Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Deltoids

 
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My favorite muscle(s) to train, I love nice, big round deltoids! Many try to achieve this and few do. The reason? They don't train all heads of the deltoid.

You have the anterior (front), medial (side) and posterior (back) heads that all need to be trained to achieve this nice round look.

The seated dumbbell press will work all heads, but this is not enough to get that round cap. The Arnold press is fantastic and should be included as part of your routine, this will work the anterior and medial heads.

For the anterior (front) you can do:

Front dumbbell raise
Plate raises
Front barbell press
Upright rows
Incline dumbbell and barbell press
Incline dumbbell flye

For the medial (side) you can do:

Side dumbbell lateral raise (starting DB from your side not in front)
Cable lateral raise (raising arm from the side not across the front)

For the posterior (back) you can do:

Bent over lateral raise
Bent over cable lateral raise
Bent over barbell row
Incline bench lateral raise (face down)
Reverse peck deck flye (this is a machine)
Lying side lateral

There are many others, this is only a short list to give you an idea. To properly train shoulders you need to devote time, and many reps of different exercises.

Remember that these are small muscles and can be injured easily. Once you injure your rotator cuff, it can be extremely difficult to ever heal it. This is not the time to try to impress those around you with your strength. Training shoulders twice a week may even be too much for some, so take it easy and never train them more than twice a week, no matter how tempted you are to rush it.

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