The 10 “Commandments” of Shoulder Training (THOU SHALT NOT!!)

If you want to build bigger shoulders there are definitely some things that you are going to have to do, and other mistakes you will have to avoid in your shoulder training. In this video, I’m going to give you the 10 “commandments” of shoulder training to help you not only build more muscle in you

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Today we’re going to cover the 10 commandments of shoulder training. 10 things that you shalt, and shalt not do if you’re looking to develop your biggest, and healthiest shoulders.

So without further ado, let’s get right into the commandments. First up: MALE VOICE: Thou Shalt Not Skip Rear Delts. JEFF: Like the man said “Thou shalt not skip rear delts”. Now guys, the rear delt is one of the three heads of the deltoid. Why do we forget to do it?

It’s just as important as the front, and middle delt, and in terms of complete shoulder development you need to do it. So you can see me doing it here. Great exercises for the rear delt. Like the face pull, or the exercise I covered in a recent video where we emphasized the key point of hitting the rear delt is making sure that you get that extension of the elbow back, behind the body. It’s not doing reverse flys that get you to the level of the body, but somehow, some exercise, some way that puts that elbow back, behind the body.

Regardless of what exercise you choose, don’t forget to do it. MALE VOICE: Thou Shalt Not Just Do Rear Delts on Shoulder Day. JEFF: The beauty about the rear delt is, even if you have been ignoring it in your training, you don’t have to just relegate it to shoulder day. You can actually add additional volume for the rear delt if you remember to do it on back day because you can easily incorporate rear delt work into back training, by simply positioning your elbows differently. If, on the last set of a lat pull down, you have yet to do any rear delt work this week, or you want to add additional volume; just lift those elbows up a little bit, lean back, and get them to travel back, behind your body instead of straight down, or on a one-armed dumbbell row.

Instead of allowing the dumbbell to stay nice, and tight to your body – which is great if you’re trying to work your lats – you can get the rear delts some additional work just by letting your elbow drift away from your body a little bit, and pulling up. As you can see, the rear delt gets a lot of that additional work. Or maybe even with a high boy row here, instead of doing a row to your belly button, the high boy row – with lighter weight – allows you to pull up, and back, and work on those rear delts to make sure they’re getting the work they need throughout the course of your training week. MALE VOICE: Thou Shalt Not Perform the “Behind the Neck” Press. JEFF: You heard the man, and I’ve said it myself many times on this channel.

Ditch the ‘behind the neck’ press. Especially because you have so many better options and what you’re doing by doing the exercise is forcing your anatomy into a position it doesn’t want to press from. If we don’t believe me, or him; you’ve got to believe him. This is our Raymond skeleton and you can look at the direction of this joint. This shoulder joint angles forward about 30 degrees.

It does not face straight at you, and therefore, you should not be pressing with my elbow pointed straight at you, doing ‘behind the neck’ pressing. . What you need to do is, you need to obey what your anatomy is trying to tell you, and get your elbow in front of your body a little bit. This is the natural position for the arm, and this is the more natural position to press from. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing the exercises and not getting problems, or having problems with it.

Ultimately, you’re fighting your own anatomy. Fix that by doing what I’m going to tell you next. MALE VOICE: Thou Shalt Not Skip Overhead Presses. JEFF: There is no reason to have to abandon overhead pressing just because you can’t press from behind the neck. There are so many other ways to load up the exercise, to train your shoulders heavy, but to do it out of a safer position.

If I were to sit down and use dumbbells, and do a classic Arnold press, I could do that. Especially if you look at the position of the elbows in that exercise. Arnold was onto something. The elbows are positioned in that scapular plane, about 30 degrees away from that midline. You can see, when I press, they stay there.

As Jessie walks around to the side of me, my elbows are in the forward position, allowing me to press more safely. The same thing could be said if I were to go grab a barbell. The key here is, you grab a more narrow grip on the barbell because by grabbing more narrow you bring your elbows from this outside position, to more of an inside position. So now when I press you can see that the elbows are going to be more in front of your body in that preferred plane. Next, we could do something even more athletic.

You might not have access to this, but if you’ve ever seen it in your gym and shied away because you didn’t know what to do with it; the jammer press is a great way to explosively train your shoulders, and to load up the weight. But here again, look what it’s doing with the position of the elbow. It’s getting you in front of your body. So whomever said “You can’t do behind the neck presses, so you shouldn’t press” is getting it wrong. You need to press.

Finally, if you want one more option I love the landmine setup for pressing from. Not only can I train one arm at a time here, but I can eccentrically load my entire core, and be explosive on my press. There are a lot of different options, but the key is: find one, load it up, and use it. Don’t abandon all overhead pressing just because we’ve told you to forget the ‘behind the neck’ pressing. MALE VOICE: Thou Shalt Not Forget to Include Light Weight.

JEFF: Just like the old saying ‘what goes up, must come down’, what gets heavy should also get light at some point. Especially when we’re training our shoulders. If you want to get maximum development of your shoulders it’s not always necessary to go so heavy. Especially if you want to direct the load specifically to the delts. A lot of times when we press we get a lot of extra help from our legs, or our triceps, or muscles around the area that are helping.

And that’s a good thing to developing overall strength, but when you want to go for that ultimate hypertrophy of a muscle, you’re ultimately going to want to be able to isolate, and target that muscle with as much tension as you can. The side lateral raise done in one-and-a-half rep style allows you to get command of the weights. And yes, they’re going to be a lot lighter than you’re used to, but you’re going to feel the impact of this immediately. Do the rep, come down halfway, and go back up again. There’s no more momentum swinging these weights around.

That is all contraction of the delt, and whatever strength you have in that delt that is responsible for getting that weight back up. And doing just a few sets of these is going to have a great impact, ultimately, on how much bigger your shoulders can become because maybe for the first time ever they’re feeling the actual brunt of the load that you’ve been handing off to other muscles in the first place. Make sure you’re including some light weights with your heavier training if you want maximum development. MALE VOICE: Thou Shalt Honor the Eccentric. .

JEFF: This one answers one of the more common questions. That is: how come my shoulders never seem to get sore after I train them? Probably because you’re never putting them in an eccentrically overloaded position, or delivering tension to that muscle when it’s stretched because the exercises we do for shoulders don’t really ever take us into a stretched position. Unless, that is, we plan for it. We can do that and we can take advantage of one of the three main stimulants for