What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I'm going to show you how to improve all your shoulder workouts by improving every,
single shoulder exercise you do.
I'm unleashing the master tip.
The one tip that can make every, single one of your shoulder exercises more effective,
and therefore improve the results that you're seeing from your shoulder workouts.
Here's what you have to do.
We're going to start with a demonstration.
I want to start with a side lateral raise because it's the easiest place to see this.
If you take your arm and you raise it up to your side like this, just lift your arm out
to your side as if you just did a dumbbell raise.
Now take your other hand and reach up, and grab your trap.
What do you feel?
You probably should feel some tension here, in this trap, in this position.
But you shouldn't because we naturally, just as we did in our chest workout master tip,
we let the upper trap become too active in everything we do, and it's pulling away the
possible results you should be seeing from the muscle you're trying to target.
So if we're looking here, and we grab here – that's what you do – do me a favor from
here.
Now try to depress this shoulder.
Try to get the trap out of it.
Try not to shrug.
You should see a drop like that.
At least you should be capable of a drop like that.
If you are, then you're making the mistake.
So what you want to do is see if you can do that now on every, single exercise.
And you can!
I don’t care if it's pressing, I don’t care if it's front raises, I don’t care
if it's rear lateral raises, I don’t care if it's for your side delt.
If you look at the problem here you can see it up close, first and foremost.
If I were to go and raise my arm up you can see the contribution of the delt.
Yes, it's working to pull my arm up, but the delt, the upper trap here is also working
to pull my arm up.
So if I don’t control that, this is the level of activation that I get from the middle
delt.
But if I actively depress my arms, I try to pull my shoulder blades down, and now I raise,
you can see how much more the side delt has to work.
Yes, you might have to drop the weight and drop the ego too in order to be able to execute
this.
But that's going to lead to much better gains in your shoulders.
I did a whole video on how lighter weights – I'll link it right here – lighter weights
with shoulders is going to increase the hypertrophy and the gains you see in your shoulders because
it's one of those muscle groups that tends to get dwarfed by the contributing muscles
around it.
It's right here, next to the chest.
The chest likes to contribute when we're doing shoulder pressing exercises.
The triceps like to contribute when we're doing shoulder pressing exercises.
It never really gets an opportunity unless you force the opportunity for it to get more
isolated tension, and we can do that by getting that upper back out of it.
So here are some more examples.
If I do the side lateral raise, I'll go back to this one.
You actively start by pushing down and depressing those shoulder blades, and then reaching out.
You almost want to feel as if you're reaching out, and under a fence.
Never allow the trap to sneak back up, even if you start to get fatigued.
That just means you might have to lower the weight a little bit.
I've even showed you before.
If you want to add some more tension here you can stop halfway down and then reestablish,
and then go back up again in one and a half rep style to really drill home the tension
on your middle delt.
The next thing you could do is you could bring the dumbbells around to the front.
You can do the same thing here.
If you want that front delt to work then you'd better make sure you're getting the other
muscle groups out of it.
So again, actively push your shoulders down and then lift.
It's almost like a scooping motion.
You should feel it go down first, and then scoop up.
Down, and scoop up, keeping that downward tension as you go up.
You're not going to stop the rotation of the scapula, which is going to allow the arm to
raise up, but it's going to stop the contribution, and the over-activity of the upper traps,
and the levator that are pulling your shoulders up, and cheating the front delt.
We can do the same thing here, as you've seen me doing before.
The rear delt.
Here you just want to push your arms back toward your butt.
You're sliding them down.
Same thing, depressing them, but sliding them back down because your torso is now parallel
to the floor.
Now, can you do this on presses?
You actually can and it makes it a hell of a lot more effective for targeting the delt.
Yeah, we press, and we press with no mind toward 'is this actually even working our
delts?'
We just know that we're getting the weight up, and over our heads.
That's fine if you want to just develop big shoulders because we need to do an element
of heavy lifting to just develop the overall strength, but what you're left with is just
a big mass of a shoulder, but without the definition, and the roundedness that you're
looking for in that delt for a little bit more of an aesthetic look.
So you have to drop the weight here and focus on how you press.
So the same thing here.
I can press, as you watch me here.
I can press with my arms up, and overhead, but what I'm doing here is, I'm getting the
same over activity of the upper traps as I do that.
Instead what I want to do is, I want to pull down, and let the arms go for the ride.
So when I let that happen, now the delts are doing a lot more of the work to have to do
the pressing.
What you want to do here is, not just look at keeping down and pressing, but then let
the biceps lead the way.
So if I keep this down and pressed, and I bring the biceps up, toward my ears; now we
know that we're doing more of the pressing here through the delt, and getting as full
of a contraction as we can.
But the key is still the same.
You've got to get down before you go up.
I don’t care what movement that is.
It's down before it goes up.
Yes, it's the same master tip as we have for the chest, and all the exercises for the chest.
But there's a reason for that.
Like I said, these muscles are all in the same area.
They're all trying to help us push.
So they're all trying to find the same cheat.
The same cheat is doing this, and we don’t want that to happen.
Guys, if you've found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what you want me to cover here in future videos.
Of course, I'll cover more of the master tip series.
Also, if you're looking for a way to get more out of every, single workout you do by doing
every, single exercise you do better, not leaving really untapped potential on the exercises
by making small, little mistakes; head to ATHLEANX.com.
Click on the link below this video and use our program selector to find whichever program
it is that meets your goals.
We're going to put the science back in strength in all of those programs.
Once you determine what it is you're trying to accomplish you can be assured that you're
going to be getting all the best tips that I have to make sure you get the best games
ever.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again in just a couple days.
See you.