Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2825: How To Build Your Shoulders, Arms, and Glutes Before Summer

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Want boulder shoulders, sleeve-filling arms, and a head-turning backside? In this episode, Sal, Adam, and Justin break down exactly how to build the aesthetic physique you're chasing, especially the muscles that matter most for women and bikini competitors. First, a reality check: "sculpting" is really just building muscle. Fat loss reveals the shape, but the shape has to be built first. Most women get this wrong by chasing sweat, soreness, and burn as signs that training is working. They're not. Consistent strength gains over time? That's the signal. The guys break down why programming beats exercise selection every time. How you order movements, structure sets and reps, manage volume, and cycle intensity is what actually drives your results.   Use code MUSCLEMOMMY50 before April 1st to get Get MAPS Muscle Mommy for 50% Off (Use code MUSCLEMOMMY50 before April 1st): https://www.mindpumpmedia.com/maps-muscle-mommy?htrafficsource=spotify-organic&hcategory=posttype&el=2825 Rho Nutrition: rhonutrition.com/discount/mindpump Use the code "Mind Pump" to get 20% off! Timestamps: Mind Pump Fit Tip: Why "sculpting" is really just building muscle — and how fat loss reveals the shape you've already built. (1:17) The real reason most people don't get results: chasing burn, soreness, and sweat instead of this. (3:20) Why your program — not your exercises — is the actual driver of physique change. (3:20) Build first, then cut: the order of operations most people get backwards. (5:49) Consistent strength gains are the #1 signal your body is actually changing. (8:14) Always do compound lifts before isolation work — here's why order matters more than people think. (9:26) How to reallocate volume toward your target muscle (delts before chest, etc.) for faster results. (12:49) Why you need to train both heavy AND in the pump rep range — and how to alternate between them. (15:26) The two non-negotiables that make or break your results: protein (~1g per lb of body weight) and sleep. (16:57) Best exercises for delts (overhead press, rear-delt fly), arms (curl-grip pulldowns, curls, close-grip bench, overhead tricep extensions), and glutes (squats, hip thrusts). (20:33) MAPS Muscle Mommy program is 50% off — built specifically for this kind of training. (23:20)  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about sculpting your shoulders, arms, and glutes, exercises, order, volume. We break it down for you. By the way, we have a great program for those of you that want to develop those muscles.

called MAPS muscle mommy, and it's 50% off right now. Go to MAPS musclem mommy.com. Use the code MuscleMummy 50 for that discount. Roe Nutrition provides excellent supplements utilizing liposomal technology. Now, this technology allows the compound to be utilized far more effectively. Liposomal cratine, better than cratine. Liposomal glutathione far better than regular glutathione. NAD, you want the mitochondrial energy benefits.

you want to use NED and feel a difference. You got to use it with liposomal technology. And Roan Nutrition is the best in the industry for that. Go check them out, get 20% off. Go to roanutrition.com. That's R-H-O-Nutrition.com forward slash discount, forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind-pump to get that 20% off discount.

Today's program giveaways, the RGB bundle. If you want to win, leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. And if you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, Muscle Mommy. 50% off right now. Go to Mapsmusclemobie.com.

Use the code Musclemobmy 50 for the discount. Back to the show. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstor.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstor.com. That's it.

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

This is what used to win bikini shows. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, arms, delts, and glutes are really what bring the body together, especially for women. You mentioned bikini shows. Like, this is like... Yeah, I would... And if I would order them, I would order them in glutes, shoulders, then arms in that

order of priority. Uh-huh. So when I trained, obviously, a lot of female competitors and, you know, you're presenting your physique on a stage in a bikini. And the girls at one shows had especially glutes and shoulders. Those are like the, a lot of times arms will look really good when you have good shoulders. Like, because everybody has biceps and triceps. And if you can separate that look with the shoulders, it gives a very sculpted looking arm.

And so that was when it came to the programming, that's what was unique about how I I programmed first, let's say, like a female competitor versus like a male competitor or just a normal person. Like when we were presenting this symmetry, this symmetrical balanced physique, a lot of times these were the main focus points of how I programmed that. Yeah, there are definitely body parts that really contribute, I would say, the most to the, what we consider aesthetics, right? To the look that people are looking for.

You mentioned the delts, really well-developed delts, make the arms look. good. Yes. And so that makes it real important for the upper body. And then of course, glutes. That's like a big priority with people's training now. Glutes are important functionally and athletically as well. Strong glutes make you fast and make you powerful. But well-developed glutes just look good and it's not a muscle that you can fake. You build it. And you can build it. You definitely can build it. In fact, all the muscles that we just talked about can be radically changed through the proper application of strength training. And what I mean by proper application, a lot of what I'm talking about is programming.

And programming in fitness jargon, what that essentially means is the combination of sets, reps, exercises, the organization of them, the order of them, the weekly schedule, the monthly schedule, the larger cycles, which could be two or three months long. like that's what programming is. And that makes a huge difference. And what a lot of people understand about body parts, their knowledge is typically limited to exercises. Like I know exercises for body parts, but where you place them, of course how you perform them, that's real important, but where you place them and then how you put together the

entire program makes a huge difference. I mean, a well-written program will produce, you know, 50 to 80% better results than one That's a huge difference. I actually really enjoy this conversation because it is nuanced. And getting back to, and I know this, this applies to everybody, but why I keep drawing back to the bikini competitors is because those were all, I never got a bikini competitor who had never lifted weights. These are already people that have been lifting weights for a long time.

But when I would, like, so just like a normal client before I take a competitor through anything, it's like first week is just tracking what you do. I want to know how you train. I want to know what you're eating. I want to know how you're moving, all the things. And I have never had a client so that I did not radically change the way they lifted weights. It was always programming. Yeah.

And I think that's because women still, men are susceptible to also. But I think women are sold a lot of these movements that are not the best for development. they're designed around sweating and burning calories. Or feeling of burn. Yeah, all about the feel. Yeah. A lot of times it's just way too many reps and they're just squeezing the muscles.

Yes. A lot of super setting exercises, short rest periods, isolation movements. And so a lot of times I would just radically shift that and make a few other tweaks nutritionally so that and we boom. We just see this huge difference. I'm so glad you said what you're saying what you're saying because when we think sculpt, we tend to think fat loss. Now there's a component there, right?

There's definitely a component there of... Very little. Not having a lot of... The very last step. The majority of sculpting is building. Like, if you want shoulders that look like you work out, if you want arms that look like you work out, if you want glutes that look round and full like you work out,

you have to build them, okay? And not only that, but having a little bit more muscle in your delts, at the same body fat percentage automatically looks leaner. So in other words, you don't even have to get leaner if you just built your delts a little bit. Now, suddenly, you've got definition and shape. This is, of course, especially true for the glutes

where a little bit of body fat on the glutes looks good anyway. But it's true for all muscles. A well-developed, remember, built muscle looks leaner at higher body fat percentages. And the building part of sculpting is what people typically miss, especially women, because they're so typically

rushed to get lean. Like if you had more muscle, it would get easier to get lean anyway, but also you're just going to look better. In those muscles you highlighted in the beginning, it's like it builds out that ratio. So that actually you look more thin and what they're desiring from that effect because of the fact that they built and developed these muscles, it gives you that hourglass kind of figure. I mean, I would say all of sculpting is the building process.

the part where you lean out or diet or cut is just revealing the work of the sculpting. It's all you're doing. It's like all the real work is done in the off season. Once you go into prep or another way of saying that, once you decide I want to lean out, right, get lose body fat, at that point, you're just revealing the hard work that you did into building and sculpting the body. And if you're not choosing the right exercises, you're not hitting protein intake. and you're not hitting in a sufficient calorie surplus, you're not going to do that.

Right. You're in this perpetual cycle of pushing your body in all these exercises, hoping that your body's going to burn, but not giving it the tools, not doing it. It's like, and this is an area that a lot of, both men and women get stuck here of, you know, training in the gym four, five, six days a week and eating really good, but then not seeing change in their body.

Yeah, and along those lines, the best rule of thumb, or one of the best things to focus on is getting stronger. Okay, so you can burn a muscle where it burns and it gets tired and gets fatigued and he gets sore. None of those are good predictors of any change in shape or definition of the muscle. None of that, okay? It just means that you exhausted or tired the muscle. A better predictor of whether or not the muscle is going to look different is strength.

If you get consistently stronger over a period of time, you know, if you're training properly for a 90-day period and you've added 30 pounds to an exercise, you're going to look different. I can't say that for if the muscle got sore this many times or if it burned really bad during these exercises or you got really sweaty during your workout. You can do all of that and look exactly the same. But if you consistently get stronger, your muscle's going to look different. Your body's going to look different.

So it's one of the best predictors. You've got to adapt. Of sculpting. So that would be the first thing I would say is get strong. In fact, if you focus on getting stronger for most people, especially for women, you're going to get great results from that. The second thing is when you're looking at your workout programming, a good rule of thumb. It's not a hard rule, but it's a general rule. Most of the time, you want to focus your energy on the compound lifts before you do the isolation lifts.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So compound lift, you know, there's two general categories of exercises, compound and isolation. And you can loosely break it down and say compound lifts involve more than one moving joint and an isolation movement really involves one joint. So an example of this for the delts, a compound exercise would be an overhead press. I'm using the shoulder joint and the elbow joint. An isolation movement would be a standing lateral. That's an isolation exercise.

when you're doing your workout, you want to prioritize the compound lift in the beginning of the workout. Why? This is where you're going to lift the most weight. This is we're going to apply the most tension. Most taxing. This is where you want the strength gains. You want all the strength gains to go to the compound lifts because it give you so much in return. You're going to build the most muscle from those specific exercises.

And then, two, you want to be able to perform them effectively. And so, like, fatigue itself is something you don't want to, fact, you don't want to, that in quite as much. So that's why prioritizing it first, you know, you're able to eliminate that. And then whatever you have, you know, left energy-wise, we're going to put into isolation. I'm so glad you brought this up as one of the main points because I was actually really surprised at the controversy that we got on the shoulder up of the ranking of the shoulder stuff. Because it was how to sculpt, you know, like best exercises to sculpt your delts. And we put lateral raises as toward the bottom of that.

And that's because it's not. Everybody's good to probably. That's why. Yes. And it's like. Which is not a bad exercise. Exactly. But if I'm going to rank it.

Right. If I'm having it's not going to come close to competing with the compound movement. Right. There's just, there's just better compound lifts for the shoulders that will build and grow, which again, to our point earlier, it will sculpt the shoulders better than a isolation exercise. That by the way, you can't even load very much. No. In fact, they don't lend themselves well to load.

very low. And then your traps end up overtaking the movement. And the point is to build these delts. And this is why that movement was ranked so low on our list. But yet got all kinds of heat. And I was like, oh, wow, I'm surprised how many people don't realize this and are out there probably doing all kinds of lateral raises when it would behoove them to be focused more on compound lifts that will build more of their shoulders. That's right. So generally speaking, you know, we're talking about delts, arms, which is biceps, triceps and glutes. the first exercise in your workout for those body parts should be a compound lift, and then you can follow up with isolation. So compound lift for delts would be like overhead press.

Compound list for triceps would be dips, closer grip bench press. Believe it or not, there's a compound lift for biceps. A lot of people don't know this, but you could do what's called a pull-down with a curl emphasis. So it's literally like a reverse grip

or supernata grip pull-down. But rather than focusing on the back, you're trying to do a curl as you come down. That's a compound lift for the biceps. And then glutes, you have like your squats, your dead lifts, your hip thrusts. These are compound lifts that you can load heavy to build the glutes. And then you can move into the isolation stuff.

The other thing is you want to prioritize these body parts at the beginning of the workout. And you also want to prioritize them with more with more of the volume. So what do I mean about that? Okay, so I'll use delts because I think this is a good example. Is it a bulk of the training? Yeah. So typically when you're doing a workout, like a common split that someone may do is what's known as a PPL split. So this is called a push, pull, legs, split.

It's a very common way to break up the body parts. So the push day would include chest, shoulders, and triceps. Pull day would be back, biceps. And then the leg day would be, of course, legs. So let's talk about the push day. Almost always in a workout, people will do chest before shoulders. Okay. Now that generally makes sense.

Generally speaking, you want your delts are so active in chest exercises. And the chest exercises are heavier. so like a bench press you'll do more than you will let's say an overhead press so typically you start your workout that way but if your if your focus is delts if you're like look I don't care about really developing my pecks I'm sculpting of a woman's physique this is where we'll let's go first yes yep I've never had a woman come to me and be like I want to build my chest up more it's always if you want it's this is where this is where programming gets a little bit different with men and women especially when we're talking about aesthetics right is you're you're going to focus

on a muscle group that makes a difference. Like with women, a lot of, some of my female clients, we did hardly any chest training and put that extra volume into building adults. And you have to account for that too because you don't want to just do more shoulders, which is a mistake that people make is they do everything and then they slap on more volume on the shoulders. It's no, if I'm going to take from anywhere, I'm probably going to take from the chest and I'm going to add the volume in the shoulders.

And so back to your point about volume matters. and understanding how you organize this and where you take because just adding more shoulders because someone who says, oh, this is how you should build. It's like, well, then you're doing too much. And so there's a delicate dance there. That's right. So you want to do more work for the body parts you're trying to develop,

but that doesn't mean you just add more work to your overall workout. You take away some work from other body parts. Your body can only tolerate so much total work or damage, okay? And if your goal is, again, to develop your delts, Adam gave a great example, take away some of the work for chest and throw it onto shoulders and prioritize it at the beginning of the workout. Same thing with glutes and even arms.

Look, if you're looking like, I just want to, I'm not that interested in developing my back a lot, but I want my biceps to look really good or my triceps to look really good. You might even do those before the larger body parts if the goal is to sculpt and shape a particular body part. Then we have, you know, kind of two ways you could train your body with strain training. And it's a good idea to do both. you have your heavy days and you have your light days. Heavy days, reps are low, and I'm just trying to be strong.

Lighter days, I'm focusing more on getting a pump. My reps are much higher, probably around 12 to 15. And I'm just trying to get good blood flow. It's a good combination or way to alternate your training or to add some kind of novelty. And so both of them have value. Both of them run out of value if that's all you do, is the point that I'm trying to. Well, this really prioritizes strength. and recovery. That's what I like about this is you have a day where I'm really focused on going

heavy, which I'm going to put extra stress on the body and really promote getting stronger, which we know internal build muscle. And then I follow that up with a lighter, a lighter training sessions, which now is more, I'm still going through. I'm still training, but it's, it's more facilitating recovery and resting me up to get ready again to do another one of those. And there's another way to do this would be to do phases. So I would do a few weeks where I'm going heavy and then a few weeks where I'm going lighter or the rep ranges change would be a different way to put it. My rep range is, you know, the next few weeks is five or six. The next few weeks is, let's say, 12 to 15.

And it's a great way to keep the body progressing because the body does adapt pretty quickly to a specific rep range if you just stay there. You have to change it out. All the time. Next up is, look, you want to sculpt your body. You better eat a high protein diet. By the way, you better eat a high protein diet even if you're trying to get lean, okay? Even if your goal is to try to lose body fat, high protein preserves muscle better than a non-high protein diet.

If you want to build, which is what we're trying to do, you definitely need to have high protein. Now, what does this look like? One gram of protein per pound of body weight or per pound of target body weight. So if you want to weigh 140 pounds or 150 pounds, that's how many grams of protein you're going to eat on a daily basis? Makes a big difference. If I'm, if you're, I'll just give an example. If you have two identical women, everything's identical. both of them 145 pounds.

One of them is eating 80 grams of protein a day. The other one's eating 145 grams of protein a day. Even if everything else is the same, even if the calories are the same, so the 80 gram of protein is having more carbs, fats, whatever, make up the difference. The 145 gram protein person is going to build muscle faster and better than the 80 gram protein person. It makes a big difference.

And here's the thing with it, you can't make up protein. So you can't have like low days and go, okay, I'm going to make up for it today. it's every day. It's every day consistent is when it really makes a difference. Your body doesn't store protein like it does carbohydrates or body fat or fat. Protein is every single day. Be very consistent with high protein. You also need good sleep.

Trying to build and shape the body, even trying to get lean on not good consistent sleep, good luck. You're playing this on hard mode, if not impossible mode with porcelain. Those are two no exceptions. That's right. I mean, it's like you said,

like every goal. It's like these two make such a massive impact in whether or not you're going to get anywhere towards your goal. Well, and it really needs to reflect what your training intensity is looking like too because that seems to be the easy lever that everybody can pull. Push harder in my workout. Train to filler, get after my workouts, but then not pay a lot of attention to how they've been resting that week. And you need to learn to be able to this is a lot of my coaching when I'm coaching competitors is like, how did you sleep last night? night. Yeah. Like, okay, even though today I wanted you to really get after it or chase a PR, this is not a day we do that. Like you need to back off. Go through, we're going to go through

the workout still. We're going to do it, but then back off a little bit right now. And I think this is something that we tend to ignore. And it's like when you are in the build in scope, you're trying to build muscle. It's so, the recovery piece of this is such a large piece of the puzzle that I will scale back on intensity and or volume in a training routine if my client isn't getting adequate rest because of how important it is. Oftentimes I've had clients who were doing everything pretty well, consistent, decent strength training. All I did was have them bump their protein and get better sleep.

And it was miraculous how dramatic their bodies. I mean, I'm not talking subtle. It wasn't like they subtly got stronger and subtly body started. It was dramatic. After a few weeks of this, it was like, holy cow, what has happened to my body? Yeah, I mean, exercising, that's just the, the, the. catalyst to get you towards, you know, the building process. The building process is really in the recovery.

That's right. And it's the stress catalyst. So it doesn't take much to send a signal to the body that, hey, we need, hey, this person is going to do this thing, lifting weights. It's usually less than you think. Yeah. And so if you are hammering that and you're not getting adequate protein in rest, boy, you're going to really stall out.

You can weigh back off the training and really focus on the protein and the sleep. And boom, all of a sudden you see that person get stronger. in admos. Totally. All right, so let's list best exercises for each body part that we just talked about. We'll include a compound, I guess, in isolation. We'll start with delts. I think I named one of them already at overhead press.

It doesn't get better than an overhead press. It's your money exercise. Now, I like standing overhead press. You can do these seated, but I do like standing because it does involve a little bit of upper back stability. It's good for shoulder mobility. And honestly, all things being equal, it's just a better exercise.

Does that mean you can't do these seated? You can. You definitely can. There's a lot of varieties and versions of overhead presses. You can do with dumbbells, barbells. You can do an Arnold press, a machine press. But overhead press is a must when it comes to the compound lift. I'm going to also throw a little curveball here since we're just talking about best exercises and it doesn't fall in the category of your compound lift.

And that's a rear dealt fly. Oh, that's my favorite isolation. That's where I was going. Okay. So I don't know if you're going to go. Oh, you're going to go into isolation. Yeah, compound isolation. Yes.

Because I just, to me, that's, that ends up taking a high priority. even though it kind of is counterintuitive or conflicting with what we're talking about with compound lifts because of its neglect. That's right. The rear delt doesn't really get hit. It's just, it's everybody does front dealt type of movements or lateral type of stuff.

And when you talk about sculpting a body and a physique and the shoulder in particular, building that round shoulder makes such a huge difference. Oh, I rank the rear, the rear dealt fly higher than the side. lateral. Oh, yeah. Definitely better than that. Which is, I think that's one of the things that we did in that, when we ranked the list,

that got controversy. That's right. No. For aesthetics, that's what makes the delts look round. Yes. 100%. Biceps, I like the curl grip pull down where you're focusing on curling as a compound lift. Isolation exercise for bicep, really, at this point, I don't care.

It could be a preacher, it's, be a standing curl. It could be, you know, an incline curl. Clined curls are great. Yeah. Actually, I like incline curls because it places the bicep and a stretch a lot. Yeah, that's what I like it. But they're, yeah. You're good with that.

Triceps, close grip bench press is my favorite compound lift. And then overhead tricep extension just because of the stretch at places on the long head of the tricep. And I would rank that higher than even a tricep press down for overall. Oh, I would too. Oh, yeah. I definitely would make that. And then glutes, this is easy, you guys. Barbell squats and hip thrust.

You can't get it better than those two exercises. Dead lifts are great. Sumo dead lifts are great. Romanian dead lifts are great. They're all great. Cluette. Specific squat and hip thrust. But if you had to pick two,

squat and hip thrust. Like you're, and you can hip thrust before you squat, squat before you hip thrust. I really don't care. But I think they're both. Oh, I mean,

that's why we held that master class for that was because it's, if you just, if you get really strong on the hit thrust, you can get really strong and squat. Your butt's built. You're going to have a butt. You're going to build a butt from that.

100%. Now, We have a program called muscle mommy. And it is a well-programed strength training program with an emphasis on the body parts that we just talked about. So it was written in a way to where, you know,

the typical woman says, hey, these are the body parts I really want to focus on. And so it was written in that way where they're prioritized, both volume and priority in the workout. And it's written, like we said, with the best exercise first and the supporting ones after that. And it's 50% off for this episode right now. So it's half off.

And it's a full program. You've got video demos in there, sets, reps, exercises, the whole deal. You go to Maps, Musclemommi.com. The code is MuscleMummy 50, and that gets you 50% 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 at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, 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 Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support,

and until next time, this is Mind Pump.