Filling Out Your Shoulders – Part 4 of 4

We’ve spent the past 3 weeks talking about shoulder routines, and today is the final installment!

As with the traps, you have to be careful of overdeveloping your delts because it can cause you to be a little out of balance.  The photo to the right shows a young kid who’s obviously working hard on his shoulders but needs to get his triceps and his traps caught up (my opinion)…

Last week we introduced two delt exercises and today here are two more.

Dumbbell Side Laterals

1. Take one relatively light dumbbell in each hand and stand with your feet about shoulder width apart.
2. Let the weight hang just in front of your body with the palms facing inward toward each other. Your elbows should be bent just slightly and the body should be leaning forward just a little bit.
3. Use the strength in your shoulder muscles to pull the weights outward and upward in a semicircular motion until the weights reach the level of your shoulders.
4. This exercise best focuses on the median deltoids when the wrist is rotated just slightly so that when the dumbbells are fully raised, the back end of the dumbbell is slightly higher than the front end.  Imagine you are holding a pitcher of water and want the pitcher to slowly empty.
5. Squeeze your shoulders for a moment at the top.
6. Lower the weight slowly, back to the starting position, but for extra burn don’t let them touch your thighs.
7. Repeat this movement for the desired number of repetitions.

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Continue reading about Filling Out Your Shoulders – Part 4 of 4

In the last two weeks we’ve talked about shoulders.  We focused on the traps previously but today let’s talk about the deltoids (a/k/a delts).

What are the delts?  They are the muscles surrounding the joint where your arm connects to your shoulder.  They are involved in many exercises, as well as tons of everyday motion.  Plus, they are a visible part of your physique, from the front, the back, and the side.  For more description, click here.

Many exercises that target the shoulders involve laterals – pivot-type movements that will be described below.  But I can’t stress enough, like I tried in the first installment, that targeting/isolating your shoulders is really only important after you’ve mastered the basic compound exercises like squats, bench press, and deadlifts.

Military Press – Standing

I like the military press since it hits the front and side deltoids, but also involves other muscles because it is a compound movement.   Start with just the bar and no weight until you have mastered the movement.  Here are the basic steps.

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Continue reading about Filling Out Your Shoulders – Part 3 of 4

Aside from the big 3 (squats, bench press, and deadlifts), the area I like to focus on most is my shoulders.  Nice shoulders give you that “powerful” look that really fills out a t-shirt.  It’s especially useful for people like me, who don’t have naturally broad shoulders, to add mass to the shoulder area.

I’m assuming that as a regular reader, you already know how important the big 3 are but you can refresh yourself here:

• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Bench Press (I tend to emphasize the incline bench press)

If you are ready to move on to additional areas of focus, I suggest shoulders.

What Are The “Shoulders”?

You might think you know what the shoulders are, but let’s be precise.  We’re including here the deltoids (front, back, and side) and the trapezius (traps).  The traps form a triangle in the upper middle of your back, and are visible from the front, kind of behind your collar bone.  When the upper part of the traps are really developed, it ends up as more of a trapezoid shape.  Some people consider the trapezius muscles to be part of the “back” muscles.  But for these two articles, we’ll consider the traps to be part of your shoulder workout.  You can see some simple body muscle schematics here.  The photo the right also shows a nearly perfect triangle in the middle of the back.

We’ll talk about the traps in the first two parts of this series.  Then we’ll finish up with the delts.

Exercises for Your Trapezius Muscles (“Traps”)

The traps come into play with many different movements (which might be why you see them lumped with either delts or “back” muscles in routines).  It’s really hard to isolate the them.  But that’s ok, because we generally recommend basic compound/multi-joint exercises rather than isolation, especially for beginners and intermediates.  (more…)

Continue reading about Filling Out Your Shoulders – Part 1 of 4

Image Credit: roguefitnessphotos

The overhead press is one of the most basic movements available for working the upper body. It’s so good, in fact, that it is touted by many to be the most useful movement for working your upper body.

Overhead presses place primary stress on the anterior deltoids (front shoulder muscles), the medial deltoids (middle shoulder), and the triceps. Secondary stress is also placed on the upper chest, the stabilizing abs and lower back, and the upper back muscles involved in the rotational movement of the scapulae.

This exercise is very efficient for building overall body mass simply because of the shear number of muscles groups involved in the movement. Any well designed training program should include an overhead pressing movement, and the overhead press is a premier movement to strengthen your shoulders and upper body.

Set-Up:

• Get in position: Take a firm grip on (more…)

Continue reading about How To Overhead Press With Good Form

While the best exercise for building shoulder mass is the overhead press, you might want to incorporate side laterals into your workout to add thickness to your outer shoulders. There are, however, a couple ways to lose some of the benefit from this exercise.

Your shoulder muscles are actually composed of three separate heads that are in the front (anterior deltoids), middle (medial deltoids), and rear (posterior deltoids). Developing full looking deltoids is a good idea because your shoulders are visible from every angle, whether you’re being viewed from the front, side, or rear.

Working on your medial deltoid adds width to your shoulders which helps make your waistline look smaller in comparison. This is great for women also as it helps to shape an “hourglass figure”.

A common mistake when doing deltoid side laterals, however, is to use too much momentum to raise the weights up to shoulder level instead of letting your muscles do the work. There are a few ways this can happen. We’ll take a look at each of these problems and how to fix them. (more…)

Continue reading about Side Laterals That Actually Work Your Shoulders