So, you want to get wider delts? Good because I'm going to show you how to do
it with just this and this and have it work for you better than it ever has before.
What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com So bigger, wider delts are what you're after,
the good news is, you can't do it with just dumbbells. As a matter of fact,
I'm going to prove it to you today by giving you a full workout at the end of this video to make sure
that it happens. On the same note, pursuing those wider delts by focusing mainly on the middle head
may not be giving you the results that you want, and here's why. If I don't take out that plastic
cap again and draw your front delt, your middle delt, and your rear delt and put it right here
on your shoulder, you can see the part that's most responsible for the width is that red portion that
you can see. But the geometry of a circle demands that you actually be more well-rounded, literally.
Because if I were to take out this circle and diminish the size of the front and rear delts,
well, look what just happened to the roundedness of the middle delt. It gets flattened out because
when you re trying to create something round, it can't just be round on one side, it has to
be round no matter what angle it's looked at. So, what this means is the path to the widest
delt is going to be the one that's also developed through the front delt, yes, that middle delt, but
also that rear delt too. But when you're really starting to think about building big shoulders,
you really have to start thinking beyond just shoulders or push day. As a matter of fact,
there's plenty of opportunity to work them again on back or pull day. And when you're looking to
build those wider shoulders, the volume is going to add up to help you to get them. So of course,
on a push day, those non direct shoulder exercises like bench press, pushups and dips that you're
doing for your chest are going to have a heavy overlap in terms of helping that front delt of
yours to grow. So, some of the onus for that direct front delt work is removed, however,
not completely, which is why you're going to still want to make sure you include it when
you're training your shoulders directly. But it's here that we have the greatest
opportunity to increase the size of our shoulders by not overlooking that second chance to increase
the volume of the most underdeveloped two heads of your shoulders right now, the middle and rear
delts. So, exercises like the Chest Supported Row that allow for the elbows to be flared out
to the sides to work more of the upper back or in this case, heavily load the rear delts is
something you're not going to want to miss. The High Pull is one of the best ways to safely
overload the middle delts and again sneak it in under the guise of being a generic pull exercise,
but again, with heavy focus on building up those middle and rear delts. And of course,
one of the most powerful rear delt exercises of all time, the Seated Cable Row is one that
you have a great opportunity to make sure you're including in your back or pull day workouts. And
just like there's no skipping leg day, there's no skipping Face Pulls on leg day as yet another
great opportunity to bring up that rear delt to viewers to make sure that you're looking round
no matter where someone looks at you from. But it's on the dedicated shoulder day that the
real gains are possible because if you're not devoting at least some portion of your effort
to be focused on developing all three heads of the delts, you're not going to develop them fully. So,
we like to kick this off with a Dumbbell Standing Overhead Press. Now, if you're doing a push day,
then you already got this covered on that day. But if you have shoulders split apart on their own,
then I recommend starting with a Basic Dumbbell Standing Press. And the reason
why I like the standing variation here is because it's the safest for your shoulders,
it's uninterrupted by the back of the bench in terms of normal shoulder biomechanics. It gives
you a great option for handling some heavy weight here and of course progressively overloading it
in future workouts. And of course, it also gives you the ability to incorporate your legs if you
want to make this a little bit more explosive via a Push Press. The bottom line is it's a
good way to kick off your workout and we just do two or three sets with a weight that will
cause you to fail in the 8 to 10 rep range. Next, I want you to move right into that focused
front delt work. I mentioned before, it doesn't have to be a lot, but you really need to do it
right. Because all the other compound lifts that you're doing that are incorporating your
front delts are doing so in a non-specific way. In other words, they're being called to
the task but not directly being responsible for lifting the weight that you're lifting. Well,
here we can make that happen by doing a Dumbbell ISO Alternating Front Raise. And there's a
couple of key points here. The ISO portion here is talking about isolation, trying to initiate the
first 20 to 30 degrees of that front raise with just the front delts, the tendency to swing back
or extend at the low back or lift with the traps is far too common. If you just isolate the front
delt to do that initial lift, you can then power the dumbbell up the rest of the way, but you're
guaranteeing that you're engaging in recruiting the front delt to the task. That s a good way to
start the exercise and a good way to ensure that you're getting the maximum development on that
front delt in the roundness and all we need is one to two really good hard sets with a weight that
will cause failure in the 10 to 12 rep range. But now this is where I want you to turn your
attention to those two more underserved heads of the delts, we're talking about the middle and rear
delt. And we start with something very similar in terms of concept, the Upper Limit Lateral.
We sit down on the floor with a lighter pair of dumbbells, much lighter than usual, and all we
have to do is start with those dumbbells one inch off the ground and then lift them up out to the
sides. Do not let the traps take over, do not lean back, do not sway, do not swing. Initiate with a
focus contraction. This alone is going to feel unique to a lot of you. When you get to the top,
give that little extra squeeze and then lower back down. But don't let the dumbbells touch
the floor. This constant tension will light up your middle delts and it will teach you most of
all how to engage them. And once you know how to do that, you can grow them. This is a great
way to do it. We do it with three sets of a weight that causes failure and about the 12 to 15 range,
again, going a little bit lighter here. Next, we stick with the metal delts, but we
take an entirely different approach with them. There's a saying in sports that what you slow
down, you must speed up in training. Well, here what we do light, we can also do heavy, and we
can also do explosively. That's why I like to do another lateral raise, but this time the Dumbbell
Cheat Lateral Raise. And instantly I can grab a heavier dumbbell here and I'm not so focused
on the isolation. Because here I know that if I can apply heavier loads and a more overloaded,
eccentric portion of the exercise, thinking about how you could actually fight or stop the dumbbell
on the way down, knowing of course that the heavy weight is not going to allow you to,
then I'm getting a different stimulus for growth. Remember, it's the intention that
applies the tension to the muscle you're trying to train when you're trying to make it grow. Here,
you're doing three sets of 6 to 8 to failure on each arm to make sure you get that done.
But now we got to complete that 180 and get all the way around to the back to work on those rear
delts. And again, if you've listened to my advice already, you've figured out a way to work them
into the other workouts of the week. But here on Dedicated Shoulder Day, what are we going to do?
We start off with one of my favorite, it's the Rear Delt Row. And this variation of a dumbbell
raise is actually really effective at hitting that rear delt and mostly because we're doing
it with extension as the main goal. In other words, driving the elbow back behind the body,
allowing your elbow to drift out to the side to get that horizontal abduction. But mostly, again,
it's the extension of the elbow back behind the body that activates and engages the rear
delt. We're looking for just two to three sets here in that 10 to 12 rep range on each arm.
And from there I want you to put that final nail in those rear delts by doing something we call
the Dumbbell Hip Hugger. And this is actually a great exercise for tying together the abduction
of the middle delt and the extension focus of the rear delt to hit both of these more
underserved areas of the delta in one shot. And what I want you to focus on when doing this is
to grab a heavier dumbbell than you would use for a lateral raise and try to imagine pulling
up a tight pair of pants. Your elbows would likely drift backwards and your elbows out to
the side to give you the effect of what a hip hugger would feel like. If you do this right,
you will feel one of the most intense contractions on both the middle and rear
delts perform two to three sets with a weight that will cause failure in a higher 12 to 15
rep range to ensure those gains come. And for the slightly masochistic out there,
you do have one extra little option if you're just looking to try a little final finisher, we call it
the Iron Cross finisher. And all you're going to do is take a slightly lighter pair of dumbbells
and you're going to alternate between these front raised isometric holds and these lateral
raise isometric holds. And the nice thing about it positioned at this point is the isometric strength
that you have is going to always exceed your concentric abilities. So, if you have anything
left in the tank at all at this point, you likely have the ability to perform this, continue to
try to rep this out until you can no longer control a repetition in either direction.
I posted myself doing this in my shoulder workout on Instagram. If you haven't already done so,
make sure you follow me over there as well. Guys, I can tell you from experience it's certainly a
ball buster, but it's also a ball builder when it comes to building out those rounder delts.
Guys. Remember, don't just focus on the middle delt when it's the wider shoulders that you
want. Remember, it's rounder shoulders are going to hold the key to the gains that you're after.
In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the workout I just gave you exercise by exercise
so you can go and try it out for yourselves to see just how it works for you.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a high-quality protein to support your hard
efforts in the gym, Athlean-X PRO-30G provides a whopping 30g of protein per serving at a
cost-effective cents per gram, you can find it over at Athleanrx.com. if you haven't done so,
guys, make sure you click Subscribe and turn on your Notifications, so you never miss a video
when we put one out. There's also a quick dumbbell chest workout you might want to check out as well,
you can do that right here. All right, guys, good luck with this one. I'll see you soon.