My Only Goal is Jacked Upper Body

Hi BBM,

This may be somewhat hypothetical, although I semi-have the same goal. Also, I know this may fall more under bodybuilding than “what you do”, but since most of the bodybuilding stuff I read online seems like a whole lot of confusion and nonsense, I thought your sound advice could help.

What if all I care about is having a jacked upper body, and I think my lower body is plenty big…how should I train? I have no interest in ever going to a powerlifting competition, and I don’t have any loyalty to power lifts in general, other than if they will get me bigger.
Do I really need to keep squatting? What if squats zap up most of my energy that could be put towards more upper body work, especially if that zapping affects my compliance?
If I only want to train 3x per week for 1 hr per time, what would be the best way to proceed in order to reach my telos?

I began my journey in SS, hoping it would get be to be a jacked beast, but realized after tons of hard work I didn’t look much better. In fact, I always noticed that most of the SS people did not look jacked either (contra Jordan and Austin). I hope for a better path.

Arete,

If you want to gain muscle in any area of your body you will need to provide that area with progressively greater and greater stress. The main training determinants of hypertrophy are ROM, motor unit recruitment, and training volume. Our opinion of how to set these variables up with the primary goal of hypertrophy is reflected in our hypertrophy templates.

Since you asked, “Do I need to squat to get a bigger upper body?” No. Of course not.

I do not think training 3hrs per week is likely to result in the physical development you’re discussing and I still think you should train your lower body with a lift you’d prefer. I think squats have their place, but I’m not married to them.

-Jordan