What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
No, I’m not trying to be an a-hole with the title.
I’m actually going to show you a warmup – my warmup – that I use for my shoulders
that you can use to build a lot of muscle.
We’re going to take a little heavier weight – same exercises – and we’re going to
allow this to help us build muscle via metabolic overload.
We can drive as much metabolic accumulation as we possibly can by, not just seeking the
burn, but then reveling in it, and chasing the burn even more, and not giving us a break
as we go through these 12 exercises.
It’s called a deltoid dozen, using one, single plate.
Let’s rewind a bit first.
We’re talking about a warmup.
If you take a 5lb or 10lb plate, if you go through the series of moves I’m going to
show you here, you’re going to hit your shoulders in all different planes, hit all
heads of the deltoids, and get them feeling nice, and loose before you head out to train.
Let’s walk through this first with the lighter weight.
You can see here as I start with some pendulums.
All we want to do is swing these things.
We call them sweepers.
Back and forth.
You can see I’m getting a little adduction on the arms, I’m getting nice and loose.
The goal is to let the weight let my arms swing.
Utilize the weight to your advantage.
We progress that here up to a little bit of a transverse plane movement now, and we actually
get our hips involved just to let the fluidity take place here.
Don’t lock yourself up.
Let the arms swing nice and free.
You should feel as if your arms are starting to get nice and loose, just from these first
few movements.
The next thing you do is lean forward and take that light, light plate – I realize
– then you’re going to row it to your belly.
What we’re doing here is focusing on getting extension of the arms behind our body.
The extension is going to be one of the easiest ways to start to introduce more mobility to
the shoulders, versus having to go straight adduction, or flexion, or overhead extension.
Now, from here we’re going to take it a little bit higher.
This is almost a horizontal version of a face pull.
Here, the elbow travel is straight out to our sides.
You almost want to pull the plate apart at the top and get more of a high pull effect,
utilizing more of the upper back muscles, and even more of the rear delts to do this.
Now that we’ve loosened up the shoulders and hit those indirect planes, now we can
start to go a little more into that troublesome plane, for a lot of people.
That is abduction.
We can do that here with a pendulum.
Here, we’re actually utilizing a little bit of momentum in the swing of the plate,
left to right, to ease into abduction.
We’re not just hitting the middle delt here.
We’re getting the rear delt as well.
Even when we swing to the front we’re getting some of that arm travel across the body, which
will get the front delt, too.
So, we’re getting some elevation, we’re getting that swing, we’re actually taking
it one step further every, single time.
Once we’ve done that, let’s challenge a bit more, the external rotation of the shoulders.
We’ve got to stand up and do a sword raise.
So, we’re lifting from the bottom left, and then up toward our high right, or vice
versa.
The goal here is trying to get as high and externally rotated as you can at the top to
continue to loosen up that shoulder into abduction, and now with the external rotation combined.
So, you’re going to want to do that on both sides.
Once we’re standing, another great way we can activate the rotators of the shoulder
is to take this plate into the plate halo.
We’re trying to circle the plate nice and tight around our head as much as we can, utilizing
the muscles of the rotator cuff, and trying to get them nice, and loose, and warm in all
planes, in all directions.
Of course, you want to make sure you’re not just taking it in one direction, but going
both clock-wise, and counter clock-wise around your head to warm up both shoulders through
both internal, and external rotation.
With that accomplished, now we can move onto a little bit more of the pressing movements.
We’ve warmed up our shoulders, now let’s start with the pressing a little bit.
We start with a very easy plate press out.
Straight from our upper chest, and straight out, utilizing the front delts to a heavy
degree.
But we can actually shift that focus a little more to the side delt, if we push at an oblique
angle.
After we push and feel nice, and loose in the front, now we’re going to press at the
oblique angle.
Make sure the arm that stays straight is the side that you’re pushing to.
So, if I’m pushing to the right side, that arm goes out as straight as I can, and the
left arm is there to support it.
Now what we’re doing here with the plate-eight is making this a lot tougher.
Even though it’s a warmup, by this time you can see I’m huffing and puffing here,
and I’m sweating.
You want to be able to get your arms out there and keep the tension on the shoulders while
we continue to mobilize.
Now we’re going in this figure eight pattern, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
but never relieving the tension because my arms are being held out there the entire time.
Now, giving ourselves a bit of a much-needed reprieve here, we go into the overhead trap
raise.
Which, again, I’ve covered before on this channel.
This is going straight up, but all the way overhead.
You can see what we’re doing here is trying to activate and engage the lower traps.
Very, very important for the stability of your shoulders.
You want to make sure they’re active and alert before you start getting into some of
your heavier overhead pressing movements to come in your later workout.
Finally, we go here and do our last exercise, which is the bus driver.
I use this one in my workout with Jinder Mahal, if you haven’t seen that one here on our
channel.
It’s a ball buster, for sure.
The idea is, even as a warmup can you continue to drive the bus until your arms are fried.
They’re super warm, ready to go, you can do anything now.
You’re ready to start your workout.
So, to recap and actually check this out with the heavier weight here, this is where you’re
going to build muscle here, guys.
I don’t care if you’re using a 45lb plate like I am here, or whether you’re using
a 55lb plate, or God help you if you can use a 100lb plate; go to town with it.
But I’m going to tell you this: by the time you’re done with all these movements you’re
likely not going to be using what you wanted to use when you set out to start this thing.
It gets very, very difficult, quickly.
But you still do the same movements here.
So, to recap.
We have our sweepers here, back and forth.
Remember, even with the heavier weight here try to let the weight loosen up the shoulders.
Then we go into this transverse plane where we’re swinging the weight side to side.
Again, utilizing those hips to help loosen up the shoulders and get your entire body
ready for what’s to come.
Now we bend over here.
Now with the more challenging weight.
Again, very, very light for a row, but we have to start in that same plane.
Remember, this is accumulation, guys.
Not just looking to fatigue ourselves to dead failure here.
We’re going for an accumulation by the time we’re done with all these reps.
You should probably be aiming to do about eight reps of each if you can.
We do the low row to the belly, then we bring the plate up higher now, until it’s going
up really high on our chest, looking for that reverse face pull action with the plate.
Then, of course, we start going into that pendulum.
You can see here, a lot more difficult for me to pendulum this weight up, and to the
side, up, and to the side.
From here, we want to take it up into the diagonal.
We get a little higher, a little more external rotation.
This is tough, but we do have that lower hand to spot if we need it.
It’s going to come in handy for you.
As I’m trying to externally rotate and finish up nice and high on the sword raise, I do
have that lower hand to help spot me to get this.
Of course, we’re working on both sides at a time.
Then we work the haloes the same way here.
It’s a little more challenging, but because the plate is held nice, and tight, and your
arms aren’t out as far as they were on some of the earlier exercises, the challenge is
not as hard.
Despite the fact that you’ve added more weight.
But the benefit is still the same.
We’re loosening up, and we’re working those external rotators.
Now from here, we start that pressing portion of this.
It becomes a lot more difficult when you’ve chosen that heavier weight.
So, we’re doing the plate press outs here.
Again, choosing a number and try to hit it every, single time.
Next, we go in and start taking up the oblique angle.
Now we’re working more of that middle delt because we’re pushing out a little more
to the side into abduction, as opposed to straight out in front of us.
Again, making sure to keep that outside arm – the pressing arm – straighter than you
are on the assistance arm.
From here, we go into that really difficult portion with the plate eight.
The plate eight, done with a 45lb plate – as many of you can probably already attest to,
is not that easy.
But it’s worthwhile.
You’re going to go here and, again, by now the burn is probably substantially in place.
If you have to rest for even a split second, make it a split second and get right back
into action here.
You want to really, really revel in that burn if you’re going to benefit from the metabolic
overload, and the accumulation here of metabolites as you continue to rep out.
That is what will be your stimulus for growth.
It doesn’t always have to come down to overload and mechanical tension here.
You can do this other ways, guys.
I invite you to try this.
Now, after we’ve done the plate eight, we give ourselves that slight reprieve with the
trap raise.
This is no picnic.
Doing a 45lb plate, as I’m doing here, straight up overhead, utilizing muscles that tend to
be pretty weak in the lower traps is still going to be quite a challenge.
You want to try and get your eight reps.
Then finally, if you can, drive that damn bus.
It ain’t going to be easy at this point, but you want to try and do it for as long
as you can here.
It might even be just seconds, but fight it, fight it, fight it.
Get that burn and keep it going.
So, there you have it, guys.
12 exercises in one routine that you can either do as a warmup, or as the main event.
If you’re going to apply that grit and determination and that little extra heavier weight that
you’re going to need to turn this into a metabolic stressor.
Guys, it doesn’t matter which one you choose.
The idea is, you have to have the understanding of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
We always try to provide you with the education behind what we do – the science behind the
strength – so you can get the benefit out of what it is you’re trying to do.
If you’re doing this for a warmup, understand the differences of each exercise and what
they’re doing to your shoulders to help you get closer to being warm, and ready to
start doing some heavier pressing.
Or whatever other exercises you’re going to do.
But if you’re going to turn this into that main show, the main event, then put the effort
there, but know what it is you’re doing.
So, when you do push, you’re pushing safely, you’re pushing hard, and you see results.
Guys, if you’re looking for a step by step program, head to ATHLEANX.com and get our
ATHLEANX training program.
We put the science in every, single thing we do to help you get better results from
what you do.
In the meantime, I hope you’ve found this video helpful.
Let me know in the comments below and whatever else you want me to cover, I’ll do my best
to do that for you in the days and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.