Training Shoulders With Dumbbells – Your Guide To Monster Shoulders

The key to the development of delts having a round three-dimensional view is the proportional development of all 3 heads of muscles. In this case, your deltoids will look filled when looking at them both in front and behind or on the side.

Most often, visitors to gyms are well-developed front delts, moderately developed middle delts, and severely lagging rear delts. This, as a rule, finds its manifestation in the essentially developed humerus bones. In other words, your palms are more turned back, and not to the hips, when you stand with your hands down and relaxed.

This is probably due to your bias for bench press and chest training in general, as well as your tendency to pay more attention to the muscles that you can see in the mirror.

On the other hand, there are people who avoid direct load on the front delts and focus on the development of medium beams. As a result, the average deltoid in them is voluminous, and the anterior ones remain small and underdeveloped, especially when viewed from the side.

Appreciate yourself from the side

Before you begin to build round delts, you should find out what the development of these muscles is at the moment. This will allow you to correctly prioritize.

Take a picture of the front, back and side in the standing position with hands on the sides and palms facing the hips.

When viewed from the front, your shoulders should have some roundness. If this is not the case, your shoulders will look narrow, regardless of the width of the bones.

If your shoulders have a narrow bone structure or you have wide hips, then giving the delts of roundness is exactly what you need. You can achieve this by placing a priority on the development of medium delts with the help of various options for lifting through the sides.

If, when viewed from the side, the front beams are not full, then you obviously need to focus on their development. You can achieve this by using various variants of frontal lifts and pressures above your head.

Well, if you are behind the back of the deltoid heads, you will not lose if you focus on their development with the help of various dilutions of hands – with dumbbells, blocks or in the simulator.

When assessing your back delts, keep in mind that these are shorter muscles that look completely different from the front delts. To better evaluate your rear deltoid, use the “double biceps behind” posture.

Draw up a work plan

Let’s look at the basics of training the shoulders before moving on to the details. Let’s say that you will be training your shoulders every 5-7 days.

We could talk about the pros and cons of co-training different parts of the body, but enough to say that the lagging shoulders are best not to train after working on the muscles of the chest. The training of the chest and shoulders should be separated from each other for 2 or 3 days. In this case, you will be able to train your shoulders when they are fresh and full of energy.

In addition, despite the fact that it is quite logical to train the rear deltoid in the “shoulder day”, perhaps it is more appropriate to work on them in one day with the back. All because the rear delts function like a back muscle. In other words, they help to pull your hands down and/or back.

Therefore, when you pull up, pull dumbbell to the waist in the slope or pull the strap to the waist with a grip from above, your rear delts will be significantly included in the work, whether you like it or not.

Exercises, Sets, and repetitions

#1. Rear Delts

In general, 3-4 working approaches of one isolating motion for the rear beams will suffice. Work approaches are all those approaches that are not warm-up, so they are brought to a concentric failure or terminated in 1-2 repetitions before it.

However, if your rear delts seriously lag behind in development, then perform two isolation exercises. In each of them, do 3 approaches. Here are 3 effective exercises to choose from:
1. Retracting your hands back into the crossover
2. Raising your hands through the sides, lying belly on the incline bench
3. Raising your hands through the sides, lying belly on the incline bench, with the dumbbell turned outwards

Avoid scrapping so that you can isolate the rear delts. Keep in mind that the function of the rear tufts is to simply move the humerus (arm) back, and not to bring the shoulder blades together.

Regardless of what exercises you do for the posterior deltoids, there are several principles of biomechanics that should be considered. For example, the brush should be deployed with little fingers back. This technique causes the rear delts to perform the main work.

# 2. Front Delts

When performing isolation exercises on the rear delts it is difficult for most people to feel the work of the muscles. For this reason, it is better to keep the number of repetitions high (10-15). It is possible to lift more weight in fewer repetitions from time to time, but it is better to wait until the neuromuscular efficacy of the posterior deltoids becomes really good.

Doing some type of bench press above your head on almost every shoulder training is a good idea. In the end, the press above the head is one of the basic motor patterns.

It is better if you perform such exercises with free weights, that is, with a barbell or dumbbells. This will help you to keep your shoulders healthy.

In addition, the press above the head for the front deltoids is like squats for quadriceps. Well, while the front elevations isolate the front delts in the same way as the leg extensions isolate the quadriceps. Just do not lose your head and remember the symmetry of the shoulders.

If the front delts are your strength, then concentrate, above all, on the bench press, performing frontal rises only occasionally to gain muscle. This, in combination with the stimulation that they receive in the training of the chest, should be more than enough.

But if you really need to pull up your front delts, then you should definitely do some kind of frontal rises in addition to the press above your head.

Two of the best types of press above your head – this is a bench press (sitting or standing) and a press of dumbbells (sitting or standing). Although many schemes of approaches and repetitions are fully working, it is better to follow the 4-way scheme x 6-10 repetitions in this exercise. However, 5×5 and 3×8-12They are also good options, which should be performed fairly regularly.

As for the isolation of the front deltoid with the help of frontal lifts, alternating dumbbell lifts keep the palm of the lead ahead, although the forward bar lifts are also quite effective.

Regardless of the type of frontal rises that you choose, be sure to lift weights to a 110-degree angle, roughly speaking, to the top of your forehead. It is at this point that the front deltoid peak shrinks, and not at an angle of 90 degrees, where most people stop.

When performing any of the variants of frontal lifts, adhere to the range of 3×10-12, from time to time dropping to 6-8 or increasing the number of repetitions to 12-15.

# 3. Mid delts

If you want your shoulders to be like those of professional bodybuilders, you must include in your program some kind of ups and downs through the sides to pump the middle delts.

The basic variety is the lifting of dumbbells through the standing side. Although this exercise is performed by many, most of them do it wrong.

Your palms should be pointed down in the upper position. Or, if you want to increase the load on the middle delts, unfold the brush with your thumbs down a few degrees so that the little finger is at the top of the top point of the exercise.

Your wrist, elbow, and shoulder should be at the same level at the top of the movement. The protruding process of the ulna (olecranon) should be directed back, not down.

At the upper point of the movement in most people, the brushes tend to be the thumbs up, and the wrists are higher than the elbows. All because this motor pattern allows the dominant front deltoid to help more than you want.

People who are overly active in the upper part of the trapezoidal are also inclined to “shrug” their shoulders when their hands approach the corner at 90 degrees. To avoid this, imagine that you need to “push” dumbbells from the body to the sides.

Do not even think about doing any other types of side elevations until you master the correct technique of lifting dumbbells through the sides. When you are ready for some changes, try to climb through the side because of the back on the lower block, completing the movement in the same position as mentioned above.

For more variety, you can change the maximum stress point by doing one of the following one-sided variations:
1. Lying on your side on an incline bench. The endpoint of the movement is 90 degrees of the shoulder, where the peak delt of the middle delt occurs.
2. With the body tilted toward the working arm.

If you need to tighten your lagging behind in the development of the middle deltoid, do 2 variants of climbing through the sides in 3 approaches. Do one exercise in 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions, and another in 3 sets of 12-15 repetitions. Well, as always, from time to time you can work with heavier or lighter weight.

Examples of training programs

Here are two options for basic, no-frills, training, each of which is aimed at correcting the deficiencies in the development of shoulder muscles.

#1. For lagging rear delts ( with well developed front beams ):

# 2. For lagging front delts ( with well-developed medium-sized beams ):