So, there's no debating here, dumbbells are absolutely going to help you to
build bigger shoulders, but if you really want to see some gains from time to time,
at least you're going to have to put at least one of those dumbbells down.
What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, anthleanx.com. We continue our series today. I'm going to show
you how to build the perfect shoulders with just dumbbells. The thing--
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, is that my cue? All right, so perfect shoulders -- wait
you're going to have to move out of the way because you're not going to fit in
here. Ugh, look at these delts. Oh my God. Perfect Jesse? Listen,
maybe improved, perfect no. Are you sure? Look at that, the profile.
From any angle, honestly, from any angle. Listen guys, obviously perfection is in the eye of the
beholder, right? It's relative. However, even if you get close to perfect you're going to look
really damn good. And what I'm going to show you here today is eight things that you can do
with just dumbbells. As a matter of fact, dumbbells enable you to do this more than
anything else in the gym. So, with that said, let's start breaking them down one by one.
So, look, if you want to build big shoulders, you've got to make sure you can actually
train your shoulders. And it's important that we warm the shoulders up before we even do that,
because we know that's the most vulnerable joint in the body of injury, given that it has some of
the most mobility of any joint in the body. So, we start right here at the light side of the dumbbell
rack with a light dumbbell to do this little warmup. It's a simple dumbbell halo that, again,
is perfectly done here with a dumbbell because it's very convenient. You go around your head
both clockwise and counterclockwise with the end goal being to work on warming up the rotational
aspect of your shoulder. Extra rotation and interpretation, something that is very much
ignored by most people, which sets them up for injury when they attack their shoulder workouts.
Secondly, you want to come across your body with this dumbbell sword raise. And here again, we're
working on getting some of that extra rotation, but also transitioning to getting your arm across
your body, which, as you'll see here in exercise three, is another very important requirement
of healthy shoulders. And that's what this right here with the dumbbell cauldron we're working on,
bringing those shoulders really far across our body as far as we can, by making these big
sweeping circles or caldrons, as the exercise is called. The bottom line here, guys, is warming up
your shoulders is a requirement for making the gains that you're seeking here. The dumbbell
makes it really, really easy to do. Okay, so that you're all warmed up,
the next thing we're going to do is actually start building those shoulders up. And for God's sake,
guys, do me a favor, start training your front delts. Look, I've heard it before you don't have
to train your front delts as long as your bench pressing. Well, you don't have to train your front
delts as long as your bench pressing if you're not looking for perfect shoulders. If you want
perfectly developed shoulders, you're going to have to start to include some additional
front delt work with some direct exercises. We're not talking complicated here, guys.
Dumbbell press outs will work incredibly well here. Dumbbell front raises a classic
front delt builder. The fact is we can apply some focus tension to the front delts and get more
hypertrophy. And again, when the goal is building the perfect shoulders, we're not looking for just
good enough, we're looking for the best. Which brings us to another important point
here. If you want to explore the maximum capacity of growth in your shoulders, figure out a way to
get more stretch and more range of motion like this. This is the leaning side lateral raise.
You can see that by simply just changing the orientation of my body, that the dumbbell is
actually crossing midline and applying a greater stretch to the middle delt before I go into every
single repetition, I get the benefit of the stretch reflex for better growth. The second
exercise we can do can target the front delts in much the same way, and it's just an incline front
dumbbell raise. So instead of always doing them standing up, just sit down on this slight incline,
and you'll see that your shoulders will naturally fall back behind your body,
placing again that slight stretch on the front delt that leads right into every repetition, each
one a more powerful contraction because it takes advantage of that stretch reflex once again.
Tip number four, if you want to build those big, perfect shoulders, is to make sure that you're
not limiting the heavy stuff to just the overhead pressing exercises. That will be the same thing is
if you just did a heavy close-gripped bench press when you're trying to build your triceps and you
went light on every other exercise you did: dips, skull crushers or maybe even tricep pushouts.
There's a bigger capacity to grow here if you extend those heavy exercise options in your
arsenal. So, what I'm suggesting is you increase the weight on all of the raises that you do
front, side and rear raises. Let's talk about the front first. This exercise is
just a heavier than usual front dumbbell raise. Again, what's actually interesting here is it's
not necessarily what you're doing on the way up, but what you're doing on the way down that
sparks the muscle growth. Because we know that a forced, heavy eccentric is going to be one of the
three main drivers of muscle growth and it's one that you don't want to ignore when you're
trying to build perfect shoulders. Likewise, we can pick up a heavier than usual dumbbell here
and do a lateral raise the same way, we call this a Cheat Lateral. And again, even if I had
to utilize a little bit that momentum to muscle it up to the top, the goal is trying to slow
the descent of the dumbbell down, control that eccentric and provide that impetus for growth.
And we don't limit it to just those two heads of the delts guys, because we can attack the rear
delts in very much the same way. As a matter of fact, we know one of the best ways to build the
rear delts is to overload extension of the shoulder. Because a simple seated cable row
is actually one of the greatest ways to build your rear delts is typically done with heavy loads. But
if I wanted to go and stick strictly to dumbbells here like we are in this video, I have two other
options here. I could simply sit at the end of a bench and do this little bit of an abbreviated or
scarecrow row, where I'm just bringing my elbows up to my sides, very short range of motion, and I
could feel that because again, these muscles don't typically use heavier weights. Or I could do the
rear delt row, which is one of my favorite ways to train the rear delts heavier by simply leaning up
against a rack, pulling that arm back behind the body with a little bit of a twist on the shoulder
external rotation, which will absolutely light up your delts. But the fact of the matter is,
guys, none of these have to be done with light weights and the additional weight here is enough
to spark the growth that is you're seeking. Ok, now, having just said that, tip number five
is actually to work your way down to this end of the rack and start using those light dumbbells to,
particularly for those raises. Look, it's important to overload the eccentric portion
of the rep, especially on those delts that don't typically get that eccentric overload. But just as
important is to make sure that when you're trying to build a muscle, that you're training that
muscle and not relying on momentum exclusively to build the muscle up. So, what I'm suggesting
is on a front raise sometimes you want to grab those light dumbbells, really light dumbbells
and go really slow. Eliminate all momentum, initiate every single inch of a contraction from
that dumbbell, from your side to shoulder level, by and with the front delt only. And of course,
the lateral raise that you were doing standing before can be taken down to the floor for a
much different effect. With the lighter dumbbells you're performing only that upper 75% of the range
of motion, which in this case is going to keep the focus and attention directly on that middle delt.
There's no reprieve of the dumbbell down at your side in this case. You keep that focus
and tension on from the very beginning of every rep to the very end of the last rep. And finally,
the rear delts guys, the W Raise done with very light dumbbells as one of my favorite ways to hit
this muscle group. The key here is try to form the W with your arms to ensure the rotation of
the shoulder and more importantly, the extension required to hit that rear delt with that really
laser focused effort. Guys going light is going to be a requirement, there's no choice between heavy
and light, both of them are going to be needed. Tip number six, you guys know how much I love the
face pull, but we don't have cables are band, you do have dumbbells. We have the Urlacher.
Is there a fly in here? Uh, don't mind me.
Urlacher is your face pull equivalent when you have dumbbells and dumbbells only. And you're not
sacrificing very much in the process because we know that the face pole is one of the best ways to
build up the entire posterior chain, particularly those rear delts in the upper back musculature.
Well, guys, you can do this with Urlacher by simply sitting with a pair of dumbbells at the end
of the bench. And you'll notice that the mechanics of the movement are very similar. They start with
that straight arm out in front of your body and they pull up nice and close to your body, maybe a
little bit more of a bicep hammer curl activation in this Urlacher. But when we get to the top,
the elbows are staying nice and tight, tucked to the body, palms facing back,
just like they do on that face pole and we get the activation of the same muscles. Face poles,
Urlachers, you're never going to get away from it if you're training with me.
So, by now it's apparent that you could definitely build your shoulders up by using dumbbells only.
The fact is, if you really want to build them up at some point, you're going to want at least put
one of them down. Let me explain what I mean. If you were to press a pair of dumbbells up overhead,
relatively heavy, you're going to be limited by how much your core can stabilize
in the two dumbbells going up over your head at one time. Let's say you had a pair of 50s
pushing one 100 overhead is always going to be more challenging on your core stability
than pushing 50 pounds at one time. And what that means is if you want to increase the weight that
you can press overhead, if you simply put one of them down on the ground, you're going to be
able to do that to the tune of 10 to 15 or even 20% more weight in that single hand.
And what happens is if you train that over and over again, you will actually build up the
strength unilaterally then when you bring them back together again, in that bilateral press,
you'll have more pressing strength overall. We know as we get stronger, the gains will
come more easily. Guys, make sure you're not always pressing overhead two arms at a time,
mixed in that one arm at a time for the best and most perfect shoulders that you can build.
And speaking of pressing guys, make sure that you're using your dumbbells to your advantage
when you are pressing with them. Because they give you one of the most distinctive advantages that
dumbbells have overhead pressing that barbells do not and that is the quick switch between weights
and the opportunity to do that seamlessly as a drop set. Look, pressing with a barbell is great,
but when we're trying to utilize drop sets with barbells that precious time lost, switching place
on and off can be made up easily by using the dumbbells. As a matter of fact, optimally by using
the dumbbells, we simply perform a set to failure, put the dumbbells back in as quick as it takes us
to reach for the next ones, we can get right back up into that next set. When we're looking to train
to and through failure to really tap into those muscle fibers and create the overload needed for
growth, dumbbells give us an opportunity that barbells just make a lot more difficult.
So, there you have it, guys. If you're trying to build perfect shoulders, there's eight things you
don't want to do, and you just need dumb--What is wrong with you. I got a stiff neck. From what?
From that tackle. What tackle. Just go on, go on. Guys, listen, perfect shoulders again in the eye
of the beholder, but with these eight tips, you can get there yourself. If you're looking for
programs that break it down step by step guys, all of our plans will show you how to build the
perfect body, all available over at athleanx.com. In the meantime, we found the video helpful,
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