It’s not impossible to develop a pair of awesome shoulders, but you have to know how to do it.
There are a million sayings out there about how important shoulders are, and there’s a good reason for that – they have immense strength and look powerful when built right. If you want to create yourself the perfect pair of shoulders, this is the article for you.
You will need to follow these guidelines every week, for a month. Make sure that you get at least three to four days of rest between training sessions so every time you exercise, it has the best effect.
2 Shoulder Workouts
These shoulder workouts don’t look like much, but if you do them twice per week you will get the desired effect with the necessary amount of rest.
Warming Up!
Shoulders are a really versatile muscle group which means they have a very wide range of motion, but it also makes them more susceptible to harm.
Make sure that you always warm up before exercising for 5-10 minutes. Your warm-up should include light sets and range of motion movements to prepare your rotator cuffs and elbows for the workout that will follow.
Do these warm-up exercises before starting either workout, by lifting lighter weights and recuperating for 20 to 30 seconds between sets. Your warm-up set should have 2 minutes of rest between the sets and should look like this:
- External Rotation with Cable: 2 sets, 10-12 reps.
- Cable Internal Rotation: 2 sets, 10-12 reps.
- Car Drivers: 2 sets, 10-12 reps.
- Triceps Pushdown – Rope Attachment: 2 sets, 10-12 reps.
Shoulder Workout 1
This first workout serves to stress your body as much as possible, so use the heaviest weights you can manage.
You need to build power, but make sure that you don’t lose your form or hurt yourself just to lift a few more pounds.
Your broken ego won’t hurt nearly as much as a torn muscle. If, by some chance, you can manage to lift even more reps than the ones listed here, don’t.
Throw on more weight and lift that weight the right number of times. If necessary, use wrist wraps and elbow sleeves to keep these areas safe because they’re more prone to injury, but always remember – you’re lifting that weight because you safely can.
Have two minutes of rest between sets so your body can get ready for the next one and give it one hundred percent.
Here is the first workout:
- Push Press: 3-4 sets, 5 reps.
- Side Lateral Raise: 3 sets, 8 reps.
- Barbell Rear Delt Row: 3 sets, 8 reps.
Shoulder Workout 2
While the first one was aimed at making you stronger and more powerful, this set is completely different. Here, all you need to do is feel how your muscles work, without giving importance to the stress or resistance.
You will always stress the shoulders with seated Arnold presses for 10 reps with 60s, but you will feel them far better with some lighter 40s instead.
Every exercise in this routine needs a weight that you will have no problem lifting, one that will let you lift it more times than your normal rep count.
This will let you concentrate on the muscles and it will enhance the time your shoulders spend under stress.
Lift lighter weights and feeling a bigger burn in your muscles will bring benefits in the long run. Remember that this isn’t a speed contest – you’ll get there, no hurries.
You just need to watch your time under tension (TUT) so make sure you devote an extra 3 seconds for each rep to do the negative part of the movement.
When you do the rep, make a pause so that you can feel your muscles with all the blood rushing through them. With more time under tension, you will break the wall between decent shoulders and awesome shoulders!
You will need to rest for 45-60 seconds at most, so get back to pumping that iron whenever you feel ready as the pump that your muscles are experiencing is what will make them grow!
Here is the second workout:
- Arnold Dumbbell Press: 3 sets, 10-12 reps.
- Cable Seated Lateral Raise: 3 sets, 10-12 reps.
- SUPERSET – Face Pull and Reverse Flys: 3 sets, 12 reps per exercise.
