Delts increase the length of the shoulders or just the width. How to broaden your shoulders

Broad shoulders and a narrow waist are the dream of any athlete, because refined proportions are now more important than shapeless muscle mass. And, it would seem, pumping up your shoulders is quite simple: do the base to failure and you will have deltoids like cannonballs. After all, it’s not a shin. But with training the deltoid muscles, this scheme fails. To pump up voluminous 3D shoulders, you need to train them in a special, technical, thoughtful and original way. But how exactly to do this and how to pump up your shoulders width, according to scientific research, read in this article. The most interesting things about training and sports nutrition on our telegram channel

Introduction

My story today is another article about research conducted by a modern bodybuilding guru named Bret Contreras. I have already talked about how science advises, and, and today it’s time to learn about shoulder training for mass, and what exercises are best suited for this.

To be honest, Contreras’s previous conclusions were far from clear-cut, but the results of his research regarding shoulder training simply amazed me. But if you have not yet heard about his experiments, let me remind you.

In 2010, Bret Contreras, a famous American fitness trainer, scientist, writer and experimenter, conducted research to identify the most effective exercises for each muscle group. As equipment, he used a medical device, an electromyograph, which determines the electrical muscle activity of contraction of muscle fibers.

That is, Contreras took it and found out which exercises make our muscles work to the maximum and are, accordingly, the most effective for muscle growth. The results of his research were simply shocking. Contreras crushed many exercises that were considered unambiguously the best, while others he exalted to the skies. According to his results, the best exercises are now:

• For the chest -
• For biceps – pull-ups on the horizontal bar with a narrow reverse grip
• For triceps – extension of arms on the upper block with a rope handle

But let's get back to mass training for shoulders. Even during the “golden” era of bodybuilding, athletes knew that the deltoid muscle consisted not of three, but of seven separate muscle bundles. They perform flexion and extension, adduction, horizontal abduction and adduction, internal and external rotation.

This means that the basic shoulder exercises that we are told about in the literature are clearly not enough to develop all individual segments of the deltoid muscle. The meager set of exercises that ordinary gym-goers perform is the main reason for their lack of the sought-after 3D shoulders, which are characteristic only of bodybuilding stars.

Conclusion: to give your shoulders the shape of a ball, you need to pump not three deltoid bundles, but all seven, so the range of shoulder exercises should be wide and varied.

This was the introduction, and now I propose to move on to the main part of the story and learn about how to pump up your shoulders. , and what exercises the rebel Contreras considers best for this. So…

The best exercises for the anterior deltoid

The anterior deltoid is rarely a lagging muscle group; the posterior deltoid and deltoids are usually lagging behind. The difficulty in developing these bundles is the inability to isolate each of them and make them work solo. But such problems do not arise with the anterior delta, because it takes an active part in all chest exercises. Heavy bench presses put a lot of stress on the front muscle, and it grows without any effort. But if, nevertheless, the anterior delta lags behind in development, science names the three best exercises for this muscle segment.

Bench press

I’ll say right away that this is not a typo. At first I myself did not believe that this basic exercise for the middle delta turns out to be the best for its anterior bundle. But Bret Contreras says there is no other shoulder exercise that works the anterior deltoid as much as the overhead press. And imagine my disappointment when I realized that in trying for years to level out the imbalance in the gap between the middle and front bundles, I was only aggravating it.

The thing is that even sitting on a bench with a horizontal back, during the press we necessarily lean back, thereby removing the load from the middle, weaker delta and shifting it to the front, stronger one. And if you consider that most standard bench presses (for some reason unknown to me) have a slight slope back, pumping up shoulder width with such an exercise becomes very problematic.

An unpleasant picture emerges: the overhead barbell press is a complex and traumatic movement that “kills” the elbows and. And instead of pumping up the shoulders in width, it gives them thickness, causing them to visually “slide” forward. Question: why the hell is it even needed?

I remember reading an interview with one of our professional bodybuilders, who came to the USA and trained for a year under the guidance of Charles Glass. His surprise knew no bounds when it turned out that the coolest coach in bodybuilding openly dislikes the classic overhead press with a barbell and recommends doing it in a bench press machine, sitting with your back to the gym. The bench of such exercise machines is located at an angle, the trajectory of the press is forward, but at an angle. In this case, the load on the front deltoid is removed, while on the middle and rear deltoid, on the contrary, it increases.

The same Alexey Shabunya, the famous Belarusian bodybuilder openly admits that he rarely does the overhead barbell press, because he feels severe discomfort from it. He, not caring about all the canons of training shoulders for mass, prefers flyes with dumbbells as the best exercise for the middle delta. And most importantly, the question of how to pump up the width of his shoulders does not bother him at all; Alexey has truly voluminous and powerful 3D shoulders.

Bent-over barbell chest press

This exercise for the anterior deltoid did not come as a surprise to me. Even without knowing about the results of Bret Contreras's research, I realized a long time ago that this exercise is not for the upper chest, but specifically for the anterior deltoid.

Bent over barbell press is not an exercise for the chest, but for the anterior deltoid.

The load on the chest during an incline bench press, according to the electromyograph, increases by only 5%, but on the anterior delta by 40%.

Conclusion: This exercise is not suitable for pumping up the upper chest, but it is perfect for the front deltoid.

Army press

This classic pressing movement for developing the shoulder girdle ranks third on our hit parade, once again proving how far the stereotypes of traditional bodybuilding are from real life. The military press is a really cool exercise for the front deltoid, but in terms of its effectiveness it is much inferior to the previous movements.

But oddly enough, I do military presses quite often, but not for the shoulders, but for the chest. Or rather, for a very small but extremely important muscle segment called the subclavian muscle. It is this that is the most difficult section of the upper chest to build, without which the upper section of the pectoral muscles looks unfinished.

I do the military press at the very end of the chest workout, because the front deltoids are already tired and will no longer be able to engage in the work. Thus, most of the load will fall on the small, inaccessible, but extremely important subclavian muscle. Unlike the traditional military press technique, I perform this exercise by pressing my elbows as close to my body as possible and squeezing my pectoral muscles.

Conclusion: The classic overhead press turns out to be the best exercise not for the middle, but specifically for the front deltoid. And excessive enthusiasm for this exercise does not contribute to the expansion, but, on the contrary, to the narrowing of the shoulders.

The best exercises for the middle delta

The middle bundle of the deltoid muscle is responsible for the visual width of the shoulder girdle and creating that same V-shaped silhouette that is so valued nowadays. Therefore, the bulk of shoulder training is always spent on pumping the middle deltoid. However, the results of Conteras's study suggest that the exercises that we thought were most effective for the middle beam are not so. The best movement for growing shoulder width, which is many times faster in impact, is an exercise that is extremely rare in our gyms:

Horizontal pull of the upper block with rope handle

And here I was shocked for the second time, because I saw how professional bodybuilders do this exercise, but I thought that it was aimed at developing the muscles of the upper back, namely the trapezius. But science says the opposite: performing a horizontal row of the upper side, but with the obligatory extension of the arms to the sides, is many times more effective than all other exercises for the middle delta.

Horizontal rope row - the best exercise for the middle deltoid

The second important aspect of the high impact of the horizontal row with a rope handle is that the trajectory of this exercise has no “dead” zones. The middle delta is actively involved in work and does not relax for a moment. I regularly do this middelt exercise during shoulder mass training, and I can say that it really engages previously untouched segments of the deltoid muscle, making the shoulders look like cannonballs, round and large.

I just want to add that I (perhaps due to my height) feel the work of the deltoids better when I stand not directly towards the machine, but leaning back a little. Thus, the trajectory of this exercise for the middle delta turns from horizontal to inclined, turning off the core muscles from work.

Retracting the arm to the side on the lower block

But I knew about the effectiveness of this exercise for the middle delta for a long time, intuitively feeling its high effectiveness. As it should be, at every shoulder workout for mass, I do the usual lateral raises with dumbbells, but only in order to tire them and the trapezius, which always impudently gets involved in the work. And when the shoulder muscles are thoroughly tired, I move on to the main dish of my deltoid feast. I begin to move my arm to the side on the lower block.

I can say with all sincerity that in no other exercises for the middle delta do I feel such a high involvement of this segment in the work. And it is very difficult for an ordinary gym goer to find the answer to the question of how to pump up shoulder width without performing this isolating exercise on the middle delta.

The secret to the high impact of this movement lies in the elongated trajectory of the movement. Externally, moving the arm to the side on the lower block resembles the same movement with a dumbbell. But thanks to the low location of the simulator block, already in the initial phase of the movement, the middle delta ends up in an unusually stretched position, which remains constant during the movement.

This is a really cool exercise, I also like it for its variability, since it can be performed in two versions:

1. The lower block cable is located in front of the housing. In this case, the front (so to speak) part of the middle delta is included in the work.
2. The lower block cable is located behind the housing. Then the posterior part of the middle delta and the posterior deltoid bundle itself are more actively involved in the work.

Pulling the arm to the side on the lower block is also interesting because by changing the position of the body (standing straight or tilted), you can constantly load your shoulders in different ways, bringing into the work all the new muscle bundles that were relaxing before. Of course, my deltoids are not yet far from ideal, but after I started doing this exercise, their shape improved significantly.

Bent-over dumbbell flyes

Having read about this exercise as one of the best for the average delta, I sinfully thought that Bret Contreras must have mixed something up by drinking too much tequila out of scientific fatigue. Because bent over dumbbell flyes are the best exercise for the rear deltoid, but not the middle deltoid.

I think our fitness guru himself was a little taken aback when he received such results, but the fact remains: bent over dumbbell flyes, in addition to the rear ones, also quite heavily load the middle bundles of the deltoid muscles. But if a number of conditions are met:

• The hands should be positioned in one line, and not be parallel, as we are used to. A prerequisite is that the little finger must point upward.
• The breeding itself occurs not only to the sides, but also a little forward.

At the next mass training session for shoulders, I included these bent-over dumbbell flyes into my set of exercises and honestly tried to catch the moment when the middle bunch would come into play. I felt my rear deltoid unusually strong and sharp, and I think these bent over dumbbell flyes are a really cool way to pump them up. But I cannot say that this movement is aimed at increasing the muscle mass of the middle deltoids. Sorry Contreras, but my mid-deltas don't agree with you here.

The best rear delt exercises

The posterior segment of the deltoid muscles is an extremely small, but extremely important muscle segment that allows you to make your shoulders like balls, round and proportionally developed. But the whole problem with training the rear deltoid is that it is extremely difficult to work it in isolation, excluding other parts of the deltoid muscle from work.

And the results of scientific research actively confirm this, since the best exercises for the rear delta are the same:

1. horizontal pull of the upper block
2. Bent-over dumbbell raises in the variation described above

In other words, these two movements build muscle mass equally well in both the middle and rear deltoids. And although there are many other exercises for the development of the posterior bundle (the same reverse flyes in the chest machine), but according to the electromyograph indicators, all of them are significantly inferior to these movements in terms of the number of muscle fibers involved in the work.

This strange situation is slightly diluted by another exercise for the rear delta, which Bret Contreras called the third most effective. These are horizontal pull-ups on a barbell or Smith machine. But you just need to pull yourself up not to the belt, but to the head. In this case, the load on the rear deltoids becomes maximum.

Horizontal pull-ups - a rare exercise for the rear deltoid

In my opinion, this is a technically difficult movement; it can be easily replaced with a rear deltoid exercise that is similar in biomechanics. Namely, bent over barbell pull. But you just need to stand strictly parallel to the ground and pull the barbell towards the shoulder girdle. I do this rear delt exercise from time to time, but I do it exclusively on my favorite Smith machine.

If we summarize all of the above about the most effective exercises for the rear deltoid, it turns out that it will not be possible to isolate it 100%. In any case, the middle bundle of deltoid muscles will also be included in the work.

Conclusion: You need to start training your shoulders with these two exercises, trying to load the back beam to the maximum. Only targeted specialization in the development of this segment will make it possible to make 3 D-shaped shoulders.

Conclusion

If I had shoulders like cannonballs, when I read about such unconventional research results, I would simply laugh and continue training my shoulders for mass the old-fashioned way. But I still have to work and work on my deltoids. Therefore, I am constantly looking for new methods of training them.

Although the effectiveness of some of the exercises described by Bret Contreras raises questions for me, the lion's share of the information he voiced became extremely useful for me. In any case, the two most effective shoulder exercises: horizontal rows and dumbbell raises are firmly established in my training arsenal. I recommend trying it!

And in conclusion, I suggest you look at the unconventional shoulder training of the charming Dana Linn Bailey, an Internet star and part-time Miss Olympia 2013 in the Women’s Physique category .

I want to hope that my story will be useful to you and will help you make a breakthrough in training your deltoid muscles, increasing their volume and significantly improving their shape. May the mass be with you. And strength!

It's no secret that women are in awe of the classic symbol of masculinity - broad shoulders and narrow hips. Not all men have been blessed by nature with this dignity, so they wonder whether it is possible to make their shoulders wider with the help of training.

“I slant a fathom in the shoulders” You can gain it if you do it systematically, with full dedication. To achieve results, you need to know how to make your shoulders wider. Not everyone who puffs around the gym has broad shoulders. In order to increase the desired volumes, a set of exercises has been developed.

Important Factors

During most strength training exercises, the lats are loaded, either directly or indirectly. You need to understand that the shoulder joint and the muscles that surround it have a very complex structure and are therefore susceptible to injury. During exercise, you should be careful about placing stress on the deltoid muscles.

Internal muscles are divided into groups:

• Supraspinatus;
• Infraspinatus;
• Small round;

The external heads include the heads of the deltoid muscle: posterior, middle and anterior. Thanks to them, bending and rotation of the arm occurs.

If you want to have broad shoulders, you should do special exercises that focus only on the deltoid muscle, isolating the others as much as possible.

To pump up your shoulders faster, as many muscle fibers as possible should work. Gym goers try different techniques and programs, doing all the exercises at once.

But if you do additional isolation exercises, you can overload your muscles, causing injury and stunting their growth. Pain may not appear immediately; as a rule, this process is cumulative. Mindless training will not lead to anything good.

At the initial stage of training, it is necessary to perform the base exclusively on the shoulders - this will lay the foundation. When volumes and strength capabilities increase, the trainer will tell you what isolation exercises are introduced and whether they are needed in a particular case.

Basic exercises

These include variations of bench presses, "barbell from behind the head", standing press with dumbbells, exercises from a sitting position. You need to perform them 8-10 times, gaining momentum. Gradually increase the working weight - this will promote muscle growth.

Before training, you should warm up the muscles, all three bundles, as well as the rotator cuff muscles. The warm-up complex includes dumbbell flyes, lifts, and flying flyes. Dumbbells should weigh 3-5 kg, each exercise should be repeated 15 times without breaks.

Horizontal bar

Almost all the muscles of the shoulder girdle develop on the horizontal bar. But you need to pull yourself up correctly - only then will there be a result.

Main principles:

• All movements must be smooth, jerking should not be allowed;
• It takes as long to go down as it takes to go up;
• The grip should be strong, the body position should be vertical;
• You should not swing;
• On the way up, inhale, on the way down, exhale.

How can you make wide shoulders on the horizontal bar?

Do the following exercises regularly:

• Straight medium grip. You need to hang on the horizontal bar, bend your back, bend your legs a little and cross them. The distance between the hands should be equal to the width of the shoulders. Pull yourself up, squeezing your shoulder blades together. Touch the bar with the top of your pectoral muscle, and straighten your arms on the descent;
• Reverse medium grip. Grasp the bar with an underhand grip and arch your back, legs bent and crossed. Rise up as much as possible, fix your body and bring your collarbones to the bar;
• Narrow reverse grip. Grab from below by bending and crossing your legs. Pull yourself up, pull your shoulders back, touching the horizontal bar with your chest. This is an exercise for the rear delts;
• Wide grip. Hang on the horizontal bar so that the distance between your hands is maximum. Bend your legs and cross them. As you pull yourself up, squeeze your shoulder blades together, arch your back, and touch the bar with your chest. Elbows should be pointed straight to the floor;
• Wide grip on the head. The legs and back should be straight, and when lifting, the bar should be behind the head. Elbows point to the floor.

Dumbbells

At home, you can make broad shoulders by working out with dumbbells. Take medium weight dumbbells and perform circular movements. Work at a calm pace, without jerking.

Not only girls dream of a beautiful figure with which they can surprise all the men around, especially when it’s approaching summer, and they can parade along the beach in a swimsuit. Many men also do not lag behind, wanting to attract the attention of representatives of the opposite sex with their broad shoulders and back.

True, you usually have to work on this, studying hard, because how else can you expand the backbone of your shoulders?

Sometimes a young man works hard, but still fails to achieve more or less tangible results. Perhaps the fact is that the wrong set of exercises was chosen, or perhaps it is that the technique of performing them is “lame”.

There are two ways to widen your shoulders if they are naturally narrow:

• Increase the bones of the shoulders and chest. This option is suitable for guys who are under 20 years old. This is due to the characteristics of bone growth. Once they reach this age, they grow much more slowly, so this task will become increasingly difficult;
• Enlarge the deltoid muscle. This method is suitable for both a young guy and a man of any age.
• You can get a beautiful body by widening your shoulders and back, it all depends on how you do it, how correctly. Here are some tips:
• To perform this you will need a barbell, horizontal bar, dumbbells;
• To achieve excellent results and increase your shoulders, you need to work all muscle groups;
• Pay proper attention to your back. It will not only be healthy, but also beautiful;
• If you decide to train your back, you will have to devote a lot of time to training, up to the whole day. At the same time, there is no need to work out the remaining muscles on this day. This is especially true for the legs, otherwise you can get seriously injured;
• Regularity is important in sports. If you decide to expand your shoulder bones and back, then you need to work hard and not skip training.

When working out your back, you need to do the most difficult exercises first. Then you can move on to simpler ones. With this approach, you will be able to expand your back faster.

Exercises

Remove the deadlift from the rack, holding it firmly in your hands, bend your knees, leaning forward slightly. Watch your back, it should be straight, like a string. Pull the barbell towards your abs as far as possible. During this exercise, the body is under tension. It is advisable to do it in several approaches, 30 times each.

To widen your shoulders by increasing your arm muscles, the following exercise is very good. Take dumbbells in your hands, stand straight and at the same time lift them to the sides until your arms form a straight line.

Can you widen your shoulders with this exercise? Can. Because when doing it, the muscles of the arms and back are worked out, due to which the shoulders also increase.

Raising dumbbells in front of you can also make your narrow shoulders wider. Just pick up dumbbells and lift them one at a time in front of you.

Rest your knees and one hand on the bench, and grab a kettlebell in the other hand. It needs to be pulled towards the abs. It is advisable to do several approaches of the exercise, 20 times each.

A great exercise to help broaden your back is the wide-grip pull-up. Grab the bar with your arms wide apart and pull yourself up, trying to reach it with your chest, staying at the top for at least a fraction of a second.

This exercise on the horizontal bar will not only increase your back muscles, but also broaden your shoulders, because the wider you spread your arms when performing it, the more it will affect this part of the body.

Another exercise on the horizontal bar. It is similar to the previous one, but you need to pull up the body, as if diving your head under the crossbar. To avoid injury, tilt it down slightly before lifting your body up.

Take dumbbells in your hands and lean forward so that your torso and legs form a 90-degree angle. Now spread the dumbbells to the sides. The exercise uses the muscles of the chest and arms.

Beautiful broad shoulders are the pride of any man. In order for the figure to be in the form of the coveted inverted triangle, it is necessary to correctly load the shoulder muscles. Read more about this.

Exercises for the shoulders, like for other muscle groups, are divided into basic and isolating. When performing basic exercises, the shoulders are pumped as a whole, a load is added to the trapezius, while isolating exercises pump up individual bundles of the deltoid muscles. To obtain the best form, it is important to combine these loads.

3 basic shoulder exercises:

1. Barbell overhead press on a Smith machine

Perform the barbell overhead press in a Smith machine. This is much safer than free weights, and this machine will ensure smooth and correct arm movements. All that remains is to control the movement of your elbows. The elbows should be strictly in a straight line in the plane of the body. Your back should be kept straight, so place the back of the bench strictly perpendicular to the floor. Breathing is very important for proper performance in the gym. You need to exhale at the top of the press. If you start exhaling simultaneously with the start of the exercise, then in the peak part of it, you will not have enough oxygen. Accordingly, you will not be able to squeeze more weight. With this exercise, you work the middle deltoids, as well as the trapezius, triceps, and serratus anterior. When working to failure, ask someone from the audience to back you up - this way you will perform the approach better and safer.

2. Seated dumbbell press

The dumbbell press trains the front, middle, and very slightly rear deltoids. Hands with dumbbells go in one straight line, elbows strictly to the side along the body. A common mistake is to pull the elbows to the sides and bend the lower back. Keep your shoulders level, without raising or lowering them. Take only those weights that you can squeeze without breaking your technique.

3. Barbell row to the chin

The barbell is taken with an overhand grip and pulled to the chin, while the elbows look to the side and up. For best results, try to raise your elbows higher than the barbell. The load will go mainly to the middle deltoid muscles, then to the anterior and trapezius muscles. Perform barbell rows to the chin extremely slowly. Jerking can cause unwanted injuries. The choice of grip (narrow, wide) is a controversial issue. It is believed that a wide grip is less dangerous for the shoulder joints.

3 isolated shoulder exercises:

1. Standing dumbbell lateral raises

The exercise is highly technical and requires proper technique. If the technique is incorrect, the dumbbell lift ceases to be an isolated load, because you turn on the trapezoid, and when swinging your body, you also use your legs. Therefore, it is important to choose the right weight that you can lift using only your deltoids.

The shoulders should be lowered, the elbows reaching parallel to the shoulders. If they go higher, the shoulders will automatically rise and the trapezoid will start working. The little fingers should be at the top point.

To better understand the technique, beginners have such an association as “spill water from a mug.” Imagine that you are holding a glass of water in your hand, you need to spread your arms to the sides so that every drop is poured out of it.

This dumbbell lift can also be done with a block. Take 2 handles on different sides of the lower block and perform the exercise.

2. Reverse flyes in the Peck-Deck simulator

When performing reverse flyes, there is an isolated load on the rear deltas, and this exercise also engages the muscles of the upper back.

Before starting your workout, adjust the Peck-Deck, set the handles to shoulder width, and raise the seat to such a height that your arms are in line with the floor when sitting on the machine. Move your arms as far back as possible, squeezing your shoulder blades together. As you exhale, bring your arms together. Your elbows should be behind your back; if this cannot be done, reduce the weight. The back should be stiff and straight. Slouching and swaying your body will lead to loss of efficiency and injury.

3. Raising your arms with dumbbells in front of you

Lifting dumbbells in front of you will perfectly work your front deltoids.

This exercise is performed standing, arms with dumbbells lowered until they touch the thigh. As you inhale, swing your arms with almost straight arms. The position of the dumbbells can be:

1) back of the hand up;

2) palms facing each other.

You can raise your arms alternately or simultaneously. Keep an equal distance between your hands! It should either be equal to shoulder width or slightly narrower. Do not use your lower back and legs to help push the weight of the dumbbells out. Also, do not lift the dumbbells above 45 degrees from parallel to the floor, otherwise the trapezius and serratus anterior muscles will become involved.

Don't rush to increase weight. In order for there to be a concentrated load, do not lower your hands to your hips, keep them in front of you and work in the upper part of the amplitude.

In order for you to better understand how to perform the exercises, we asked the famous Russian bodybuilder Alexander Fedorov to do a shoulder workout.

Shoulder training with Alexander Fedorov

Prepared by: Anastasia Kuzheleva