I used to work out a lot with weights and the check comes doing your joints start to hurt this,
back, knees, it just happens. Sometimes getting into that kind of shape can kill you.
There's fantastic trainers like Jeff Cavaliere on Athlete-X, his videos are amazing. But at my age,
I found the hardest, toughest, most productive way is bands, training with bands.
Yeah, bands are great and all and this Jeff Cavaliere fellow, he's a great guy,
but what about Jesse Laico at Atheleanx.com, he's the real star of the show.
I can't disagree with the thing you just said.
What's up guy's Jeff Cavaliere, Atheleanx.com. You see, I've always been a Stallone guy and Arnold,
you just gave me more validation as to why. But the fact is, we're talking about bands today,
guys that's we can all agree on and you can actually build muscle using just bands. I'm
continuing the series and today we're talking all about shoulders. What can you do to hit
the middle, front and rear delt, as a matter of fact, you hit the whole shoulder together?
These are the exercises that you want to focus on. Let's start break them down one by one.
So, when it comes to building bigger shoulders, we're going to start here with the big exercises.
You know, the ones that hit all three heads at once. And you can't start without talking
about the overhead press. You see, there's a challenge, though, when it comes to overhead
pressing with bands. Usually, you're either using something that provides good amount of tension,
but you just can't stretch it far enough when it comes all the way from the ground,
or you opt for something lighter and it just doesn't provide enough overload to cause growth.
So instead, you do this, and this is the line one arm press. And what this does is it fixes
the band length problem because I can start with a bent leg and I can match my strength levels to
provide just the amount of tension that's going to create the overload necessary for growth.
Of course, as I get stronger, I can creep my foot down further and further,
increasing the length of travel and stretch of the band. I could also do something really
unique here, I don't have to just settle for the concentric overload. I could actually
introduce an eccentric overload as well. Once the band is fully extended up over my head,
I push my foot down and try to control the descent of the hand back down to shoulder level.
Now, let's say I want to do something different. I don't want to go for a tension overload, I want to
introduce a metabolic overload to my pressing. Well, I could do this, this is the push press
pull apart. And here I could actually focus a little bit more on increasing the time that
I'm under tension at the top of the press. So when I press up overhead with two hands,
now I actually get a chance to stay there, pull the band apart at the top, and then, of course,
pull it back together, creating an abduction resistance that's making it harder for me to
actually get my arms fully extended and my hands close together up over my head.
When you're looking to get a little bit more explosive with the overhead pressing,
the kneeling up and over's is the way to go and see. What you do is you anchor the band
underneath your knees and then you put your hands in this pressure position so the band is not
bending your wrist back and you get to this tall, kneeling position and you simply drive
this band up overhead as fast and hard as you possibly can. Speed matters here. We're looking
for power. We want to introduce a different stimulus here for those delts. This is going
to definitely hit the front and middle delt, the rear delt not as much, but don't worry guys we're
going to be hitting those in just a minute. And with our three overall shoulder exercises
down, now it's time to start working around from head to head to head. And we're going to start
right here in the front with the front raise pull apart. You see, this is looking like a
traditional front dumbbell raise, except we're doing it with bands. But when we get to the top,
we could do something to introduce some new stresses here and prolong the time that we
have to spend in this miserable top position on the front delt raise. And this is where we
just simply pull the bands apart. And by doing that, yeah, we're going to shift a little bit
that load to the middle and rear delt, but most importantly, what we're doing is prolonging the
time under tension that we have at that top, most difficult position of the front raise.
If you really want to put a unique stress on the front delts, then you're going to want to do this.
And this is the stretch front raise. The band should be anchored behind you in such a way that
it actually pulls your arm back into extension, which is going to apply a good stretch on the belt
before every single repetition is performed. It's the act of this stretching of the front delt that
gives you the stretch reflex necessary to create a more powerful contraction. So, what I like to
do is not just drive my arm up in front of me, but then control the descent in the eccentric all the
way back down. You can literally see the fibers resisting this on every single repetition.
Working our way around now to the middle delt. You know, you're going to have to do some side lateral
raises here. And you can actually do these better than maybe you can with some dumbbells if you know
how to apply tension the right way. What I like to do, number one is not anchor the band under
the same side foot that I'm lifting my arm up on, but on the opposite side. Because what it does
is it gives me a little bit more range of motion in which I can actually apply the resistance of
the band. And then I also want to make sure that I grab this thing the right way, because whether I
grab a dumbbell or I grab a band with an overhang grip, I'm actually going to be at the mercy of any
kind of weakness I might have my wrist or any pain I might have my forearm in terms of performing
this with peak tension at the top of the rep. What I could do instead with the band is simply
grab it this way, anchor it around the back of my hand and then just focus on lifting up
the entire arm. It's not so much focused on what's happening directly at the wrist. Now,
let's say you have some of those issues at your wrist or forearm and you still want to
take advantage of the gains you can have by doing these lateral raises, you can do the short arc
version of this. And that's when you take a band of much heavier resistance anchor it around your
arms like you see me doing here, double up around the elbows and then you simply drive your elbows
out away from your body into abduction at the shoulder as much as you possibly can. The fact is,
with the arm decreased from the long arc version here, you're going to have to introduce a heavier
band in order to have the resistance that you're looking for, to create the muscle overload.
And now, of course, there's one other thing we can do, and this is my favorite variation
for growing your shoulders with bands, and it's called the cross body lateral raise. And you can
see right off the bat, one great advantage here, similar to the stretch front raise,
is on getting a stretch on the mid delt. Something that almost never happens in almost any variation
of a lateral raise, even when done with dumbbells. You want to get this band across your body to get
that pre stretch and then forcibly drive your arm up and across your body into abduction.
You can see the tension that's placed on the middle delt here at the peak contraction. Try to
hold it for a second or two and then again, resist that eccentric all the way across your body.
But lateral raises are not the only way to hit the middle delt guys. There's two more ways that
are incredibly effective at getting the job done. The first of which is actually called the banded
high pull. You see, it looks exactly like the high pull that I recommend to you all the time
for building bigger shoulders with dumbbells. And what this does is it not only introduces
the abduction that we need to get our middle delts, but it has another component here
that's so often overlooked and that is some additional external rotation at the shoulder that
can always be beneficial to producing not just strong, but healthy shoulders. So, you can see,
just like with the dumbbells, I don't want my elbows to beat my hands in the race to the top.
If I were to do that, I simply turn this into an upright row, which we're not doing.
Instead, I want to have the hands be higher than the elbows at the top,
which reinforces the external rotation I just mentioned. But we have another option here,
too. It's called the hip hugger in the hip hugger, you actually take to individual bands and you
double them up just like this, because we're going to need the added resistance. And with your hands
hanging now just at your sides, all you want to do is pretend like you're pulling up a pair of pants,
drag your hands up your hips until you get those elbows out into abduction. At the very top of
the movement, it's important to hold the squeeze for at least a brief second or two. This is where
you want to really reinforce that tension. And now, as I mentioned earlier, that brings us
all the way around to the back side, to the rear delt. And the first exercise I want you to do here
is called the Rear Delt Pull. You simply wrap the band around your back and you're just going to do
a band pull apart, essentially. But how you grab the band is essential to getting the full benefits
of this exercise. If you could grab the band with an overhead grip, the tendency would be to try to
actually do an elbow extension to get the band behind the body, but that's only shifting the
work to the triceps. Instead of you grab it like this, now the focus is on moving the entire arm.
And with the arm being the focal point of the movement now you're going to shift all that
load to the rear delt doing the reverse fly. But you don't have to do it and standing only. As a
matter of fact, you can increase the intensity and the focus one side at a time by doing this,
the alternating Bent Over Rear Delt Pull. You can see the position is the same. As a matter of fact,
I get some additional benefits from the down arm in terms of shoulder stability right up
into that shoulder blade. Either one of these is a great way to target the rear delt and help
to get them to grow. Especially if you've been ignoring them for far too long.
And that brings us to exercise number six. You didn't think we get to the whole video without
doing a face pull, did you? Well, here you go. Here's your obligatory face pull video. Guys,
you know I love this exercise. You also get the extra rotation built in to hit that rotator cuff,
there's nothing better than a face pull. Maybe whipped cream, but these are good, too.
So, you have guys, whether you're an Arnold guy or a Stallone guy, the fact is--
Come on, Jeffrey, what about the Jesse guy? Like I said before, he's the star of the show.
Arnold, with all due respect, could you please let me finish my outro?
I'll be back. Like I was saying, guys,
never underestimate the power of bands when it comes to building muscle,
if you know how to use them. Guys, hopefully now as far as your shoulders go, you know exactly what
to do. If you want to see more of these in this series, make sure you leave your comments below.
Tell me what's the next and I'll make the video. If you're looking for step by step programs, guys,
all of them are available over at athleanx.com. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so,
make sure you click subscribe turn on your notifications, so you never missed in a
video when we put one out. I told you I did back.
I'm gone, how about that? Oh, come on Jeffrey. I command.