Any man’s physique that is jaw dropping has a common denominator. There’s a certain characteristic when it comes to the ideal male physique that is undeniable. When asking women about what they find most attractive in a man’s physique, the most common answer you’ll get is: “I like a man with broad shoulders.” This is exactly what we are going to talk about in this article. The common denominator in every amazing male physique is the V-taper. The V-taper is a visual representation of broad shoulders and a narrow(er) waist. Look at your typical superhero’s physique, classic Greco-Roman statues or any male sex symbol for that matter. What do they all have in common that contributes to their sex appeal? You’ve got that right, it’s the V-taper.
Most people blame their lack of a V-taper on their genetics and curse others who they label as ‘gentically blessed”. Your genetics do determine your bone structure and some people have bone structures that are indeed more favorable for aesthetics than others, but your genetics are not to blame for your lack of a V taper. Pretty much everyone who doesn’t have a skeletal deformity in their shoulders and rib cage is able to sculpt a V-shaped upper body. The problem is not your genetics, it’s a lack of muscle mass in the right areas combined with carrying too much body fat around the abdominal area, which makes your waist too big.
This ideal image of the male body all comes down to the proportions of the Golden ratio 1:1618, also known as phi in Greek. The golden ratio results when the ratio of two numbers is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two numbers. I won’t go too much into detail about this, but to make things clear, the perfect human proportions of the ideal male physique can be traced back to mathematics.
Creating the V-taper according to the Golden ratio gives you a more masculine, more athletic and overall more attractive look. Despite what you might think, you too are able to transform your physique and are able to rock a V taper yourself. To achieve this, there are 3 major keys one should focus on.
THE V TAPER FORMULA
Many people are under the impression that the most important element of sculpting a V-taper is building up the shoulder musculature. While they are correct that building a strong shoulder area plays a big role in “building broad shoulders”, – *light bulb lights up* – there’s actually a surprising muscle group that is even more important to develop to create the look that people perceive as “having broad shoulders”.
The muscle group I’m talking about is the latissimus dorsi or in fitness slang, the lats. The lats are big muscles located on the side on your back. Developing these muscles will create a wider, more dominant and athletic look. They play a crucial role in developing the proportions according to the Golden ratio. No matter how strong your shoulders may be or how well-developed the shoulder musculature is, big shoulders by themselves won’t give you the look you’re striving to achieve. This is actually pretty visible when you compare Olympic weight lifters to body builders. While Olympic weight lifters are insanely strong, they don’t focus on aesthetics. Often times the lats aren’t a priority to their sport and therefore aren’t directly trained that often. Compare that to a body builder who solely focuses on sculpting a certain look and throws in a lot of lat focused work. His physique will look very different from that of an Olympic lifter, even though the Olympic lifter may be able to outlift the body builder in the movements he specializes in. Boulder shoulders are the cherry on the cake in creating the V taper look. Cannonball delts contribute to maximize the V-taper effect and enhance the width of the lats.
Lastly, but certainly equally important is achieving a low body fat percentage. No matter how well-built your lats and shoulders are, carrying too much fat around your waist will sabotage your shoulder to waist ratio and ultimately that’s what it’s all about, proportions. The only way to eliminate this problem is to adopt a calorie deficit and to shred off the fat. That’s why guys who are extremely muscular, but that are too fluffy, don’t have that ‘wow’ effect when you look at them. The excessive body fat covers their muscle’s definition and reduces their shoulder to waist ratio, even though they may carry more muscle than someone else. The ideal body fat percentage for men to maximize your aesthetics is between 8 and 12%. Going lower isn’t necessarily better, quite the opposite, it can have a negative effect for your aesthetics and will definitely have a negative effect on your health.
To summarize the points we’ve just established, we need to respect a 3 part formula to sculpt the V-taper we’re after. Together they will help you achieve the Golden ratio. The V-taper formula requires you to:
1) Build a wide pair of lats
2) Build up strong shoulders
3) Achieve a low body fat percentage
THE V-TAPER ACTION PLAN
1) Sculpt a broad back and wide lats
The most efficient way to build up the lats with ease is to become very strong at a vertical pulling movement that work the lats through their full range of motion. There’s one exercise that immediately comes to mind to achieve this goal and it just happens to be the king of the upper body pulling movements. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the weighted chin up.
Chin ups are the number one best overall back builder. The chin up is a representation of one’s upper body pulling strength, it allows for easy strength progression and as a fantastic bonus it will also sculpt a big, strong biceps. This is exactly what we need to achieve our goal.
If you are new to chin ups, start with body weight chin ups first and build it up to 10 strict chin ups. It’s important to start form a dead hang so that all of your back’s musculature is fully engaged through a full range of motion, which will give you the best muscle building results. Once you’re able to perform 10 strict chin ups with proper technique, invest in a weight belt and start your weighted chin up strength journey by adding 5 pounds. The end goal is to be able to perform about 50% or more of your bodyweight for about 4 to 6 reps. Once you’ll be able to do this, you will have a big powerful back, with a solid pair of lats that flair out to the sides, giving you that strong, V-shaped look. To train for this strength quest, perform most of your training between the 5 to 10 rep range for weighted chin ups and focus on becoming stronger over time with proper form.
2) Building boulder shoulders
Strong looking cannonball shoulders are the cherry on the cake when it comes to building a V-taper. Well sculpted shoulders are the result of becoming strong at vertical and horizontal presses such as the overhead press and the bench press, which will maximize the size of the front delt.
The front delt is accompanied by a lateral head and a rear head. Since the side and rear delt aren’t that heavily involved in overhead presses and bench presses, we need to give them some extra attention by throwing in some higher volume accessory work. Combining heavy presses with high volume supplementary work will create that cannonball delt effect, which one cannot achieve by having a well-developed front delt alone.
To supplement your pressing movements, we will throw in lateral raises and facepulls. Lateral raises are an isolation exercise that when done correctly, stimulate the side delt musculature like no other. A well-developed side delt will give you an even wider look. Facepulls heavily stimulate and grow the upper back musculature and the rear delts get a massive hit. It’s the combination of the 3 well developed heads that will give you the cannonball look and that will put the cherry on the cake.
Presses lend themselves to heavy work and are therefore best performed in a lower to moderate rep range. I advise you to perform sets of 5 to 10 for your heavy overhead and bench presses. Shoulder accessory work is best performed with lighter weights in a higher rep range due to the nature of the exercises. When going too heavy on these, technique will suffer, the intended muscles won’t get an optimal stimulation and therefore you won’t have optimal results. Perform sets of between 10 – 15 or even 10 – 20 near failure for your lighter deltoid accessory work.
Heavy presses + higher volume lateral raises and facepulls = death star delts.
3) Lower your body fat percentage to 8 – 12%
No matter how strong and muscular you are, if your muscles are being covered with a soft layer of cushion, you won’t optimally create the ratios required to have a full V-taper effect. Even if you’re not very muscular yet, losing fat is the best thing you can do for your overall aesthetics, even for your face. If you’re lean enough, even without a lot of muscle, you’ll already have some form of V taper. Building additional muscle mass will simply enhance the V-taper and make it even more pronounced.
The single best way to lose fat and lower your body fat percentage is to be in a calorie deficit. A moderate calorie deficit of about 20% is optimal as it allows you to be successful in the long run. Going too hard too soon by crash dieting is counterproductive because you won’t be able to sustain it. Dropping your calories too low too quickly causes negative hormonal processes to take place in your body which will make you feel miserable and will stimulate you to take actions such as binge eating that will set you back, often times to points that are worse than where you first began. Therefore, adopt a more moderate but more sustainable approach which will allow you to stay lean for the rest of your life.
Alongside creating a dietary energy deficit, be sure to eat enough protein to maintain your hard earned muscle mass. 0.8g per pound of body weight will suffice to optimally gain or maintain muscle mass.
Once you’ve come to a point that you’re satisfied with your level of leanness, you can switch to eating a small calorie surplus of about 200 – 300 additional calories per day to gain more muscle mass that will make V-taper effect even more pronounced.
FINAL WORD
There you have it, your personal formula to create the perfect V-taper according to the Golden ratio. It’s the epitome of an attractive male physique that radiates strength, athleticism, health and masculinity.
The V-taper is the result of having a strong, muscular pair of lats paired with well built shoulders and a low body fat percentage.
By putting an emphasis on weighted chin ups, getting strong at pressing movements and supplementing these movements with higher volume shoulder accessory work you will stimulate muscle mass in all the right places to create the V taper in your own physique. Pair that with a low body fat percentage of between 8 – 12 percent and you’ll have the body many people dream of.
Obviously, you should train your whole body so that your body’s musculature is in perfect harmony. Creating a V-taper alongside skinny arms and legs would look silly, but it’s very important to put an emphasis on the muscle groups and exercises mentioned in this article in order to maximize your aesthetic potential.
Do the hard work and be patient. You will be rewarded for it.
Kevin Mahjoubi