The anterior deltoid: Known commonly as the 'front delts' are part of the shoulder that lies in the front of the body, on either side of the chest. They're heavily involved in all chest workouts and tend to take over when doing other pressing movements.
The medial deltoid: Known commonly as the 'side delts' are part of the shoulder that lies in the middle of the other heads of the shoulder, on the outside of the arm. These are worked to a large degree when doing a standing pulling exercise where the elbows are at face level and the wrists are lower than the elbow. These are worked only moderately in traditional shoulder press movements.
The posterior deltoid: Known commonly as the 'rear delts' are part of the shoulder that that lies at the back of the body and found on either side of the trapezius muscles. These are worked as secondary muscles in all pulling exercises but in order to fully develop need further isolated training.
The major mistake that trainers make is over-using over head pressing movements to stimulate holistic growth in the shoulder. While this is a fantastic exercise that has been used as a staple in bodybuilding for a very long time; most of its focus lies on the anterior deltoid, leaving little work to be done for the medial and posterior muscles of the shoulder.
Now that we understand the location of each head of the shoulders and what kind of exercises they respond to; here are tips to bring great size and shape to the shoulders:
- Seated rear delt raises - Often enough, trainers neglect to train their rear delts in favour of training the front or side delts. They'll throw in one or two sets for rear delts and call it a day. Seated rear delt raises, when keeping the body low and still, allows you to isolate the rear delts in a way that allows for maximum growth. Also, doing exercises such as face pulls and pull ups work the rear delts sufficiently enough to cause growth.
- Side raises - Hold a pair of dumbbells next to your sides so that the bottom of them are parallel to the floor. Raise your elbows slowly and in a very controlled fashion until your elbows are in line with your lower jaw and your wrists are in line with your pectoral muscles. This exercises helps to target the side delts to a degree that few other exercises can match.
- Front raises - Your front delts do not need nearly as much work to develop if you're working your chest properly and doing over head presses. However, if your front delts are lagging, do dumbbell front raises where you stand with your arms by your side and slowly bring the dumbbell through the motion until they are in line with your shoulders.
- Light and heavy - Alternating between power sets and hypertrophy (muscle growth) sets allows you to get the best of both worlds in shoulder training: Strength and mass; but also it breaks the usual monotony of a regular shoulder routine.
- High rep range - Highly recommended for great growth in the shoulder. This is individual dependent, but the people I've recommended this to have seen great gains in mass and shape in their shoulders.
A great e-book I recommend that you read is the Anabolic Cookbook. It is filled with great recipes for building muscle and the food is absolutely delicious, not to mention it is extremely popular! Copy and paste this link into your browser to have a look at it: http://217228p4ybo6zsdzu1mf1blco3.hop.clickbank.net/
No comments:
Post a Comment