Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 340: How to Build Amazing Shoulders
Episode Date: August 4, 2016Whether you are a man or woman, well developed and defined shoulders will take your look and confidence to the next level. In this episode Sal, Adam and Justin discuss how to build and improve the fun...ction of your shoulders. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic and the Butt Builder Blueprint (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get your Kimera Koffee, Mind Pump's first official sponsor, at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Why you guys staring at my chest?
I care.
I have to say, this is probably the best you've ever looked.
Really?
Yeah.
You look extremely trash.
It's the shirt.
I love that shirt.
It's the mind pump.
What do we call this?
This is like breaking back.
It's like out to me.
It's the periodic table.
It fits you perfect.
It's so perfect for your shirt.
It's a nice looking shirt.
Nurtie Sal.
It's very sciencey.
It has his own shirt now. It's the mind pump shirt with the elements
on a rock science. It kind of looks a little bit like the breaking bad thing.
I love it. A little bit like that. I love it. You can find it at mindpumpmedia.com. It's
the new mind pump. I don't know what we're going to call it.
Sousher, out of the shirt. Evil genius. Yeah, out of me shirt. There you go.
Out of me shirt. If you're on the forum, it's 50% off.
50% off for forum members only.
That's right.
Everybody else, you still get a good price on it.
Sure, just went live.
It's up on the website, mindpumpmedia.com, go get it.
If you want to pump your body and expand your mind,
there's only one place to go.
Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts.
Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.
I feel like somebody comes in our studio
and uses my microphone when I hear.
Here's your microphone?
I find out who that motherfucker is,
dude, I'm gonna get his ass.
This time it was me.
Yeah, because every time I, I feel like
I have to read and choose everything.
Do you?
I don't tell them, that's the thing.
I catch you guys finding my mic.
My nuts, I use my mic.
We, what we do is we, we want to get my mic. We do is we use your mic as a buffer.
You're gonna get a rhinestone.
Are we ready?
Are we ready for a custom mic?
I said we are.
Listen, me and Phil are going full time.
I want custom mic.
Well, you're probably gonna want the castle.
Because me and Justin use your mic as a buffer
when we scissor.
We do.
Each other.
We need something to help.
Just like a little cheese grater. Each other. We need something to help. Just like a stimulate.
Take a little cheese grater.
Face, disgusting.
Adam's been here before.
Oh, absolutely disgusting.
Let's see if he notices.
Yeah.
Remember last time Adam got on the mic,
he was like, my mic smells familiar.
What's that?
I know what that is.
What is that?
I smelled that before.
It smells like cheese.
It smells like cheese.
Oh, it's kind of like,
yeah, it's kind of cheesy with like a rotten salmon.
It's, it's speculated in a normal kind of like,
you know, that paste.
You know, the first one, you used to, like, you know,
eat as a kid.
What?
Did you eat paste with your kid?
Yeah.
Every kid did.
I never ate my play-doh.
I never ate paste.
Bullshit.
I swarm, I ate dog food.
What is wrong with you?
But I never ate paste. You ate dog food? I ate dog food. Yeah, that's weird. I ate a paste bullshit. I swarm. I ate dog food. What is wrong with you? But I never a paid dog food. I ate dog food. Yeah, that's weird. You never tried a milk bone. You know, you're okay
See I guess that counts on so there you go. You never tried dog food. No man. It all tastes the same
Yeah, it's like the word it's weird thing about dog food is it's like the worst like leftovers ever
I thought they kind of brought up now a dog food is what is it kind of horses?
Horses. Yeah, no. Yeah, they serve them horse meat. Now what dog food is? What is it? They kind of horses. Horses?
Yeah.
No.
Yeah.
They serve them horse meat.
Yeah, I think so.
That'd be more.
I think they used to.
Yeah, they did.
So here's the thing.
I was thinking about the sea of the day.
I don't have a dog, but I've had dogs in the past.
We always talk about healthy eating and eat whole food.
You know, whole natural food.
Dog food is super processed food.
And dogs live on that shit.
I know.
Like that's all they eat.
It'd be like having a kid.
It won't live long.
It'd be like having a kid and giving them cereal.
Like, I for a day.
I know.
My boys are on that.
It's terrible.
They're on a 50-50 diet.
50-50 diet?
What's that?
Meat and carbs.
That's out there.
No, they're half raw and half dog food.
What's the raw?
Chicken or fish or whatever I have.
So you actually cooked them food
and put it in the dog food?
Well, no, I don't cook them.
I buy it like that.
You can buy it.
You can buy raw dog food like that.
That's just, it's frozen raw.
Not defrost it and feed it to them.
And plus the dog food.
And you mix it with the dog food
or like half sometimes, or whatever.
You have one and one.
So you have one meal as I do is just dog food.
And actually that dog for that I buy actually has frozen chunks of raw food and also and
then I give them raw.
So I'm probably a little more like 60, 40.
How much would you, how much would you estimate your dog food bill cost?
Why do you got to get into that stuff?
I don't know.
I'm just asked.
They're expensive dogs.
You don't want to talk about it.
Yeah, I rather not because I don't want to hear you go like, oh my god.
I can't believe you spend that much on them.
I'm ridiculous.
It's your dog.
Oh, it's your dog.
If you're going to spend money on it,
jammed up.
Well, we call it we call Mazi the 10k dog.
Oh, okay.
Because he's 10k just in surgeries alone.
Uh, so yeah, if it's your, come on, you love them.
That's different.
It's not like when you spend like $1,000 on your
poster minus shoes.
You know, so yeah, now they, um, I don't know. Honestly, my issues, you know, so yeah, no, they, I don't know, honestly,
kind of so bad, right? I don't, I don't calculate, I guess we could
sit here and figure it out, you know, they go through, they go through a bag,
probably every two weeks and the bags, you know, $100 bag of dog food.
So, well, that's not bad. Yeah, it's not like, that's nothing. I wish
my grocery bills that much. Yeah, yeah, that's the dog grocery bills. So my grocery bills a that much. Yeah, that's the dog grocery bills.
So my grocery bills a little much. Yeah, you eat a lot more. And I actually people think I'm weird,
but I actually feed my dogs according to their activity level. I feed in the same way I would feed.
Why wouldn't you? I do the same thing. And we talked about very few people do that. And people aren't
like restrictive with it. No, like the bulls empty. We got to keep filling the ball. Yeah, exactly.
They just, or they read the back of it.
It says, okay, I don't know.
75 pound dog, they get four cups and they just give them four.
I'm like, wait a second.
How does that?
That doesn't make sense.
If your dog's not active.
Yeah, they went out.
You took them on the beach running for a day versus the day.
It was my team.
Yeah, there's a total different.
I hate to say this though, but fat dogs are adorable.
Well, you know what I mean?
There's something very cute. Very cuddly. Yeah though, but fat dogs are adorable. You know what I mean? There's something very cute.
Very cuddly.
Yeah.
I love fat dogs.
It's bad.
It's horrible.
I like that.
Horrible to say that.
Well, you can say that about people too.
Fat people are cute.
They are.
Uh-huh.
Fat people are cute too.
Yeah.
They're a snuggler up to you.
But you know what I mean?
Like you get you like a, like a ween,
I saw a weenerdog once and he looked like his legs,
his belly was almost too big for his legs to touch the floor.
It was the cutest thing I ever seen in my life.
See, I see that. I did very do that. Huh, I think I think sad
I see that I go you're killing your dog
You know, he probably live with you for another year struggling his panties sad, but it's adorable too
It's like a adorable sad. It's adorable and sad. It's both. Yeah, it's mixed emotions
I think I think the future I really do believe I mean look at we in our time just our generation
Look how people are with their animals now then what right? I mean when I was a kid you didn't even pick up dog shit
Like that was just dog shit's dog shit, right?
Doggy back doggy back and picking up dog shit didn't happen
I mean you picked up shit in your yard if you're dog. It's like fertilizers. Why don't you just leave it?
Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying like you would normally leave it
But now we with now it's like, oh my heaven,
I'm sorry.
And now you can't even take a dog on like a regular trail
because it's gonna disturb the natural, you know,
whatever forest animal situation you got going on there.
No way.
I swear to God, like there's so many beautiful trails
in Santa Cruz and you can't even take a dog with you.
Are you kidding me?
It's gonna disturb the raccoons and the f***ing squirrels and all squirrels. So what happens if a human like what happens when you take a piss
off? Exactly. What's the difference? Yeah. I'm on a leash. Yeah. That's I didn't know
that it's it is silly. Silly hippie nonsense. I am so bummed I couldn't get those shoes
that you send me a picture. Oh, I tried really hard. The Nintendo one. I'm bummed too.
I knew you'd like this. Oh, right away. I saw I mean, I'm like, Oh, this is Adam. Where
did you see him?
This place old school shoes and sand crews. It's called old school shoes. Oh, well, just go back there. Here. Do you want? Yeah, I win anyway. They didn't have his size. Oh shit. They didn't have a size nine
I look like a size nine
Pretty big feet
I look like a size 90 feet.
Pretty big feet. It's true.
Little baby feats.
No, they did not have my size.
And I don't, you know what?
I love when you find, I get paris sneakers like that
because you won't ever see it on anybody else's feet.
You won't see this.
No, yeah.
That's what makes you.
You got to be the right person to rock those.
Those are sick.
Are they all custom?
They're Mario brothers.
Yeah.
But they were cool. They're loud
But I mean who but so Nintendo made them I wasn't the place that no no no vans their vans
Yeah, but you remember the print yeah the van vans did the whole contract with Nintendo right?
Do can we talk about Pokemon go no do we have to I don't want to because I feel like everybody eight eight billion dollars
Yeah, yeah, I'm just straight to, because Google's the one that created it.
Nintendo stock went fucking through the rules.
Yeah, they teamed up.
Well, because you know what actually brought that to market was,
like initially, Google was playing around with their maps
and they put a little bit of augmented reality spin to it
and people lost their shit.
And so it's like, they got all this like feedback
and market research because they're Google
and they were like, oh shit, we guess we should make
an app out of this and then boom,
it just took off in overnight, you know.
That doesn't happen with anything.
Did you guys see the video, the Central Park video?
Apparently there was like a rare Pokemon
that appeared in Central Park.
Yeah, and they rushed to the show.
Bro, it was it was fucking pandemonium.
Yes. Like people are running over each other trying to get over.
It's sad. It's a sad state of affairs when you look at what what people go fucking crazy
over. And then there's crazy shit going on.
Nobody can care less about it.
Let's be honest. It goes to show you that everybody has their own flavor. Right? Like this
is something that motivates a different type of a person.
Oh, you mean to exercise?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
So there's part of that for me.
And I, well, that's why I'm for it.
Yeah.
I'm like, cool.
It's getting people off their ass, but I mean, it really is like the most
introductory steps possible.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, I mean, you and I, for sure, this is close to home.
Yeah, exactly.
We've been in the app world now for a couple of years now,
and I remember when we were developing ours,
we were going like, you know, gamifying fitness,
but making it so simple that a three year old could do it.
And the objective is just to get them to move more, right?
To get them to move more to exercise
and find a created way to do it.
I mean, they had a whole fucking home run.
They did it.
It was brilliant.
This kit, on Friday, right?
We go out to dinner, Katrina and I are, you know, the, we're a downtown Campbell, we're
eating outside, beautiful night.
It's like six or seven o'clock at night, maybe a little later.
And everybody is packed and Campbell on Friday night like that.
There's this kid.
He's walking down the strip and he's got a sign, big white sign, and it's like three Pokemon logos and he's selling t-shirts.
And he's like selling to people that are sitting at dinner, eating outside in Campbell,
and he's walking up a down shirt, get your Pokemon team shirt, get your Pokemon team
shirts and like 12 or 16 bucks, I don't remember.
So I see him and that struck up, we meet a couple right next to us who just happened to like, we all kind of chuckled when
he went by, right?
And we're like, this crazy.
And they were 40 something year old.
They're like 42 years old.
And we start talking about the whole crave and that was conversation for dinner.
Well, then we're walking.
Like after Katrina and I, and then we eat downtown Campbell.
It's kind of our tradition.
We eat there.
And then we walk the strip for, you know, half hour, whatever kind of walk after dinner.
And we run into the kid.
And I have to stop him and talk him.
I'm just curious.
Oh, does he look?
He looks like he's probably 20.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
22 at the oldest, maybe as young as 19,
somewhere in that range, and full of energy.
And I stop him and say, hey, man, come here.
I was like, what are you selling?
I'm like, oh, I'm selling teachers, man.
Some teachers you want one?
And I'm like, no, I don't even know that.
I've never even seen the game.
I just know, oh, he's like, oh, let me show you.
So he pulls his app up and he shows me the whole game
and how it works and the whole concept.
And I'm like, man, I'm really fascinated with what you're doing,
though, I think that's pretty crazy
that this just came out and you're already hustling.
I'm sure he's like, oh, yeah, oh, no, definitely, dude.
He goes, well, my full-time job, he's like,
talking about his full-time job, he wraps cars and I've hit that. And then he's like, yeah, but this shirt, I'm like, it's pretty
smart, dude.
Did you get this kid's name and number?
Yeah, I actually did.
Of course.
Of course.
This is the kind of kids you want to stop them.
You want to hire.
I would.
This kid made two grand this week.
Doing that, hustling Pokemon.
She that's that when I used to manage gyms, that would be the kid that I would recruit
to frickin sell membership 100% his person out person out he was he was so not afraid or intimidated
to talk to me. He was like shared his shared all his information. He was all
excited. I was like, this is cool kid. So we connected on Facebook. We linked
up. So I have all his info. So yeah, I but I thought that was pretty. No, he's on it.
Like he saw opportunity and he's on Angle and he took it man. So I like that. I
love when I see people like especially young young 20 year old
Kid like that see seen an opportunity like that getting out there on a Friday night when most other his peers are probably out drinking and
Party on the same strip mother fucker out there. You know, we're he's gonna be in 15. Why Pokemon? Why not Zelda?
Well, let's think about this. Let's hate from a business perspective. Think about this.
At this right now, what is happening?
If you, Pokemon was the generation right below us,
so we really didn't do Pokemon.
Pokemon, well, yeah, we weren't into it.
It was in a round.
Yeah, it was a generation, but that generation
is 25 to 30 years old now.
Yeah.
They all have, most of them at a college have careers,
they have jobs, they have money, yeah, super into their phones.
Yeah, but look what else they're selling.
Is it Nintendo selling the original NES again, but smaller and preloaded with like
a hundred thousand?
Oh, you bet your ass on buying that.
Because their original players were us and now we're in our 30s and everybody.
And what's, what's a hundred thousand?
Yeah, what's a hundred two hundred, but I already bought it.
I bought it like five years ago.
I read the same thing.
I bought all the old Nintendo stuff
I have the whole game set up and all a bunch of games. So yeah
We'll dig it out sold mine to my best friend like when I moved to college, you know, it's like no
Cuz it like he has a that's when that's when you were
That's when playing video games took real skill and I'll tell you that I know I just passed everybody out
But I'll tell you why yeah, because when you turn that shit off, you're gay, there's no saving that shit. Game was over, start over next time.
Unless you wrote down the code like for Metroid.
No, let me tell you right now, gaming now,
compared to what it was then,
is like crazy, another level.
That's actually what made me fall off of game.
I was a little gamer all the way up
until I was close to 30 years old.
And part of it just got so overwhelming for me
that if you were not like a daily gamer,
you couldn't keep up because you had your skill set. You had to practice that much or
you would get murdered by these little 12 year olds online. And I just didn't have
the time anymore. I was like, this sucks. I can't even be a weekend warrior. I can't
even just like pick up my big games. We're all about, it was like physics based. So,
you know, you really had to like, yeah, the time when you push the button,
it was reflex driven.
It wasn't like, what like it is now.
Now it's like this immersive fucking like movie experience
in high definition.
You're like, whoa, seriously?
My shit is rumbling.
If you don't, if you don't know much about football
and you like wanna learn football,
like how the game is played, like getting maddened for
it learned.
Because you have to understand schemes.
You have to know the defense comes out and you don't just like know what buttons to push.
You need to be like, you can't love it.
You can actually lob it so you go over the defender, like you would in the game as instead
of just throwing a direct pass.
And you need to know what they're at there.
Are they sitting in a zone?
Are they mad?
Yeah. Yeah, like you have to know, you have to know how to do that and it like teaches you need to know what they're at there. Are they sitting in a zone? Are they in the man? Yeah, like you have to know how to do that
and it like teaches you how to,
it's crazy.
Wow.
What are you guys talking about?
I zoned out there for a second.
Did you guys, you were speaking to kids earlier,
did you see the video that I posted on the forum of the,
she's gotta be three, the three year old.
The Persian girl.
The little girl?
No, it's a boy, it's a boy.
Oh boy, so it's a little boy?
Yeah, yeah. Three years old. I think he's three, three or four, I mean that. The little girl? That's a boy, it's a boy. So it's a little boy.
Yeah, yeah.
Three years old.
I think he's three, three or four,
I mean, that's my best guess.
He's three.
This is barely, it's barely three.
Okay, so people don't realize this,
but there's geniuses in different types of intelligence.
Okay.
When we think of a child genius,
we think of a child that does science real well
or maybe music,
but there's also the kinesthetic,
you know, body mechanic type geniuses,
and this little three year old.
A rat, A rat, so A-R-A-T, A rat, period,
Jim is the Instagram name.
This little kid can do the most ridiculous,
like body manipulation, jumps, back flips,
climbs the wall like a monkey.
I mean, just his strength in his coordination
and proprioception is like, it's off the chart.
A genius law.
It's very obvious that his dad or.
Oh, sure, he's trained.
Oh, yeah.
I don't care, man.
Like, you know, like Mozart was a freaking child,
genius, like you could train me.
Oh, yeah, no, you're right.
Just just to get the kid to even want to try or do that is.
But the ability to have the brain that can allow that kind of adaptation to understand
where his body is in space and know how to manipulate and turn it and twist it and jump
and crazy.
And then the strength, the strength this little kid has.
Yeah, super fascinating.
Yeah, I would be interested to see what this kid looks like in like three, four more years.
Oh, yeah, little muscle.
You know, you know, you haven't looked at martial artists.
Did you ever look up the kid?
Um, the little kid Hercules or what else?
Yes.
Yeah.
I don't know what he's up to now.
Somebody told me that he's just in steroids in his milk.
No, somebody told me he's like just like a normal plane Jane.
Somebody was accusing the dad though of giving him, uh, giving him the voice.
That's what I heard.
There was stuff like that, but I don't think that was true.
I think, you know, here's a thing.
Well, trusted flakes.
You're, people need to realize that every once in a while
there's an anomaly is born and they're born
with some ridiculous abilities, whether it be,
you know, intelligence or something like that,
you know, or physical or whatever,
it's just, they're born that way and it's just crazy.
And if they, and then if they have the aptitude and the, and the ambition, then
forget it. They're going the next level. So, yeah. I wanted to talk, we, we've run a couple
episodes now on particular body parts and had to train them properly. We talked about,
what do we air, Doug? We aired abs. We talked about abs. We talked about glutes.
Um, first two, and, uh, you know, I want to talk about,utes. That's an ass, those are the first two. And abs and ass.
You know, I wanna talk about, you know, Adam,
you brought this up, you wanna cover shoulders.
Yeah, the one reason why I feel like I wanna
dress shoulders, I've just recently,
I've gotten a lot of people, in fact,
right before I came over here, I was stopped
and somebody was asking me an issue with their shoulder,
clicking and making noises when they're exercising
or noticing like a dull pain.
So I think shoulders are a really good one to address for sure.
It's a complex area for movement and capacity for movement as far as that goes.
Right. I would say if you're looking at the kinds of issues that are going to come up with
consistent long-term resistance training, you know, whether, you know,
imbalances in chronic pain, shoulders got to be one of the top.
I know shoulders and hips, man, one and two.
It's got to be back, you know, like low back,
I know my low back hurts and then the other ones shoulder
or lack of shoulder mobility.
But before we even get into that, I think from an aesthetic
point of view, for men and for women,
shoulders probably are near the top.
Oh, anytime I take on a client,
and especially if you hire me for aesthetic purpose,
you like, I wanna look a certain way
and we're trying to like shape their physique,
posture and shoulders are like my go-to like secret move.
It really is.
Like I look at somebody and I'm like,
I'm gonna address their posture, I'm going to address their posture.
I'm going to build their shoulders and it's going to bring their whole body together.
Like watch the, watch the confidence. Oh, yeah. Immediately. Yeah. Just by getting them upright,
getting them in a neutral position and and teaching them how to build their shoulders,
seriously brings the whole body out. It really does. Well, it's strength. I mean, moving, pushing,
pulling, anything. If you're addressing your shoulder joint as an entire unit and optimizing its capacity,
like, well, everything will benefit. I think when, you know, when women will complement
other women, this is one thing, this is something I know it's a long time ago, women will,
will bring me a picture or will complement another woman and say, oh, she's got great
arms. She's got great arms. I like her arms.
It's not the arms that are standing out.
It's the shoulder.
When it comes to women, yeah, exactly.
When it comes to women, you know, if you get really nicely developed delts and you're relatively
lean, the whole arm, the whole arm takes on a new look.
Well, I think I have talked about this on the podcast before.
This has been for me. I was always known for my arms.
And that's just because when I was a kid,
that's all I fucking trained was bicep tricep,
bicep tricep every single day, right?
So I've developed these larger arms
in comparison to my other body parts.
Well, when I got into competing and symmetry is important
and not having big ass arms, you know,
you have to be symmetrical.
I laid off of them and I started to really, really put a lot
of emphasis on my shoulders.
It was amazing.
Right now, I get the most compliments I've ever had on my arms
and my arms are smaller than they have been in 10 years.
It's because your delts probably.
It's because of my delts.
And it just brings out the definition
because it separates, it separates.
If you build a really good deltoy,
it separates out from the buy and try it and it really. If you build a really good deltoid, it separates out
from the buy and try it and it really makes them look great.
It's amazing.
Well, it's funny now that we're talking about this way.
I think we can kind of break up this conversation.
We're going to have on shoulders into two main categories.
There's the aesthetic conversation
and then we'll have the functional conversation,
which by the way, the functional mobility side of it
is going to contribute very greatly to the...
Oh, they said they go hand in hand.
They go hand in hand.
But the reason why I want to start with aesthetics
is because from a, when you look at a shoulder,
what makes it look impressive is the balance of it.
It's not necessarily even the size of it.
It's the balance of the shoulder
and does it look round, especially from the side side because there's a lot of shoulders out there
You see that are very well developed in the front and they're they lack the rear deltoid and so they don't have that round look
And I know a lot of people a lot of bodybuilders in particular who focus a lot on the lateral head of the shoulder to side head
But it's really the rear delt that they should work on. That's the one from an aesthetic point of view,
that's the one most underdeveloped part of the shoulder
that I see that causes, you know,
that's giving people shoulders that don't look around
is they don't have rear delts or good rear delts.
Well, and I would argue that a good majority of that
has to do with the lack of mobility and the-
It's not activating.
Yeah, they're not activating.
They're in a protractive position. Yep. They're in a protractive position.
Yep, they're in a protractive position.
So when they do exercise like seated row,
or even when they do like rear laterals,
or do things that can't be if I just said rear laterals,
because of this full of food.
Food.
Food.
Come on man.
I just said it.
My legs, my legs are calm.
Yeah.
I, I caught it right away when I said,
I just fucking said that this guy.
So what do you guys, you're re-re-fly.
Re-re-fly.
So like when you're doing rear flies for the rear delts, you know, some people are having
a hard time activating, you know, or if they're doing a C2 row or any other movement that
they're trying to engage their rear delts, it's like, like Justin said, they're just dormant.
So, you know, this is where, you know, realigning and really working on mobility
and that posture plays a huge role
in how they're gonna look.
And addressing that is really gonna help the posture.
You know, it's gonna pull everything back
and build that, that bracing stability
around the joint that, you know,
you're really not gonna have that kind of support
if you're not addressing your rear delts and it's something really important.
Yeah, when I, you know, when I was...
What are you explaining to? Why don't you break up the shoulder that, you know, it's three primary parts to it and...
Yeah, the anterior head, you have the lateral head and then the posterior head, which is, you know, basically three heads to the shoulder.
The one on the back, the one on the side, and one on the front.
You know, when I was a kid,
I forgot, I would read religiously Flex Magazine
and Muscle of Fitness, and there was an article,
and I don't remember the bodybuilder who wrote it,
but he basically said, to look good on stage,
you need to work your rear delts a lot,
and that's the one body part that,
that's the one part he showed us
to make your shoulders round.
So I used to start every workout with a rear fly,
or a rear lateral as I like to call them.
And as a result, I think over the years,
my shoulders are probably one of my better body parts,
but it's my rear delts that really stand out quite a bit.
And it's because I started every single workout
with a focus or an emphasis on that,
or at least I always included it.
The thing is too, when you look at people's shoulder routines, they rarely will include
something for the posture ahead of the deltoids.
That's interesting, because intuitively, before I would do a heavy shoulder day, I would
make sure to really activate my rear delts.
I would do like pull apart, so I would do a cable crossover.
Something I'm really like emphasizing the fact
that, you know, I want to make sure that this is going to be
involved when I go into, you know, powering out a heavy weight
over my head.
Yeah.
What go ahead?
Well, I just want to keep going on what he's saying right
there because that is such a major, major point.
It's something that I do always.
I anytime before I do chest or shoulders.
Chest, yeah.
100% I'm either one starting with a very light, like rear fly, or I'm doing band pull-aparts,
or I'm doing some sort of a mobility drill. That's really going to activate my rear delts,
my rhombads, my traps, get them all activated so I can engage and keep myself in
a retractive position when I'm going to do a press of any kind.
Otherwise, I notice this now more than I ever noticed.
When I do a bench press, if I get right under and do it and even having good mechanics
and knowing form, if I just get under a bench press and I start benching and I start increasing
weight, increasing weight,
increasing weight, as soon as I start to get up there
with a bit of challenging weight,
I can feel the stress in my shoulders.
If I make sure that I do band pull-up parts
or I'll even do like speed rows with just the bar.
So I'll go over like a chest, right, over a bench.
I'll grab just the 45 pound bar and I'll do speed rows
and really concentrate on just exploding back,
squeezing the shoulder blades together
and do like three sets of that to get that firing
and activated, then I get under the bench,
night and day difference.
Night and day.
Yeah, just by activating the opposed inside.
Yeah, because it just gets you, it gets you realigned,
right before you get yourself in a position.
Or even a little bit like the power lifters
do in the excessive arch, you know, going into that bench.
And I'll flirt with that a little bit,
but I've found sort of a hybrid to that
where I feel nice and comfortable with my shoulders
as retracted as possible.
But like when I'm actually benching,
it immediately feel like the dispersion of the force.
So it's not like just stopping right there on my shoulders.
So one thing you wanna consider also what the deltoids is,
if you just look at the isolated function of the deltoid
It's really about moving the humorous the upper arm
And for example the posterior head of the deltoid the rear shoulder attaches at the scapula
So really if we were just to work the posterior deltoid it's actually a pretty small movement
But the shoulder itself when we're working the shoulder very rarely, does it operate at
this frozen position where just the humerus moving?
The scapula plays a huge role in shoulder movements, whether I'm doing an overhead press,
even a side lateral, even a rear fly, even a front raise.
The scapula is quite involved.
It's not sitting frozen in position.
It's either stabilizing or it's moving,
and allowing the humorous to move through the socket
in a particular way, and the joint socket.
So when you're examining the shoulder
and how to move it properly, really what you really want
to look at is, how do I get my scapula
to move properly within movements? For example, in overhead press,
you want the scapula to be able to sit down in the shoulder girdle and pull back a little bit
and give you a nice tight, stable structure. They call that the shoulder girdle such a compress overhead.
If I try to press overhead, but I don't work with my scapula,
if I freeze my scapula in position, I'm not going to go up very far.
My range of motion is going to be severely limited.
This is very common when you see a guy, especially you see him, the big buff dudes
sitting at the 90 degree bench doing a seated barbell press.
And what do they look like?
He's pausing at 90 degrees and then he's pressing up.
He's looking up at the bar.
Elbows are super out.
I was taught this way.
I was taught the flared out elbows,
come down at 90 degrees, look up at the bar.
I remember teaching that, you know, saying as you press
and it's like so opposite and so bad.
And it's horrible for the shoulders.
If you look, if you examine the structure of the shoulder
and by the way, we're comparing good form to good form.
Okay, so bad form is worse than either one of them done well. In other shoulder, and by the way, we're comparing good form to good form.
This bad form is worse than either one of them done well.
In other words, if I go down, my elbow's bent to 90 degrees,
and I'm pretty stable.
That's better than doing good form,
or good positioning with shitty form.
So we're comparing good to good, apples to apples.
If you look at the position of the humerus of the arm,
and I'm coming down at 90 degrees,
the action of my shoulder,
and my stabilization, the way I'm stabilizing at 90 degrees. The action of my shoulder and my stabilization,
the way I'm stabilizing is literally jamming my arm
into my shoulder socket in order to press it up.
That flared out position,
the reason why you have to stop at 90 degrees
is you go any lower and you're causing impingement,
you're causing issues at the shoulder joint.
Really when you're doing a full shoulder press,
a proper full shoulder press, it is a full movement.
I'm coming down below my chin, down to my upper chest,
my elbows end up tucking at the bottom.
And as I press, they may flare out a little bit
as I'm pressing up, and then when I press up,
my arms, my humerus is either next to my head
or even slightly behind my head.
And the best position that you can look
at Olympic lifters, at like really good Olympic lifters
at the top of a press, and you'll see what I'm talking about
They're straight as a line and their head is maybe even slightly forward from their arms versus really really tight
You know bodybuilders who work on the gym they press above their head elbows bent and 90 degrees and they're arching back and looking up
It's almost like a high incline chest press with the way a lot of these guys press
Yeah, in fact I way a lot of these guys press.
In fact, I've seen some of these guys
set the bench to have a slight incline
so they can do their press.
And Hammer Strength has a machine like that.
Have you seen the front press,
so the military press one, not the behind the neck one,
but the, it's designed almost like.
Well, it's exactly what you're describing.
Exactly.
What they're doing in promoting
is the skill set based off of the exercises they're
doing. So the capacity for range of motion, they're pre-setting by the frequency of the movement
patterns they're doing in a sense. And so, like Olympic lifters, if you're shoulder, you're
really doing yourself a disservice if you aren't going through that full range of motion
and you're locking out at that capacity,
but you're supported because you've done all the work
to drive the force down and you're packing
the shoulder properly.
So what's interesting, so for years, that's what I did.
Like what Adam was talking about,
I would press down to 90 degrees, I'd do it seated,
elbows out, like we were taught whatever.
And very rarely would I come up to a full lockout
at the top where everything feels tight and strong.
And then when I would go do other movements,
I would take a yoga class I'd get into Downward Dog,
and I would just get fatigued as hell in my shoulders
because I wasn't used to stabilizing myself
in this straight position.
Meanwhile, I'm looking at all these dudes and ladies
in the yoga studio and their rest is downward dog.
They could sit in this fully extended position
and just chill.
That's how they rest.
And I'm like, how can you rest like that?
Why are my shoulders so tight?
I know I'm stronger.
So fast forward, you know, training using kettlebells
for my shoulder presses, which by the way,
if you do military presses or standing shoulder presses,
which is, it's like the bench
press for the shoulder or the deadlift for the shoulders or upper body. It's a fundamental
exercise. If you're doing that with a barbell, I highly recommend you learn how to do a kettlebell
press, one arm kettlebell press as well, because it will really teach you how to maintain tall,
locked out posture and give a rotate your hand as you come down.
Yeah, it allows your shoulder to move
in its natural power.
It encourages it.
And in order to press the kettlebell properly,
you have to have that.
So everything we've talked about so far
is in the sagittal plane and in the frontal plane.
So let's talk about the transverse plane
and let's talk about rotation of the shoulders.
This is a whole nother dimension
that the shoulder brings in movement capacity
with internal external rotation.
Yeah, you're talking about now the stabilizers
of the shoulder, and if we get,
so we're talking about, okay, you have good scapular mobility.
That comes from proper overhead pressing.
That comes from proper one arm overhead pressing.
It comes from doing mobility drills
like shoulder dislocates with a stick.
For example, that's a good movement.
But now Justin is talking about strengthening the things that stabilize the humorous of
the upper arm, the internal external rotators.
So when people tear their rotator cuff, when you hear that all the time, like I tore my
rotator cuff, what they really mean is that is they tore either the infraspinatus or the supraspinatus
right off of the cuff or the edge or the rim of the shoulder blade.
And the reason why they tore it was this little tiny stabilizer muscle was not strong enough
to keep up with the pecs and the lats and all the strong force.
Too much force on the stabilizer.
And so if you're a heavy lifter and you train consistently
with weights with the big movements,
if you neglect doing some direct work on those muscles,
your shoulders will lose stability over time
and you can cause problems.
I, this happened to me years ago.
Again, I used to be able to throw a ball pretty far.
Baseball, snow ball, a football, whatever. I used to have a good arm when I was a kid. Even though, don't look like to throw a ball pretty far. Baseball, snowball, football, whatever.
He's had a good arm when I was a kid.
Don't act like you threw a ball.
I did throw a ball, though.
I wasn't sports, but I actually had a good arm.
Snowball.
Snowball.
Yeah.
I can hit it.
What did they say in Star Wars?
I can hit it something off the...
What?
I don't remember.
Anyway, so...
I'm dear, you throw a random Star Wars thing at me. I don't even know Anyway, so. I'm dearly through a random. I think the horrors thing had me, I don't even know what it is.
Fuck.
So I used to be able to throw, I had a pretty good arm and then I started lifting weights
and then years later I went to throw a ball and I hurt my shoulder.
Oh, I bet.
I hurt my shoulder.
I couldn't fucking believe I hurt my shoulder.
I couldn't throw anymore.
And it was because I had weak, those internal external rotators that were really, really
weak.
So that's an important component.
I would say you probably want to include
some kind of work for those muscles,
at least once a week.
You know how often you guys do that?
Yeah, I guess it just really depends on what you're doing.
It's part of my warm up.
Yeah, cause I notice it contributing a lot,
especially with overhead press or anything else
that I'm doing, you know,
once the weight really drives up, I need all that extra bit of stability that
I can get.
And also too, it just helps to keep everything loose and lubricated and functioning properly.
I feel like otherwise, like it builds up.
Like when I'm doing presses all the time or I'm benching a lot more, anybody can realize that
you're going to feel that tension build up to where you feel like, oh my God, this is
getting hard on the joints.
The only way to really surpass that and to gain new levels of performance is to do all
these little nuance things to make sure that it's rotating properly, to make sure that
you're taking it through full range of motion and getting proper function out of your shoulder.
So that way, as your strength increases with your major muscles, everything's kind of built
up with it.
I would say for people listening right now, probably the easiest thing you could possibly
do to dramatically improve the gains of your your shoulders to be able to see results
on your shoulders is this, very, very simple.
Take your presses, because you, I guarantee,
you probably do presses, you work your shoulders out,
you do some kind of a press, whether it's a dumbbell
or a barbell press or whatever.
And not your knucklehead, that's the answer.
You better be doing presses.
But if you're doing presses, which I think most of you are,
lighten your weight by a significant amount.
Drop a lot of your weight, maybe even half,
maybe even cut your weight in half.
And all you gotta do is focus on a really full range of motion.
Now here's why I think you need to cut your weight way down.
Okay?
If you're working within a particular range of motion,
and you all of a sudden increase it by three inches,
and you're even thinking yourself,
like I'm gonna take a little weight off,
but I'm gonna challenge myself a little bit.
Don't do that because your shoulder stability
and that extra three inches is poor,
and you will hurt yourself.
You literally have to back way down
and just exaggerate the range of motion.
And I promise you'll feel those shoulders working,
like you've never felt them before.
That alone, just that by itself,
within a very short period of time,
you'll see better results in terms of how your shoulders look.
Oh, I did a post, this was, I don't know, a few months back.
And it's a post to me in a seated 90 degree bench press
behind a barbell press behind my head.
And I did it with 45, so I did 135 behind my head. And it was a with 45. So I did one, one 35 behind my head.
And it was a big deal for me.
And like, that's what the post was talking about.
That was a big milestone for me.
And you know, it's something like that.
I mean, it's not a big deal
because someone's like, that's not impressive weight
or anything like to really get all excited about.
But for me, when I started doing that movement,
I had to drop all the way down to just the bar.
Just to be able to get the range of motion.
Yes. Because I, and that was the whole purpose of that movement, I had to drop all the way down to just the bar. Just to be able to get the range of motion. Yes.
Because, and that was the whole purpose of that movement was I really am trying to train
that scapula to stay in that retracted position.
So I'd sit upright on the bench and actually scoot away from the bench.
And I really would only sit at the bench just so I could really concentrate on squeezing
this gap.
I mean, we're all fans of a standing overhead presses as the number one staple movement for a shoulder.
But the 90 degree bench that allowed me to kind of sit there and really concentrate on peeling the shoulders back
where I sat down and stayed stabilized and I can focus on my form, watch myself in the mirrors and going up and down.
And, you know, for every week, I would just, you know, add five to 10 pounds, five to 10 pounds.
But I started with a 45 pounds and to work my way all the way to 135,
that was a huge win for me to be able to do it.
But it will progress, it will catch up,
and it will catch up a lot faster than most people think.
But like you said, it is a must that you start super, super light.
It's amazing.
If you haven't taken that muscle through that full range of motion,
it doesn't take much weight for the body to respond to it.
No, it's not used to it.
And you know what, proper shoulder pressing,
whether it's like Adam's talking about behind the neck,
which by the way, if you have great shoulder mobility
is not bad, if you have bad shoulder mobility,
horrible exercise.
That's why, okay, and that's a good point
because we were taught not to teach that exercise.
Because at the risk factor,
the risk versus reward is not as good
as a standard overhead press.
However, if you've got good shoulder mobility,
there's nothing wrong with it.
Well, I would like to point out that,
you know, if you're somebody and you saw
that exercise on my Instagram,
or if you're somebody who's listening going like,
I don't think I can do that,
you, it should be a goal for you to get to the point
where you can do that.
Start with a broomstick.
Yeah, exactly.
Start with a PVC pipe. Yeah, exactly. Start with a PVC pipe.
Yeah, just to move through that.
Exactly.
That is a movement pattern that you want.
You want to be able to pull your shoulder blades back
enough to where you can put a piece of pipe
or bar behind your head.
That should be natural, but it's not for a lot of us
because we've curved and shaped the body.
So if you're listening to this right now
and you can't do that,
don't just say I can't do that,
start addressing that mobility to the point where you can.
And that's what the whole point of the post was,
like, hey, this is a big win for me.
I'm actually doing decent weight, 135 pounds,
where I had to start with a goddamn ball.
You can progressively increase your range of motion,
just like you progressively gain strength.
I mean, people just don't address it with that mindset.
It's another form of progression. It is. There is. It's not just about progressing, you
know, how much weight you lift or how many reps you do, you can progress through your
range of motion. So keep this in mind. If I'm doing squats and I'm squatting with 100
pounds and next, and I did 10 reps and next week, I want to progress,
I can add 10 pounds to the bar if I wanted to,
or I could add an inch to my range of motion,
and that's gonna make it more intense,
and to be honest with you,
that's probably the first place you should go
before you add weight, is really working on range of motion,
and aiming for a full range of motion.
So rather than adding weight to the bar, all you're doing is you're
measuring your range of motion and get you have to be able to get as excited
with increases in range of motion as you would with more with adding more weight
because I promise you to be honest with you the more range of motion with the
same weight is more valuable than more weight at the same range of motion. It's just
the truth. It's just the truth.
And if you progress at that rate, here's what's going to happen.
Number one, the end result will be you're going to be stronger anyway.
Okay, so by Adam starting with the bar and focusing on range of motion and working his way
up to 135 pounds, he's a lot stronger now than had he not done that and just focused on
adding weight.
So at the end of the day, basically, it's more effective for strength.
It's also at the end of the day more effective for aesthetics.
There's no, I don't know if there's any studies.
Well, there's some studies to show that full range of motion activates more muscle fibers
and whatever, than shorter range of motion.
But for my experience, and I'll challenge you to find any trainer that disagrees.
I've only seen bodies develop better
from an aesthetic point of view with fuller range of motion
versus shorter ranges of motion.
So here's the other thing too, Adam.
We're talking about behind the neck press
and we're talking about shoulder press,
standing shoulder press, and all these different movements.
How big of a role does the mid upper mid back play
in healthy shoulders?
Oh yeah.
Huge.
It's huge, right?
I would say that's probably one of the number one reasons
why people have poor shoulder mobility.
I mean, when you guys do an assessment,
and you do a row assessment, nobody does a row properly.
No, we make their shoulders.
Elevate shoulders, forward shoulders.
Yeah, for sure.
So that all contributes to not being able to move through the full range of motion.
Well, I feel like we've done a really good job of addressing mobility and getting real
lined and focusing on that.
What are some of the things that I'm really interested in here, you guys?
I know I have mine because of course, this is my world.
This is the whole aesthetic driven thing is, do you guys have tips on for you either personally building
shoulders or for clients as far as you know specific exercises or go to moves or the do's or
don'ts that you guys have found over years with building shoulders. Yes. So two things. For me, number one, really nice full range of motion shoulder
presses with kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, one arm at a time, and then finishing the
movement while holding my arms straight up and actually holding it for two or three seconds
and stabilizing anything and then coming all the way down. That's made a big difference.
That has happened later on in my life
because I didn't focus on those things in the beginning.
So my shoulders now look better than they ever have
and that's one of the reasons.
But here's the other thing too,
is I would focus on heavy presses
and then some workouts I would start
with lots of isolation movements
and then I would go to the presses afterwards.
So I would start with a rear fly, a side lateral, and then I would go work
on my presses with lighter weight. And this kind of pre-exhaust little technique, it does
change things up a little bit. And I noticed when I do that, when I started incorporating
that, and it's probably because it's a different stimulus, it's a different approach to exercise.
Most people don't do it that way.
Most people start with the compound movement first.
It's just a different way to change up the workout.
When I started doing that, I noticed good results.
And then lastly, the shoulder tricep connection is very strong.
In other words, most exercises we do
that for the shoulders that are compound involve the triceps.
But there are movements that, and here's a thing with muscles, they pair up really well with
another muscle group, and sometimes when you pair them up with another muscle, it's a
different stimulus and you sometimes get some new results.
So again, shoulders and triceps, very common.
Shoulders of biceps are very uncommon, but there's some exercises like an upright row, or
high pulls, or part of a clean.
Those movements work the shoulders and shoulder girdle
very effectively, don't activate the triceps,
activate the biceps.
And so at one point, I got really good at full range of motion.
Again, you have to have good shoulder mobility,
but full range of motion, upright row type movements
and high pulls, and that really kicked my shoulder development to Hegear.
Well, I think too.
For me, it was a plethora of things that really helped aid, because shoulders were an issue
for me for a long time.
And so, like Sal had mentioned with kettlebell presses, and then I got really into kettlebells,
but thinking about the benefits of it, for me, it was understanding the movement capacity
for my shoulder and where my hinges were
and where like my weak points were within the movements.
And so one thing that like you see people doing stuff
like a Turkish get up or you see people doing,
maybe you see people, I guess you guys probably don't see this very often, but somebody's carrying an overhead position and they're just stabilizing
it and they're walking with it or they're carrying, they're carrying it in the rack position
or they're doing farmer carries.
So the rack position is when you've got the dumbbells or kettlebells up against your body,
right?
Up against your body and you're folding it like into your chest. And you're just walking everything in and walking.
The reason is, it reinforces this,
the stabilizing force, right?
Now I'm connecting to that.
And I'm also connecting to it when it's overhead.
And these are all, it's definitely sending a louder signal
for when I'm going into my press.
I feel supported already
from the start to the finish. And overhead for I know for a lot of people is the problem, right?
When it's overhead, it gets a little wobbly and shaky. And just doing things like that to
emphasize the fact that you're supported will increase, you know, the feeling you get when you lift anything
over your head like 10 fold.
And so I just learned something right now.
Like I never even considered,
do, I mean, if I saw, I wouldn't think it was crazy,
but I never considered just holding it and doing
and moving, walking, walking,
or holding it in the rack position.
I'm gonna do that next workout
because that makes perfect sense.
Yeah, no, it's awesome.
And I don't know if I guess I haven't shared that before,
but yeah, I've been doing that for a long time.
And also like you said,
some days I isolated.
And when I was going through the competition
more and trying to really build up
and get a more aesthetic look to him
because there's definitely an aesthetic look
you can build up to where you get that nice line
and it looks more presentable.
But yeah, using those techniques,
but now I'm also like, I'm pre-exhausting.
I'm making sure I'm doing my band pole parts,
I'm getting my rear delts activated,
but I'm also, I used a lot of bands too,
just because of the fact that I could get resistance going through an eccentric portion of the lift a lot of bands too, just because of the fact that I could get resistance going
through like an eccentric portion of the lift a lot, you know, whereas before or with
weights, sometimes you don't concentrate on that enough.
So there's just things like that that if I'm not doing it, if I'm not being explosive
with my shoulders, that's what I don't need to do.
And my shoulder will immediately build because, you know, whatever I'm not incorporating
or haven't done for a long time,
it's gonna stimulate a new building process.
Well, again, if you look at athletes,
very rarely do you see an Olympic lifter
who doesn't have an excellent,
a well-developed back and shoulders,
and very rarely do you see a gymnast
that doesn't have amazing high-steps and shoulders.
And it's just that full range of motion movement
that they're constantly doing or supporting themselves
that I think is developing the shoulder so well.
I'm gonna incorporate that.
What about you Adam?
Man, shoulders have been a fun one for me.
It was a major lagging body part for me.
I remember when I had a female body builder
tell me that in my early 20s, made me feel like shit.
I had a, I'm like, what do you think of my overall physique?
She's like, well, you've got good arms, but your shoulders are terrible.
I'm just straight up tall. And I was just just all sad after that.
Yeah, I'm going to give you a complex.
But the funny part was, that was the first time totally. That was the first time I ever
was assessed by like a bodybuilding. I was only like 22 at the time.
And I didn't even look at my own arms that way. I looked at them and I thought,
because I had big arms, thighs and tries, I thought I had these big arms. And I didn't even look at my own arms that way. I looked at them and I thought, because I had big arms, pies, and tries.
I thought I had these big arms.
And that's actually how she said at first,
is that you need to work on your arms.
And I thought to myself, like,
get out of here.
You know, I said,
I've seen these pifons.
She was referring to my shoulders.
And especially my rear delts is what she said.
She said, you know, you really need to bring out
your rear delts more.
And that was the moment that I really started
to put emphasis on it. And I used to totallyts more. And that was the moment that I really started to put emphasis on.
And I used to totally neglect them.
And even as a trainer, because my mentality was, when I do a lot of pushing exercises,
like chest and things like that, my anterior delts are getting worked.
When I do a lot of rowing and a lot of back exercises, my posterior delts are getting
worked.
So I'd throw laterals in there every once in a while.
That was it. You know,
that was pretty much my shoulder workouts. And I really didn't
put emphasis on them until that time. Once I started putting
emphasis on it, at that point, that was back when I was doing
body parts splits. So I just started to make a whole shoulder
day. I started playing with all different movements and
movements for me that the biggest and I have gone through phases
of like really watching my shoulders develop more growing or changing
as far as the shape,
focusing on the rear delts was big number one,
because it is probably, and it's very small muscle,
it's small in comparison to the anterior deltoy,
the anterior deltoy gets really more developed
than the posterior deltoy,
and of course genetics play a role for everybody,
but I think that's a lagging
piece to most people of shoulders. So I began to, all anytime I touch shoulders, there
was always at least one, if not two exercises in there that was addressing the rear delts.
That helped a lot. I love a standard rear fly with dumbbells, especially if you have
one of those benches where you can just rest your chest on it
to keep you stabilized
while you can really concentrate
on doing that movement properly.
I love a rear cable fly where I'm bent over at 90 degrees
and I'm actually pulling all the way through
on the cable so it keeps constant tension
on it the entire time.
It helps me really focus.
So those are my two go-to rears.
And actually my press that I love,
a hanging clean to a press,
I felt developed my shoulders more than anything.
So you clean every time you do a press,
a clean press, clean press.
Clean press.
Now, were you doing a proper clean?
Yeah, not a full, not full from the ground.
No, but I mean a hanging clean,
but I mean a proper flip and then see there's that power.
Like that stimulus you need.
It's that pull, it's the upper pull.
Like I was just saying with upright, upright rows too.
That move, that move built my shoulders
like nothing else has, hands down.
Hands down, that has been like the number one builder for me.
And then one more little tip I think that I do,
and I don't remember where I first read
this or what, but it made a lot of sense when I came across it.
It is a lot of people that do trying to build the laterals up.
You know, they go heavier, heavier, heavier, heavier, trying to build them.
And it's such a small movement and it's so easy to incorporate a bunch of other muscles
trying to perform that. A lateral, a lateral turns into a trap exercise, turns in a trap
and form and hip-hinging power. You know what they'd go from, right? This is what
they do. They go from depressed scapula to elevated scapula, depressed
scapula to elevate, that's how they do the lateral. Really the the side of the
deltoid is moving the humorous.
So you want to move the humorous, come up, it's a shorter movement.
And if I see somebody using, if I see a strong dude using more than 30, 35 pounds inside
laterals, it's usually because they're doing them wrong.
Yeah, I'm very rarely doing 100%.
100%.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I actually stopped a long time ago doing side ladders heavy at all really ever
How heavy do you go? I did I
I merely I rarely ever go over 20 20 20 25 pounds or 20s, but I
Reps repetition and frequency do you ever so side ladders when and change up a lot of your your stimulus like if it's with like the cable or the rubber band. Exactly. Or a barbell type version of it.
Yeah, I know I'm always changing where how or angles, but you know when I'm going through
maps black, as maps black, when I first started competing, shoulders was one of my focus
points because on the stage for sure the bigger those shoulder caps are, definitely comes
out.
So inside laterals were definitely the focus for me.
And what I would do is I would just three, four times a week,
I was doing the lateral raises just really light,
but frequency, frequency, frequency,
just stimulating, stimulating, and concentrating
on my form and really trying to isolate
that part of the muscle.
Otherwise, you get caught up and lift and super heavyweight
and everything else takes over.
It's not an exercise that lends itself well to heavy weight.
Some exercises just aren't made for heavy weight
and that's one of what's going on.
I feel the same thing goes for the posterior.
I think it's correct.
It's not an exercise that's supposed to be like,
if not your rhomboid and traps really getting incorporated.
A lot of guys really end up retracting the shoulders
and squeezing the shoulder blades together to rock up that.
It turns into a funny row.
It does, isn't it?
It's not a rear.
Roses where you can go heavy.
It's not the rear ladder.
Right, yeah.
And here's a real lie.
How about this?
You ever try this with a side lateral?
Here's something I learned from the physical therapists
that I work with because it does work on a different form
of a different part of shoulder mobility.
And I noticed when I would do it, first of all, when I first tried it, it was very difficult.
Then when I was able to do it, I have never felt anything you hit my side delts like this
exercise right here.
So it's like a side lateral.
The differences my palms are pronated.
So they're completely pronated. So they're completely pronated.
So they're not facing, you know,
they're not facing down.
They're facing back behind me.
So my pinkies are up.
It dumped the milk out.
Yeah, but I'm not coming up.
I'm staying that way the whole time.
Elbow's flared out.
It's a very short movement.
And it hits the side delts like nothing ever done.
I call them scarecrow's.
I call that dumping the milk out.
But I don't pronate it at the top.
It stays that way.
So it jerks off to your random guys.
So even at the bottom like this,
I'm starting with my palms facing back
and I come up and move down that entire,
the whole wrap is one of my palms facing down.
You're done with the milk out before you hit the top.
And it hits the side delts like nothing I've ever done
before.
It's one of the best isolation movements.
Here's the thing too, we talked a little bit about cables.
Shoulders are probably, if I had to pick one body part that worked well with a machine,
and I'm using cables that are a machine technically, so I'm talking about cables here.
It's the delts.
I can't think of any of the muscle that you can really develop with machine, quote unquote
machines, like you can the shoulders.
And that's because cables allow different angles of pull and wide ranges and full ranges
of motion.
It's very free and it's perfect for the shoulder, which is like it's like the hip joint of the
upper body, right?
Moves in so many different directions, and cables allow for that.
So if you-
You can do a scaption, you can do a different-
Oh, yeah.
You can have fun, man.
If you really want to add volume and frequency
to your shoulder training, get into cable machine
and have fun with all the different angles.
Yeah, free motion machine and go bananas
with all the different angles.
Just have fun, go light, you know,
all you're doing is adding frequency and volume.
You know, of course, you, by this point,
you should have already been doing your heavy presses
and stuff, your big, you know, movements.
But do some, have some fun with the cables
and go real light and watch what happens to your shoulders.
I think that right there,
because it's kind of a combination of what I was trying to say
with what did it for me when I was competing was,
you know, stick to your found,
on your foundational days and maps
You have your your big presses your big movements
But then on all the other days you know go light go light controlled free motion and just mess with angles and reps
reps and all those different like movements
This is I mean what you're talking about basically is how you know our maps programs are designed because you have the trigger sessions with maps
Red right where you do small movement, light movements
several times a day on the off days,
and then black, which is focus sessions, very similar,
but you go in and you add volume and frequency,
and those cable movements are excellent
for adding volume and frequency
to your big gross motor movement exercises
like your presses.
So listen, if you like MindPump,
leave us a five star rating review on iTunes.
Also go to Mind Pump Media.com.
We have all of our programs available there and including there's testimonials, you can
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You can also find us on Instagram at Mind Pump Radio.
You can find me at Mind Pump Sal.
Adam is at Mind Pump Adam and Justin is at Mind Pump Justin.
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