Aesthetics: Building Your Physique
A commanding physique requires muscle and defined tone. Maximizing your genetic muscle potential creates a V-shaped upper body: wide shoulders and a small waist.
The key to achieving the physique you truly desire often lies in having clear direction. Beginning an exercise regimen can feel exciting but also overwhelming for new trainees, especially with the abundance of information online or the experience of exploring gym memberships (see Why Gyms Are Becoming Overrated).
With a guided coaching experience from day one of resistance training, you can build the physique you truly want. Careful early planning and design set you up for success, much like a well-executed home remodel or construction project.
A V-Taper is a desirable physique for some because the very wide shoulders give your frame a strong appearance from the front or rear. The fit of your clothes will also change as your physique progresses, requiring the assistance of a tailor or custom-fitted clothing to assemble a better-fitting wardrobe (see How To Fill Out Shirts With A Muscular Frame).
Building your upper torso also involves removing body fat to expose the advanced muscle development from years spent progressing through those resistance movements. It also has to be understood that body fat loss occurs throughout the entire body at once and can’t be spot-reduced in a specific area in a short period of time.
This is why patience is required to build a proper V-taper, but it is well worth the effort if one is determined enough.
How to Get A Wide V-Taper
Part I: – Building A Wide Back
Developing the muscles of the upper back is similar to training any other large muscle groups: lots of compound movements with progressive overload. Adding more sets, reps, or time under tension gradually increases the exercise’s intensity, thereby stimulating muscle growth. The main goal is to focus on strength and progress further each week of your training routine.
The most effective exercise for upper back development is pull-ups, which can be performed with various hand positions to target different back muscles. Pull-ups train the latissimus dorsi, trapezius, and shoulder muscles simultaneously, which eventually build your functional upper-body strength.
Functional strength is important for performing everyday tasks and flight/fight response movements that require power and agility. After mastering pull-ups, other back exercises will become much less challenging as you continue training.
These are the variations of pull-ups you can perform for upper back development:
Wide Grip
Chin-Ups
(Grip Variations)
Pronated Grip
Supernated Grip
The wider your grip on the bar, the more the lats and shoulder muscles are targeted (best for a V-Taper). The grip on the bar determines how well you can control your weight during the pull-up; the overhand grip provides the best stability.
Next is the nutrition needed to develop a wide upper back. A diet that supports muscle growth is all that’s necessary to see results in a short period of time, which is one providing an excess of energy and nutrients to support growth (see How to Properly Build Muscle).
Adding sufficient muscle is the most important phase in designing your physique, as lean muscle tissue is directly linked to your metabolism. With a higher-than-average metabolism, it’s easier to go into the next phase of V-Taper design:
Part II: Losing Fat For A Smaller Waist
The fat-loss phase is much less complicated than building muscle, as burning fat for energy can be done in a short window of time compared to increasing the number of muscle cells in the body. Fat loss should increase steadily over several weeks and become noticeable towards the end of a very brief diet. Long-term dieting is very hard on the body and is not sustainable for optimal health (see The Hazards of Staying Shredded Year Round).
The best way to lose fat is to control the number of meals you eat throughout the day. Dieting fads are trendy but not long-lasting or effective for lifestyle changes. Intermittent fasting is one method that can accelerate fat loss for individuals without eating disorders or negative relationships with food (see Top 6 Signs of Food Addiction).
By reducing the number of meals you consume to 2 or fewer a day, you can see noticeable changes in your waistline without drastically changing your eating habits. When fat-loss progress begins to stall, add another variable to keep progressing.
This is the best time to introduce cardio into the fat-loss phase, as there is room to adjust after reaching a plateau. Cardio can be slow intensity (power walking, long jogs) to high intensity (recreational sport, sprinting, etc.), considering that the cardio is no longer than 30 minutes a day to prevent muscle loss and increase in appetite. (download How to Get Ripped in 30 Minutes or Less)
As the fat-loss phase continues, the body will signal hunger cues more often and need more satiating, nutritious meals to feel satisfied. A diet with higher amounts of high-quality protein and hydrating fruits/vegetables is necessary, while processed carbohydrates (breads, pasta, starches) are to be temporarily avoided.
Carbohydrates add weight to your body by storing water within the skin, creating a puffy or bloated look that’s not ideal for the silhouette of a V-Taper frame. The perfect shoulder-to-waist ratio would be closer to the Golden Ratio, with shoulders about 1.5 times the waist measurement (see How to Develop A Statue Physique).
Focusing on these phases of building muscle and maintaining lean muscle mass for a certain period of time is how you design the physique you want.
The Wrap Up
To develop an impressive V-Taper to your upper body, there are two phases you should focus on. If you don’t have enough lean body mass or any muscle at all, first work on developing strength with upper-back exercises while getting enough energy from meals to stimulate muscle growth. Next, transition to the next phase of burning excess body fat slowly by reducing meal frequency and adding cardio as needed to achieve desired results.
2 Responses
I do agree with all of the ideas you have presented in your post. They are very convincing and will certainly work. Still, the posts are too short for newbies. Could you please extend them a bit from next time? Thanks for the post.
I’ll add some more in detail posts for techniques in the near future. Thanks for sharing!