Click Here To View Of The Bodybuilding.com Coupons Currently Offered! Updated For 2010.
The ideal frame as a bodybuilder is to create the classic V-taper, with wide shoulders and a narrow waste. Depending on your experience, your shoulder training will vary. Below I will detail some basic guidelines for training deltoids as a beginner, advanced, and preparation for a competition.
Training the Deltoids:
There are two types of exercises that you can perform while training your shoulders, raises and presses. Raises allow you to better isolate the different heads of the delt. You need to perform raises to the front, side, and rear to achieve overall shoulder development. The great thing about raises are that they almost completely isolate your deltoids with little to no tricep involvement. On the other hand, presses are also a necessity to building great massive shoulders, but do involve other muscle groups like the triceps. You can better isolate the shoulders while performing presses by doing several things like:
- changing the width of your grip
- moving between dumbbells and barbells
- using various machines that vary the angle of the press
Beginner:
As a beginner, your total shoulder development is very important not for only great looking shoulders, but assisting the development of other large muscle groups like the back and chest. This is why I suggest many power movements as a beginner. The shoulders respond very well to heavy weights for compound movements, such as seated shoulder press. Not only will this help your overall development, but it will assist you in increasing your other power exercises like the dead lift and bench press which require lots of deltoid strength.
Advanced:
Now that you have developed a solid foundation, its time to start focusing on exercises that specifically target the individual heads of the shoulder. Continue to execute your power movements, but now include more side, front, and rear raises. You can vary these exercises by:
- using dumbbells, barbells, cables
- supersets
- descending/ascending sets
This is also the time to start focusing on the development of the traps. Remember the traps allow you to finish your pressing or lateral movements while your arms are above the level of your head. With this in mind, I always train the traps after shoulders because they are already pre-fatigued. I will discuss more on trapezius in another post.
Competition:
Here’s when you get to show off all those long hours in the gym. However, your work is not done yet. Training up to your competition is usually the hardest part because the lack of calories your eating to get into optimal shape. It is your ultimate goal to achieve total separation of each head of the delt, from the traps, and from the pecks. To achieve this I suggest increasing your training intensity. You can do this using many techniques including:
- Supersets
- Trisets
- Giant sets
- Stripping Method
Now is also the time to look at yourself in the mirror and determine your weak points. I will be discussing soon how to reorganize your training sessions to lessen those weak points.
Sample Training Exercises For Pre-Contest
Related posts: