Q: I have flat shoulders. I do lots of sets of dumbbell presses, but they aren’t helping. Should I try doing lateral raises first in my shoulder workout?
A: We both have to fight and do everything right to sculpt our delts into round mounds of muscle so we don’t suffer from flat shoulders. One thing we’ve learned is that overhead presses—for us, anyway—tend to put almost all of the stress on our front deltoids, and those front heads don’t add to the roundness you’re after…
That’s why in almost all of our shoulder programs in our e-books, you’ll see dumbbell upright rows listed as the big midrange exercise for delts. It produces more of a direct hit on the medial, or side, heads, which will give your shoulders width and roundness. Pull the dumbbells up and out so your hands are outside your shoulders at the top of the stroke…
In our 3D Positions-of-Flexion programs in our e-books, you’ll usually see dumbbell upright rows (midrange) as the first exercise, incline one-arm laterals (stretch) as the second, and standing lateral raises (contracted) last. We’ll add a pressing movement after those three exercises because overhead presses are important for complete deltoid development as well as bullet-proofing your rotator cuffs.
We must emphasize the importance of incline one-arm laterals (pictured below). In a previous newsletter, we mentioned that stretch-position exercises can help develop the target muscle at the insertion where it connects to the bone. We discussed dumbbell flyes and how they can add detail to the centerline of the chest.
The same is true of incline one-arm laterals. Because your arm moves in front of your torso, you get a good stretch on the medial-delt head and affect the muscle at its “point,” where it inserts between the biceps and triceps. It’s the best stretch-position move for the delts…
In the 3D Muscle-Building e-book, where we analyze and identify all of the best stretch-position moves for every bodypart, we say you can substitute one-arm cable laterals as the delts’ stretch exercise—but those really pull your arm down more than across your torso. Because of that, we suggest sticking to incline one-arm laterals most of the time to get your delts wide, round and detailed.
That exercise works best because of the more direct angle of pull across your torso. Down near the bottom is where you also want to add X Reps for an even better size effect. It’s one of the key exercises we use to overcome flat delts. This shot of Jonathan shows the results of 3D POF training…
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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