Build Big Shoulders with Bands (NO WEIGHTS!)

If you want to build big shoulders with bands and did not think it was possible, then this is the video for you. Here, I’m going to show you the best ways to build bigger shoulders using just resistance bands and no weights. In times of gym closures and an increase in the number of people doing home

I used to work out a lot with weights and the  check comes doing your joints start to hurt this, back, knees, it just happens. Sometimes  getting into that kind of shape can kill you. There’s fantastic trainers like Jeff Cavaliere on  Athlete-X, his videos are amazing. But at my age, I found the hardest, toughest, most productive  way is bands, training with bands.

Yeah, bands are great and all and this  Jeff Cavaliere fellow, he’s a great guy, but what about Jesse Laico at Atheleanx. com,  he’s the real star of the show. I can’t disagree with the thing you just said. What’s up guy’s Jeff Cavaliere, Atheleanx. com.

You  see, I’ve always been a Stallone guy and Arnold, you just gave me more validation as to why. But  the fact is, we’re talking about bands today, guys that’s we can all agree on and you can  actually build muscle using just bands. I’m continuing the series and today we’re talking  all about shoulders. What can you do to hit the middle, front and rear delt, as a matter  of fact, you hit the whole shoulder together? These are the exercises that you want to focus  on.

Let’s start break them down one by one. So, when it comes to building bigger shoulders,  we’re going to start here with the big exercises. You know, the ones that hit all three heads  at once. And you can’t start without talking about the overhead press. You see, there’s a  challenge, though, when it comes to overhead pressing with bands.

Usually, you’re either using  something that provides good amount of tension, but you just can’t stretch it far enough  when it comes all the way from the ground, or you opt for something lighter and it just  doesn’t provide enough overload to cause growth. So instead, you do this, and this is the line  one arm press. And what this does is it fixes the band length problem because I can start with  a bent leg and I can match my strength levels to provide just the amount of tension that’s going  to create the overload necessary for growth. Of course, as I get stronger, I can  creep my foot down further and further, increasing the length of travel and stretch  of the band. I could also do something really unique here, I don’t have to just settle for  the concentric overload.

I could actually introduce an eccentric overload as well. Once  the band is fully extended up over my head, I push my foot down and try to control the descent  of the hand back down to shoulder level. Now, let’s say I want to do something different. I  don’t want to go for a tension overload, I want to introduce a metabolic overload to my pressing. Well, I could do this, this is the push press pull apart.

And here I could actually focus  a little bit more on increasing the time that I’m under tension at the top of the press. So when I press up overhead with two hands, now I actually get a chance to stay there, pull  the band apart at the top, and then, of course, pull it back together, creating an abduction  resistance that’s making it harder for me to actually get my arms fully extended and my  hands close together up over my head. When you’re looking to get a little bit  more explosive with the overhead pressing, the kneeling up and over’s is the way to go  and see. What you do is you anchor the band underneath your knees and then you put your hands  in this pressure position so the band is not bending your wrist back and you get to this  tall, kneeling position and you simply drive this band up overhead as fast and hard as you  possibly can. Speed matters here.

We’re looking for power. We want to introduce a different  stimulus here for those delts. This is going to definitely hit the front and middle delt, the  rear delt not as much, but don’t worry guys we’re going to be hitting those in just a minute. And with our three overall shoulder exercises down, now it’s time to start working around from  head to head to head. And we’re going to start right here in the front with the front raise  pull apart.

You see, this is looking like a traditional front dumbbell raise, except we’re  doing it with bands. But when we get to the top, we could do something to introduce some new  stresses here and prolong the time that we have to spend in this miserable top position  on the front delt raise. And this is where we just simply pull the bands apart. And by doing  that, yeah, we’re going to shift a little bit that load to the middle and rear delt, but most  importantly, what we’re doing is prolonging the time under tension that we have at that top,  most difficult position of the front raise. If you really want to put a unique stress on the  front delts, then you’re going to want to do this.

And this is the stretch front raise. The band  should be anchored behind you in such a way that it actually pulls your arm back into extension,  which is going to apply a good stretch on the belt before every single repetition is performed. It’s  the act of this stretching of the front delt that gives you the stretch reflex necessary to create  a more powerful contraction. So, what I like to do is not just drive my arm up in front of me, but  then control the descent in the eccentric all the way back down. You can literally see the fibers  resisting this on every single repetition.

Working our way around now to the middle delt. You  know, you’re going to have to do some side lateral raises here. And you can actually do these better  than maybe you can with some dumbbells if you know how to apply tension the right way. What I like  to do, number one is not anchor the band under the same side foot that I’m lifting my arm up on,  but on the opposite side. Because what it does is it gives me a little bit more range of motion  in which I can actually apply the resistance of the band.

And then I also want to make sure that  I grab this thing the right way, because whether I grab a dumbbell or I grab a band with an overhang  grip, I’m actually going to be at the mercy of any kind of weakness I might have my wrist or any pain  I might have my forearm in terms of performing this with peak tension at the top of the rep. What I could do instead with the band is simply grab it this way, anchor it around the back  of my hand and then just focus on lifting up the entire arm. It’s not so much focused on  what’s happening directly at the wrist. Now, let’s say you have some of those issues at  your wrist or forearm and you still want to take advantage of the gains you can have by doing  these lateral raises, you can do the short arc version of this. And that’s when you take a band  of much heavier resistance anchor it around your arms like you see me doing here, double up around  the elbows and then you simply drive your elbows out away from your body into abduction at the  shoulder as much as you possibly can.

The fact is, with the arm decreased from the long arc version  here, you’re going to have to introduce a heavier band in order to have the resistance that you’re  looking for, to create the muscle overload. And now, of course, there’s one other thing  we can do, and this is my favorite variation for growing your shoulders with bands, and it’s  called the cross body lateral raise. And you can see right off the bat, one great advantage  here, similar to the stretch front raise, is on getting a stretch on the mid delt. Something  that almost never happens in almost any variation of a lateral raise, even when done with dumbbells. You want to get this band across your body to get that pre stretch and then forcibly drive your  arm up and across your body into abduction.

You can see the tension that’s placed on the  middle delt here at the peak contractio