Weight Training Tips and Articles

Shoulder Weight Training Workouts

January 22, 2008 on 5:24 am | In Weight Training Routines, Weight Training Exercises, Shoulders, Arms |

  If you weight train, building bigger, wider shoulders is a must for that Herculean look most men are striving for. The shoulder, or deltoid, muscles are made up of the front, side, and rear attachments, or heads. For total deltoid development you need to do some specific training for each head of the shoulder muscles.

  Many weight trainers start their shoulder workouts off with military presses to the front. This is a great exercise for building the shoulders, but if you’ve been lifting weights for a while and have built some muscle size you may overdevelop your front deltoids as compared to the side and rear delts. Many chest exercises like the bench and incline press involve the front deltoids so you may not need to do as much work on them when you do your actual shoulder workout. Because of this you may want to start your deltoid workout with dumbbell presses. Dumbbell presses will allow you put more of the resistence on the side delts.

  Because of the work your front deltoids get from chest exercises and your rear deltoids get from back exercises you should do more exercises for the side delts when you train your shoulders. Building the side head of the shoulder muscles will help add width to them. Besides dumbbell presses, you can do many variations of side laterals to build wider shoulders. You can do side lateral raises with dumbbells, cables, or machines.

  You should also do a few sets of rear lateral raises for the rear deltoids since they only get some secondary work from back exercises. You want to develop each head of the deltoids as evenly as possible so you may want to avoid doing too much direct work on the front delts if they are overdeveloped during your shoulder workouts. Front lateral raises may not be necessary because of this.

  You can train your trapezius muscles with the shoulders if you want. The best trapezius exercise is the shrug. You can do shrugs with a barbell or dumbbells. To get the most out of heavy shrugs you should use chalk or wrist straps to assist your grip.

  Here’s a sample shoulder workout with most of the focus on the side deltoid heads.

Dumbbell presses: 3-4 sets

Dumbbell side laterals: 2-3 sets

Cable side laterals: 2-3 sets

Rear laterals: 2-3 sets

Shrugs: 3-4 sets

Drop set of your choice to finish with.

  Because the shoulders (besides the side head) are involved in so many upper body exercises it’s easy to overtrain them. A shoulder routine like this should help you avoid overdoing it and decrease the likelihood of injury.