Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2897: How to Build Glutes, Quads, and Shoulders (The Body Women Actually Want)

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

In this episode the guys break down exactly how to build the glutes, quads, and shoulders that women actually want — covering why you should train your priority body part first in the workout, how to shift volume away from other areas rather than just piling on more, why getting stronger in the big compound lifts like hip thrusts, squats, and overhead press is what actually builds muscle, why you have to eat in a surplus to build anything, and why balance still matters even when you're focused. MAPS Upper Lower: https://mapsupperlower.comCode: LAUNCH for 40% off. Women's blueprint included — emphasizes lower body, glutes and delts. Four day split, workout videos, exercise demos, coaching videos and live coaching with Cole. SPONSORS Rho Nutrition (liposomal creatine, NAD+ and Glutathione): https://www.rhonutrition.com/discount/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP for 20% off everything. Liposomal technology for actual absorption — discussed on air for gut-friendly creatine. LINKS Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.comMaps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia 0:00 - Intro 2:01 - How to build glutes, quads, and shoulders — the body women actually want 6:34 - Step 1: Prioritize the body part — train it first in every workout 11:10 - Why building delts gives women the arm and waist look they're actually after 12:48 - Step 2: Shift the volume — don't add more, trade it 15:38 - Step 3: Getting stronger is the key — compound lifts beat the burn every time 19:34 - Why female powerlifters have the best glutes in any gym 19:50 - Step 4: Eat to gain — you cannot build if you're always in a deficit 23:25 - Step 5: Still need balance — don't ignore everything else  

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 Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast approaching over half a billion downloads. That's right. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we're talking to women, how to build your glutes, quads, and shoulders.

By the way, we have a brand new Maps program. Maps upper, lower. It's a four-day muscle building split. We have a women's version in it where we emphasize lower body, glutes and delts in the program. It's 40% off because it's a brand new program. Go to Maps, upper lower.com, use the code launch, get 40% off. And this episode's brought to you by one of our sponsors,

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And use the code mind pump that gives you 20% off. 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 mindpump store.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpump store.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Long before we started mind pump, we were trainers. We trained people for over two decades.

Lots of our clients were women, and we know what they want to focus on. Overwhelmingly, women like to build their glutes, their quads, and their delts. So we're going to talk about that today, how to build those areas, essentially, how to build the body that women actually want. Let's get to it. I don't even argue it's even more popular today than even when we were training classes. It was popular then, but I feel like it's even more popular. Well, what's more popular now is that women want to build. Yeah.

They would describe it in ways back then that we knew, we got to build it, but they were afraid of saying. I think that's, I feel, that's the sentiment I felt was that I think that they wanted the same things, but I think it wasn't socially accepted for a woman to build muscle. And so, but the things they wanted were things like glutes and sculpted shoulders. They just didn't say it that way. where now I think it's, I mean, Muscle Mommy is an example of this and, you know, CrossFit helped push this. I think that it's, you know, it's invoked to get strong for, and so now I think it's, it's communicated this way more often.

And what we're going to talk about today really is about how to organize your workout routine to build those areas the most, right? So like you're going to the gym, you're working out. and you're like, look, I want to get fit. I want to look like I work out. And these are the areas that I really want to stand out the most. Like my glutes, my quads, or let's just say lower body, and then shoulders for upper body, which will touch on. Because sometimes women don't realize it's they want to build shoulders.

They'll say things like they want sculpted arms. And in reality, it's the shoulders that give that look that they're looking for. Yeah, and I want to make it clear, too, even though that this episode is geared towards, you know, women. All these same rules apply to a guy that is. is trying to focus on certain body parts. And I think this is a mistake that both men and women make when programming. I think what typically happens is you decide that, oh, there's a body part or an area that I want to work on or sculpt. And we just slap more of that stuff into a already routine and don't realize that how counterproductive that can be.

Yeah, it's good. I'm glad he said that. So let's take a step back. So we're a lot further today than we used to be in the sense that we used to have to convince women to lift weights to get the body they want. I don't think we need to do that anymore. I think everybody knows. In fact, I was just talking to a friend of mine. They're totally revamping the 24th Fitness on Hillsdale.

It's one of the ones that we all worked in. And they're moving so much of the footprint towards weights. Yeah, we let cardio. And so a lot of gyms are changed their footprint to accommodate for growing demand and strength training. and it's mainly because women are lifting weights. Guys always lifted weights. Yeah. But it's mainly because of the women.

So when you're, when you were talking about workout programming, and I'm not going to get too deep in the weeds because we can't get in the weeds with this. But workout programming refers to the program itself and what constitutes or what the program consists of. Exercises, sets, reps, tempo, and then how the interplay between all of them is,

how each one affects the next one. in terms of order of the exercises in the day, the days how they're organized, the weeks how they're organized. And it takes into a lot of things, it takes a lot of things into consideration, including recovery, balance, and how the body moves. And so what Adam referred to is referring to is that people, a lot of people don't have a good understanding of programming. So they'll just say, I want to, this more of this body part.

I'm going to do more for this body part without understanding the interplay between all the other things. And so what ends up happening is they go nowhere. And so the reports that people will often come to us with is they'll say, but I'm doing all these exercises for my glutes, nothing's happening. Or I'm doing all these exercises for my lower body, nothing's happening. And we'll say, well, let's look at your total program. And then we can see the mistakes.

Once we correct them, boom, the body responds again. So number one, in the workout itself, you want to prioritize the body part. What does that mean? Train it first. Okay. So let's say you're doing upper body workout. So like a traditional, a good kind of, you know, tested and true muscle building split is an upper lower split. Like, in fact, we have a MAPS program.

We just came out with that's MAPS upper lower. It's very classic, tested, effective general split, right? Where you're working upper body one day, lower body on another day. Well, an upper body day typically looks like this. If you're training your upper body, you typically start with either chest. are back. And so the idea with traditional workout programming is to start with the largest body part when you have the most energy and then move down the line to the smaller body parts as your energy starts to wane. And this not only makes a lot of sense, it actually

works for the most part. Now here's where you kind of flip that out of the set. If your goal is to focus on your delts, then train your delts first. Even though your delts will be fatigued by the time you get to chest, so you're not going to be a strong in your chest presses. If you're more interested in developing your delts than your chest, then you hit your delts first. And the data supports this entirely. So bodybuilders and athletes have known this for a long time. Bodybuilders have talked about this for a long time. But now we have data the show that, oh, what you train first in the workout tends to get the greatest adaptations. And as you go down the workout, you start to get lower and lower. Yeah, the muscle recruitment

process, it definitely prioritizes those body parts that you, uh, you signal like right away in the beginning. And so then, you know, the rest of the workout, it's definitely firing on all cylinders. I realize how common of a mistake this was for so many people. Again, this was one of the many things that was revealed to me when I was competing. Again, I went into competing thinking that these are the most elite people when it comes to diet, programming and training and stuff like that. So I would, I assumed would be some of the most knowledgeable people.

But one of the things I remember I'll never forget, actually. actually this because I came off of a show and shoulders were like my my focus on the next round was like, okay, I want to really build my delts. I had from reviews from the judges, like I had compliments on my chest and back. And it was just like, okay, those were, had been prior areas of focus for me. And so I'd be lifting with a buddy of mine who was also a competitor. And we were starting on an upper body day. We were lifting. And I went straight to shoulder presses to start. And he's like, what are you doing? Like, what? You always have to do that. after chance.

Yeah, yeah. Why are you doing this before we bench press? And I'm just like, oh, my focus is shoulders. Yeah, but then you're going to be so weak. I said, I don't care. I'm not trying to make any more gains right now on the chest. I'm trying to bring my shoulders up to match my chest in this situation. And the look on his face was just like so confused.

Like, no, that's not what you do. And it was just like, well, yeah, you do if that's the focus, you know? And it was like, but so to me, that was so glaring because, again, I, I'd assume that somebody at that level who is, you know, being judged for their physique knows the best way to sculpt it better than the average consumer. But that may go, oh, wow, okay. And he wasn't following bad advice. He was following traditional program advice.

It just wasn't, hey, I want to prioritize this. And it's not, and it's not, it's not something that is going to make him, obviously he was competing in being judged. He's still already the 1%. And so he had a great physique. But I've told you guys many times, I think part of the thing that I have. as an advantage going into this, even though the big disadvantage was I didn't have a coach, I didn't have a team. It wasn't really into the sport. I didn't know what I was doing for the first time,

but I understood that. I understood diet and nutrition really well. I understood programming really well. And so at least show over show, I saw all these, I'd see improvements because I programmed that way. It was like, before I'd start, it wasn't like I'd get back to a routine and the only thing that would happen would just be on a diet. It was like, I had a plan. And every show looked after If every show it looked different. It would be feedback I got from the judges. And so my programming never looked exactly the same as the last. It was, oh, I'm making tweaks now because this is the feedback I'm getting from the judges.

And so I had to try and present it. And this is why this kind of, I mean, understanding this is really training like you're a sculptor. Like you're looking at your body like it's a piece of clay and you're developing the areas that you want to focus on, which is a great thing about strength training. You can really change moldable the way that your body looks. And again, going back to delts, delts for women, this is true for men too, but especially for women. when women develop their delts, it gives them the physique

that they typically are looking for when it comes to upper body. They typically want this kind of sculpted look to their arms. It comes from delts. They want to have a smaller looking waist that comes from delts. It gives them better looking posture.

So it's delts before back, delts before chest. It's delts before anything on an upper body day. And so you prioritize it in the order of the day. Just to touch that on that again for the minute. I know this is a very female-focused conversation,

but this was also very surprising to me because I was so heavily focused on arms for most of my life. I think for both men and women, the delts are what make the arms look better. Those are the lines you're looking for. Somebody who says, I want better arms. It's delts. Build your delts. Because the delts create this beautiful separation.

Because we all have muscle, right? There's not a single person walking around that doesn't have a bicep, doesn't have a tricep, doesn't unless something was removed or lost or whatever, right? for the most part, we all have them. If you get lean enough, it'll reveal them. One of the best ways to have great-looking arms is have great developed delts

because it separates the bicep and the tricep, and it gives it that illusion and that look. And so, you know, highly recommend somebody who wants nice arms, whether you're a female saying, I want toe nice arms, or you're a dude who's saying, I want big, you know, I want big arms. You know what? I got the best, the most big arm compliments

when my arms were an inch and a half smaller than what they were at their peak, but it was when my delts were the best and most revealed. 100%. All right. Now, that's not the only thing. So work it out.

Put it first in your training day. Okay, but that's not the only thing. Here's the second part. Everybody screws up on. Shift the volumes. Here's what you don't do. Got to take from someone. You don't take your normal workout

that you've been doing with your total volume and then just add more volume to a body part that you want to train. That's a great way to get no progress. That's a great way to over-train your body. Your body can only handle so much volume. And volume is how many sets you're doing, reps, and the total amount of weight that you're lifting. You have to shift the volume. Now, people are afraid of doing this because they're like, well,

if I take volume away from my back and from my chest and move it towards my shoulders, or if I take volume away from these other areas and move it towards my lower body, I'm going to lose muscle in those areas. Not true. And the data is incredibly clear on this. The amount of training volume required to build a muscle is significantly higher than the amount of volume that's required to maintain. It's way different, you guys. In fact, the data, it's crazy. It's so much you could reduce way more than we even normally do.

It's like, it's some studies show one fourth the volume. Other studies have showed as little as one ninth the volume. So in other words, take all your training, cut it. it down to 25% and you'll keep the muscle that you've already built. And that's the, some of the data, some of the, some other data says you can cut it down even more. I've experienced this myself. Like I can cut it way down and I'm training way less and I don't lose any muscle.

So shift the volume. So if you're a woman and you're listening right now and you want to build more glutes and quads and shoulders, well, you take volume away from the other areas and move it to these. But don't just add training volume. Or just add more on top of more because that's how your body gets. It's overwhelmed and doesn't progress. Well, yeah, and somebody might be asking, why is that? And it says every bit of this, right?

We always talk about how exercise is good for you, but it still is a stress. That's right. And you're in every bit of volume of training, right, that you do. So every set and rep and amount of weight you move, add stress to that bucket. And once it gets to a point where it's completely filled and you overspill, it becomes counterproductive. The body is now stuck trying to just recover from all this volume and stress. it doesn't allow it to recover adequately and then adapt and build and strengthen.

And so you want to make sure that that's balanced out. And you would rather be on the lower end of that stress bucket than to risk overfilling it and over spilling because then that's where the results don't. And so I even like the way we've programmed the upper lower, like there's still, you're still getting decent volume on that. You could even go lower if you, if you wanted to based off of what all the studies are saying, to your point, that it takes, once you've. built it. It takes very little to maintain that muscle. And so you're always better off like,

okay, pulling away from some of these other muscle groups that you're like, okay, I know that that's developed on me. I really want to develop this other. Well, then it's really scale back on that and put the energy and focus on the thing that you want. Yeah, when you look at how volume affects muscle growth, it's kind of like a bell curve. So you'll increase volume, get better gains. Then there's this really short peak and then you do more and you get less gains. So sometimes people like, well, I added volume and I still got more gains. You didn't get as many as you could have. You're on this side of the curve.

And many people go so far as to they work out, they get sore, they work out, they get sore, they work out, they get sore, no progress. What's going on? Way too much. Your body just can't adapt. Next up, this is an important thing to understand. And it's still a message that I need to communicate more consistently to women, which is this. The key to building muscle is getting stronger.

It's the best correlate to building muscle, especially in the first five years of your training. So what does that mean? If you're training your glutes or your quads or you're focusing on your delts, the compound lifts that work those areas like barbell squats or hip thrust or overhead presses, get stronger in those exercises. Don't even worry about getting stronger in other exercises, in fact. Remember, we're shifting the volume. I don't care how much stronger you get in your barbell row.

I don't care how much stronger you get in curls. I don't care how much stronger you get than some of these other exercises. What I would care about if glutes, quads, and shoulders was your focus is how much can you hip thrust, how much can you barbell squat, how much can you override press?

If you get stronger in those, those areas will build. It's like clockwork. Yeah, and you're mentioning the biggest movers, the big compound lifts in those categories. And so if you really emphasize what's going to get me the strongest for that particular muscle group

and it's usually those compound lifts and you're going to prioritize that. That's what you're going to focus on. I think, too, like, I can't help but think of, like, group training classes as well, where, you know, a lot of the emphasis is like the entire body, and then, you know, people will add in to your earlier point. They'll just add in the volume of, like,

well, I'll just add some, like, you know, lateral raises. I'll do something for my shoulders at the end when, in fact, if we shift our focus, we do, you know, those compound lifts and then we trade out volume. You're going to have a much better result. Think about it this way. What's the heavy?

lift you can do for the body parts that you're trying to develop, that's the one you should focus on. So if you're a woman listening right now, I guarantee you, you could hip thrust more than you can for any other glute exercise. You could do all kinds of abduction and glute kickbacks. But the hip thrust is where you'll be lifting the heaviest weight. You can do lateral raises and rear laterals and all, but you're not going to be able to lift as much as you can overhead press. Focus on the heavy lifts, get stronger on those. Watch those body parts develop. Getting strong beats the pump, the burn, the feel. Yes.

And I think that's where the mistake is made. There's this idea that when you do exercises for a body part, and because you feel it more in that area, it's working more of that area or it's a better exercise. This is where I think people make the mistake. This is why glute kickbacks and laterals. Because they burn and they feel it in the spot. in the area where somebody might go do a barbell back squat with 185 pounds on their back

and be like, I don't really feel much in my butt. But let me tell you, that is putting way more muscle on your butt than your 50 kickbacks are doing all day long. And so that's what it is. Getting strong in those core lifts is far better than the burn than the pump and feeling it in that muscle. And so that's how your workout should be prioritized is starting the workout. out with those big lifts, caring about what did I lift last time I did this? Can I stack on another

five or ten pounds and continuing to progress that way? You know it's funny about that, Adam? It's so funny because you have a lot of, just to back up what you're saying, you'll have a lot of women that lift weights and then you'll have some women that power lift. You know, consistently speaking, who has better developed glutes, the women that power lift. Of course. And they're not even, they're not trying to feel the muscle. They're trying to just get strong. They can care less about filling a muscle. So they're just trying to squat more. And female power lifters tend to have incredibly developed glutes because they're strong. Which brings us to the next point.

And this one I have to just, I always have to hammer this home. You guys. Look, if you're trying to build anything, you've got to eat to gain. That's it. You're not going to build if you're eating to cut. It's just not going to happen. It doesn't work that way. You have to eat to gain.

So if I'm trying to add muscle to my glutes, quads, and shoulders, I should expect to see my weight go up on the scale. How am I adding muscle if the weight isn't going to go? up. Don't be afraid of gaining. Look, if you're doing, if you're following a program like maps up or lower and you're like, I want to build round glutes, I want to have a nice lower body, I want to have some nice delts. It's a, it's a nine-week program. If by the end of it, you get stronger and you gain six pounds on the scale, congratulations. You've built those areas. If by the end of the program, the scale has not moved or gone down, you probably didn't build anything. And you have to eat in order to gain. So feed your body. Hit the protein targets.

eat the calories. Otherwise, it ain't going to happen. There is a, there's a large percentage of people listening right now that understand that hip thrust, that squats, that deadlifts, that these movements are great for building the butt. Yet they are, they can't understand why they haven't built their butt. This is the main reason. Yes.

It's because they're in a caloric deficit or barely maintenance at some points and or also doing things like cardio. And they are doing all the right. things lifting wise, but they're not feeding, they're not giving the body the material to go build the tissue. That's right. So I don't care if you have the best programming in the world, you lift all these lifts perfectly. If you're living in a caloric deficit and you're always trying to cut or lean out, you're not going to build. So you've got to. And so you've got to be in a surplus. You've got to eat, you've got to eat calories. And you definitely got to eat your

protein consistently because that's probably the other piece to the eating part because maybe someone's like, I do, I do try and eat more calories, but then they're in a calorie surplus, but then they're inconsistent with hitting their protein intake. So it's hit your protein take consistently and be in a calorie surplus and then do all these right lists and get strong. I can't tell you. I've had so many female clients in the past that were really consistent with their workouts and I see their programming.

Everything looks good. All I did. All I did was increase their calories by seven. into 800 calories. It's like magic. And it was like magic. They were like, I can't even believe how easy that is.

The beauty of this too is that the legs, the butt are the biggest muscles of your body. And when you add five or seven pounds to scale, which sounds so scary to some people, especially to my female clients, but you add five to seven pounds of muscle to someone's ass or their legs,

boy, that metabolism is roaring. And boy, does it make... By the way, you don't look like you gained five or seven pounds. You just look like you have rounder glutes. Yes. And better quads. And then your metabolism is roaring. And it makes the cut process a million times.

So maybe you're listening right now and you're like, yeah, but I feel soft and I don't, I don't want to add more weight to the scale. I want to lean out. And then I want to build my butt. You're far better off. Go build the butt. Go build the shoulders. Build the metabolism.

Increase the calories. Even if you don't like where you're at, body fat percentage wise, it's a better strategy to go build first. And then cut. It'll make the cutting process far. easier. Now lastly, this is just the trainer on us, which is this. Okay, cool. I want to build my glutes, quads, and delts. That's all I'm doing them. I'm not training any other body parts. Yeah. Don't do that because the body still needs balance. Okay, so you can actually stop progress by creating such an imbalance that your body refuses to build more muscle. And it'll do this. It'll do this when

imbalances get glaring, either because you injure yourself or because your body's not moving well. So, Although we did say shift the volume, you still want to do some exercises for your back and your chest and your hamstrings and your core. You still want to train for balance. So don't go extreme with what we're saying and avoid everything else and only train glutes, quads, and shoulders. And again, I'm going to mention this one more time. We have a new MAPS program called MAPS upper lower. And this program does have a women's blueprint in there that's available where the programming is exactly what we're talking about.

And it is emphasizing the lower body and the delts, taking into account all the things that we talked about. And it's a brand new program. So it's 40% off. It's a four-day split, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, off, Thursday, Friday, or you can move it around. Four-day split, designed to shape and sculpt your body. It's Maps, upper, lower.com.

Use the code launch. That'll give you 40% off. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aestetic, 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 sound, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at Mind Pumpmedia.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.

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