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BEST EXERCISES FOR BIG SHOULDERS
🕑 Added 2025-02-15 13:27:08 +0000 UTCEvery man who goes to the gym dreams of a V-shaped body. No wonder, because this is the silhouette that distinguishes any man from a woman. This is due to our anatomical features. Specifically, women bear children, so men and women have very different pelvis/shoulders ratio.Women usually have wide hips and narrow shoulders (relative to the hips). In contrast, men have broad shoulders and narrow hips. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Therefore, the wider the shoulders (and they always look such relative to the pelvis), the more athletic a person looks. It doesn’t matter man or woman. But when broad shoulders aren’t an advantage for a woman. Rather the opposite (the woman will look masculine). If you’re a man, BROAD SHOULDERS and a V-shaped body symbolize victory in natural selection. The more masculine a man, the more he stands out among other men and the better his chance with women. There’s room for black marketing of course. I intentionally oversimplify so that we don’t go deep into the ethology and evolutionary biology of man. Either way, you and I want broad shoulders, so what’s highly important for us? Right. Exercises for building big shoulders.WHAT TO PUMPWhen we talk about a V-shaped body, we most often mean BROAD SHOULDERS and BROAD BACK. I’ll write an article about the back in a month, today we’re gonna talk about shoulders. Moreover, broad shoulders are more important for the said body type than a broad back.So, when we talk about shoulder width, the first thing that we think about is the deltoid muscle, which moves our upper arm bone relative to the shoulder joint in different directions. Here’s what you can do with your arm:raise it in front of you
put it behind your back
raise it sideways
move it horizontally
move it vertically
bring it to the body
take it away from the body
etc.
In fact, you can move your arm as you like. It’s natural and you’re so used to it that you fail to notice how unusual and cool it is. Look at the other mammals. Look at the dog paws, horse stables, buffalo hooves, chicken paws. Do their forelegs have the same mobility as human ones? Of course not. Why? They did not have such evolutionary necessity. It is the human being who uses his forelimbs so effectively and variedly, because he descends from APES, for one, and also because he created CIVILIZATION. Our monkey relatives actively move the humerus relative to the shoulder joint, because they climb trees a lot, where the branches are at different levels, so they have to move their hands in different directions relative to the body.Why am I telling you all this? So that you understand that the SHOULDER JOINT is a very delicate part for being highly MOBILE. The greater the mobility, the more moving parts, the greater the likelihood of injuries and breakdowns. That’s pure physics.Almost all the movements we do with other joints are not as complex as the movements we do with the shoulder joints. Almost all movements can be divided into:PULLING (back, biceps, biceps femoris, etc.)
PUSHING (chest, triceps, quadriceps, etc.)
In other words, when we pull, we bring the bone closer to the body, and when we push, we move the bone away from the body. That is, movements usually occur in one vector (direction).But when we talk about our SHOULDERS and shoulder joints, the situation is so much different. With the deltoids, we can both raise our arms in front of us and put them behind our back. In the first case, it’s a press movement, and in the second case it’s a pulling movement. Our shoulders are a highly mobile mechanism allowing you to make very different movements. That’s great. BUT this puts your shoulders at high risk of injury if you work with very heavy weights with the wrong form. What are the most common injuries? SHOULDER JOINT or ELBOW JOINT injuries. With shoulders being far ahead. Now you understand the theoretical background to why. That’s the cost of mobility.CONCLUSION: wise up when you work your shoulders. Have regard to their anatomic features and delicate nature. Strictly follow the technique.Okay. What makes such extreme mobility of the bone relative to the shoulder joint possible? The variety of muscle fibers attachments. THREE muscle bundles control the shoulder:ANTERIOR DELTOIDS (arm abduction, presses)
MIDDLE DELTOIDS (hybrid, presses-rows)
REAR DELTOIDS (arm adduction, rows)
The most interesting thing about this TRIO is the middle bundle of your delts. It’s a hybrid. In fact, it turns into either a pulling or a pushing muscle depending on the situation and your body tilt. This is achieved by specific attachment of the fibers. This information is important for us, as it shows that there are no THREE different types of movements for each of the three beams. In fact, there are TWO main types of movements (PULL - PUSH) to build your deltoids. And if you get this, it will be much easier to grow your shoulders.TOP OF THE LINEThere’s a variety of deltoids exercises. But all of them are more or less successful versions of ROWS or PRESSES. I’ll cut to the chase and name the top two exercises for training your deltoids. They are:CLASSIC OVERHEAD PRESS (a press variation)
BARBELL OR DUMBBELL UPRIGHT ROW (a row variation)
The first exercise is best for training the front hemisphere of your deltoids. And the second exercise is best for training the rear hemisphere of your deltoids.Why these two exercises? They are weightlifting exercises and are safe for these parts of your deltoids. They are as close to natural movements as possible, so you can do heavy weights necessary for muscle growth.For example, I often see people do the behind-the-neck press in a seated or standing position. Why do they do it? Because they believe that such an exercise will make their shoulders bigger. Will it? No. Most likely, this exercise will make you handicapped rather than build your shoulders. Why am I so judgmental? Well, that’s a PRESS EXERCISE you do in a manner that’s the most uncomfortable for the joint. Press movements are performed by the front hemisphere of your shoulders. So there is no need to take your upper arm bone back. You need to take it back when you do a rear hemisphere row. If you’re pressing (which already makes emphasis on the front), and take your elbows back, behind your head, it’s highly likely that the unnatural position of the joint plus the heavy weight on the barbell will simply injure your shoulder sooner or later ....You can really get into the benefits of an overhead press over other presses. You can call it a natural movement. That this movement is one of the basic ones in weightlifting. That it’s safe. BUT, I believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I advise you to watch my recommendations in the accompanying video. The same goes for the back hemisphere upright row.As a matter of fact, UPRIGHT ROWS aren’t that popular in modern bodybuilding. Most often they do endless middle and rear deltoids lateral raise and flyes. To tell the truth, I have no idea why things are this way. After all, doing a bent-over lateral raise you’re actually doing a pulling movement with a fixed elbow joint. In other words, you’re doing an isolated rear deltoid exercise. And when rowing, your elbow joint is free and helps the shoulder joint. In other words, you’re doing a BASIC (multi-joint) deltoid exercise. So what’s happening? Why does everybody do isolation and rarely do the base? And then they wonder: why is the deltoid not growing? Give it the right load and it’ll grow. It’s just a muscle. It submits to the basic rules and conditions. Follow them and you’ll see growth.HOW TO PREPARE A PROGRAM?We have two basic exercises: an overhead press and a barbell or dumbbell row (upright row). I recommend mixing up the sets in these exercises. I.e. do lengthy supersets.Barbell or Dumbbell Upright Row Set
30 sec rest
Overhead Press Set
30 sec rest
Barbell or Dumbbell Upright Row Set
30 sec rest
Overhead Press Set
30 sec rest
Barbell or Dumbbell Upright Row Set
30 sec rest
Overhead Press Set
30 sec rest
Barbell or Dumbbell Upright Row Set
30 sec rest
Overhead Press Set
30 sec rest
and so on
Did you notice that I started with pulls (upright rows) and not with presses? Why did I do that? I did that because the rear hemisphere of your deltoids is usually weaker than the front hemisphere, actively working during chest presses. Moreover, I noticed that it is the rear hemisphere that gives more in terms of overall width. So we start with what’s more important for a bodybuilder - rows to gain width.You can do a whole lot of sets with such mixing. You don’t have to limit yourself to only 4 sets per exercise. I can make 10 sets when I’m in the mood. The fact that I’m doing a deadly effective work keeps me going.If you’d like to diversify your workout with some other exercise, it will be no trouble. You can use the following similar pairDUMBBELL RAISE or DUMBBELL UPRIGHT ROWS
SEATED DUMBBELL PRESSES
Mix them the way we did with the main pair.Well, these are my recommendations. I’m sure they’ll help you create that desired V-shaped body of an athlete. May the force be with you, friends.
