Ep. #167: How to Create the Ultimate Shoulder Workout

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply, because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less.

And that’s what I do in these episodes. Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And I want to talk to you quickly about shoulder training and specifically how to create shoulder workouts that really work. Now if you are a natural weightlifter, your shoulders are going to be sore.

stubborn. Unless you just are a genetic outlier, you’re gonna have to put a lot of work into them to get them to where you want them to be, and especially to keep them proportionate with your biceps and your pecs and getting your shoulders to where they need [00:01:00] to be is going to require that you know how to train them properly, of course, which is we’re going to talk about here.

But before we get to that, let’s talk about First, about a few of the most common mistakes that I see people making in their shoulder training, and one is not doing enough dumbbell or barbell pressing. Instead, most people seem to just do various machines or isolation exercises with dumbbells like side raises or rear raises.

Another common mistake is doing too much work on the anterior, the front deltoids. through pressing or front raises and not giving enough emphasis to the side and rear delts through stuff like side and rear raises. The third most common mistake is using too little weight and just going for too many reps and not following a clear scheme for progression.

So again, what you will commonly see, especially with stuff like side raises and rear raises is you’ll see people using very lightweights doing very high amount of reps. Whatever, 15 or 20 reps. And just stopping at the point, where it gets too uncomfortable or at an [00:02:00] arbitrary, they say, okay, I’m just gonna do 15 reps.

And then you see them a few months later, still using the same weight, doing about the same reps. Then remember that your shoulder muscles are like any other muscle in your body. If you do not progressively overload the, you have three deltoids. If you do not progressively overload them over time, they will not grow.

It’s that simple. Okay. So if that’s how to do it wrong, let’s now talk about how to do it right first, starting with a few principles that you need to apply when training your shoulders. One is you should be focusing on heavy weights and by heavy weights, 70 to 85 percent of your one rep max. So that’s maybe like the 10 to 12 rep range down to maybe the four to six rep range, depending on the exercises that you’re doing and how you’re programming your training.

Another important point is focusing on exercises that allow you to safely progressively overload your shoulders. For example, a few of my personal favorite shoulder exercises that fit this criterion are a few variations of the dumbbell press. So you have the traditional dumbbell press as well as the Arnold dumbbell press.

[00:03:00] The barbell press. So like the overhead press, which you can do seated or standing seated puts a bit more emphasis on the shoulders and standing is a bit more difficult. You’re not gonna be able to use as much weight standing as you will be able to use seated because the standing overhead press is more of a whole body exercise or at least a whole upper body exercise.

And the side and rear lateral raises, which you can do seated or standing. I prefer standing and those exercises are particularly good for developing the middle and rear deltoids, which give you a fuller, more capped look. You won’t be able to get that if you were just to do dumbbell or barbell pressing alone.

And the final principle for good shoulder training is something I just alluded to. And that is doing exercises that focus on each of the individual deltoids as opposed to just doing a bunch of anterior deltoid work, which is again, what most people tend to do.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, [00:04:00] would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay. So let’s put all this together into a simple workout that you can put into use and see how it works for you.

So you can start your workout with the seated or standing barbell press or military press overhead press goes by different names. So what you want to do there is warm up. And if you’re not sure how to warm up properly, head over to muscle for life. com and search warm up two words and you’ll see an article I wrote on it.

So do your warmup and then do three sets of about [00:05:00] four to six reps. So this is heavy. This is 80 to 85 percent of your one rep Mac. Next, I want you to move over to the dumbbells to do side lateral raises. You don’t need to warm up. Your shoulders will be plenty warm from your pressing so you can go right into your working sets.

And there I want you to do three sets again with four to six reps. So that’s 80, 85 percent of your one rep max. And that’s a bit heavier than most people are used to on their side raises. And the reason why I’m recommending that is because I want you to get stronger once you focus on getting stronger.

Now, if you can’t. maintain proper form with four to six reps, then bump that up to six to eight reps or even eight to 10 if you have to, but I wouldn’t recommend going higher than that. And then the next exercise I want you to do is with dumbbells and it is the rear lateral raise. And again, you can do it seated or standing.

I prefer standing, but you can try either way. But the point here is once again, three sets of four to six reps, unless you just can’t maintain proper form, then you can use a bit lighter weight, but don’t go. And lastly, just for your rotator cuffs, I [00:06:00] like to do face pulls as well. So I recommend three sets of about eight to 10 or 10 to 12 reps of face pulls.

And that’s it. Really. That’s all you need to do in the workout. Now, a couple of parameters here for the workout. One is that when I’m talking about rep ranges, what I mean is when you reach the top of the given rep range, that means it’s time to go up in weight. So if you, let’s say you get six reps of your overhead barbell press, then it’s time to add weight to the bar.

You can add five pounds total, two and a half pounds either side, or if you’re feeling particularly Strong, then you can add 10 pounds to the bar, five on either side, and then you work with that weight until you can press it for six reps, move up and so forth. So in this way, over time you are getting stronger.

Also what happens over time is your volume is working up as you’re working up toward that six rep threshold. And then once you reach it, your volume is going down and your intensity is going up. And that’s good for [00:07:00] when we’re talking about programming over a long period of time, that’s what we want to have happen.

We want our volume and our intensity to be undulating. Now the same applies for your raises as well. So if you get six or if you’re working in the six to eight rep range, let’s say on your side raises. So you get eight reps, then it’s time to move up to the next set of heavier dumbbells. So it’s time to move up five pounds in each hand.

And just a quick note here, if you are doing that and you find that when you move up in weight, you can’t get at least the low end of your rep range. So again, let’s say you’re pressing for six reps, you get it one set, you move up and you can get two or three, then go back to the previous weight, work up until you can do two sets of the top of your rep range and then move up and you should be fine.

Another important point here is intra set rest times. A lot of people don’t give themselves enough rest in between sets and that hampers their performance. So what I want you to do is rest about three minutes in between your four to six rep sets and about two [00:08:00] minutes in between your six to eight or eight to 10 rep sets.

Doing that will allow your muscles to fully recoup their strength for maximum effort each set. One final point is you don’t have to take every set to absolute muscle failure, which is the point where you actually get stuck on a rep and you have to just abort it. Instead, you can end your working sets about one to two reps short of failure.

So that’s at the point where. You’re struggling to finish a rep and you’re not quite sure if you can get another. That’s where you can end. Hey there. It is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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