Do you find it difficult to grow muscle in ALL areas of your shoulders?
Are you not getting that rounded, shredded look you’ve always wanted?
Whilst you’re making gains in other areas, are your shoulders the one muscle group that’s lagging behind?
Well… In this article I’m going to fix this.. by sharing five secrets that will get you those Big, Popping ROUNDED shoulders. If you apply these tips I guarantee you will get Defined, Protruding, Boulder shoulders…
shoulders that will give you that irresistible physique you know you’ve always wanted.
Let’s get started.
1) UNDERSTAND the ANATOMY
Now for a brief science lesson.. if you can’t hack it, or think you’ll get bored.. I don’t care. This is needed.
The shoulders are actually called ‘deltoids’ and are made up of 3 heads (or muscles).. The anterior (front), medial (side) and posterior (rear).
Each of these muscles must be trained properly in order for the entire shoulder to grow, and appear rounded..
The shoulder is a ball and socket joint, giving it a wide range of motion.. but.. because of this flexibility, it is not very stable and is easily injured (Reference). So you HAVE to be careful. Warm-up. Don’t be silly.
(I’m not gunna waste one of these points telling you how to warm-up, because it makes me mildly irate to think that ‘warming up’ would be a secret tip)
2) TRAIN each DELTOID PROPERLY
The problem is with shoulders, people just wanna do the exercises they know, or enjoy the most. I’m talking about Dumbbell-Overhead Press, Incline Bench (although shoulder activity on this should actually be minimal), Lateral Raises.
These are all very nice exercises. Very nice. Keep doing them.
But.. just realise you neeeeed to VARY the exercises you do. There’s loads. And each shoulder exercise you do should have a purpose.. you should know exactly which deltoids they are targeting.
You need to vary the movements you do.
For instance.. Lateral Raises primarily target the MEDIAL (side) delts. Of course, the other delts do not stand-by completely useless, they contribute slightly- but most of the work is being done by the medial deltoid. Therefore, that’s the head that grows more as a result of doing this movement (Lateral Rasies).
Let’s go with a more difficult one.. Overhead Press (Dumbbell/Barbell.. it doesn’t make much difference).. which muscles does this exercises work? (don’t feel stupid if you don’t know, I had to research properly this just to make sure)..
Mainly the ANTERIOR (front) deltoid, and also a decent contribution from the Medial. (of course, other muscles in the body contribute to the entire movement, such as the core, triceps etc.. but we’re focusing on the shoulders here)
Another one.. Incline Bench.
Okay, okay.. this isn’t technically a shoulder movement.. but it does work the shoulder, and you’ll see the point I’m making in a minute (unless you’ve already spotted the point)
Incline Bench, although primarily works the upper portion of the chest, also works the ANTERIOR (front) deltoid..
What’s the pattern here? Have you spotted it?
Well.. if you haven’t..
3) MAKE SURE you DON’T neglect the REAR-DELTS.
That’s right. If you want to get FULL, ROUNDED shoulders you can’t just train the front and middle delts.. you’re going to have to train the Rear ones too.
I made this mistake for a long time.. I would have my Chest day, finish with some lateral raises.. and then I’d have my Shoulder day, and finish with Incline Bench or Dips, all while completely ignoring any exercises that target the rear-delts.. The result = semi-circle shoulders.
For the first few years of my training I kind of presumed that overhead presses, or any kind of presses, would work the entire shoulder. But looking back, that made no sense at all, since when you press (or push), you push from the anterior, using muscles from the front… So… in order to work the muscles in the back of your body (posterior), including your rear-deltoids, you’re going to have to PULL, rather than press.
My favourite exercise for the rear-delts are Rear-delt Cable Cross-overs.
You can YouTube how to do these, but I’ll try explain them with my words anyway.. Basically, get yourself inside the cables – with both sides at your disposal – and plug the pin into (on both sides) the lightest or second lightest weight. Take any attachments off the cable, and set it near the top (as long as it’s above your shoulders, its fine).
Then, grab the cables from opposite ends to your hands.. grab the right-hand side cable with your left, and vice versa. At this point you will be crossed over you’re wearing a straitjacket. Move the cables out in front of you, and pull backwards slowly, keeping your arms slightly bent.. engaging the REAR-DELTS.
If you’re unsure, just check it out on YouTube.
There are, of course, plenty of other rear-delt exercises.. face-pulls, dumbbell flyes etc.
I’m not going to lie though, training rear-delt can be a ball-ache sometimes. Rear-delts are just one of those muscle-groups that aren’t involved in some of the big, popular compound movements, which is why they get neglected. You have to make a conscious effort to target them.
This is good news for you though.. Because now you know.. Now you can stand-out from the rest, and train rear-delts properly..
It really is one of the biggest secrets to getting rounded shoulders.
If like me.. you’ve neglected them, just try and throw a rear-delt exercises on the end/beginning of a workout where it wouldn’t normally be. Maybe at the start of a leg day, or every upper body workout. I’ve been doing them 3 times a week in the attempt to play catch-up.. and it works. They really started to POP after a couple of months. No more semi-circle shoulders for me..
Next..
4) Train with Proper.. Correct.. GOOD, nice, sexy, good (adjective, adjective, synonym for correct) Form
.. train with proper form.
Don’t be one of those geezers swinging 12kg lateral raises in the corner, looking like a dickhead. You know who you are. No-one will ever be impressed by you doing that.
What will be even less impressed are your muscles, which will respond with a big fuckyou to muscular hypertrophy. In order for your muscles to grow (not just shoulders, although this is especially prevalent with shoulders, as it is one of the smaller muscle groups), you need to be somewhat disciplined with your form.
Don’t get me wrong.. there is a time and a place for going heavier, testing yourself, shocking your body and muscles and visceral system… (https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=1&contentid=832)..
But 99% of the time, you’re going to want to lift with proper form. If you lift too heavy with shoulders too often, you’re going to mess them up (in a bad way).
So.. what is the proper form?
Well.. it differs from each exercise, of course. But a good rule of thumb, when the only goal is muscle growth, is the slower the better – particularly in the eccentric portion of the movement (on the way down).
Take Lateral Raises, for example.. firstly, you want to use a weight that you can bang out 12-16 clean reps with. This is usually around 7-10kg for most people. (If you’re unsure, start at 7kg). You want to bring to be controlled when bringing the weights up, rotating your pinky finger up as you complete the movement at the top.
Make sure you feel your deltoids contracting
On the way down, you want to emphasise control even more. Go slow, but not too slow .. I suppose CONTROL is the main word to have in your mind. Maintain your posture. Control in your movement, control in your form, visualising the muscles contracting. This is the best way to make them grow.
You want every rep to be efficient as possible, because wasted reps add up.. soon it will be wasted sets, wasted exercises, wasted sessions.. you DON’T want that to happen. Make every rep your baby, and your shoulders will respond by getting swole.
5) ‘Progressive Overload’ and Number of Reps
Right.. this last one is slightly less basic. But if you think you’re capable, read on..
You might hear the term ‘progressive overload’ a lot – it basically means: just make sure you’re improving. This isn’t measured just by how much weight you lift, it’s also measured by the amount of REPS and even quality of reps you’re doing.
For example, say you’re doing Barbell Overhead press.. (assuming correct form is understood)
Week one you might be lifting 40kg for 8 reps for 4 sets with perfect, immaculate form… Decent, cool… The next week you do 40kg for 10 reps.. but the additional 2 reps were completed by using and bending the knee, to give you a little extra bounce in order to lift (not quite perfect form). The third week, you manage to do 40kg for 10 reps, and this time there was no bouncing- it was perfect form.
Do you see what I mean? This is what progressive overload can look like. There’s improvement.. but the actual weight stayed the same. Progressive overload can be a verrry slowwww process, and gets more slow the more you improve. In regards to this specific example, once you can get to 12 reps with emaculate form, I’d then look to increase the weight to 50kg.
Right, that’s it.. you can go away and build up those shoulders- become that massive inverted triangle that you’ve always wanted to be. If you apply these tips, yoiull achieve these goals. Just to be consistent with your training.. and more importantly.. be smart.
Have a great day
Harry Wilkinson Copywriting 