The Elite Physique

Shoulder Workout Routine

Tips For The Best Shoulder Workout Routine

fit woman with dumbbells doing shoulder workout routine

For a great physique you need a good shoulder workout routine.  Well-built delts give your physique balance and proportion by giving your upper body width, making your waist look smaller. Creating well-developed shoulders can be intimidating. But, there is no reason you cannot build powerful shoulders to improve your total physique.  Let’s look at some of the factors that go into building great shoulders.

Muscle Fibers

A shoulder workout routine for size and strength can be rather difficult and many lifters give up way too soon in their attempt. The shoulders consist of a lot of muscle fibers, roughly 60% slow-twitch fibers. With this in mind, be certain to focus on endurance shoulder exercises in the early months of your shoulder development.  As you advance your training, advance your anaerobic intensity.  Be careful not to do more exercises, reps, and sets.  That will cause your shoulder growth to stall.  Again, focus on progressive overload and anaerobic intensity.

How to Start Your Shoulder Workout

To build head-turning shoulders, start your shoulder workout routine with a compound exercise. Michael Matthews at MuscleforLife.com tells us, “One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about lifting and building muscle naturally is the more you emphasize compound movements and heavy lifting (80 to 85% of 1RM and higher), the better your results.”

A shoulder compound exercise is any over-head pressing movement involving a barbell, dumbbells, a machine, or cables. Overhead presses work all of the heads of the shoulder at the same time.

Front Delts

To give front shoulder growth, toss in front raises. Front raises can be done with a barbell, dumbbells, a plate, or cables. You can add detail to this movement with a dumbbell with a hammer grip, where your thumbs are pointing up.

Another fabulous front shoulder exercise is the Arnold Press. The Arnold Press allows a broad range of motion, allowing maximum strength other deltoid exercises don’t offer.  This is a great way to add beefy front delts.

Rear Delts

Working your posterior delts is crucial, as well. To add muscle size and strength to the back of your shoulders, do rear deltoid rows. To do this movement, merely grasp a barbell with a pronated grip. Be sure your arms are a bit wider than shoulder-width, however avoid over-exaggeration. Pull the bar toward your collar bone and contract the shoulder blades together. When you release, make sure to get the full stretch at the bottom of the movement.

Another posterior deltoid movement a lot of people do is bentover lateral raises, which are very effective. With this exercise, bend over with a dumbbell in each hand, lifting each one from your side and contract the shoulder blades together. If you want to jazz things up and genuinely bring those posterior shoulder muscles into action, try rotating your hand grip on the dumbbells. Rather than having a pronated grip, use a palms facing up grip. You can really notice the effects with this small hand rotation.

Cap Your Shoulders

To give your shoulders a nice cap, add in some lateral raises. Lateral dumbbell raises advance your shoulder proportion and help tailor your upper body.  When doing lat raises don’t use extremely heavy weight.  This is a delicate exercise and can cause injury if you lift too heavy.

Here’s The REAL Shoulder Workout Routinered arrow pointing down

When it comes to a shoulder training, you need to put 100% focus and dedication into your workout.  Start each shoulder training on Monday when you are well-rested and fresh.  Start with a compound exercise and work down to isolation exercises.  Pace yourself and don’t overtrain.  Overtraining is so easy to do, so don’t fall victim.  Now, see below for some of my BEST secret training routines for big shoulders.

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You can have the most INTENSE and ADVANCED shoulder workout routines ever by implementing the concepts suggested in "Killer Shoulders".  This EXTREME shoulder training program shows you exactly how to weight train to build amazing delts in record time. Learn more about how to create Jaw-Dropping Shoulders...

>> Click Here for the Killer Shoulders Program

Karen Sessions NSCA-CPT

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My name is Karen Sessions and I am a life-time natural female bodybuilder, multi-certified fitness instructor, author, specialist in performance nutrition, and a success coach. I've been in the fitness industry since 1988! I teach people Just Like You how to transform their bodies, get in shape, build muscle, lose fat and compete in Bodybuilding, Physique, and Figure Competitions. When you have the CORRECT information you can have total confidence and turn your dreams into reality... and I can help transform YOUR body. I have helped THOUSANDS of clients reach their goals and I can help you, too. Be sure to grab my free gift above so you can start moving toward your goal.

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