Ready to give your shoulders some real punishment? The following workout is perfect for swelling the delts with blood to encourage growth. It’s also fantastic for training mobility, for working out multiple muscle groups, and for generally giving those shoulders a hard time.
The full workout is as follows:
- Warmup
Cuban Presses
Overhead Press - Superset 1
Alternating Dumbbell Upright Rows
Steering Wheels - Superset 2
Face Pulls
Lateral/Front Raises
External Rotation
Shrugs
Now let’s look at a breakdown of these movements:
Cuban Press
You’ll start out with your upper arms, shoulder height and your forearms parallel to the floor. You’ll be holding a light pair of dumbbells and essentially they’ll be facing forward at shoulder level. Now you’re going to pivot those shoulders on the spot to get into the beginning of a regular shoulder press movement and you’ll be going to press upwards. This is a light exercise – you won’t be able to do it with a heavy weight – and it’s intended to warm up the rotator cuffs and it should help mobility. Three sets of fifteen should suffice.
Overhead Press
This is a nice basic movement to start with and it’s highly compound. You’ll be doing four sets this time and will pyramid with the weight, moving up gradually and then down. It’s perfect for starting because you’ll be hitting all three heads of the deltoid muscle.
Alternating Dumbbell Upright Rows
Hold the dumbbells in front of you and pull them straight upwards, bending at the elbows as you do. This one hits the lats as well as the shoulders.
Steering Wheels
Here you hold a weight plate up in front of you and then just twist it clockwise and anticlockwise. This one combines an isometric hold with the movement and is generally much more difficult than it looks! Perform as a superset with the upright rows and finish two sets of around 12.
Face Pulls
Face pulls are rows with a cable machine but where you pull the handles at face height instead of body height. They’re excellent for working the lats and rear deltoids.
Lateral Front Raises
Raise the dumbbells both laterally (to the dies) and to the front with a straight arm. This will target the front and side (anterior and medial) deltoid heads which make them perfect for supersetting with the face pulls. To perform this as one faster exercise, raise the dumbbells in front, rotate your arms out and lower them to your side. Then repeat again in reverse. Again, perform as a superset for 2 x 12.
External Rotation
This one works the rotator cuffs. Hold a cable at elbow height, with your elbow tucked into your body and a right angle in your arm. Now just pivot your shoulder outwards to pull the cable. This is a fantastic one for increasing your shoulder strength to increase your power on the bench press and other moves. Perform on a light weight for 3 x 10.
Shrugs
Finishing on shrugs means switching over to the traps but you’ll still be training your shoulders too and combining traps with shoulders makes a lot of sense.
