How to get a V taper: train the lats and the side delts, and leave the waist to the fat-loss pages

A V taper is a torso that's wider across the shoulders and upper back than at the waist. Two muscles make the wide part: the latissimus dorsi, or lats, which run down the sides of your back, and the side head of the deltoid, the muscle that caps the shoulder. Training builds both. The waist is the other half of the shape, and it's a different question, covered in its own section below.

This is a page about which exercises train those muscles and how much of them to do, not a promise about how your shape will change. The studies below measured groups of people, mostly men; where you start and how your body is built are things a page can't see.

1. Train the lats with a vertical pull and a row

Pull-ups load the lats heavily. In 25 people, 21 men and 4 women, lat activity during pull-ups and chin-ups was 117% to 130% of a maximal isometric contraction, the highest of the seven muscles measured.¹ A 2026 review of 23 studies of lat activity found pull-up variations broadly similar across grips, and on the lat pulldown found pulling the bar down in front the setup most consistently tied to more lat activity.² Rows count too: in a 2004 study of 12 men, the wide-grip pulldown and the seated row had the highest ratio of lat to biceps activity of the four pulls tested.³ So the lat half of a V taper is one vertical pull and one row, every back session. How to do them: how to do a pull-up, lat pulldown form, the seated cable row and the dumbbell row. The full menu: the back workout.

2. Train the side delts directly

A bench press doesn't do this part for you; an overhead press does some of it. In 13 men experienced in strength training, the side head worked at 30.3% of its maximum in the lateral raise and 27.9% in the seated shoulder press, against 5% in the bench press and 3.4% in the dumbbell fly.⁴ A ten-week trial points the same way: in 24 healthy men, the 13 who bench pressed three times a week grew the chest, the front of the shoulder and the triceps more than the 11 who didn't train, and the side of the shoulder grew less than every other muscle measured.⁵

Lateral raises with dumbbells or a cable both work. In the eight-week trial of 24 resistance-trained men and women, each person trained one arm with each, five sets to failure twice a week in a 12-to-16-rep range, and side-delt thickness, measured by ultrasound, rose by 3.3% to 4.6%, with the two versions about equally effective.⁶ Keep the arms long: in 10 competitive bodybuilders, the side head was more active in a lateral raise with straight elbows than with bent ones.⁷ How to do them: lateral raises. The press and the rest of the shoulder: overhead press form and the shoulder workout.

3. Give each muscle enough hard sets, and add to them

The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 overview of 137 systematic reviews tied 10 or more sets per muscle group a week to more muscle growth.⁸ For a V taper that means counting two muscles separately: the lats get their sets from pulls and rows, and the side delts mostly from raises. How to count them: how many sets per week. Then make the work a little harder over time, a rep or a little weight at a time: progressive overload. Everything else that goes into growing muscle, from effort to protein and sleep, is on how to build muscle.

4. The waist: what the trials found

A V taper is a contrast, and the waist is the half that exercises for the waist didn't change in the trial that tested them. In a 2011 trial, 24 healthy sedentary adults, 14 men and 10 women, were split into two groups; the group that did seven ab exercises five days a week for six weeks saw no significant effect on body fat, abdominal fat or abdominal circumference, the waist measurement, compared with the group that didn't, though its curl-ups improved.⁹ So the training on this page is for the shoulders and back; the waist and body fat are covered on how to lose body fat and how to lose belly fat.

A sample week

A practical layout of the list above as two upper-body days, not a protocol from a trial. The rep ranges are the ones the back workout and the shoulder workout use, and the lateral raise range is the eight-week trial's.⁶ End each set with a rep or two left, except the last set of raises.

Across the week that's 12 sets of pulls and rows for the lats and 8 sets of raises for the side delts, plus the presses. Put the two upper days two or three days apart; the upper/lower split is one way to build the rest of the week around them.

Common questions

How do you get wider shoulders at home?

The same two muscles, with less kit. Lateral raises need only a pair of dumbbells or a band, and pike push-ups stand in for the overhead press (the shoulder workout has the home column). Without any equipment, the side delts and the lats are both hard to load; a doorway pull-up bar or a band is the smallest kit that covers both (practical, not a study finding). For the lats at home: the inverted row and pull-ups.

Is it different for women?

The exercises are the same. In a 2025 meta-analysis of 29 studies that put healthy men and women aged 18 to 45 on the same training, relative increases in muscle size were similar between the sexes, with absolute increases slightly favouring men.¹⁰ The lateral raise trial above included women.⁶

Can you get a V taper waist with exercises?

Not from waist exercises, in the trial that tested them: six weeks of ab work had no significant effect on abdominal circumference.⁹ The training here is for the shoulders and back; the waist side is on how to lose body fat.

Do wide-grip pull-ups make your back wider?

Grip width mattered less than people think in the studies: the 2026 review found pull-up variations broadly similar for lat activity across grips, and grip-width effects on the pulldown inconsistent.² These studies measured activity during a set, not growth over months. Use the grip you can get the most good reps with.

How long does a V taper take?

No page can promise a timeline. The lateral raise trial ran eight weeks and measured a 3.3% to 4.6% rise in side-delt thickness on ultrasound;⁶ the bench press trial ran ten.⁵ Those were groups on set programs; the part in your control is the number of weeks you keep doing it.

The other goals

This is one of the goal questions on this site with an answer like this one. How to build muscle is the general version, how to get stronger the lifting one, and how to jump higher and how to run faster the athletic ones.

If you'd rather have the week planned

Two upper days fit on an index card; fitting them around your legs, your cardio and the days you actually have is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in the Trainerize app, built around your week, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: add four sets of lateral raises to your next two upper sessions and write down the weights.