Shoulders

[ironWarrior417]

Hey guys, love hearing stuff from you guys, especially your articles on shoulder training. Right now, I'm lagging a bit in my shoulders, but I'm working to fix that. That little bit between the middle head and the rear is my weakest point right now...seemingly nonexistant. My routine usually looks like this, with a little bit of mixing up.

Behind the head overhead press - 4 sets, not including warmups
Arnold press - 3 working sets

Rear Laterals - 4 sets, ascending weights
One armed rear laterals - 2 sets to failure

Seated laterals - 4 sets, warmups
supersetted w/
Front barbell raises - 4 sets, warmups

Shrugs, 4 sets
Behind the back shrugs - 4 sets

Am I hitting all the angles that I need to to work all three heads of the delt? I've been trying to mix up angles and stuff, but then my rotator feels fucked up the day after training. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[TheNaturalG]

Hey guys, love hearing stuff from you guys, especially your articles on shoulder training. Right now, I'm lagging a bit in my shoulders, but I'm working to fix that. That little bit between the middle head and the rear is my weakest point right now...seemingly nonexistant. My routine usually looks like this, with a little bit of mixing up.

Behind the head overhead press - 4 sets, not including warmups
Arnold press - 3 working sets

Rear Laterals - 4 sets, ascending weights
One armed rear laterals - 2 sets to failure

Seated laterals - 4 sets, warmups
supersetted w/
Front barbell raises - 4 sets, warmups

Shrugs, 4 sets
Behind the back shrugs - 4 sets

Am I hitting all the angles that I need to to work all three heads of the delt? I've been trying to mix up angles and stuff, but then my rotator feels fucked up the day after training. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
From the looks of your routine you have alot of sets and it looks like you are trying to be obssevie compulsive by hitting your muscle by every angle. If you do all Compound exercises like Seated Military Press, Military Press, Seated Dumbbell Press, etc. and get as strong as you possibly can on those your entire shoulders will grow. Unless you are at a more advanced stage where you are trying to focus on a certain area of your muscle for proportion I really would not worry to much about different angles and stick to the compounds.

[ironWarrior417]

From the looks of your routine you have alot of sets and it looks like you are trying to be obssevie compulsive by hitting your muscle by every angle. If you do all Compound exercises like Seated Military Press, Military Press, Seated Dumbbell Press, etc. and get as strong as you possibly can on those your entire shoulders will grow. Unless you are at a more advanced stage where you are trying to focus on a certain area of your muscle for proportion I really would not worry to much about different angles and stick to the compounds.

Believe it or not, you ain't the first person to tell me that I was being OCD. Thanks for the insight, though, bro!

[MELTDOWN]

The pain, the agony, the fire burning in your shoulders....

http://www.animalpak.com/html/article_details.cfm?section=training&ID=138

freaking results soon to follow.

[BONE]

More than likely the reason you feel the problems in you rotator cuff could be that either your form is not that good ( I will assume it is good though), or it is from the fact that yes you are hitting your delts from every single angle you can think of. However, your front delts are probably stronger than your rear delts because you are doing to many sets for the front delts when compared to your rear delts. This is leading to a muscular imbalance which will lead to the rotator cuff problems.

Maybe, cut out the front raises when you do two pressing movements and also know that it is a known fact that behind-the-neck presses will leads to more problems in the rotator cuff than any other exercise especially if you are using a heavy weight for low reps.

[ironWarrior417]

More than likely the reason you feel the problems in you rotator cuff could be that either your form is not that good ( I will assume it is good though), or it is from the fact that yes you are hitting your delts from every single angle you can think of. However, your front delts are probably stronger than your rear delts because you are doing to many sets for the front delts when compared to your rear delts. This is leading to a muscular imbalance which will lead to the rotator cuff problems.

Maybe, cut out the front raises when you do two pressing movements and also know that it is a known fact that behind-the-neck presses will leads to more problems in the rotator cuff than any other exercise especially if you are using a heavy weight for low reps.

Believe it or not, my rotator problems come from playing baseball in high school. I have/had a lot of injuries to overcome from playing right through them during the spring seasons.

Here's the fucked up part though, Bone, is that when I do a side-tricep pose, my rear delt sticks out like it's a fucking growth (it's not, just solid muscle.) And I put front raises on that workout, but chances of me getting to them are slim, since I usually toss up supper before them. Thanks, bro!

[Mr.Totality]

You might want to cut all of that into two different routines. Personally, I do a heavier day for shoulders than a different routine all together that uses lighter weights/higher rep exercises.

Examples:
Heavy day:
Seated press (8 sets)
Seated behind the neck press (4 sets)
Arnold presses (4 sets)
behind the neck barbell shrugs (4 sets)

Lighter day:
Side laterals(4 sets)
front laterals (4 sets)
rear laterals (4 sets)
upright rows (4 sets)
dumbell shrugs (4 sets)

On the heavy day, go consistently as heavy as you can for as many reps as you can. To quote the great Ronnie Coleman "the muscles cant count the reps".

Hope that helps

[BigNate]

I pound my delts. High volume, drop sets, super sets. They love it! Here's a sample of what I do:

Smith machine press using half back bench
4 sets not including warm ups
reps:
12-15
8-10
6-8
4-6 then drop set for 10-20

DB Front Raises
3 sets
reps:
10-12
10-12
6-10 then drop set for 8-12

Machine press or Arnold press
3 sets
reps:
10-15
8-12
8-12

Seated Side Lats
3 sets
reps:
10-15
10-12
10-12

Rope pulls for rear
3 sets
reps:
10-15
10-12
8-12

Shrugs (light weight)
3 sets
reps:
10-15
10-15
10-15

I know that's 19 sets and a lot of reps, but that's how my delts respond well. Make 'em pump so hard you want to scream.

[king1]

I generally just do my pressing (dumbell, seated military, smith press, clean press) as hard as possible, get 4 sets of dumbell, cable or machine laterals in with a drop set possibly, and 3 or 4 more for the rear. THen i hit traps for 4 sets. My shoulders are my best bodypart from that kind of training.

But is it unnecessary for a beginner to hit all 3 heads???

[IntensityJT]

try adding front raises in there

[Wolf Man CHG]

I got a good exercise I just added to my arsenal and it works great.....

Behind the back Cable side laterals.......set the cable at the very bottom...take the grip behind your back and bring it straight up...keeping your arm slightly bent to keep pressure on the shoulder...

this adds an extra stretch in relation to doing it in front of you

good luck

[T.Alan]

I see that the majority of the advice is based upon higher volume training. As we're all different our bodies adapt to stimulus accordingly. I respond well using moderate volume and pyramiding my sets.

Here's the approach I recently took to add more width to my shoulders.

Lateral Raises
Stretch, then a solid warm up set - whatever it takes for you to get warm
25lbs x 12
30lbs x 10
35lbs to failure

I keep perfect form throughout all sets, but consider failure to be when I reach partials.

Smith Machine Militaries
warm up with 135
155 x 14
170 x 12
185 x 10
200 to failure

Lateral raises
I try to mimic the pulling motion from a power clean and pause at the top for a second.

110 x 10
120 x 10
130 x 10

Rear Delt Laterals - face down on an incline bench
10lbs x 25
15lbs x 20
17.5lbs x 20
20lbs to failure

^The weight should not be top priority on these. If you can't feel your rear delt pumping and burning go lighter til you can.

Worked well for me.

[Good-Riddance]

for me I only use 2 pressing execersises, HEAVY dumbell's, and standing behind the neck military's, if I do more pressing then that, it dont seem as affective, I then follow that up with.

4sets of side lat's
4sets of front lat's
4sets of reverse incline bench flyes

then I do heavy dumbell or heavy bb shrugs, and behind the back smith machine shrugs

that usually wrap's up my shoulder & trap workout