Bodybuilding shoulder training

[TitanWIP]

It seems to me that shoulders are often an after thought for bodybuilders. Hear me out. Everyone does the same routine. One pressing movement, and then a battery of front, side and lateral raises. The shoulders more then any exercise seem to get under-trained, or at least aren't given much thought. It's almost all isolation work.

I want to hear how you would approach building shoulder mass if isolations movements and laterals were out of the question. I don't want to debate the effectiveness of isolation mvoements. I just want to see how you would approach gaining shoulder mass if you couldn't do isolation exercises.

I hope by bringing this topic up that I can learn and we can expand some horizons and built some bigger delts.

[glwanabe]

Titan,

I'll get back to you with my opinion on this. I'm at work, and way busy.

[BendtheBar]

I think this is a good topic.

Primarily, I believe you should focus on benching and overhead pressing movements, including incline presses, for front delts. For side delts, I like overhead presses, upright rows, and deadlifts.

Rear delts...I never work directly. I really don't see the point of doing a reverse flye when rowing movements do so much more.

[glwanabe]

I've come to regard shoulder training as needing a higher priority than chest work. Your shoulders are a complex joint and need careful attention, as well as being strong to support other heavy work. Bench, deads, rows, dips, chins, front squatting, all of these moves hit the delts in some fashion.

There's several ways to employ pressing movements. BHN pressing, Standing pressing from the front, partial reps at the top. You could do a pretty decent job of even development with, bench, rows, and standing, or BHN presses. I don't think you need lots of iso work. Infact, I think it's worse in the long run, due to so much assistance work from other moves.

Upright rows. I like them, but as I, and others have said there is a way to do them. I do them to hit my medial delts. Wide grip, and only pull the chest, not the chin. I use them as a way to buld width and define that area. I'm not doing them at this time however.

I don't do heavy rear lateral work, but I do some very light work. I use about and 8lb dumbell just to get the area warmed up. Bent rows hit them pretty hard.

I've done a little bit of partial reps with the bar overhead, and then lowering to about the top of my head, then push it back up. This hits the Medial delt, and tri's nicely. I read about this from Bill Pearl.

Like everything I do lately, it's about keeping it simple.

[Grim83]

i rarely do iso work for my shoulders, mainly i just hit them with the over head press, and to a smaller degree they get worked during power cleans, occasionally i will include upright rows to bring out the medial head more, but thats it