Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

If I could give you one tip for your shoulder workout that would improve the results you see on every shoulder exercise you do, this would be it. I’m calling this one the shoulder workout “master tip” for good reason. In this video, you will see how you can instantly fix one thing about every shoulders exercise you do that will increase the results you see from doing the exercises.

It starts with a quick test. Stand up and raise your arms out to your sides to shoulder level. When there, take a look at yourself in the mirror and see if you did what I am showing you not to do; shrug your shoulder. You can test by reaching across and grabbing the upper trap on the opposite side. Did you notice that it is very tense? If so, you likely used a great deal of upper trap activation to lift your arm and minimized the contribution of the deltoid. This is a big mistake if you are trying to get your delts to grow.

The upper traps are overactive in virtually every single person, mostly because of the postures that we find ourselves in every single day. We are either sitting at a desk hunched over or texting on our phone, both of which tend to cause us to inadvertently shrug. The traps can get a bit tight and tend to jump into action every time we go to execute a chest exercise where we are pushing a lot of weight.

We can’t allow this to happen. Not only is this not wanted but it is actually getting in the way of a complete and isolated contraction of the delts. For best results and strength of contraction in your delts you want to be able to get your shoulder girdle depressed not elevated. The lower traps are the primary muscles responsible for depressing the shoulder blades prior to executing reps on your shoulder exercises. When depressing your shoulders during a shoulder exercise you immediately feel the intensity of the contraction increase in your deltoids without the substitution that occurs commonly in the upper traps.

This can be applied to every single shoulder exercise you do, which again is why this is called the master tip. Prior to performing a shoulder press for example, you want to depress the shoulders when in the 90 degree position at the start of the exercise and then proceed into the press. Doing this, you ensure that you aren’t cheating the weights up but using the contraction of the deltoids to drive the weights up. For even more of a contraction, think of pulling your biceps in towards your ears rather than just pressing the weights overhead. This should make the deltoids contract even harder and perhaps the hardest you’ve ever experienced in a shoulder exercise.

The next exercise you can do this on is side delt raises. Before you fix this, you may want to actually just check your traps. Likely they are going to automatically shrug because of the overactivity. Correct it the same way by activating the lower traps and pulling your shoulders down. From here, reach your arm out and away from your body to lift the weight without letting the traps kick back in and shrug the weight up. You will actually be able to see the difference in the contraction if you try this with and without the attention of keeping the shoulders down.

Finally, you can do this on the other shoulder raises as well. The rear delt raise and the front delt raises present the same challenge. Before simply lifting the weights up be sure to actively depress the shoudlers and then lift the weight. Remember in the case of the rear delt raise you aren’t pressing down towards the floor but back and down towards your butt because of the altered position of your body during the exercise.

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