Shoulder Workouts
The shoulders are involved in just about any upper body exercise so they are a very important muscle to train hard. They also add to the aesthetic appearance of the physique. Wider shoulders are one of the top priorities when most of are looking to improve our body shape. While you need intense training for the shoulders, you also don’t want to overdo it. I keep my shoulder training short and sweet by using some specific high intensity techniques. Here are a couple of my favorite shoulder workouts.
Seated Barbell Presses – 3 sets starting with my heaviest weight for low reps, after warming up of course. Decrease the weight and complete more reps on subsequent sets.
One Arm Landmine Presses – This can be done while standing or kneeling. Go to failure using one arm, then switch to the other. Go back and forth like this 3 or4 times with a drop in weight for the final round.
Cable Side Laterals – I do these one arm at a time back to back, dropping the weight each round to keep the reps up. You can usually grab near the cable to lean towards the direction you are raising the weight. I feel this focuses the resistance on the side shoulders better.
My other favorite shoulder workout is focused on dumbbell training. This enables me to get other great exercises in without doing them all during one workout.
Very Inclined Seated Dumbbell Presses – These are great for hitting the front delts. I like to 3 straights starting with my heaviest one post warm up. I then follow with one medium and one light set.
Seated or Standing Arnold Presses – I do one set of this old school classic with 10 second rests done after failure a couple of times.
Standing Side Dumbbell Lateral Raises – This is a drop set that I like to start with rather high reps. This makes for a ton of reps and a deep burn as you go down the rack.