Not to brag, but I get the most amount of compliments on my shoulder development.
While I have a lot of weak points that I openly talk about on the YouTube channel and work my a** off on each week, my shoulders have always been overly developed. I attribute this partially to genetics and partially to my unique way of training them.
The problem that I see with a lot of shoulder workouts at the gym is a lot of standing around. I see so many guys on shoulder day that spend more time talking about girls and fantasy football than they do actually working out!
Another problem is most guys only perform the basic movements which put a ton of stress on the rotator cuff and other ligaments in the shoulder, and doesn’t hit all three heads of the deltoid muscle.
You have three portions of your deltoid muscle – which we will quickly go over before getting into the article.
First up you have your anterior deltoid, which is the very front part of your shoulder that even gets in work when you are hitting the bench press, or doing any type of chest movement.
Then you have the lateral deltoid, which is the large middle portion the deltoid muscle that gets blasted during most shoulder exercises like the lateral raises.
Last but not least you have the rear deltoid muscle, or posterior deltoid muscle group, which seems to get the least attention, but is extremely important if you want an aesthetic looking physique.
Why I Came Up With This Workout Strategy
Like I said in the intro, the two biggest problems with most guys’ shoulder workouts is a lot of standing around which kills workout intensity and motivation, as well as not targeting all three heads of the shoulder workout.
This insane shoulder workout tackles both of those issues! We are going to be incorporating one of my favorite shoulder exercises of all time in this workout, and using it as a pre fatigue strategy before we hit a specific muscle in the shoulder.
What we are going to do is before each set we are going to be doing a set of dumbbell farmers walks with our shoulders tensed as a pre fatigue. This means that you will be grabbing a pair of heavy dumbbells and walking around your gym with your deltoids and traps tensed. This puts an incredible amount of fatigue on your deltoids and is the perfect pre fatigue exercise to blast your delts!
Before each shoulder shaper you will be doing a set of these farmers walks, and by the end of your workout you will be drenched in sweat like you had been doing a leg workout!
I find that adding in some type of dynamic exercise into a traditionally boring workout without much movement gives you a chance to boost your workout intensity and make some serious gains.
I’m excited for you to try this workout! Make sure you let me know in the Youtube comments what you thought about it!
Here is my “Insane Shoulder Workout for Mass…”
Exercise 1: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Dumbbell Rear Delt Fly Superset
Start off with the dumbbell farmers walk and go heavy since this is the very beginning of your workout.
Use straps if you have a weak grip so all of your focus can be on the deltoid muscles. Immediately after putting the dumbbells down after the farmers walks grab a light pair of dumbbells that you can control and perform a set of dumbbell. rear deltoid fly’s for about 10-15 reps.
Perform this superset for 2 total sets with about 75 seconds rest between the supersets.
Exercise 2: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Deltoid Tension Row Superset
Just like the last one – start off with the dumbbell farmers walk until failure with a goal of getting about 30 seconds under tension.
After this grab a pair of light dumbbells and do the deltoid tension row superset, focusing on putting maximum tension right on the lateral deltoid muscle.
Exercise 3: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Dumbbell Shoulder Shapers
Just like the last one we are going to be going until failure on the farmers walks, but then we’re going to transition into dumbbell shoulder shapers.
Shoulder shapers are a great exercise for putting a ton of overload on both the anterior and lateral deltoid at the same time.
This is one of my favorite aesthetic bodybuilding exercises for the shoulders, especially if you are able to flare out your elbows at the right angle to channel the squeeze in your deltoids. Make sure you watch the video so you can see the perfect form on this exercise!
Exercise 4: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Close Grip Upright Row EZ Bar
I think you get the farmers walks by now – so I’m going to head straight to the EZ bar row exercise. Just remember with all of these sets we want to be 30 seconds time under tension on the farmers walks.
The EZ-bar upright row allows you to really focus on the anterior deltoid muscle – but you have to make sure that you keep the bar away from your body. If you are doing the upright row to close to your body you will target the traps muscle which is NOT what you want to do.
Watch the video for a detailed breakdown of this exercise.
Exercise 5: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Dumbbell Lateral Raise Superset
This time we are going to superset our farmers walks with the traditional dumbbell lateral raise, placing all of the focus on the lateral head of the deltoid muscle.
Make sure that you are not resting your deltoids at the top or bottom of the movement and keeping 100 percent of your focus on the contraction of the shoulder muscle.
Exercise 6: Komodo Flares
This was inspired by the most alpha animal of all time: The komodo dragon! Lol…
Komodo flares are a cross between a halfway seated dumbbell lat raise and seated dumbbell shrug… and will give you the deltoid pump of your life!
I like to use a light weight on this (about 50 percent of the weight I would normally do dumbbell shrugs with) and focus on the contraction on the lateral head of the deltoid.
This caps off an epic shoulder workout, so feel free to push yourself and knock out 3-4 sets of the Komodo flares!
Let me know what you think about the insane shoulder workout in the comments below and I will talk to you soon!
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