Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2905: How to Build an Aesthetic Physique | Best Exercises for Chest Back Shoulders and Legs

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

In this episode the guys break down the best exercises to sculpt the physique men actually train for — covering incline press for upper chest development, deadlifts and barbell rows for back thickness and width, standing overhead press with rear delt flies for that rounded shoulder cap, and barbell squats with Romanian deadlifts for complete lower body development. They explain why most guys develop flat-looking chests by neglecting the upper portion, why powerlifters often have more impressive looking backs than bodybuilders, and why rear delt development is one of the most technically misunderstood movements in training.   MAPS Upper Lower:  https://mapsupperlower.com Code: LAUNCH for 40% off. Four day bodybuilding split, male and female versions, workout videos, exercise demos and live coaching with Cole.   SPONSOR Troscriptions (methylene blue and medical grade supplements):  https://troscriptions.com/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP for 10% off first order. Medical grade supplements with clinically validated doses.   LINKS Mind Pump Store:  https://mindpumpstore.com Maps Fitness Products:  https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia 0:00 - Intro 2:05 - Why strength training is the only form of exercise that lets you sculpt your body 7:27 - Why you have to pack on clay before you can sculpt it — the beginner trap 9:59 - Chest: why incline press beats flat bench for aesthetic development 12:06 - Adam's story — the year he made incline press his priority and his chest changed forever 13:49 - Back: why thickness beats width for how a back actually looks in real life 15:42 - Why every heavy deadlifter has an impressive back without exception 17:17 - Why getting strong in the deadlift makes every other back exercise better 18:53 - Shoulders: standing overhead press plus rear delt flies — why rear delts change everything 20:36 - Why rear delt flies are technically harder to do correctly than people realize 21:21 - How leading with rear flies before pressing changed Adam's shoulder development 22:18 - Lower body: barbell squat and Romanian deadlift — you need legs, don't skip them 23:05 - Why getting to full range of motion on squats gave Adam unexpected calf and hamstring gains 24:04 - Why the four day upper lower split allows you to prioritize lagging body parts twice a week

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, fellas, we're going to talk about how to sculpt your chest, back, shoulders, and your lower body. You know, the physique you actually want.

By the way, we have a brand new workout program. Maps up or lower. It's a four-day bodybuilding split. Four days in the gym, upper-lower, and then a day off and then upper-lower again. Go to Mapsuporlower.com. And if you use the code launch, you'll get it for 40% off. This episode is also brought to by Troscriptions. So Troscriptions is medical grade supplements.

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Hit pause. Head on over to Mind Pumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, fellas. Today, we're going to talk about how you can sculpt your back, your chest, your shoulders, and your lower body. You know the physique that you actually want, the one that looks great at the beach. We're going to break it down for you.

Let's get to it. Let's go. Yeah. Let's talk about the-bodies. Be dying for this conversation. He's like, I can't wait until we get to the studio today. I was just thinking about building men's bodies. Yeah.

I was about to take my shirt off. And I was like, dude, we should talk about this first. You know, this is actually a good conversation. It's going to be aesthetically focused. Okay, that's why Adam's poking at Justin. But you're the performance guy. Totally aesthetic. But we're going to talk about like the aesthetic point of view, right?

Like, how do you develop these muscles so that they make the biggest impact visually, right? So we know what they do for function and strength. And that's all great. I think that's more important. But nonetheless, most people go to the gym. Let's say, let's be honest, though, what do most people want? They want to look a certain. Yeah.

And even the people that say, I'm in it for health, strength, longevity. Yeah. But they always end that with. And I'd like to look a little better. I'd like to lose 15 pounds. We're like, so there tends to be an aesthetic goal attached to almost all. Almost all. There's always, I mean, that's an over generalization, but they're absolutely

exceptions to the rule. But I'd say a vast majority of everybody that I train. It's always there, regardless. They were motivated because they wanted to change the way they looked. 100%. And they knew that losing body fat and lifting weights was the path. I just didn't know how to do it. Yeah, and I'm going to just say this.

This goes without saying. I think everybody who's listening understands this by now. But the most aesthetically valuable form of exercise is strength training. So all exercise versus no exercise is good. So all forms of exercise are good. all of them will improve the way you look as you become more fit and healthy. But strength training is quite unique.

It's the only form of exercise where I could target parts of my body. I remember in the old documentary pumping iron where Arnold Schwarzenegger, he's young. He's against his 20s in this, but he's getting interviewed. And he talks about how bodybuilders are like sculptors and how he looks in the mirror

and like a sculptor, he decides where he wants to add more clay and how he wants to shape his body. Strength training allows you to do that. are exercises specifically for chest and back and shoulders and for the lower body. There are ways to train your body to where you develop muscle in a way that looks more impressive visually than other ways of exercise. And so that's what we're going to kind of focus on is like, okay, what these body parts that we just mentioned, these are the big ones, but what are the best

exercises to develop that aesthetic look, that give that look that people really seek when they do string training. You know, you reference pumping iron all the time, and I don't really. But that scene in particular is one that I appreciate a lot. And I think that the part of it that I think a lot of people don't see is just the patience required to be that sculptor. Oh, yeah.

We want this immediate, you know, result. I want to build my shoulder. So you want to go in and so you want to just do an exercise or follow one program and see this huge difference. And it just, it takes a long time to do that. And so I have such an appreciation for someone like Arnold talking about that and talking about sculpting the body because it's, it's an ongoing process. And when you look back over months and years of consistently training, it's crazy how much you can really do that. Like you can really completely transform the body and how it looks. And damn near almost any.

that you want, right? Like, obviously, you can't train to make yourself taller, um, but you can't make yourself wider, thicker, thinner, you know, more here, less there. Create allusions. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, that's really, really cool that you have the power to do that through nutrition and consistent proper training and muscle building. And so I think it's a really cool thing. But I think a lot of people just don't have the patience for it. And the consistency to allow it to develop. It takes time, and I will add this, the things that you have to tackle or contend with when it comes to strength training your body or developing it in a particular way is you don't

have unlimited ability to recover and adapt. So, you know, we're going to talk about exercises that really add that visual element, the ones that really give that aesthetic look and what that is all about. But there's a lot of exercises. There's 100 chest exercises. Why don't you just do all of them then? Maybe these ones over here, which are the ones you guys are going to mention, are really good for developing this aesthetic look.

Why don't I just do all of them, though? I don't I just do every single exercise I can think of? And that's because you're limited by your ability to recover and adapt. And so you have to pick the best ones and you can't do all of them. You can only do the ones that are the best, and you have to recover and adapt. You have to give your body that time and ability to do so. otherwise nothing's going to happen. Also, sticking with the Arnold analogy since you went that way of packing on clay,

certain exercises pack on the most clay for you to sculpt and work with. And so, yes, there are exercises that are good for chest development. But what happens to a lot of people is they do these small movements or movements that don't pack a lot of clay on that, sure, it works your chest and it works from this angle or it hits this part or this thing and it's different and unique. but part of sculpting and building a physique like this, the first part is actually packing on a lot of that clay in the areas that you want.

And then the sculpting part is that cutting the body fat and leaning out and then it's showing that. Generally speaking, a bigger muscle looks better than a smaller muscle does. And that's generally speaking. Now, when you get lots of muscle size, you're already jacked, then you can play with like little tiny movements. That's right.

But early on, there are exercises that are superior to others when you are trying to body build and sculpt because you want the things that pack on the most clay. And the things that pack on the most clay, typically are a lot of the exercises that we talk a lot about. And I do think this is an important point to hammer home

because in the bodybuilding world and the Instagram world, a lot of people follow these pros. And these pros have already packed on so much clay. And what is unique on Instagram or it goes viral are these unique movements You've never seen before. You've never seen or a new machine or a, you know, sideways chest press thing or adding bands.

It's just smearing clear. There's these novel, there's these novel exercises or movements or things that they're doing. And what people miss is that those people had already packed on a ton of clay from doing the movements that really move the needle. And now they're doing these novel things. And then you have this. And I say this because I was this kid. I was susceptible to this. Totally.

20, 22 years old, looking at the, I was always chasing the new creative exercise and the newest thing that was being advertised in the magazine versus sticking to what

packed on the most clay and getting strong in those lifts. And that I think is such an important thing to talk about. So let's start with chest. So first off, let's talk about what makes a chest look aesthetic.

So obviously muscle, right? So you need muscle under chest for it to look aesthetic. So a big, strong chest looks better than a small, weak chest. That being said, there is a way to develop your chest to make it look more impressive when you have your shirt off. And this really points to the upper chest. So you can have two chests that are very well developed, but one chest is much more developed in the upper part in relation to

the rest of it. And it gives it a more powerful presence. It makes it look more balanced. Yeah. And it creates a bigger or fuller. Yes, a big full looking chest because the upper chest really developed. So what we want is we want an exercise that is a big, big bang for your buck exercise, but one that also develops a chest in a very aesthetic way. And for me, that's the incline barbell bench press or incline dumbbell chest press. That's a good compound lift, builds a lot of muscle, but it also develops the chest in a very aesthetic way because it focuses on the upper chest. I love this advice because traditionally the flat bench press is what's been hailed as the best.

Not a bad exercise. Yeah. Great exercise. And because of that, so much emphasis has been put on on doing flat bench. And many times I was like this. I'm not sure if you guys were the same way or not, but I neglected incline because it was difficult because I couldn't lift as much. It was heavier.

Early years of lifting, I was embarrassed to not be able to put a wheel on the barbell. And so, you know, at that time, it took that, it took me a long time just to get to there on a flat bench. Last thing I wanted to do was throw quarters on and go do the incline bench. So it was something that I neglected for so long, yet that's one of the best ways to build an aesthetic chest. And so, and I remember, I totally remember the year that I made that goal of, okay, I'm going to, no matter how embarrassing it is for me to lift this lightweight on my incline, my goal is

to try and get my incline bench press up to what my flat bench press was. And it was the most growth and development and the best my chest ever looked was from that. And then I've never looked back. And now it's become the staple is like, I might not flat bench for a really long time, but I never miss an incline. And so what this looks like for you is when you're doing your chest workout, start your workout with a compound lift and make most of the focus on the upper chest.

In fact, if all you ever focused on was upper chest, if all of your presses and flies and cable exercises were to target the upper chest, you would develop a very aesthetic looking chest. what's wonderful about what I'm saying, by the way. I know we're talking about how it looks, but there's always this side, and this is just because I'm a trainer,

a function, and I will say this, it's also more functional. Yeah. So you don't really have this kind of negative tradeoff where, well, more better aesthetics, worse function. Incline pressing in the real world tends to be more functional and healthy for your shoulders as well. I was going to ask you guys,

even from an aesthetic perspective, besides just function for like, a decline chest press. Is there any value really to that? I mean, I see very little. Very little. It's a short range of motion. Maybe functionality, you know, but I like dips better.

Yeah. For something like that. Dips will be way more fun. But I mean, for chess, the focus should incline pressing, incline flies, and you're done. Don't build you up. Build your upper chest. When was the last time any of you did a decline? I don't.

I don't. Probably in college. I was probably 23. I always rarely ever did it because I just, I always. 23, 24 years old. Yeah, somewhere around there. And you know what drew me to it? Weird.

How much weight you could put? Exactly. That was the only thing that was appealing to me was that I knew on incline or decline bench press. I could press more than anything else. And that was back when that's what I cared about was doing that. After that, the results from it are so minimal. And I agree. I think that if you want to target the lower chest like that, ring dips like you love or barbell dips or even the dip.

Flat bench by itself too, cover a lot of that. Yeah. No, totally. But stick to upper chest exercises to develop an aesthetic-looking chest. Now we get to back. Back's interesting because we say back. When we say chest, we're talking about one muscle, talking about the pecs. When I say back, we're talking about a lot of different muscles.

You got your lats, you got your rhomboids, you got your trapezius muscles. You have all the terrorist major and minor muscles. You've got a lot of erector spin A muscle. Like you've got a lot going on that. I don't know why we call it back. We should probably call it lats. and something else. Basically what I can't see.

But yeah, so now here's a deal. Aesthetic looking backs have two, there's two things or two components to an aesthetic back. There's width. So how wide your back looks. And this is especially important from the front. Makes your waist look smaller.

So body builders do something called a front lat spread. But even from the front, if you have a wide back, you'll see that from the back, obviously. But from the front, it gives you this nice V-taper. but then you want thickness and depth and you want upper back development.

Nothing looks more impressive and people will debate this all day long. Bodybuilding made wide backs very popular, but I will say this. In the real world, you take your shirt off, you're at the beach. It's the thick upper back development that gives you the aesthetic look.

It just looks powerful. A wide back without upper back thickness or thickness, you know, nice lat spread, kind of cool. Does not look as powerful, or as impressive as somebody with developed traps and that thickness in the back. So that comes from rows and deadlifts. I even think that it does more for the V-Taper.

I'll make that argument because you don't move in a 2D world. You're 3D. And so when you get thicker and your waist is smaller, that's a true... You're like this. From every direction.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you might... Getting a Y-back might be good for a V-Taper if you were flat if we live in a 2-D world, but you're not, you're a 3D. And so if you want that true, like, V-Taper look or hourglass look where you have a small waist and a wide, thick back, I mean, it's deadlifty.

And to me, it's deadlifting. That's one of the most controversial things to me to say that, which is so crazy. I know people are weird about it. Because the deadlift is a hip hinge movement, and there's so much power that's being driven from the hips to do that. But if you, I have never met anybody who can deadlift good way. a lot of weight and does not have an impressive back.

Every heavy deadlifter has that. And you get to a place where if you're deadlifting over 400 pounds as a man, and you will have, your back will show it. You will have a good looking back. Now, I'll say this too, because, you know, obviously bodybuilders are at the peak of aesthetic muscle building. And I've seen bodybuilders with a lot of bodybuilders, especially at the high level, have really wide backs.

but oftentimes you see the thickness that's missing. I've seen power lifters transfer to bodybuilding and they have to work on back width all the time, right? Because power lifters do a lot of depth. They say they have thick backs. But when they're just standing there, when they're lean, they look impressive. Thickness makes your back look aesthetic in the real world.

It also sell, so the pursuing the heavy deadlift translates to all the wide back exercises so well too. I never could lap pull down or pull up more weight than when I got really strong of the deadlift. So that's the other part too, the CNS piece, the just overall power and strength, you get from building a big deadlift. Not only will build this stick back, but then it will also carry over into all the traditional bodybuilder back exercises that everybody talks about that are so clutch for you. I mean, if you have, try getting really, really heavy barbell rows and not be able to deadlift very much. You know what you're limiting factor? It would be that weak-ass low back.

You will only build a row so much if you don't have a strong deadlift. Now, if you have a really strong deadlift, that guy can now hold on to a lot more weight in row. It wasn't until I could deadlift over 400 pounds before I could even row over 275 pounds. Because I couldn't hold that and row it for multiple reps until I got that strong where I could hold four or 500 pounds. And so the carryover, not only what you get aesthetically from the, from building a strong deadlift, but then the carry over to the other lifts are incredible too. And so I will die on that hill that the best way to build an aesthetic back is through the deadlift first. I would say your top three exercises, deadlift, your barbell rows, and your pull-ups. And you've got all the

bases covered. But the deadlift is going to give you, you get strong of the deadlift, you'll have a nice looking back for sure. Now let's get to shoulders. Shoulders are interesting, right? It's this pretty, it's like this three-dimensional muscle. It's got lots of different function. The shoulder joint. Very versatile.

Very versatile complex. Standing shoulder press or standing overhead press will build big shoulders, but you need to do rear flies. Rear flies for that rear delt. When we're talking aesthetics, okay, yes, big shoulders are important. But if you don't have well-developed rear deltoid muscles, which you're really only going to get through something like a rear fly, you're going to have a forward sloping shoulder look.

So you'll got the muscle. Very protracted. But it just doesn't look as aesthetic. When you build that rear delt, it gives you the roundness. Everybody thinks it's lateral. Everybody thinks it's side laterals. It's not side laterals. It's rear flies that gives you that cap to your shoulder.

So you do your overhead presses and your rear flies. That's going to give the aesthetic look. There's two big reasons why this is a missing component. for a lot of people. One, just pure the lack of it, the lack of focus. So there's a large portion of people that just neglect to focus on the rear delts.

And then there's a good portion of the people that actually do focus on the rear delts, but do it improperly. It's like a row. When I think of a lot of the muscles that I had to try to sculpt and build for bodybuilding, the form and technique to developing the rear delts

is one of the more technical ones because it's hard to not allow the back to overtake the movement. It's a very small range of motion. It's a small range of motion. It looks more like a flying out than it is back. And that movement to the average eye, when you look at somebody demo and exercise, if you're, even if you're not a beginner, an intermediate lifter, and you see someone doing a rear del

fly and you try and emulate that, unless you have a good coach that's queuing you and asking how you're feeling and talking to you with that, it's tough for you to not allow the back. to take over that movement. And that back is a bigger, stronger muscle. So it already wants to. And it'll default to that. And it'll still look mechanically correctly. So the average...

It's not going to develop the... But it won't. And so it's one of the more, you know, technically focused movements. But once you lock in and you figure it out on how to properly do it and hit it, man, and you build those rear delts out. It makes the back look better.

The way your shirt sits on you, the whole shoulder cap, Your arms now look better because your shoulders are defined and separated. One of the best training seasons I ever went through. I was young when I did this, but I figured that out was I started my workouts with rear flies. Then I went to overhead presses and my delts changed so quick. To be coming from a weak body part to now, it's been to one of my strengths.

I would say the rear del and the standing overhead press and I really didn't get into the standing overhead press until hanging out with Justin because, of course, he does everything functionally. And really, and actually working up to where I could do a push press. So I could use a little bit of body English to push weight over my head that's never been there before. And there is something to be said about standing up, learning to push as more weight than you've ever pushed overhead and then being able to stabilize it there for a second

or two over the head before you bring back down. The combination of those two things played a huge role in my shoulder development. Now let's talk about lower body. So we get to lower body. You want muscle. Don't skip this, fellas. It's so funny, I see now in social media where they'll see, they'll be asking, you know, people, you know, what's a turn on with somebody's body or a turnoff or whatever. And they get to young ladies and they say, what does it turn off with the guy's body?

You know what they all say? Upper body developed skinny legs. Yeah. That's like a thing, right? You got to have legs, everybody. Don't skip leg day. Chicken legs. But really, two things here.

I mean, there's a lot of exercise you do for lower body. but number one, nothing beats the barbell squat. Nothing beats the barbell squat. It is the king of exercises for a reason. Get good at them, get strong at them, do a full range of motion. Your legs will look amazing. You throw in a RDL, a Romanian deadlift for the hamstrings and glutes. You're done.

Yeah. Like those two exercises right there are going to give you really nice, well-developed lower body. You're going to have great hamstrings from the RDLs, glutes and quads from the squats. you pretty much got it right there. Just get strong. Practice full range of motion too, right? That should be a part of this journey, I think, is where if you can only get to a parallel squat,

getting a place to where you can do a full range of motion, deep squat. I mean, I actually, it blew my mind when I finally worked on my mobility and I was able to break parallel on the squats. I noticed I got calf gains from that. I noticed I got more hamstring development from that. Just by getting my barbell

back squat deeper than a 90 more glute gain too everything yeah everything came up from that and and don't be afraid to come back a little bit on weight in order to do that because full range of motion yeah i i had i got more development with a lighter weight full range of motion and all those muscles than i did just going as heavy as i could and only getting down to 90 degrees so there's a lot of value in doing that the other thing i think is that uh when you talk about bodybuilding i think it's important to bring up the frequency that you're hitting these muscles too. Twice a week is typically ideal for body parts. And what I like to do when we're talking about aesthetics and body,

which is kind of cool about like splitting the body up in this like four day a week, upper lower split is let's say you were talking like we're talking about right now, all these kind of muscle groups are areas, man, I really want to develop that. I mean, on one day I might lead the workout with chest because that's the primary focus. the next upper by day, I might lead with rear delts or shoulders, depending on it. So what it allows me to do. I love that. So much more flexibility.

Yes. It allows me to have that flexibility. Now, if I'm really lagging in a single body part, that both days, I'm probably going to lead with that. But maybe I'm somebody who's like, I don't have this massive discrepancy, but I want to develop all that. Well, some workouts I might lead with this muscle group. Other workouts I'll lead with that muscle group to really be able to put everything I got

into that. Because that's one of the best things that you can do when you're trying to get strong in a lift is just to purely lead that workout. 100%. So we have a program that's like that. It's a four-day split. It's called Maps Up or Lower. And it is a bodybuilding workout.

It is designed to develop a very aesthetic physique. Again, it's a four-day split. You're hitting the whole body twice a week. We have a men's version and a women's version. The women's version, the programming is a little bit different. But because it's a brand new program, it's 40% off. So if you want to follow something that's written out for you with exercise demos and videos, no guesswork, good programming.

Go to Maps Upper Lower.com. Use the code launch. That'll give you the 40% off. And you can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. 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 Super Bundle 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 Mind Pumpmedia.com.

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