Desertbreh wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:03 pm
So what is the BroBrandon pathway to a truly herculean shoulder girdle?
Lots and lots of side lateral raises.
Pressing is fine if your shoulders can handle it, but it’s a complex joint and several other muscles (pecs, traps, triceps, etc.) get brought into play while pressing, so it’s hard to keep that focus just on the shoulders.
For the side raises a lot of people, myself included until more recently, start the movement with their traps. At first look, we’re just raising the dumbbells up and out to the sides, but that “up” thought makes us skip what we should be doing in the lower position of the movement. Think instead of pushing your hands as far away from each other as possible. This will naturally mean they raise as they travel. So think “out” not “up”. When you’ve fully contracted and your arms are parallel to the ground you can use the “up” cue to make sure you’re fully tensing them in that shortened position.
The next mistake in raises that people make is having their arms straight out to the sides. Let them drift in front of your body slightly to keep in the scapular plane. More tension on the shoulder muscles, less pinching inside the shoulder joint from and unnatural position.
Cables and machines are superior to dumbbells for side raises. In the lengthened position (hands down about to start the lift out to the sides) the first foot or so of movement is mostly sideways, so gravity isn’t apply any down force to counteract the movement if you’re using dumbbells/kettlebells. The dumbbells are made doubly bad for this movement because of the strength curve of the muscle. As it shortens, it gets weaker; so now we have the highest gravitational force on the muscle at the point where the muscle is in a weakened position and can’t fight that gravity. A cable machine, with the handles set around your knee height, will provide an even amount of force throughout the movement. We can then raise the handles up so they’re around hip height, and this will provide more force in the lengthened position with that weight dropping off ever so slightly in the shortened position. You can combine these two in a superset, or throw in a light dumbbell to attack the shortened position as well and make it a giant set, to really hit the shoulders hard. Start with the hip height cable to stress the lengthened position, rep to failure, drop the handles and grab your dumbbells (now it doesn’t matter that you’re fatigued in the lengthened position since there is no resistance there) and attack the shortened position, rep to failure, set the handles down low so the entire range of motion is under stress and rep to failure once more, rest 2-3 minutes and go through all three again once or twice more. That low cable position after the other two will humble any man.. plan on setting 5-10lbs on the cable machine for that.
Rear delts are next and far too many people neglect them. Pump them up on shoulder day, pump them up again on back day. These will really contribute to the round 3D look that we all want for our delts. Hop on the reverse pec dec, set cable up around face height and do reverse flies like that, grab some dumbbells to fire up the shortened position again like we talked about for the side delts. Pick 2-3 exercises for them on your shoulder day, and do one of them again on back day.
Front delts often get enough stimulation from our chest pressing and if you’re doing any overhead pressing, but I still like to throw some isolated work in there for them. Cables again are my weapon of choice for that consistent tension through the range of motion. Lean forward slightly, with palms facing up grab whatever attachment you’re using (I like the “w” shaped attachments for this) and pump away.
Shoulders are all about getting blood in there and hitting them with time under tension. The giant set in side raises will do this by nature of hitting three exercises back to back, but for all your straight sets, really focus on making the set last 40-60 seconds. Set a timer, pump until it goes off. You’ll have to do really slow eccentrics on every rep, actively fight lowering the weight during this almost as if you’re trying to lift it rather than let it lower. You’ll feel things you’ve never felt before. 40 seconds doesn’t sound like much, but 40 seconds of constant burning tension and stretching 10-12 reps to last that 40-60 seconds feels like an eternity. This is a recent change I’ve adopted in my training, and I’m gaining strength on some lifts despite my current caloric deficit. I’m am very excited to employ this style of lifting in my next off-season where I’m actually eating enough to grow to see how my body changes.
Lastly for the ultimate shoulder look: traps. Grab a barbell, trap machine, or set of dumbbells.. whatever you connect with best. For me right now, that’s dumbbells. Go as heavy as you can while still making that set stretch to fill 40-60 seconds.