If you want to build bigger shoulders there are definitely some things that you are going to have to do, and other mistakes you will have to avoid in your shoulder training. In this video, I’m going to give you the 10 “commandments” of shoulder training to help you not only build more muscle in your shoulder workouts but avoid injury to this precious joint along the way.
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The shoulder is probably the most important joint in the body when it comes to upper body function. Without a healthy shoulder joint, you will find it difficult to perform virtually any upper body workout or exercise. Beyond that, from an aesthetic standpoint, there is nothing that caps a complete physique more than a pair of well developed delts. If you are going to build your delts to their maximum capacity you are going to want to make sure you obey the first commandment of shoulder training and that is to not skip the rear delt exercises.
I don’t know what it is about the rear delts but they just don’t seem to get the same attention that the middle and front deltoids do. Make sure you are incorporating not only enough exercises for this muscle group but be sure that they are the right exercises if you want to get them bigger. Beyond that, you can add additional volume for your rear delts by making some slight tweaks to the way you perform exercises on your back day.
The behind the neck press is one of those shoulder exercises that simply needs to be avoided. I say that knowing that there are far healthier ways to press heavy weights overhead without placing your shoulder joint in a compromised and unnatural position. The landmine press, jammer press, arnold press and even good old fashioned barbell press can all be performed with the elbow in front of the body to dramatically improve the safety of the shoulder exercise without compromising the gains you will see from doing it.
In an effort to build bigger shoulders, we tend to focus a lot on not just pressing but in using heavy weights all the time. This is a big shoulder workout mistake. The deltoid muscle is a relatively small muscle group that responds well to targeted tension with lighter weights. If you never felt just how this can work, just perform a side lateral dumbbell raise with half the weight you normally use in one and a half rep style. You’ll be a believer instantly.
Often times, the shoulders and the exercises for your shoulders do not incorporate a position of lengthened tension. This prevents this muscle group from experiencing the same eccentric muscle damage that other muscles that can be stretched during the exercise can. That is, unless we make some modifications for doing that. Watch how the side lateral and front raise can be done with cables to add that extra stretch for the delts to not miss out on this anymore.
The shoulder muscles are commonly injured, and the solution we come up with is to avoid training them all together to allow them to heal. We still soldier on with our chest, back and arm workouts however. This is a mistake. The old use it or lose it phenomenon is in place here and you need to realize that there are many options for continuing to train even when the shoulder is a bit irritated. Instead, the focus should be on minimizing the other exercises you are doing like the bench press and pullup that could be aggravating your shoulders more than any direct training.
Finally, the upright row will always be a bad option when it comes to building bigger shoulders more safely. Avoid this movement and instead make the switch to the dumbbell high pull. You will find that not only is your shoulder development not compromised but you will see better gains and far less pain in the long run by making this change.
As you see, you can build bigger shoulders if you avoid some of the biggest shoulder mistakes while improving some of the things you are currently doing in your shoulder workouts. The ATHLEAN-X Training Systems at athleanx.com can help you to get everything right by training like an athlete. See how to get the most out of your training in my step by step, day by day instructions and workouts.
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