in the floor bridge that you actually flatten the back, push the back down and activate the core and the abs. So tighten your abs up after you pray, which you will feel because in order to push your back flat, your abs have to tighten up and then you drive up through your heels. We did a great YouTube video around this on our channel. So when and that's something that's important on we're highlighting it right now and talking about the glutes because I think it's the most common here that this applies to all the exercises. Again, the weights arbitrary, it's all about the connection, the squeeze, the isolation process, you're trying to feel it. So don't get caught up in the pumping reps and just going really fast through it slow down and really try and articulate the movement and think about where you're trying where you're trying to feel this at and understand that if when you're doing a movement where there could be a lot of posture issues or you're not connected very well, just going through these isolation exercises quickly doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get better connecting, you've got to think about it. No, all the rules we talked about originally apply to this. As far as the compound movement for the glutes, hip thrusts, squats and deadlift and deadlift variations in particular sumo, those are the best butt building exercises you could do hands down. In fact, if you do good squats and good hip thrusts, you're probably covered. As long as you're connected to your glutes, you're going to get some good glute building effects from that. All right, moving down the body hamstrings. This is another popular one, by the way. I would get a lot of women who I would train who'd say that they want to develop their hamstrings. And most people only know one exercise for hamstrings, leg curls. Now leg curls are a great isolation movement, especially when you go light and you squeeze the hamstrings. And by the way, here's a little trick when you're doing hamstring curls where you lay down on the machine, when you come up with the weight, try taking your legs off the bench as well. In other words, almost like you're kicking your legs back while you're squeezing your hamstrings and watch what happens, the squeeze you're going to get is going to be insane. Because our tendency when we do a hamstring curl on a machine is to try to bring our knees to the chest at the same time. This is why you'll see people's butts come up off the bench while they're doing hamstring curls. Instead, push your butt down, lift your legs off the bench and squeeze your hamstrings. And that will isolate your hamstrings better than anything in my opinion. Hamstring builder, good mornings or Romanian deadlifts? Yeah, Romanian deadlifts. Definitely deadlifts I think are the best for this for sure. Oh yeah, you can beat those at all. Quads, how do you isolate the quads? Now this one's a rare one. I don't think I've ever really run into anybody who's like, I can't feel my quads when I do an exercise. But if that's you, leg extensions, I can think of a better exercise that'll isolate your quads. That's good for, you know, in terms of connecting. And then of course, squats, but I like front squats for quads. I like front squats better than back squats. Your Sissy squats. You just feel, Sissy squats are great. The problem is if you're not connected, you fall flat on your back. Well, this is also where, you know, again, it's a great place to highlight things that people see on Instagram or see people doing. Is that bad? Is that good? When we're addressing something specific, like, oh, I'm trying to develop my quads, here's where like elevating the heels makes sense. If so, if you are going to do a back squat, so I like a back squat with heels elevated, because I can load it much heavier, right? The front squat, I can only get up to maybe 275 or so. Maybe my best was like 315 that I can hold on there, but I could load my back a lot heavier than that, right? So, but to put more emphasis on the quads, I could get one of those, you know, those either those the pads or, you know, squat shoes or I like to use five pound plates. Yeah, or five pound plates. And this is, this is what you're trying, if you see somebody doing that, if they're not doing it as a crutch, because some people might be doing it a crutch, because they lack ankle mobility. But it's also a great way to change the recruitment pattern on a regular back squat. You now are going to become even more quad dominant than glute dominant in that movement. So that's, I think, a great way to develop the quads. Totally. Okay. So let's get into now the third step. And this is really about programming. How do I, now I'm connected. I understand the best exercises, isolation and both compound and isolation. How do I program this? Well, here's a deal. And this sounds like a no brainer, but it always surprises me when people don't get this. Prioritize that muscle. What does that mean? You're probably going to work it out more than the other body parts. And the reason why I think that that's, it sounds obvious, but it's funny because oftentimes people come to me and say, Hey, my glutes aren't responding or my shoulders aren't responding. I'll say, Okay, how often do you work them out? Once a week? How often do you work out your other body parts once a week? Okay, let's bump that up. Keep everything else the same for the rest of your body, but let's increase the frequency of training for your weak body part. And I want to highlight prioritize frequency over intensity. Yes. What I see more often than not is when people have a weak body part, they kill it in the gym. That's their way of, it's a weak body part. So I'm going to hammer the shit out of it. And they have a more volume potentially on it, but it's all in one, all in one workout. And then they're just like, they're so sore from it that it hinders their workout two or three days if they were even going to hit it again, or they fall into the same trap that I did as a young kid, which is, Oh, it's still sore and recovering. So there's no reason for me to hit it again. I'll wait till it's not sore. And then I'll hammer it again. And then that's the way I would treat this weak body part. You're far better off scaling back a little bit, not going to failure on it, and then addressing that muscle group again, two, two more times, maybe even three more times in the week. In fact, the way our maps aesthetic program is designed is, you know, we encourage people to pick one to two muscle groups that they want to develop and they want to work on. And we say, okay, we lay out the foundational workouts, which are three days a week where you have the bulk of all your major movements and your core foundational exercises that everybody should be doing, no matter what your goal is. And then we have what are called focus days. And on your focus days, or where you are putting, you know, you're adding volume or you're adding more frequency to these areas that you want to work on. And these are the areas that we recommend the more isolation type exercises. So you're going to if it's glutes and quads or let's say glutes and biceps or your two focus muscles, well, then you're still going to end up doing, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're hitting those big major exercises on those. So they're getting addressed then. And then you're also going to have these focus days, two days a week where you're addressing those muscles where you're going easier on intensity, but we're just trying to pick up the frequency. Right. So just to simplify again, full body workout three days a week. So you're hitting everything three days a week. Now you got two more days or three or more days where you can go to the gym, and you can connect, you can do correctional exercise, you can squeeze and get the pump. This is where you can add that frequency to get that body part to respond. And what we found through training clients, this is a very, very effective technique. Bodybuilders have been doing this for a long time. Now exercise order makes a difference as well. So for those of you who do full body workouts, which I firmly believe we firmly believe that full body workouts for most people are better than your traditional body part splits. Although those have a place. If you're doing a full body workout, there's nothing wrong with starting your full body workout with the weak body part. Absolutely. In fact, studies show that what you start your workout out with is where you get most of, I shouldn't say most, where you get more of your gains. So for most people, your workout should start out with the big movements and big body parts. But let's say your weak body part is your shoulders. There's nothing wrong with hitting your shoulders first and then going to chest. Now for most people, I wouldn't recommend that. But for somebody whose shoulders are weakness, I think it's a great idea. Hey, no. I had a lot of female clients that had beautiful, great legs, incredible legs. But then they just really lacked in their upper body. We're not starting with squats. There's no need to. And it makes the most sense for the majority. But there's a lot of people too that have great lower bodies that are really developed and really lack in shoulder, arm and all upper body development. We're going to squat last. Totally. Especially when we're trying to build an aesthetic physique and that's the main goal. It makes a lot of sense for the average person and the way our programs are organized is squats and squats, deadlifts, the big movements tend to be first, the biggest bang for your buck with most folks. But when we're starting to sculpt the body and we're trying to address weak areas, well now those rules don't apply anymore. It's different. Now our approach and our programming is different and absolutely you should start your workout routine with the areas you're trying to develop first. And remember to manipulate your intensity appropriately. So that means that you should probably have one to three hard workouts for that body part. And then you should have one to three more easier workouts. And that can vary from individual. So if your body doesn't recover as fast, you're more of a beginner, you're probably only going to have one hard workout and two lighter workouts. If you're more advanced, then those numbers will go up. But manipulate intensity, hitting the same body, hitting your body part hard all the time, every single time, we'll actually do the opposite. We'll actually get your body to regress rather than progress because your body doesn't have capability to recover and adapt to that. It's just too much. So make sure, so when you hit a body part frequently, that's wonderful. Just make sure you manipulate the intensity of each workout so that it's appropriate. So for me, if I'm working out a body part four times a week, it's probably looking like too hard and too easy workouts. Two workouts are heavy, compound movements. I'm really moving weight. Two of them are isolation, focusing on the squeeze, the feel, and I'm further away from failure in my workouts on those ones that am on my heavier workouts. And then this goes back to an episode that we did recently where I was making the case for tracking volume. I see a lot of value when you are trying to bring up a lagging body part of really taking the time to track your volume, at least in that weak body part. And that's what I would do. I didn't track my volume on every single muscle group in my body because I wasn't really worried when I would go and train for a show. It's like, okay, shoulders are what I'm trying to bring up. So that's what I'm tracking. I'm breaking that down. I'm not worrying about all the other things that I'm doing that's not the main focus. So I'm trying to bring up a lagging body part. So because of that, I'm actually calculating my volume per workout and per week and trying to slowly overload that week over week to make sure that I'm getting progress in that area. So little by little, like more reps or a little bit more weight or a little bit more sets. You're progressing very, very slowly week over week to make sure that body part continues to improve. Well, there's a really easy way that I used to do it. And it's to the point that you made to counter my volume discussion. And that was, you know, it's not all about volume and you have to be able to understand how to manipulate intensity and you're very right. And so I was always trying to add a little bit of weight to the bar. So I have my routine. I have my, you know, map's aesthetic program that we're following. And then I'm just going to try and add weight to the bar. Now, sometimes I either overreached or I was fatigued or I was tired and I just, I definitely was not going to be stronger going into that workout. That was a signal to me. This is the day that I might add a set. I might add a few more reps to still increase the volume, but I knew I couldn't handle the intensity of more weight. And that's the part where obviously you want to try and get to that place where you know how to feel your body and go, okay, I don't, I shouldn't be an asshole and add weight knowing that I don't feel good. I won't, I'm not going to be able to get the bar off. What are other ways that I can still increase the volume without doing too much damage and over overreaching? Excellent. And now look with that, we have a program designed for people specifically who want to do what we're talking about, who want to sculpt their body, who have weak body parts, who want to bring them up, who want to shape their body, who are motivated by aesthetics. It's called maps aesthetic. It's a full workout program, but it also is very unique from other maps programs and that allows you to modify and adapt it based on your body. So let's say you're somebody who wants to develop their glutes and that's a weak body part. Well, then you make your focus sessions glutes. If you're somebody who wants to develop more chest, you make the chest, your focus sessions. It's a very moldable program, but again, it's designed to sculpt and shape your body. All the exercise demos are in there. There's full blueprints all written out for you. It's a three-phased program. You have 48 hours to get this program at 50% off. So it's one of the biggest sales we do of the year and this is the sale we're using to close out 2019. Again, it's one of our most popular programs. So here's how you get the 50% off. Go to mapsblack.com and use the code black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0, no space for the discount. And don't forget, as of the time this episode airs, you only have 48 hours before this promotion ends.