The 4 MOST Important Muscles To Look Jacked (And How To Grow Them)

Foreign. What's going on, everybody? And welcome back to the Build the Science podcast. You're here with your host, as always, of course, me, myself and I, that is Max Coleman, AKA Colon, at all. And sitting in front of me, directly in front of me, 1400 miles away, is the one and only Daniel Plotkin, aka no longer P. Diddy Plotkin, aka Danny Boy. Oh, I said P. Diddy. I meant pity that matter. And today probably going to have the single most important episode we've had to date so far, while simultaneously being perhaps the least evidence based and most conversational. And that is what are the most important muscles for looking? Yakt yoked, joint shredded, Huge. Right, we're going to talk about why certain muscles are more important than others, which muscles obviously are the most important. And different categories of jack, whether that be jacked and lean or the big Barry jacked dude with a shirt on. Right. Then the actual really meat of the episode, we're going to talk about how you can actually go about focusing on some muscles more than others, how you can run a specialization phase or a prioritization phase for certain muscles. Right. But before we get to that, Danny Boy, why don't you go ahead and tell us why some muscles are more important to contributing to that yakt look than others. Why are big shoulders more important than a big popliteus or piriformis muscle?

Yeah, so I thought about this very, very scientifically. So I broke it down into three categories. So I considered contrasts to probably be most important. This isn't in any particular order, but I will put it tentatively in order. So contrasts. So what I mean by contrast is sort of any obvious difference that's accentuated. So an example of this would be a small waist and broad shoulders. That's a very, very clear contrast where you can have not super broad shoulders, but if you have a small enough waist, that contrast is very eye popping. So another category of contrast would be leanness. So when you are lean enough, you can see or underline contrast a lot more easily. So a quad sweep or what the tricep looks like, the sort of classic horseshoe look. Abs, when they're really, really defined or, you know, very contrasted from the rest of the musculature. So I think that's a really big one. And then the last category for me is thresholds. So reaching a certain level of muscularity in each muscle group or in every muscle group where it's not super obvious that you're lacking in one area so people laugh at you less and so on. So as Long as you get a contrast, as long as you reach a certain threshold of muscularity, I think you're definitely in the. In the clear there. And so obviously, to piggyback onto that, there's going to be certain muscles that do that better than others. So if you're trying to create a contrast in terms of thickness or width of the individual, then, you know, stuff like, you know, lats and lateral delts and so on is going to play a much bigger role than, you know, abs, which are in the front of the body. They'll contribute to thickness. If you're looking at somebody from the side and maybe not even that much, but not head on, and examples like that. And we'll probably go top to bottom, but I'll let you lead the way in terms of figuring out where we go from here.

I appreciate it. Yeah. So when we originally proposed this idea for a podcast, we thought it was going to be this fun little easy thing. And then you start thinking about the layers of what the word jacked means in of itself, and it kind of makes this a much more complex topic. So let's talk about something a little more simple. I just took a sip of the Fantasy Vibe Celsius for the first time, and it is sparkling Mandarin marshmallow edition. This is the single greatest sip of canned soft beverage I've ever had in my entire life. I completely derailed the entirety of the podcast that I paid for.

Well, I could bring it back. So marshmallow is a part of the flavor there. And marshmallows are lacking in. They. They just look, you know, too. There's no see.

Well said. And marshmallows typically made from a Swiss or Italian meringue, which is almost entirely protein stabilized with gelatin, which comes from connective tissue. It all comes back to the episode, baby. Well said, Danny boy. And you don't want to look like a marshmallow. It's funny, we were talking about this. Abs were never even remotely mentioned, which is one of the most important muscles when you first start training. Like, the reason that most people start exercising is just because they want abs, not the most. But, like, a lot of people start, like, training because they saw Fight Club and what Brad did, level abs, and that's not even remotely one of the muscles that we thought of mentioning as important for looking jacked. Right. But ultimately, we're trying to. Right back to the actual podcast. We're trying to achieve some sort of frame. Right. Generally speaking, that really plays into the whole symmetry and contrast thing, which, by the way, Speaking of contrast, if you're someone who is really disappointed by having small joints, which I find to be the case when I talk to a lot of guys looking to get jacked, don't be, don't be disappointed by that. Having small joints kind of a really good thing when it comes to the contrast the Danny boy was just talking about because it makes the actual bellies of your muscles look much bigger. Anyway, let's start from a top down approach with respect to the muscles that are definitely the most important with respect to looking jacked. And we'll talk about the context of like let's say that this is just meeting someone with a shirt on, we'll say a short sleeve shirt on and you're meeting them face to face for the first time. And that's the context we're talking about with respect to whether or not this person comes off as jacked or not or you perceive this person as jacked or not. Starting at the top with perhaps the single most important muscles there are. My favorite muscle actually, if you're curious, Dear Listener, the traps. Old Tom Hardy Bane Warrior traps kind of plays into the whole neck and traps area. Just the first thing you generally see when you look at a person, right? In my opinion, some of the most important muscles for looking just absolutely intimidating, terrifying and yolked up. Right. Regardless of if you're wearing a shirt or not too, which is kind of cool. And regardless of how you're looking at this person, whether you're looking at this person straight on or from the side or even from behind, a large set of big beefy traps touching your earlobes will immediately change the way that you perceive this person's level of muscularity. Even if they don't have the largest deltoids underneath those traps. But speaking of the deltoids, those are probably the second, if not first most important muscle when it comes to actually looking absolutely yolked up. Right? And I think this is probably the most common answer that anyone gives is the deltoids, which are really set that degree of Y or X frame depending on what you're going for. If you're someone who wasn't blessed with a particularly small waste, you can still build a really substantial Y and X frame and or at least a Y frame or in the top half portion of an X frame by having just absolutely over developed lateral delts. I think More Plates, More Dates. Derek from More Plates, More Dates is kind of like an incredible example of someone who, I mean, at least within the like sphere, this is not like direct bodybuilders, obviously, but has. Does a really good job of. He doesn't have the smallest waist in the world, but he has an incredible wide frame because he just has death star level side delts. Right. Anything that I just said right there that you vehemently disagree with any boy.

Yeah. So you conflated traps with Nick, which is a grave mistake.

So egregious. I do sincerely apologize because I think.

This goes back to contrast where I. All I need to say is Chris Bumstead, and you're wrong. So he has. I don't want to, you know, speak too poorly, but it is a very small neck, like a very objectively small neck, but good traps. And I think the contrast that's created with the small neck to the shoulders, the lateral delts, whatever medial delt to the traps, and, you know, pretty much all of the upper body is accentuated with a small neck. When you're going for the classic look. But and you mentioned they're kind of like the scary, you know, Rick House type thing. I think scarier individuals, people who you're just like, oh man, type deal, will usually have big neck, big traps. But if you're only talking about like visually appealing aesthetic, classic type physiques, then you might even veer toward a little bit of a skinnier neck to create that contrast. So, yeah, I think it gets even more complicated.

This is, you know, saying how this is the stupidest topic we've ever covered on the show. And it was also maybe one of the most complex in that the word jacked can mean literally anything, depending on who's hearing that. Because jack can mean David Laid, Jeff Seed type of jack, where you do probably have a really skinny leg, a skinny neck, and like, really, really tiny waist, but you just have like a really aesthetic pretty boy look. Someone could perceive that as jacked. Or like I said earlier, Tom Hardy and Bane, who, like, doesn't really have the most, like, aesthetic pretty boy look by any means, but as far as, like, scary jailhouse vibes goes, he's kind of the winner in that regard. Right. And Bronson is another example of that. His role in the movie Bronson, not action Bronson, who he's doing great with his transformation, but nothing to do with this episode. Here's one that we actually disagree with. Danny Boyd thinks that chest is one of the more important muscles for looking absolutely jacked. And I blame Arnold because Arnold has one of the greatest chests ever and also happens to be one of the most popular bodybuilders ever. And I think that that has swayed people's view of the importance of having well developed pectoralis major muscles. When in reality, I think that if you have very large other muscles that we're going to talk about today, people aren't even going to notice your flat chested less than 225 benching chest. But of course, Danny boy, I would love to hear your very flawed and incorrect arguments against that.

Yeah. So here's why you're wrong. Step one, you cited Arnold as the reason why people are misguided. I'm going to cite Arnold in reverse and say that's the proof that you're wrong.

It's number essentially. Well said.

Number two, many people don't have completely flat stomachs. And particularly with the shirt on. It becomes even more impressive looking when you have the contrast between, you know, the flat stomach slash big chest and the shirt just hanging down, making everything elusively, elusively jacked. You don't even have to like, tight shirt. You might give it away. But that baggy shirt in the gym, the sleeper physique with a big chest, man. So number two, wrong. Number three, from the side view, big chest is like probably number one. So you can't even.

Chest is number one from the side, from the front, if you're looking at an individual, sadly, yeah. You're trying to tell me that the chest is the most important for making that person look jack by far.

Chest and maybe traps. That's it. So you're wrong.

Well, okay, I will seed that argument because this conversation has gone entirely off the rails and we're not even remotely close to done with it yet. The chest is obviously important for looking jacked, but I think that it's like Monday is International Chest Day. People often think of it as like one of the most important muscles. Actually saw Alberto Nunez talk about this for the first time with respect to like, this, this conversation of like looking yacked up. And he was like, a lot of people go in and they think that, like, if they hit their chest, they're going to immediately look super jacked. But if they spent as much time focusing on their shoulders, it would probably ultimately aid more to their physique than just hitting chest as hard as they do. I would imagine you at least agree with that. With that.

I definitely, I think people disproportionately prioritize the chest and don't realize the diminishing returns there or the typical bro when, yeah, if they went havesies on them, I think they'd definitely be in a better situation than the Person who. And I think I fell into that category early on in training when I didn't know anything. I just did an inordinate amount of push ups every night and I could have, you know, just got a set of 10 pound dumbbells and just did push ups and, you know, some lateral raises and whatnot.

So yeah, I guess we should mention that we're talking about. When we talked about the delts, we're pretty much talking about the lateral delt, right. The side delt that ultimately contributed to it. The things that you do that you're trying to hit when you do lateral raises and stuff like that. Right. And then with respect to chest, we kind of didn't talk about that. But an upper chest, the clavicular portion of the pectoralis major, perhaps more important, getting that super well developed. In my personal opinion, however, I think that a lot of people overplay the importance of an upper chest without really acknowledging how cool and like almost bulbous you can get the look of a very well developed lower chest can look. I think that people often say that that's not a very aesthetic look and I personally vehemently disagree with those individuals and that I think that like just a chest in general, lower or upper looks pretty cool no matter what. And I think people often overplay the importance of the clavicular portion. The back is one I almost never hear people talk about during this type of conversation. I think the back is when we're talking about the whole Y X frame. It's possible that the back is going to do more for creating that look of symmetry than even the shoulders. That one I'm a little bit skeptical of. I'm not super sure, but when it comes to flexing, like if you're actually posing the. The back is going to be able to create far more width, at least the illusion of width before the shoulders ever will be able to. But I think when you're like relaxing, chilling, yeah, shoulders probably are more important. But from the side, and this is one that I get made fun of a lot for. But erectors, like the erectors looking like protruding away from the spine, someone being able to use your back as a World War I trench warfare model to be able to teach history lessons through that is one of the coolest looking things on the planet to me. The back in general is like the coolest muscle group of muscles to me. I think that it's just super fascinating and the way it looks is super cool. But one that people don't often talk about with respect to looking or ultimately jacked. Right. Anything you want to say there?

Definitely. I think we agreed pretty much wholeheartedly on the back. I think it's definitely underrated amongst regular gym goers, but probably appropriately rated amongst bodybuilders. I think there's a, you know, a common trope, like shows that are one from the back and stuff like that. So I, I totally agree. Basically.

Oh, let's go. Common ground. This episode is really just. There we go. Let's hear it.

Although with the shirt on, I don't think lower back is going to make.

As lower back certainly doesn't matter at all with respect to having a shirt on. But like even with a shirt on your upper back, obviously that kind of plays with the whole traps we were talking about earlier. Like having a well developed upper back looks so gnarly even with a lot.

Especially if you're looking at somebody on the back. Like it's just the by far the, you know, most aesthetic thing.

I think arms obviously one of the most important I, I With respect to having a shirt on. If you have a shirt on and you're looking at someone, especially from the side or the back with respect to the triceps, that is like an absolute gnarly look. And one that I almost never hear is forearms. You see someone with just gnarly construction worker ifbb pro level forearms and you don't see any, anything else. Like I met Grizzly while I was at the Arnold, right? And obviously that dude is like literally one of the strongest people on the planet, but shaking his hand and like his forearm, like his forearm eclipsed my entire arm. And it was all I could see on him because he was wearing like the world's baggiest shirt ever. And you just immediately know like, not only is that person just you yolked up, but when we're talking about the scary jailhouse vibe that we were mentioning earlier, like giant scary forearms are kind of like one of the most underrated muscles with respect to this type of this, this conversation that's being had in the like sphere of bodybuilding. Do you have anything you want to say about that?

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like forearms are a situation where if they're overbearingly big, there are some physiques and maybe even less common in bodybuilding, more common in strongman and you know, powerless or just like that, where their forearms are just about nearly as big as their actual upper arm. And that to me is not very aesthetic. With the shirt on, they're still, you know, scary. Amazing looking dudes. But once they start actually posing or flexing or, you know, even standing around with a shirt off, it starts becoming much, much less aesthetic to me. So as long as their upper arm is obviously bigger than their forearm, I think that large forearms are definitely a green light. But I think I would prefer to have smaller forearms if they created that contrast with the upper arm. Some might disagree. Just my personal, you know, opinion on.

That, I definitely agree. I think that the biceps can be smaller than the forearms. Like if your biceps are pretty underdeveloped, but you've got big beefy triceps that kind of like, you don't need to worry about that illusion in my opinion. Also, the likelihood of you having larger forearms than biceps and triceps is incredibly unlikely. Unless you compete in something like strongman or maybe even powerlifting and you just never do accessories. Arm reference. Oh, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. The nichest of the lifting communities out there. Or slap boxing, which is now a super popular thing as well. Okay. We've kind of just gone off the rails here and we can get to like the actual sides of it. We did not mention legs once. But obviously having super well developed quads, whether you're, especially if you're like posing, that can create like a really wonderful X frame that you just can't really get without having super well developed quads. Obviously you have anything else you want to say about the muscles that are. Well, you know, what just tied together? You name three muscles that you think, and it could be groups of muscles that you think are the most important for contributing to that ultimately. Yak. Look.

My top three would probably be lateral delts, lats, and this hard one probably traps, but close with the chest.

There, which I agree and I agree with lateral delts. I'm glad we at least disagree somewhat. Lateral delts, the lats, obviously. And then for me it would either it wouldn't be the chest. No, no question about it. But it would either be the traps or the triceps or the three most important. It's hard to choose between those. But if you have super well developed lats and super well developed delts, the traps, you can kind of compensate for the traps and have really big triceps that kind of completes the ram, so to speak, and kind of covers you from all bases. So I would say triceps. If you're just someone who wants to just. You want to look yacked and you want to focus on. You probably want to focus on the lateral delts. That one I Don't. I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with the lats and for me, the triceps. That kind of covers your basis from all areas. Yes. Probably going to be missing a little bit from the chest, but those are the three most important in my opinion. Anything you want to say before you move on to the actual thing that we want to talk about?

No. Again, mosey on.

Cool. As long as I get the last word, I'm happy. Okay.

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So let's say that you do want to focus on the lats, the lateral delts and the triceps or even the chest to make Danny boy happy. How should we go about doing that, Danny Boy? And why can't we just grow all of our muscles simultaneously to be the ultimate jacked robot human? Why should we focus on maybe some muscles more than others? And if we do, how do we go about focusing on some muscles more than others?

Yeah, so this basically comes down to what the volume research looks like. So how much can you do before there's one of diminishing returns or potentially no returns? And what it seems like from the available studies that we have is that, you know, as long as you're doing all the right things outside the gym, you could probably do a whole lot without really risking loss. For sure.

There comes a point about the downside of the U curve. Yeah.

So if you think about it, sort of like I don't like the whole inverted U because it makes it seem like the downside is steep. But if we're talking about the what the curve, the dose response curve looks like for muscle gain, it's probably, you know, pretty steep all the way up to about 10 cents. And then it starts to get less steep in terms of the amount of gains from more sets, all the way up to 20, but still, you know, benefits for most people up to that point. And then based on the studies that we have, there is still some gains that can be eked out, most likely, especially if you're willing to experiment with yourself up to, you know, we don't actually even know what that would look like. Yeah, but I think it's pretty safe to say that playing around in like the 30 range is, is not a horrible idea if time constraints and recovery constraints aren't a thing for you. So are you going to eke out, you know, are you going to double your gains from being in that territory? Very, very unlikely to be true. But playing around there is, I think, a very good idea. But we're not going to do every muscle in that range. Just not practically feasible from a time standpoint and probably from a fatigue standpoint. So what to do? You want to cover that or you want me to.

We can talk about it a little bit. But just to. Just to kind of clarify what Danny boy was saying, for those of you who are not really, like, well, familiarized with the whole inverted U thing, the idea is that when you're working with lower set numbers for each individual muscle, right? So let's say you're doing three sets per chest a week. Each additional set that you add to your chest for each week will have very large increases in the amount of hypertrophy that you'll see. So from three sets to four sets a week, pretty large difference. From four to five, pretty large difference. Five to six, pretty large difference. However, that starts diminishing once you get somewhere between 10 and 20. So, like, the difference between doing three sets and eight sets for your chest a week, pretty big. The difference between doing that same difference, let's say 15 and 20 sets per week is not going to make much of a difference at all, though it will still make some difference, right? You will still see some additional growth. That's what he means by, like a tapering off of that curve, right? And then potentially eventually you'll get to a point where you're doing so much that you're. You can't recover and you'll. You'll actually potentially see some decreases in muscle size, though that's never really been demonstrated in the research that we have today. But like Danny Boyd was just saying, you can't just go to the gym and do 30 sets for your chest, 30 sets for your back, 30 sets of your quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So for more than anything, a pragmatic and time constrained issue, we want to run specialization phases, right? We might want to focus more on our biceps because they're lagging behind the rest of our arms and the rest of our muscles, right? So we can take those from our usual 10 to 15 to 20 sets a week, and we can up that to something like 30 sets a week. Now, obviously, that's something that you want to do somewhat slowly. You wouldn't want to go from training your biceps 10 sets a week to 30 sets a week in the span of five days. By any means, it's probably better to do 10 sets a week, then maybe 15, and then maybe blah, blah, blah, slowly working your way up. Right? T Now, when you do that, because you're spending so much time training, let's say, your biceps with 30 sets a week, we're probably going to have to pull some volume away from other areas. One, from a, there might not. You might not be able to recover from a systemic standpoint doing 100, 200 sets a week for all of your muscles combined. But more than that, I would argue from a time and pragmatic standpoint, if you're doing 30 sets a week for every muscle, you're going to be in the gym for counted 12 hours a week. If not, probably more, depending on how long you're resting between your sets and stuff like that. On top of just volume, I think there are some other considerations to make when doing specialization phases as well. Right? So one, we want to take some volume from other muscles and bring those down to maybe maintenance. Good news here is that you can do as little as, like, I mean, really, no one really goes around doing this, but you could do as little as like three, four sets a week for each muscle and not really worry that you're going to lose a lot of size in that muscle. Right. And then you can take all of that time that you're saving and put it into the particular muscles that you actually care about. But aside from volume, we can also manipulate things like frequency. So while you might normally be training your biceps, let's say two times a week, maybe three times a week, now that we have all this time to recover, and we have all this time that we get to pay attention to the biceps, we might be able to train that four, five, six times a week, potentially depending on how crazy and psychotic you are and how much you actually want to grow the biceps. And then on top of that, we can also manipulate exercise order. Now, the research that we have with respect to exercise order would seem to suggest that really doesn't matter which muscles you hit first in the workout. Right. However, from a pragmatic standpoint, I'm skeptical of that research. One, it's somewhat limited, and two, just from a personal anecdotal standpoint, you really get to like, train the biceps really, really hard if you're doing them at the beginning of your workout versus what most people normally do, which is you hit like three sets of biceps after doing all of your back, chest, and other upper body work for. For that day. Right. So manipulating exercise order, frequency and volume are all things that you can do. And then the last thing I'll say about specialization phases, and this is when I almost never hear people touch on in Daddy boy. I'm really curious as to your. Your standpoint on this is focusing on regional aspects of a muscle, something that you really don't get to do when you're trying to grow everything at once. But when you're focusing on specific muscles, you can kind of, because you just have more time and more energy to spend on those muscles, you can change exercise selection to hopefully, and this is very speculative here, hit different portions of the muscles. So let's say for biceps, right, I may normally just do your standard easy curl bicep curls, right? That's the bar that's shaped like that. For those of you who don't know, I just did a curlicue with my, with my hand on screen for those listening. But if I was running a specialization phase for biceps, I may do some hammer curls as well. I may do some reverse grip curls in hopes to hit maybe the brachioradialis. But you may also do some wide grip curls and some small chance to hit the inner, more medial portion of your biceps and closer grip bicep curls for. To potentially hit the more lateral portion of the bicep. Obviously, like I just said, very skeptical, but there's a lot of levers to pull when it comes to specialization phases outside of volume, even though I feel like that's the one that gets talked about the most. Right. I've been talking for way longer than I'd like. I'd care to. So, Danny boy, do you have anything you'd like to say about my giant specialization right there? Yeah.

So I think two things. One is that I don't. I think a bunch of muscles can go to maintenance, but I'd probably put a, you know, a large portion, especially if you're only going to 30 and not doing something, you know, a little bit more absurd than that. I'd probably, you know, stick with eight to 12. I think that covers two bases. One, you know, let's say theoretically speaking, you might benefit from some oscillations in volume, bringing some down to sort of like a moderate spot and up some up to, you know, a more aggressive volume range could theoretically even benefit you know, some of the muscles that are going down. This is completely theoretical, but something where I'm like, all right, if I'm trying to cover all my bases, I tend to like to oscillate between moderate and high with some few muscles going to maintenance. While if you were really trying to push the super high volumes, which I think is, you know, unnecessary in most cases, then yeah, I'd take a lot more down to maintenance. So really just depends on how aggressive you want to be with things at, at each end. But I tend to like to be sort of moderate while being aggressive because sort of by definition, specialization phase are going to be aggressive for some. The second thing I'd say that you didn't cover, which I totally agree with, sort of trying to get at specific regions. Like, you know, for a normal program, an incline bench press is going to cover most of the chest with a, you know, a little bit of biasing the upper chest. But it's a very good global chest exercise. But I might have some partial flies in there or, you know, know, some theoretical considerations, push ups.

Like just a bunch of different ways of hitting the chest.

Yeah, exactly. But another thing that I would do in order to account for the fact that I'm doing a lot of volume is include more exercises that I think have less bang for your buck. So along with, you know, variation, I also want to include exercises that are probably just less disrupting overall. Exercises that don't take a lot of amping yourself up, exercises that are harder, maybe in the shortened position, not the lengthened position. So, for example, I'm not going to do six to nine sets of RDls. I'm going to do more hamstring curls and potentially even more lying hamstring curls that I'm used to because I can accumulate that volume without necessarily impeding my session is probably going to be in short order because of the fact that frequency usually goes up in order to accommodate for those higher volumes. So basically including more exercises, slash sets that are, you know, recoverable from where, maybe less stimulus per set. But if we're talking about doing a ton of sets, those less stimulative sets might actually add to the total amount of potential anabolism. So if you can get most of your growth from X and you only have certain recoverability left, you can't keep including the most stimulative. You can add those last cherries in order to sort of round out that growth response. Obviously this is all, you know, relatively speculative, but just from a pragmatic or practical standpoint plus some theoretical considerations. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Before you jump ahead. I do. I think that this can be really well exemplified with both the forearms and the quads. So like. And you said you hit it with the hamstrings as well. Like you said, I might do a little bit more line hamstring curls. Like that would be a really good idea. Like if you really want to bring up the legs, let's just start there. You would want to make sure that you're doing a lot of lying hamstring curls and a lot of seated hamstring girls to do it and of course rdls. But those exercises all. Or at least the two seated exercises, the two curling exercises hit different muscles preferentially, right. So your sarcoreus is going to be a little bit limited when you're doing a seated hamstring curl. But your semi tendinosis, your semimembranosus, they're going to be a little bit and along head of the biceps Morris are going to be a little bit more limited when you're doing something like a lying hip control. Right. So making sure that you're hitting the volumes there is probably a really good idea. And then some other considerations that you pro probably wouldn't do normally. Like for instance, leg extensions and squats, probably taking care of the majority of the muscles in your legs, right? To like kind of like especially your quads. But if you're looking to maximize the size of your legs, it's probably worth. And you're running a specialization phase, it's probably worth doing some less conventional exercises, maybe some adductions and abduction machines that'll allow you to tack on a lot more volume without the somewhat if not systemic fatigue, just the psychological fatigue of. All right, I'm about to get under a heavy barbell and do some squats or lunges or whatever it may be. Right. And then even more than that, like maybe you do some direct hip flexion exercises to hit some of those muscles that maybe aren't hit as. As well when you're doing more conventional leg exercises to really round out the size of your legs. Right. So I think, I think that is a really, really important note. Appreciate you bringing that up. The, the forearms are another example. Like let's say you wanted to run a forearm specialization phase, right? Normally, yeah, that'd be kind of strange. But it's just a good example because of how many functions the forearms have, right. Normally you probably would like you might do some wrist curls at the end of a workout to get Some forearm work in. But most of the time, most people don't even train their forearms. They just kind of let whatever grip work they do kind of hit their forms. But if you're running a specialization phase for them, maybe you do some pronations, maybe you do some supinations, maybe you do some radial ulnar deviations, you do some wrist extensions, you do some. Whatever it may be, right. There's a bunch of things like when you're running a more. A less focused program, you kind of let a lot of those functions of muscles go to the wayside. Right. But there's a lot of movements that your muscles can create aren't normally hit when you're doing more traditional exercises that you get to kind of play with. When you're running specialization phases, which if you've been training for. Well, sorry, if you've been training for over a decade, like Danny Boy and I have, these specialization phases are really fun. They kind of let you tinker and toy with training in ways that you kind of can't do when you're doing more focused and generalized exercise routines. Right. Sorry, kind of a rant there, but I really liked what you were just saying. I kind of wanted to piggyback off of it. So, anything else you want to say about special?

One thing to actually just underline, which you were sort of alluding to, is that it does break up the monotony of training. When you're trying to be sort of even handed with volume allotment, it can get a bit monotonous without having a focus. So I think just having a psychological focus on a few muscles can be the difference in, you know, bringing a muscle up. Just like, all right, this is a super focus. Like, I'm going to make sure I'm crossing my T's and dotting my eyes on all these sets and so on, as opposed to when you're sort of just sharing the love. Then psychologically, sometimes it's just hard to, you know, get as amped up for every single muscle group as opposed to, I think humans just in general, we like phasics, so it allows for a phasic approach to training, which I think is. Is pretty neat, while also allowing for. Because you can get a little bit more variation. When I do specialization phases, phases, I actually have a day which is sort of just kind of open where. Or at least part of the day where it's kind of open where I'm going to hit that muscle group. But with whichever exercise, I kind of am feeling that day in terms of recoverability and. Or something that I want to play with and so on. Because of the fact that you just sort of have a lot more room to sort of mess with that muscle because you know that that's your focus.

Yeah. So thank you for bringing that up because that reminded me of the fact that like, generally when you're running one of these specialization phases, you probably don't want to do this while you're cutting. Now, if you do it the way Danny boy was kind of saying earlier, where you don't really bring volume down super far to maintenance or anything, it's probably not going to hurt you at all to tack on a couple extra sets of your biceps while dieting. But generally if I'm running a prioritization phase, I'm. Or a specialization phase, I'm in a surplus, or at the very least of maintenance, so that I don't have to worry about any potential muscle loss from the movements that I'm doing with slightly lower volumes. Excuse me. Probably not a big deal, but it's at least somewhat worth noting that if you're going to take muscles down to very low volumes, three, four, five sets a week, you probably want to be doing that while you're in a surplus or a maintenance, you probably don't want to be running hyper specialization phases, hyper focused specialization phases while you're in a deficit, especially if you're on the leaner end of that deficit. Anything else you want to say?

Definitely agree. Yeah, I wouldn't. I never run specialization faces if I'm dieting.

Yeah, it's just another reason that makes bulking training so much more fun than dieting training is that generally I'm doing everything with equal focus when I'm dieting. Some muscles I might focus a little bit more because they tend to shrink down a little bit faster. Like my legs when I start dieting, they just really start shrinking to the wayside and they're not that big to start with. So I kind of really need to throw them the focus that they need or else they'll just atrophy relatively quickly. But yeah, I think that's a relatively comprehensive overview of how we go about specialization phases. One thing I will say is, are there, or one thing I'll ask, are there specific amounts of time or are there a specific number of muscles by which you can focus at a time? So let's say you generally wouldn't hear someone say, yeah, I'm running a specialization phase for my upper body. Right. Or I'm running a specialization phase for the Next two years. So how long do you think they should last and how many muscles do you think you could really focus at once?

Yeah, I, I don't mind longish specialization. It kind of depends on what you mean by long. I think a few months is, is a good spot for a specialization phase. Until something gets, you know, sort of monotonous. You need basically a couple of deloads and then I'll stop. So three, maybe four months is what I would do for usually a few muscle groups. So two, three, maybe four. But those considerations are going to be also dependent on what I'm doing with the other muscles. I'm going to be in the 2 to 3 range. If I'm bringing those muscles to a moderate range. If I'm trying to really push three to four muscles, I'm going to bring down some to, you know, very close to maintenance range. So, yeah, I think it's probably a good. I don't think we've ever spoke about this in terms of how long, but yeah, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how long you've been here.

I think it just goes with what you were just saying, which is I don't think that like anabolic resistance and just like your muscle sensitization to growth, I think that's a very overplayed issue in our field. Like, I don't think that your muscles are just going to stop growing because you're focusing the delts for too long. Right. I think if you want the biggest delts possible, you need to push the delts for as long as you possibly can. So when it comes to how long to run a specialization phase, for me, it comes down to exactly what you just said, which is I'm bored and I want to start focusing on a different muscle with respect to how many muscles at once. I think the biggest component there is what you just said with respect to what am I doing with my other muscles. If I'm bringing my quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves down to maintenance, that opens up a ton of recoverability as well as time to focus on a bunch of different muscles. Right. Uh, but if I'm trying to bring up with, let's say my like, conver on the other end of that spectrum, let's say I'm trying to bring up my rear delts, abs, forearms and calves, like, I can push those four muscles really, really hard without worrying about them interfering with a whole lot else. Uh, but if I'm trying to bring up my quads and glutes like those are big muscles that take a lot of time and then focus and energy to, to hit. Right. So that kind of interferes with how many muscles you're able to focus at once. The degree to which those muscles disrupt other muscles kind of has a, has a big impact on that. But generally speaking, like two to three muscles at once for a specialization phase is probably your best bet. Just again, from mostly a pragmatic standpoint. But if you want the largest X muscle, insert muscle here, it's probably best to really focus on that muscle as much as you possibly can while bringing some other stuff down. Again, more from a practical standpoint than anything else because you want to spend as much time hitting that muscle as you possibly can. Right. Okay. Anything else you want to say before we get out?

I think the one thing we can mention briefly is just potentially some intensity techniques, stuff like that that you might throw in for. I like to, when I'm doing a specialization phase, have a massive pump in the muscle that I'm. Maybe it's psychological, but I like to throw in, you know, more intensity techniques than I otherwise would have during the specialization phase just for, you know, some potential mechanisms and other things.

I'm really glad you said that. I'm really glad you said that because I totally was going to mention that and I forgot like BFR training is something that I might throw in a little bit more often depending on the muscle I'm trying to hit. Obviously for specialization phases like, because there might be some potential type 1 preferential preferentiality to doing things like BFR training, maybe drop set, who knows? Whatever it may be, it's, it's a good time to throw. So not only from the volume frequency exercise selection standpoint, but yeah, like you said, the literal mechanisms of growth that you're necessarily going for, we might be training through a larger rep range for those muscles. Maybe I'll be, I'm not afraid to hit my fives to eights. Maybe I'm also not afraid to hit my like 20s to 30s when I'm trying to focus on a particular muscle. So that was really, really well said. Thank you. Because I totally would have forgotten that. Anything else that you want to throw.

In there, that's good.

Cool. Okay, so let's wrap this one out. This absolute hectic episode that we've been recording. Some muscles are always going to contribute to a more yacked up look than others, but also what it means to be jacked kind of up to you ultimately, Danny boy. And I do agree somewhat that the lateral Delts and the lats are some of the most important muscles for getting an overall jacked look. And then I personally think that the triceps are a little bit more important than the chest. But that's where Danny Boy and I differ. Right. And that's why there is a wrong and a right in this world for me to be right and Danny Boy to be wrong. And I close out the episode. So I get to say that then. Sorry. With respect to if you wanted to bring up some of those muscles, you can run something that we call or has been called a specialization phase or a prioritization phase where you're manipulating the volume of some muscles and bringing them down where and focusing on the muscles you want to grow by bringing those volumes from the traditional 10 to 20 sets up week to potentially up to 30 and maybe even more depending on how you particularly respond. But volume isn't the only thing that you can manipulate. You can also train the muscle more frequently. You can manipulate the time of the session that you train that. So if you're trying to grow your biceps, probably best to hit your biceps before you do the other work that you're going to do for that session. And then you get to focus on more regional aspects of that muscle as well, maybe doing a larger array of exercise selections for that muscle. So instead of just doing your traditional curls for biceps, you might do some hammer curls, some reverse grip curls, some wide grip curls, and close grip curls. And then on top of exercise selection, you can also manipulate the direct mechanisms of growth you might try be trying to achieve. So don't be afraid to do some heavier bicep curls than you normally would. But also, don't shy away from things like drop sets, blood flow restriction training, Myoret match sets, whatever it may be to kind of get a gnarly, as they say, skin splitting pump in the muscle. Right. Cool. Anything else you want to say about outros and how to run specialization phases? Maybe don't try and focus on more than three muscles at a time. Perfect. Awesome. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening to the Built With Science podcast. If you have a topic that you'd like us to cover that we have yet to discuss, please feel free to reach out to us at Built With Science on Instagram. And as always, thank you so much for listening. Peace Sa.