5 tips for massive, healthy shoulders
Paul had a problem. His body had already been battered by years in the ring and now this: an injury while he was shooting a movie. The doctor said what Paul already knew. He had to go under the knife.
Was his career over? Was his comeback doomed?
After the operation, Paul got in touch with me because he knew I had experience with top athletes. My job was not to make Paul's shoulders look massive, but to help him get his shoulders feeling good again.
Massive, strong shoulders need to be healthy if they are to stay as they are. If my methods worked for Paul, aka wrestler Triple H, then they will probably work for you too.
The shoulders time bomb
The shoulders are the most mobile, most frequently injured and most frequently dysfunctional joint in the human body.
If you are an athlete or train like one, your shoulders are a ticking time bomb. I rarely deal with athletes from high impact sports from MMA to field hockey who have healthy shoulders when they first come to see me.
Rotator cuff tears, AC joint issues, biceps tendon tears that affect the shoulders...and more. When these well-paid athletes come to me, I refuse to contribute to this damage by having them do the wrong exercises.
This is probably why some trainers recommend not training the shoulders directly at all. I'm not that conservative. I prefer a more balanced approach where I leave no stone unturned when it comes to training the body for elite performance.
In addition to this, there is the psychological aspect of shoulder training. Even my NFL athletes like to look good. This gives them a psychological advantage. That's why we don't leave out the direct shoulder training. We just use a very specific way to do it.
5 tips for shoulder training:
1. skip the shoulder press!
When you think of shoulder training, you probably first think of shoulder presses with a barbell. Well, pull yourself together. I mothballed heavy shoulder presses years ago and removed this exercise from 99% of my athletes' programs. I've seen big improvements in shoulder health and strength since I ditched heavy shoulder presses.
Only one in 50 athletes can perform overhead shoulder presses without risk, but these are the genetic misfits who have more leeway here than most of us. And even with these athletes, we'll only be working with two-week cycles of shoulder presses with light to moderate weights, Bradford Presses and Strongman Log Presses with a neutral grip.
In your mind's eye, remove the skin from the shoulders so you can see the internal anatomy.
When you press overhead, you are essentially driving the head of the humerus into the acromion and causing impingement. Repeated use of this exercise can easily lead to a tear of the muscles and tendons involved.
It is quite simply a high risk exercise for athletes and bodybuilders who rely on this exercise.
2. powerlifter bench press, bodybuilder back
Another way to solve the shoulder problem? Bench press like a powerlifter and train your back like a bodybuilder.
The bench press is all about maximum weight and explosive power. We use the powerlifter form of exercise execution: the shoulder blades are pressed together, the chest is up and the bar is slightly lower on the chest.
The upper back is always trained with twice the volume of our pressing muscles. We use a bodybuilding form and technique, moderate weights, a super strict form of exercise execution and more isometric holding at the top of the movements. We use a lot of variations instead of lat pulldowns (which mainly train biceps and forearms anyway) - movements that really contract the shoulder blades.
Do exactly what I've described. Mothball the shoulder press, change the form of the bench press and train your upper back like a bodybuilder - and after a few weeks your broken shoulders will start to feel strong and rejuvenated.
3. the shoulder shocker
After we've eliminated most overhead pressing and solved existing problems, we start to incorporate some work for the lateral shoulder muscle heads like side lift variation into our workouts. We don't do any direct training for the anterior shoulder muscle heads apart from what I call the "shoulder shocker".
The shoulder shocker trains the anterior, lateral and posterior shoulder muscle heads, as well as the external rotators with a non-stop exercise. This is an exercise where you get a lot out of it for your efforts. My guys don't have time to devote 20 minutes to this for their shoulder workout. But if they do two or three rounds of the shoulder shocker, they train everything they need to within 3 to 5 minutes.
The Shoulder Shocker is also very safe as you don't need to use heavy weights to train your shoulders sufficiently. Great for the muscles, very little strain on the joints. The whole thing works as follows:
- When: Perform this workout after your regular chest and back workout
- Breaks: none between exercises
- Repetitions: 8 to 12 per exercise
- Sets: 2 to 3 in total
- Front lift with a weight plate weighing 10 or 20 kilos
- Sitting side raises with light dumbbells weighing 9 to 12 kilos
- Seated deadlifts and presses with strict form using the same dumbbells. This means shoulder pulls, an external rotation and pressing through the top half of the range of motion. (Google "Seated Clean and Press" if you need videos on how to perform the exercise).
4 Triple H Proven
I used these guidelines with WWE wrestler Triple H. He had trained like a bodybuilder for years with a lot of overhead pressing and this eventually caught up with him. But after just a few months, he couldn't believe how much better his shoulders felt.
During a training session, he told me that his shoulders were just as good as when he was maltreating them with heavy pressing, only now they were pain-free. He had been using the shoulder shocker for the previous 4 months.
The fact is that your muscles do not grow optimally when you are in pain. Pain generates the release of a number of hormones such as cortisol and this is not good for progress in the weight room. Eliminate what causes pain and your results will improve significantly. The method I've described will do just that.
5. 100 pull-aparts per day
Perform 100 pull-aparts with bands per day. This is especially good for those who work at a computer all day long. This is one of my top recommendations for overall shoulder health.
Keep the tension low. You should not pull too hard. You can do the 100 reps in the form of 4 sets of 25 reps throughout the day, or you can do all 100 reps at once. It doesn't matter. You can also change the grip and angle to suit you.
I've been doing this for a year and a half now and my shoulders have never been healthier. I can practically guarantee you that this program will fix most common shoulder problems.
Always remember that your shoulders need to be healthy and stay healthy if you want to build massive, functional shoulders. The Shoulder Shocker, Pull-Aparts with bands, and the methods I've outlined above are the tools you can use to accomplish this.
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/shoulder-shocker
By Joe DeFranco