How to Build “Boulder Shoulders” (WARMUP & WORKOUT!)

If you want to build bigger shoulders but don’t have access to a gym and prefer to train at home, then this shoulder workout is going to be key. In fact, in this video, I’m going to show you a routine that can be done with a single weight plate that can be performed as either a warmup routine or a

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. No, I’m not trying to be an a-hole with the title. I’m actually going to show you a warmup – my warmup – that I use for my shoulders that you can use to build a lot of muscle.

We’re going to take a little heavier weight – same exercises – and we’re going to allow this to help us build muscle via metabolic overload. We can drive as much metabolic accumulation as we possibly can by, not just seeking the burn, but then reveling in it, and chasing the burn even more, and not giving us a break as we go through these 12 exercises. It’s called a deltoid dozen, using one, single plate. Let’s rewind a bit first. We’re talking about a warmup.

If you take a 5lb or 10lb plate, if you go through the series of moves I’m going to show you here, you’re going to hit your shoulders in all different planes, hit all heads of the deltoids, and get them feeling nice, and loose before you head out to train. Let’s walk through this first with the lighter weight. You can see here as I start with some pendulums. All we want to do is swing these things. We call them sweepers.

Back and forth. You can see I’m getting a little adduction on the arms, I’m getting nice and loose. The goal is to let the weight let my arms swing. Utilize the weight to your advantage. We progress that here up to a little bit of a transverse plane movement now, and we actually get our hips involved just to let the fluidity take place here.

Don’t lock yourself up. Let the arms swing nice and free. You should feel as if your arms are starting to get nice and loose, just from these first few movements. The next thing you do is lean forward and take that light, light plate – I realize – then you’re going to row it to your belly. What we’re doing here is focusing on getting extension of the arms behind our body.

The extension is going to be one of the easiest ways to start to introduce more mobility to the shoulders, versus having to go straight adduction, or flexion, or overhead extension. Now, from here we’re going to take it a little bit higher. This is almost a horizontal version of a face pull. Here, the elbow travel is straight out to our sides. You almost want to pull the plate apart at the top and get more of a high pull effect, utilizing more of the upper back muscles, and even more of the rear delts to do this.

Now that we’ve loosened up the shoulders and hit those indirect planes, now we can start to go a little more into that troublesome plane, for a lot of people. That is abduction. We can do that here with a pendulum. Here, we’re actually utilizing a little bit of momentum in the swing of the plate, left to right, to ease into abduction. We’re not just hitting the middle delt here.

We’re getting the rear delt as well. Even when we swing to the front we’re getting some of that arm travel across the body, which will get the front delt, too. So, we’re getting some elevation, we’re getting that swing, we’re actually taking it one step further every, single time. Once we’ve done that, let’s challenge a bit more, the external rotation of the shoulders. We’ve got to stand up and do a sword raise.

So, we’re lifting from the bottom left, and then up toward our high right, or vice versa. The goal here is trying to get as high and externally rotated as you can at the top to continue to loosen up that shoulder into abduction, and now with the external rotation combined. So, you’re going to want to do that on both sides. Once we’re standing, another great way we can activate the rotators of the shoulder is to take this plate into the plate halo. We’re trying to circle the plate nice and tight around our head as much as we can, utilizing the muscles of the rotator cuff, and trying to get them nice, and loose, and warm in all planes, in all directions.

Of course, you want to make sure you’re not just taking it in one direction, but going both clock-wise, and counter clock-wise around your head to warm up both shoulders through both internal, and external rotation. With that accomplished, now we can move onto a little bit more of the pressing movements. We’ve warmed up our shoulders, now let’s start with the pressing a little bit. We start with a very easy plate press out. Straight from our upper chest, and straight out, utilizing the front delts to a heavy degree.

But we can actually shift that focus a little more to the side delt, if we push at an oblique angle. After we push and feel nice, and loose in the front, now we’re going to press at the oblique angle. Make sure the arm that stays straight is the side that you’re pushing to. So, if I’m pushing to the right side, that arm goes out as straight as I can, and the left arm is there to support it. Now what we’re doing here with the plate-eight is making this a lot tougher.

Even though it’s a warmup, by this time you can see I’m huffing and puffing here, and I’m sweating. You want to be able to get your arms out there and keep the tension on the shoulders while we continue to mobilize. Now we’re going in this figure eight pattern, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but never relieving the tension because my arms are being held out there the entire time. Now, giving ourselves a bit of a much-needed reprieve here, we go into the overhead trap raise. Which, again, I’ve covered before on this channel.

This is going straight up, but all the way overhead. You can see what we’re doing here is trying to activate and engage the lower traps. Very, very important for the stability of your shoulders. You want to make sure they’re active and alert before you start getting into some of your heavier overhead pressing movements to come in your later workout. Finally, we go here and do our last exercise, which is the bus driver.

I use this one in my workout with Jinder Mahal, if you haven’t seen that one here on our channel. It’s a ball buster, for sure. The idea is, even as a warmup can you continue to drive the bus until your arms are fried. They’re super warm, ready to go, you can do anything now. You’re ready to start your workout.

So, to recap and actually check this out with the heavier weight here, this is where you’re going to build muscle here, guys. I don’t care if you’re using a 45lb plate like I am here, or whether you’re using a 55lb plate, or God help you if you can use a 100lb plate; go to town with it. But I’m going to tell you this: by the time you’re done with all these movements you’re likely not going to be using what you wanted to use when you set out to start this thing. It gets very, very difficult, quickly. But you still do the same movements here.

So, to recap. We have our sweepers here, back and forth. Remember, even with the heavier weight here try to let the weight loosen up the shoulders. Then we go into this transverse plane where we’re swinging the weight side to side. Again, utilizing those hips to help loosen up the shoulders and get your entire body ready for what’s to come.

Now we bend over here. Now with the more challenging weight. Again, very, very light for a row, but we have to start in that same plane. Remember, this is accumulation, guys. Not just looking to fatigue ourselves to dead failure here.

We’re going for an accumulation by the time we’re done with all these reps. You should probably be aiming to do about eight reps of each if you can. We do the low row to the belly, then we bring the plate up higher now, until it’s going up really high on our chest, looking for that reverse face pull action with the plate. Then, of course, we start going into that pendulum. You can see here, a lot more difficult