How to Build the Most Attractive Body, According to Science

Name: How to Build the Most Attractive Body, According to Science
Uploaded: 2026-09-08T16:00:33.000Z
Duration: 18 min 3 s
Channel: Renaissance Periodization

Renaissance PeriodizationSeptember 8, 202618m

Topics10

Men's Training Priorities vs. Women's Preferences0:00 Reasons Men Train0:30 Science on Training Priorities1:32 Women's Stated Preferences4:00 Limitations of Stated Preferences6:00 Why Guys Miss the Mark7:00 Studies on Gay vs. Straight Training Preferences9:00 Stated vs. Revealed Preferences11:30 Six Key Differences Women Prefer14:30 Training Recommendations16:00

In a Nutshell

Men train mostly upper body (chest, triceps, back) to impress other men, but women rank obliques, glutes, abs, biceps, and shoulders highest for attractiveness. Women prefer a lean waist, visible core, balanced arms/shoulders, and developed glutes and legs—not massive chest or back thickness. Training priorities should shift toward more lower-body and core work, less chest/back emphasis, for a balanced athletic look that aligns with actual female preferences.

AI-Generated Notes

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Most men have no direct clue about what women actually like. Men sort of guess and infer, and if we're being really unkind about it, sort of hallucinate what they think women actually want. Because other guys are guys too, most guys just end up training to impress other guys. Maybe what the ladies say they like isn't exactly what they choose on dating sites, in clubs, but they do idealize a guy, on average, that has at least six differences from the guy most guys are trying to look like.

Guys train for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you got bullied in elementary school, middle school, and high school. Some guys train for the art of having an amazing physique or to get super strong. Some people train for health. In reality, it's mostly vanity. At the end of the day, in the back of many of our minds, we're at least a little bit training for female attention.

From the published literature so far and from a massive million workout RP hypertrophy app data set, what guys are training for is sometimes really far off from what women say they actually like in guys. The RP hypertrophy app data shows men highly prioritize the following muscles almost completely evenly: chest, biceps, triceps, shoulders, and back in that order. Men emphasize their forearms as the sixth highest priority after back, but at half of the average priority of the first five upper body muscles. Legs and abs were way, way behind.

230,000 training programs from RP app users don't paint just a guess of a picture. RP folks are nerdier and more nuanced than the average lifter, so the average non-RP gym guy is training upper body even more and legs and abs probably even less than the RP cohort. Mealey's direct gym observation work from the published literature points in the same direction. Newsome's broader participation data supports large sex differences in muscle strength and behavior, and Dirkey et al. show that men's own male muscle preferences are not the same as women's.

In the most comprehensive research done on this topic to date by Durkee and colleagues, women rank obliques, glutes, abs, biceps, and shoulders as the muscles in men that, when bigger than the others, create the most attractive physique. The study asked over 1,700 men and women how muscular they found different male muscle groups most attractive.

Women's stated preferences in order were: obliques (number one), then glutes, abs, biceps, shoulders, triceps, calves, delts, quads, pecs, lats, forearms, and dead last, traps. Women liked some upper body muscle, especially biceps and shoulders, but the very top of the list was obliques, glutes, abs, biceps, and shoulders. In other words, lean waist, visible core, decent arms and shoulders, and training glutes.

In the RP hypertrophy app data, chest is number one, triceps are number three, back is number five, but glutes are way down at number nine. There's some overlap, especially with biceps and shoulders, but there's also a pretty big mismatch.

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How to Build the Most Attractive Body, According to Science

Men's Training Priorities vs. Women's Preferences00:00

Reasons Men Train00:30

Science on Training Priorities01:32

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