More upper body width and thickness are what many lifters strive for. The size of the shoulder muscles, also known as the deltoids (or delts for short), is going to play a big part in this. The delts are made up of three heads – front, side, and rear. It takes a variety of exercises to hit all the shoulder heads, but once they are developed your upper body will appear much larger.
Isolating the side shoulders is going to lead to more width for the classic v-taper look. Building the front and rear delts are going to increase the thickness of the upper body and help your strength in major chest and back exercises.
The shoulders are involved in just about any upper body exercise. Because of this, they are a very important muscle to train hard without overdoing it. I only do a handful of exercises during my shoulder workouts. These workouts target the front and side deltoids and I save rear deltoid training for my back workouts. There are three main workouts I like to follow when training my shoulders.
Shoulder Workout #1
Standing Barbell Push Press
This can be considered a total upper body exercise with most of the focus laying on the shoulders. At the starting position, give the knees a little bend and straighten them to get the barbell going upward. The upper chest will be involved as well but the shoulders will be doing most of the work once the weight gets to a certain point. This “controlled cheating” will enable you to lift more. I go for 3 straight sets after warming up with 2 minutes of rest between each one. Decrease the weight by about 10% on each set to get more reps.
Seated Machine One-Arm Press
Many gyms will have a machine that allows you to press with one arm at a time. Start by repping out with one arm before going to the other arm. Without resting, repeat this so each arm gets 3 back to back sets as part of a superset. To keep everything balanced, start with your weaker arm. Even if you can get more reps with your stronger arm, always do the same amount as you did with the weaker one.
Machine Side Laterals
This is a great exercise to finish off your shoulders with a drop set on. I like to do high reps and decrease the weight twice for this superset. Make sure to pause at the top of each rep to really feel it in the side delts. I also like to grab the cable machine where I can and lean away from it. This will give you a bigger range of motion, and hopefully more strength and size.
Shoulder Workout #2
Seated Barbell Presses
The seated version of this exercise will allow for more weight to be lifted than the standing version. I go for 3 straight sets starting with my heaviest weight for low reps, after warming up of course. Decrease the weight by 10 to 20% on each of the following 2 sets to more reps. I again like to rest for 2 minutes between sets here.
One or Two-Handed Landmine Presses
I like to switch up which version of this exercise I do each time it lands in my shoulder workout. Go to a barbell corner row bar and get the very end of it to your shoulder or upper chest. You then push it up using the upper pecs and front deltoid muscles. Take some short breaks if you do the two-handed version or go back to back between left and right arms if you do the one-handed version.
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.
Shoulder Workout #3
Standing Behind The Neck Presses
Ok, this is one that you may have heard not to do because of the strain it can put on your shoulder muscles. I didn’t do this exercise for many years either, just recently trying them again. Honestly, I find that I rather like this exercise. It really comes down to shoulder flexibility and how you feel when it comes to the safety of behind-the-neck presses.
When I do standing behind-the-neck presses, I will bend my knees a bit to create a little momentum to get the weight overhead. By little I mean little too, as I’m not trying to do something that could cause an injury. Also, as the weight is lowered it should be done very slowly. It’s about feeling the muscles work after all, and I feel going too heavy can make this an unsafe exercise.
In this exercise, I don’t go for a lot of weight. My heaviest set will have me going for 8 to 10 reps. Then I’ll decrease the weight and increase the reps on my subsequent sets with a minute and a half to two minutes of rest between each one.
Seated Dumbbell Presses
To get the most out of this exercise, set a bench one or two notches from a straight up and down position. This way you can hit the front and side delts with more weight. I like to 3 straight sets starting with my heaviest one after warming up. I then follow with one medium and one light set with 2 minutes of rest between each.
Standing Side Dumbbell Lateral Raises
This is a drop set that I like to start with rather high reps and weight as heavy as possible. In the first part of the set, I will use a little extra momentum to get the dumbbells up before lowering them slowly. After decreasing the weight to keep the set going, I’ll be way more strict. With a couple of weight decreases, your side delts should be on fire.
How I Set Up My Shoulder Workouts
I keep it simple when it comes to my shoulder workouts and do them after training chest. This makes sense as the shoulders are involved in chest exercises. This is particularly true when it comes to the front heads of the shoulders. For this reason, I don’t do isolation exercises for the front deltoids.
