If you’re having a hard time getting your shoulders wider and thicker (i.e., big delts), it often comes down to 4 reasons. In this video, I’ll show you how to (finally) get big shoulders by explaining what part of the shoulder you need to focus your efforts on developing to build huge shoulders, and then show you the 4 reasons why people fail to develop this area, along with easy to follow tips to correct them. Apply all 4 of the solutions I’ll go through into your next workout for the shoulders, and I guarantee you’ll feel your shoulders working like never before, plus see a massive increase in shoulders size.
The shoulders can be divided into 3 regions; the front, side, and rear. The front delt is heavily involved in many pressing movements like the bench press and shoulder press, and often becomes overdeveloped as a result. The rear delt is important for rounding out the back of the shoulder but won’t be the focus of the video. The side delts are what you need to focus on to build huge shoulders. As for the best exercise to build up this region, research shows that the dumbbell lateral raise comes up on top. But there are 4 major flaws people overlook with this exercise and their side delt training in general that slows down growth and likelihood of injury.
First reason you’re struggling to get big delts. In the case of the side delts, most unknowingly use just 1 resistance profile by relying on the traditional lateral raise. But to stimulate more growth, you’ll want to also perform an exercise that has the opposite resistance profile, where it’s most difficult at the bottom and easiest at the top. If you have the equipment handy, one way to do this is by grabbing a cable, set up the height so that it’s at the level of your wrist, and perform a one handed lateral raise. But if you only have dumbbells, there are 2 exercises you can that’ll achieve the same effect. The first exercise accomplishes this by manipulating your body position. The second exercise changes the resistance profile by using momentum.
But, when it comes to how to get big shoulders, these exercises will only be effective if you apply the next tip, which has to do with technique. There are 3 mistakes in total. The first is that your arms shouldn’t actually be directly out to your sides. Instead, you should move into what’s known as the scapular plane. A slight lean forward as you do this will help boost side delt activation even more. The second mistake has to do with your hands. Instead of turning your hands inward so that your pinkies end up higher than your thumbs at the end position, keep your hand flat with or with your thumbs just slightly higher than your pinkies at the top position. The last mistake has to do with how you think about the raise. Rather than thinking about raising the weight up, think about pushing your hands out to the sides, towards the walls.
So you’ve now got the right exercises and the right technique, but even with all that you may be compromising your ability to build huge shoulders in the way you progress the exercise as you get stronger. With the lateral raises, you should be sticking with the same weight and focus on doing more reps instead, only increasing to the next heaviest pair of dumbbells once you can do about 20-30 reps in a set with good form. When you do eventually make that jump though, expect the number of reps you’ll be able to do with the heavier weight to decrease by about half. Instead of cheating or getting discouraged when this happens, realize that it’s completely normal and just focus on slowly building it up again and repeating the process.
The last reason has to do with how often you’re training your side delts. Most people aren’t training them enough, often just performing a workout for the shoulders once a week. But the side delts recover quickly, and with the right programming, can be trained 2-3 times a week to stimulate more growth. What I’d recommend is start by picking out 2 days in your routine to train them. As long as there’s at least 1 day of rest between the 2 days. Then for each of the days you train them, add in 3 sets of the standard lateral raise and 3 sets of one of the variations I showed earlier to vary the resistance profile. This can be used as a starting point.
Implement these 4 things and you’ll quickly start to notice the difference in your shoulder development. But, chances are you’re making subtle mistakes with the rest of your training as well. To avoid letting these mistakes hold you back, take the free 30 second quiz to find out which of my step by step programs would be best to help you transform your body just like thousands of our members have done below:
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