The shoulders are the weak link in many bodybuilder’s armors. While the shoulders are visible, mirror muscles, they nevertheless get a lot less attention than the pecs and the biceps for new athletes. What’s more, many people just aren’t sure how to train them for maximum growth. They can be slow to respond to training at the best of times and often it’s not obvious how you should go about isolating the various heads of the deltoids.
In short, progress can be slow and frustrating, which leaves the arms looking far less developed than they should be right. If this sounds familiar though, then your prayers may just have been answered. This is a shoulder blast workout that promises much faster results and that you should be able to see it working in no time at all…
Here’s the routine…
Standing Military Press
We’ll be starting out with a classic shoulder exercise. This is a compound move that works with all of the deltoid heads and at the same time requires core stability. This is an excellent way to start out as it will warm up the deltoids overall to make the following moves more effective.
To perform, take a barbell, hold it against the top of your chest while standing and press it directly above your head. If you don’t have a barbell to hand, then you can use dumbbell shoulder presses instead though they’re not quite as good.
Wide Grip Upright Row
Now you’ll be moving onto the wide grip upright row. This involves holding a barbell at waist height and then bringing it up to your chin by bending at the elbows. You’ll be bent forward as you do this though with your knees slightly bent too, thus your shoulders will be rotating backwards for each rep. It’s a little like in that it will target the rear deltoids but it has additional bonus benefits for other muscle groups too including the lats and biceps.
Bent Arm Side Laterals
Now holding two dumbbells, you’re going to raise the weights out to either side. This is a simple move that will target the lateral deltoids – the muscles on either side of the shoulders. Having bent arms makes the move slightly easier with heavier weights by shortening the lever; so you don’t need to increase the weight.
Hammer Front Raises
To finish you’ll be hitting the anterior deltoids with raises but now with a hammer grip. This is a little less rough on the wrists and requires less grip – meaning you can train the shoulders harder and for longer. Of course, hammer grip means that you’ll be holding the weights with the palms facing inward.
And there you go: that’s a quick and easy routine for the shoulders but it works very effectively because it hits all three deltoid heads and incorporates a compound move to start things off. You can mix up the specific moves but as long as you swap in equivalent exercises, you’ll get rapid results.
