Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1117: How to Build Amazing Shoulders

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam, and Justin go into detail how to build amazing shoulders. Shoulders: The MOST prized body part. (2:14) Why do modern humans have such mobile shoulder joints? (3:31) How whatever you don’t do, you don’t stay connected to: The importance of having a ‘functional’ shoulder girdle. (6:28) Why are the shoulders such a ‘valued’ focal point for men and women? (18:56) The different parts of the shoulder, what they are responsible for and what you may be neglecting. (20:38) Why mobility is KEY to developing healthy/strong shoulders. (25:10) Mind Pump’s favorite mobility exercises to build your range of motion. (30:31) The ULTIMATE workout to build AMAZING shoulders: Exercises, rep ranges, frequency & MORE! (38:30) People Mentioned Dr. Jordan Shallow (@the_muscle_doc)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned  September Promotion: MAPS Starter ½ off!! **Code “STARTER50” at checkout** The Relationship Between Waist-Hip Ratio and Fertility The Other Best Muscle Building Exercises of All Time Will Implementing Mobility Exercises Help Increase My Muscle Mass? Z Press to take Your Shoulder Development to the Next Level Sal's Super Shoulder Movement for more Shoulder Mobility & Connectivity Prime Your Shoulders with Handcuffs with Rotation on a Bench Thread the Needle Squat Like a Pro!- 10 Primers to Improve Squat Form - Lizard with Rotation (Video 3 of 10) How To Do A PROPER Dumbbell Rear Delt Fly Improve Your Shoulder Workouts with the Kettlebell Halo How to Lateral Raise for Maximum Muscle Growth Complete Guide To Growing Big Shoulders | Mind Pump Media Mind Pump Free

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one body parts that, both men and women prize quite a bit. And this one is the shoulders. We talk all about your shoulders. Now we start out by talking about the structure of the shoulders, the different joints that make up the shoulder. Why the shoulder joint is so damn mobile. It's one of the most mobile parts of your upper body. Why did we evolve to have

such incredible shoulders and what kind of injuries affect the shoulders? Then we talk about the aesthetics of the shoulders. What they make the body look like, how they can make your waist look smaller, how they can make you appear more attractive, and then we get into the fun part. We break down the shoulder anatomy and how to train the shoulders. We talk about mobility movements that you can do for your shoulders to improve your range of motion so you build better muscles and so you don't injure yourself. Then we talk about specific exercises, rep ranges, and how often you should work out your shoulders.

We also wrote a guide around training shoulders that you can download for free. If you wait till the end of the episode, we tell you how to get it. How to get it. So this one's awesome. You're going to leave with a workout for your shoulders and some more free information. Before the episode starts, I'd like to remind everybody that Maps Starter is 50% off. Now Maps Starter is our workout program for people who want to get started with resistance training. This for people who want to reap all the benefits that weight training can provide, faster

metabolism, sculpting the body, of course, tone muscles or sculpted muscles. It's a half off right now. You can find it at mapsstarter.com. That's MAPS-ST-AR-T-E-R-D-D-C-M-E-R-D-C-M. You have to use the code starter 50 for the discount. That's ST, AR, T, E, R, 5, 0, no space for the discount. Let's talk about the shoulder, the muscles of the shoulder, the shoulder function.

Where is it? Into it. Let's start by talking about where the shoulder is. Now, you know what's important? Because can you think of a body part, there's a few body parts that are equally prized by both men and women. Like, you know, there's certain body parts

that are more prized by women, more prized by men, but then there's those body parts that you get, both sides, I really want to work. Yeah, and shoulders, the first one that comes to mind when I think of that. I would say that a close second would be the arms, but most of the people that I've trained that wanted great arms, when I explained to them

if we were to build great shoulders, it would make their arms look more impressive. It's part of the arms. Right, and they once they piece that together, like, because you can have great arms, but if you have terrible shoulders in a tank top, it looks terrible. No, now the shoulders, here's the thing

about the shoulder joint. It's one of the most mobile joints in the human body. It's made up of, there's four joints that make up the shoulder joint. There's the, and these are the technical terms, but there's a glenohumeral joint, the acromioclavicular joint, the sternoclavicular joint, and the scapula thoracic joint. So there's a lot of moving parts. And, you know, we got to ask ourselves, like, why is the shoulder joint so mobile? Because you could literally rotate your arm internally, externally, you could reach up above your head,

go out to your side in front of you behind you, you can push, pull, lift things. It's this extremely mobile versatile joint. And you got to ask yourself, like, why? Why do humans have such incredibly mobile shoulder joints? Right. Now, the first hint is the fact that we evolved from primates that probably lived in trees. So obviously, if you're swinging in trees and hanging all the time, you need some decent mobility. But that doesn't really answer the full question in terms of why the human shoulder joint is constructed

or at least why we evolved to have it look the way it does. And there's something that we do better than any other animal. There's a couple of things we do better than any other animal. One of them is throw with incredible accuracy. No animal on earth can throw with as much accuracy as easily as humans can. I mean, you can train animals to throw with some level of accuracy, but you could take like, you could take a five-year-old kid, you could give him a balled-up piece of paper

and tell him to throw it inside a garbage, you know, a waste basket. And most five year olds will get pretty damn close if not hit it. And then it gets as extreme as like throwing a 90 mile an hour fastball that fits in a box that's about 17 inches wide and maybe about a couple feet tall. Like that's incredible. That's ridiculous. The closest I've seen is a chimpanzee throwing some poop. Poop, that's about it.

Now, what's the reason for that though? Because their shoulders are technically just as mobile, if not more mobile than ours. But it's different, it's a different kind of mobility. Our shoulder joints are designed. Right, you gave that great example the other day about, they didn't have like a chimp go through the, with that one course, the American, all Americans who already crushed everybody.

Yes, so they have, I mean, they have incredible mobility in their shoulder. They do, but you gotta ask yourself, why do huge modern humans have incredible mobility? We don't swing from trees like, they're in range. Munkies do. Yeah, strength is really impressive.

We don't do that, right? So why do humans, why do modern human, we left the trees a long time ago, long, long, long time ago, did we leave the trees and we were ground dwelling primates or whatever. I mean, when you talk about the main functions, push, pull, lift, rotate, and you can do that in every plane with the shoulder.

You can't. And then the fact that we could throw, and that's what made us Apex Predators was the ability to throw. So we evolved to keep this incredibly mobile joint that we no longer needed for swinging, but now we used for, obviously our daily functions, but then throwing.

Now there's some, that's, that those are some of the positives. Like that's awesome. That's great that we have this joint that's extremely mobile, are some of the positives. Like, that's awesome. That's great that we have this joint that's extremely mobile, but here's the negatives. With extreme mobility comes high risk for instability. Well, especially when you're talking about evolution

and how we've evolved especially in the last 100 years, we're doing less and less. Total. Nobody's running out somewhere with a spear killing their prey. I mean, that's like nobody is doing no and so very few people are even Lifting things all the way above their head. Yeah all the way to full extension over their head That doesn't really happen in your day-to-day life anymore

No, no, I can't tell you how many times I had clients that well, I'd say a majority of my clients who were over I'd say 40 We're not able to get a full, their arms fully extended up above their head with nice mobility. They could reach up above their head, but not with full extension. Once I got to 50, 60, 70, then the majority of them couldn't even reach up above their head. So it was actually quite common because we're born with these joints that are supposed to be extremely mobile, but if you don't strengthen all the ranges of motion and stay connected to them, then all you have is a very unstable joint. I mean, if you look at injuries, for example,

the most common areas that people hurt themselves are the back. And the spine is extremely mobile, too, right? The spine twists and bends in all these different directions. And then you look at the shoulder. And the spine is extremely mobile too, right? The spine twists and bends in all these different directions. And then you look at the shoulder. The shoulder is extremely common to have problems. The fact it's one of the most common surgeries that orthopedic surgeons will have to work on are shoulder issues.

And this is for everyday people, when I'm talking about athletes. Yeah, and you notice too, as you look at people as they age. Like this is one of those old adages is like, oh, the gravity's kind of pulling me closer to the ground and you just kind of shrimp and curl forward, just naturally because we're doing everything in front of us.

And so if you're not conscious of, like pulling yourself back in good posture, it can really get away from you to where your body does sort of form into that forward movement. Well, they say one in every four people in their lifetime will deal with major shoulder chronic pain. That's a lot. That is a lot. I mean, one of us, right, that based off of that, someone in this room right now will have that if they have an already.

I know you've had surgery. I had shoulder surgery. I had my AC joint, the acromioclivicular joint, resected. And one of the biggest problems with that is what happens. And I know you guys have experienced this with clients also, is once they start to feel this chronic pain, whether it be this kind of clicking feeling they feel, or this kind of sharp pain,

or this kind of nagging dull pain, they stop doing it back off. Yeah, they back away from it in fear of injuring it worse or making it worse than it already is. But then they don't do anything to get back to that point. Right. And that results in less and less mobility over time because whatever you don't do, you don't stay connected to.

So, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. 100%. So if you, and that's an old fitness adage, but it's so true, right? Like, still holds totally holds. Like, if you stop walking right now, let's say you just decided you're just going to be in a chair for the next 15 years. So for 15 years, you don't walk. How do you think you're going to walk as soon as you get up out of that chair? It's going to be very difficult. You'll have lost a lot of the, not just the strength and that you, because you weren't using those muscles,

but also the coordination and the connection, the skill of walking. And now the reason why I wanna make this point so strongly is because you have to approach your work, even if your goal is just aesthetics, even if your goal is just to have amazing looking shoulders, understand and appreciate that this is a very mobile joint and that there are lots of functions of the joint

and that there's more, there's lots of moving parts because that'll make your workouts far more effective. If you know this and understand this, then you will develop better shoulders through your workouts because here's the big thing with shoulders. Here's a big one when it comes to aesthetics the way people tend to train their shoulders Adam how often do you see guys and girls? Do traditional workouts and develop shoulders that just don't look?

Balanced right they just don't get that round nice look to their shoulders all the time and that's it You're you're and this is one of the thing I think these shoulders are probably one of the most common areas that you see that because what ends up happening is all these other muscles start to take over a movement that the primary mover should have been the anterior delt or the posterior delt, whatever movement we're talking about. But because they have in mobile shoulders or they have poor posture and they're still trying to perform the movement,

the body doesn't know any better. So it just other muscles are gonna take over to help and assist it, which then results in the shoulder not developing optimally. So not only just optimally for performance but also optimally for aesthetics. Right, right. And when you're looking at an area or a muscle,

and if that muscle represents a lot of mobility, like lots and lots of mobility, like if we look at the elbow joint, for example, the elbow joint bends and extends. So that's the mobility of the elbow joint. It's not a whole lot, right? But if you look at the shoulder joint, it moves in so many different directions.

This is where applying different angles and exercises makes a ton of sense. It makes a ton of sense because there's so many different ranges of motion. There's so many different planes of movement and actions that you can and should strengthen. The side effect of which will be great looking shoulders, balanced, round looking shoulders that also are very functional. And functions important. Well, functions huge and that's why I'm always talking about that with the shoulders because

I know a lot of people really want that balance to look aesthetically, but in order to to make sure everything's functioning properly, you need to have those checks and balances You need to have those opposing muscles to be able to keep Everything in its proper position. So that way it doesn't lead to impingements It doesn't lead to these problems later where you overdevelop, say, your anterior deltoid, and now it's pulling you off track. So now your arm, you're starting to lose mobility, you're starting to lose a lot of things, and you're getting these painful clicking and all these things that result of it just not being set up properly.

Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I would have people in the gym, regulars, who look fit, relatively lean muscular, and then I wouldn't see them for a while, and then they'd come in and I'd be like, what happened? Oh, I heard my shoulder. Oh, was it while you were working out? No, I was throwing the frisbee around with my kid, or throwing a baseball, or, you know, I almost fell and I caught myself myself and then I hurt my shoulder.

It was all because they lacked functionality, they didn't have real good functional strength. And so that's an important thing to look at, even if you don't really care about being an athlete or you don't care about throwing a baseball or a Frisbee, at the end of the day, the thing that will prevent you from looking your best faster than anything else is an injury.

If you get injured, there goes your workout. It's an important thing to pay attention to. On the flip side, pay attention to functionality. What I mean is by all the range of the motion that the shoulders can do develops a full-looking, round-looking, balanced-looking shoulder. You get this looking, balanced looking shoulder. You get this as nice, balanced look. And it's not just the look of the shoulder itself, it's also in the way the shoulders are carried.

So when you look at people, I mean, how many times have you guys seen these people in the gym that are muscular? Super rounded fit. But they just, they don't look like they're put together. Well, you know what I mean? They're walking around and they're stiff and yeah, it doesn't look like their abilities are there at all.

Look at their thumbs. You see this a lot of times with big buff guys. And it's a real easy tell tell. If you look at the way they walk, and a lot of times you'll see people that have major anterior dealt with a lot of over development in their shoulders, they'll have this like internal rotation of their thumbs. So look at the way they walk, their hands, the way they're positioned, they internal rotation of their thumb. So if I look at the way they walk, their hands, the way they're positioned,

they're kind of rotated in, and you can just see when they walk around, they have that kind of like gorilla look when they walk around. Everybody makes fun of that, but that's what that's from. It's from that they already have this like protracted shoulder girdle,

and then on top of that, they overdevelop the delts, and then, and that's just, not only does it not look great, but it's setting you up for long-term probably. You can't land your ass anymore. A long-term, it's a problem. Chronic paint and that's just, not only does it not look great, but it's setting you up for long term probably. You can't write your ass anymore. Long term, it's a problem. Chronic paint, that's the other part too about the importance of the shoulder, the shoulder

girdle and the ability to control it and put it in the right position because it has a lot to do with how well you work your chest and how well you work your back also. Because if you, like, remember how I covered the four joints of the shoulder? People don't realize that the shoulder blade is a big part of the shoulder function. And there's lots of muscles that attach to the shoulder blade that have to do with your back.

Right, yeah. And if your back is weak, you're not going to develop my shoulders. If you don't have good stability in the front of your body, I talked about two joints, the acromioclavicular joint and the sternoclavicular joint. Those are the joints on either side of your collar bones. If you look at your collar bones, there's two collar bones, if you will,

on one end there's one joint, on the other end, there's another joint. Those play a role in your shoulder as well. And so if you don't have good development in the front of your body or good function in the front of your body, that will also affect your shoulder joint. So I think what I'm trying to do is make the case that your shoulder joint is very mobile and very complex and it will require more than just a couple basic exercises.

A lot of attention. Well, and to my point, the better you can control it and the better mobility you have there, the better you're probably going to have a better development in control it and the better mobility you have there, the better you're probably gonna have a better development in your chest and your back also. Because if you're very unstable in your shoulders or you're extremely tight, what ends up happening is that starts there, but then it carries over to this in balance on a chest.

I mean, how often have you seen this before, where somebody has one side of their chest more developed than the other side. And a lot of times, that has little to do with the actual chest muscle itself, and actually the shoulder. They have the inability to keep the shoulder on the side of the underdeveloped muscle,

that the inability to keep that shoulder in the retracted position when they're doing chest exercises. Right, right. So not only is the mobility and strength and function of the shoulder so important for the shoulder itself, but it's also very important to the development of the other muscles that are around it,

like the chest and the back, which are two massive muscles that are responsible for us looking incredible and also for daily function of pushing and pulling. It's extremely important. It's an extremely important joint and the muscle function is very important for everything, pretty much everything you do. Forget about being an athlete.

If you're an athlete, you need to have good working crucial. Absolutely. If you're an athlete. Yeah, I mean, I would stress that almost over anything besides like, yeah, maybe your hips and ankle, but definitely your shoulder needs so much more attention because of the fact that all these rotating moves and all these shearing forces, you have to account for all these things.

And so you have to have a very balanced shoulder that can resist a lot of these forces. You guys are talking performance, and I could talk all day aesthetics about it. But this is why I like this topic, because whether you're someone who's concerned about the way your physique looks, hands down, there's never been, this is true stories, never been a bikini competitor, men's physique, bodybuilder, anybody that I've trained in that sport, that shoulders wasn't one of the main focuses of our program.

And then an athlete to your point, Justin, that's an absolute must. I don't care what sport you're playing. Shoulder stability, mobility, strength is extremely important. And then the last one, which is I think everybody else is just overall daily function. I mean, you're talking about one of the most important things. You're gonna have to carry things,

you're gonna have to pull things, you're gonna have to push things, you're gonna have to carry things, you're gonna have to pull things, you're gonna have to push things, you're gonna have to lift things above your head. And I think a lot of people just neglect that. Or again, they feel a little bit of a chronic pain and then they decide to just avoid it. And sometimes the pain isn't in the shoulder, if you have a problem with your shoulder.

Sometimes it's in your neck. You know, a lot of neck tightness oftentimes comes from lack of shoulder mobility. I can't tell you how many times I've worked on shoulder mobility with a client who has neck pain and the neck pain starts to go away because their shoulders are working, but because the body compensates, right? If one thing isn't working, something else has to take over.

Now we got to ask ourselves why the shoulders are such an aesthetic focal point for both men and women. It's because well-developed shoulders for thousands and thousands of years represented health, they just did. Just like a tight midsection is something that we all like looking at, that also was a visual representation.

Well, and to that point, the shoulders create that illusion. Oh, totally. So even if you don't tighten up your midsection, if you do build the shoulders, it creates the illusion of the the smaller midsection. And I think you've touched on this before saliv They've already done what surveys or whatever on this to prove that if they we have this common thing of the shoulder to waste ratio. There's a shoulder to waste to hip ratio

That is considered ideal in both men and women. It's not the same ratio But there's there's a ratio for men and a ratio for women. And we just, when that ratio was hit, we think the person looks more attractive. And it's because, and we've tied it to studies that show that women who have this ratio have better, easier births and have healthier babies.

Men who tend to have this ratio, tend to have higher testosterone levels, tend to have higher sperm counts. So it's interesting, it is weird, right? That we, now we, I mean, you can fool the, you know, people by, you know, doing weird things to your body or whatever, but if you do this the right way and you're healthy

and develop nice looking shoulders, the bottom line is you're just gonna look more attractive. You're just gonna look more attractive to everybody. So this is why, one of the reasons why shoulders, I think, so valued among both sexes. So I think that we've now that we've kind of made the case and talked a little bit about the shoulder, I think we should talk about exercise or what we should do with them. Well, before you go there, we should actually, because we talked all about the joints and mobility and all the functions, but we should talk about the parts of the shoulder

and really what they're responsible for. And then what I think some people neglect a lot. For example, and I think I've shared this story a long time ago on the podcast. I'll never forget this. It was like in my early 20s and I had already been lifting for some years now. And I kind of came from this camp of,

you know, when you do pushing exercises like chest and I did a lot of chest stuff, you get some of your anterior delts incorporated. That's the front of the shoulder. Right, the front of the shoulder. When you do a lot of back stuff, rowing and stuff, you get some of the back of the shoulder posterior part of the shoulder.

And then I would occasionally throw some laterals in, but I never like really targeted my shoulders. And I remember one time, and this was way before I'd ever even thought about competing or anything like that at all. And I had one of my trainers who worked for me. She was a professional competitor. And I wanted her professional opinion on my physique. And she said to me, I remember she had this thick accent.

She says, oh, I don't know, you have weak shoulders. And I was like, super offended by it. Because at that point, I thought of my shoulders as my arms, and I had these big massive arms. And she really kind of like broke it down to me. She says, no, she says, you have these great, impressive arms, but terrible shoulders. It makes your arms look sloped and she totally picked me apart.

It just destroyed my ego. But it really sent me on this path of like, okay, starting to develop my shoulders and I started training just my shoulders. And before that, I'd never train my shoulders alone by themselves. And it's funny because later on, and this is years later of putting a lot of emphasis on building my shoulders alone by themselves. And it's funny because later on, and this is years later of putting a lot of emphasis

on building my shoulders, and because of that, all the emphasis on the shoulders, I laid off of all the crazy emphasis that I was putting on my biceps and my triceps. I actually lost a couple, you know, probably an inch and a half or so on my arms, but built these develop shoulders. And I used to get compliments all the time now

on my arms. On my arms. And when I look back now on pictures of way back then, and then pictures that are more recent, and of course when I was competing and stuff, that's one of the things I was known for, was my V-taper, my back width. And part of that it was exaggerated

because of the development that I put in my shoulders. And the number one thing for me personally, and I noticed this comment with a lot of people is neglecting the rear delts and not targeting them correctly. And I think that's because it's a very small muscle, and because it's on the back side posterior, the back muscles tend to want to take over most of the movements that people see. So people see a movement like a rear fly, for example, which is a great exercise for the rear delts.

The problem is, it's not that far different from a row if you don't understand the mechanics of it and really easily you can let like your traps and your rhomboids to start to take over that movement and they end up developing more and then the rear delts don't get developed that much. It's also because the the most common shoulder exercises that you hear about, typically aren't posterior head exercises. Typically lots of presses, overhead presses. And overhead presses are phenomenal for the shoulders, but they don't work the posterior head of the deltoid very much at all. And so they tend to be very underdeveloped.

And underdeveloped posterior head of the deltoid makes your shoulders look like they're forward heavy. You're sloping forward. It gives you that, it emphasizes that forward shoulder look, that bad posture look or whatever. There's three heads of the shoulder that we'll focus on here. Now, there's lots of muscles that stabilize

and work around those different joints that we talked about. But for the sake of this podcast, we're gonna focus on just the muscles of the shoulder, the shoulder itself. That's the anterior head of the deltoid, so that's the front of the shoulder. There's the lateral head of the shoulder, the side head, and then the posterior head, which is the one in the back. Those three parts of the shoulder develop those well, and you'll get the really round shoulders develop one over the others and You start to look kind of imbalanced now before we get into the exercises that I think we should we should recommend to people and kind of give people like a

Workout a little workout they can do on their own. I think we need to make a point to talk about working on and Maintaining good mobility first hands down and maintaining good mobility first. Hands down, one of the, and this really, even when I was training like, I mean, just probably seven, eight years ago, this piece hadn't clicked for me. But once I started to dive into mobility work

and addressing this, and I, soon, and I remember when we first started the podcast, so I know you and I would talk a lot about this having to spend like 20 minutes before workouts of like really addressing like all of our issues before we go into lifting, but I started to notice a big difference, not only in the development of my shoulders,

but also just how I felt throughout the workout. Just I could feel, I could get, I got these better pumps, I didn't feel any pain, because I before I had noticed like clicking noises and things that would kind of freak me out when I was exercising. When I started putting emphasis on mobility before I started training, I really started a huge difference in my development. I noticed any sort of those weird clicking noises or small, sharp pain you sometimes get in the front of your shoulder. I completely eliminated all of that when I take the time and do the mobility before I try. Now besides injury, besides lack of pain or

reducing pain and injury, here's why it's important to strengthen and work on mobility. And mobility we could say is basically longer improving mobility would be increasing a range of motion that you have control over. Okay, so to give you an easy example, let's say I go down to touch my toes and I can barely get my fingertips to touch my toes. That's my mobility for my hamstrings, okay, and I can control it all. I'm not talking about passive stretch, like I'm actually doing the stretch myself. If I get that to go longer, now I can, when I go to touch my toes, I can put my hands flat on my feet, but I still have control over that range of motion

I have better mobility. I have a longer range of motion. Okay. Why is that important for muscle development for all muscles? Studies show quite conclusively that the longer ranges of motion that you train in the more muscle you develop. Okay, this is why a full squat done properly, I'm gonna say that again, cause I wanna make sure nobody hurts themselves. You gotta have control over this range of motion. This is why mobility work is so important. But a full squat done properly will build better legs

and glutes than a half squat done properly. A shoulder press with a fuller range of motion going down to the upper chest all the way fully extended, all the way up with the head coming forward, nice straight body will develop better shoulders than a partial rep shoulder press. Both of them being done properly,

both of them with good control, the longer range of motion just works better. So if you wanna develop better shoulder muscles, yet better mobility. If you can't do you wanna develop better shoulder muscles, get better mobility. If you can't do a behind the neck shoulder press, which a lot of people cringe, ah, behind the neck shoulder press, that's bad for you. Not if you have the mobility in the control.

If you have the mobility in control and you can do it without hurting yourself and everything looks good and form as good and it's good stability. Now you're doing an exercise that's working a different range of motion. If you can't do a full kettlebell press or the kettlebell sitting on your arm and you're pressing it rotating and coming up real tall, real straight with your arm up, if you can't

do that, you're missing out on gains. If you can't do a side lateral, your hands come up real high and you can contract those side deltoids. If you can't do a rear fly where you can stop your scapula for moving and increase the mobility of the actual humorous of your arm, so you can isolate the posterior side of your deltoid, you are missing out on gains. So range of motion that you control or good mobility

will contribute very strongly to development. And if you don't have it, you don't completely neglect it and say, oh, I can't do that. Or you don't force yourself to do a movement like overhead press because, you know, we told you that's the way to hurt yourself. That's how you hurt yourself. You address it. There's something for you to work on. It's like, hey, I, right now, I can't reach completely above my head with my arm next to my ears and straighten it all the way up because you don't have the capacity. You can train and develop that. Right.

Totally. I mean, this is all a muscular recruitment process. If you think of it like, I need strength, I need access, I need help here to be able to produce this movement. I have to intentionally focus on that. So that's something, it could be as small as like not even an inch that I have to move the weight, but that's, that inch is an entirely new exercise. So if I can look at it like that and start incrementally using these angles and really being intentional

with those angles, that's where mobility actually has a lot of necessity versus just, I'm just trying to get more flexible. It's not about getting flexible, it's about gaining strength. In those ranges of motion, right? So here's what I strongly recommend for everybody. Make mobility a part of your workout for your shoulders. You will develop better looking shoulders,

you'll develop more muscle, you get stronger. And then of course, the skills without saying your risk of injury will go down quite a bit. So I think what we should do is I think we should list off some of our personal favorite mobility exercises to do before your shoulder workout. Totally. Now, one of my favorites is a simple, basic shoulder mobility movement. It's really easy to do and learn, but it does get your body, your shoulders moving through

their full range of motion, and it helps you connect to them. And I like this one because it's easy. The reason why I like it is because it's easy. I can have anybody do it, and people can stop where their body won't let them move anymore, and they can slowly improve their range of motion. I have applied this to all kinds of clients, old clients and young clients. It's an easy one to learn, shoulder to slow.

So, you're gonna go, yeah, it is, the simplicity of it is definitely something that I enjoy that that's something I could immediately take a client over and we can work on and we could see, it's feedback right away, right? If I'm holding this stick or whatever you're gonna use, you know, whatever's accessible, and to be able to find a range,

so if I have to go with my hands really far out on that stick, that's where I'm at, that's where I start, that's where it's easiest, and then I incrementally work my way in to then be able to lift it from my stomach all the way to my lower back without bending my elbows. So that's basically the gist of it while maintaining a nice upright postural position.

Yeah, and if you hit a point that you stop at, like you're going behind your head and you're like, oh, I can't rotate anymore. That's okay, that's where you're at. Yeah. Practice within that range of motion, challenge it just a little bit. And over time, this one,

the other reason why I love this one is people improve so quickly on this. And there's hacks to it too. So if you can really work to on gaining more tension. So if I squeeze the stick a little bit harder and I pull outward a little bit on the stick, watch what happens. So yeah, definitely take it piece by piece,

like I said, about those inches are important. So I agree with that, but I have one that's even more my favorite, which the handcuff with the rotation is that hits everything. That's why, and that's why it's my go-to. If there's something where I'm limited on time, that's gotta be the most complete one here. It is, I know I can get down and do five intense reps of a handcuff with rotation and my fucking shoulders are warm

They're warm. They're for sure like just from doing especially if you do it with good intent and you take it to all the in range Emotion and really squeeze and intensify and challenge the the movement It is though. It's the one mobility Movement that I think takes the shoulder through. It's fullest range of motion in all planes. And I love that movement. Yeah. And I think, and by the way, we'll make sure that there's links to videos of these exercises in our show notes. Here's another good one.

And I like this one because it also works a little bit on the thoracic mobility. The thoracic part of the spine is kind of that upper part of your back. And mobility in the thoracic spine is going to be important for shoulder mobility. Because remember, the shoulder blade moves over the ribcage, the ribcage moves a little bit. You need all that mobility for good shoulder mobility. Thread the needle. Thread the needle.

Great movement. Really easy to learn to. Oh, yeah. Thread the needle, great movement. It's really easy to learn too. Easy to learn. You can have almost anybody do it or practice some version of it. And it involves a little bit of that scapular and thoracic mobility that contributes so well to overall shoulder mobility. It's got to be one of my- Yeah, I think too, like along those lines, reach roll left would be a favorite one of mine

just just because To be able to take your arm and a lot of times we're doing these exercise, especially pressing movements. We're pressing it basically pronated so You know like to be able to supinate now my hand and then try and lift and raise and gain access to that and raise it up It's extremely difficult. It doesn't sound like very difficult, but putting you in this position really highlights that. No, it's incredibly difficult, and it has progressions to it, right? Like in a perfect world, you can get to a point

where you can actually do both arms at the same time. I can't even do that. I have to independently focus on one side and then the other side because it's so challenging. But also one of the best ones. Also of all the ones that we probably just named, I would say the one that is the most challenging form wise because I feel like people will cheat with that. Yes.

When I teach that one, I always got to explain the intent of it and how important it is that they keep their chest down, why they it, and we're just trying to control the shoulder, and it's not about just lifting your arm up, because sometimes people look at a movement, and they see, oh, lift the hand up off the ground as high as you can. And so they compensate the rest of it. Yeah, I realize your elbow's bending,

and then the right thing, and their thumbs kind of spiraling back, because it is a lot of torque that you're fighting against because your natural inclination is to have your hands in that position. Now I would say take one or two of these movements. If you take one, I'd say handcuffs with rotation, but ideally you'd want to take two of these movements and spend a grand total of 10 minutes. Okay. Just time yourself, keep your reps slow, you don't need to count the reps, you don't need to do a ton of whatever. Just 10 minutes, set your timer for 10 minutes, I'm going to practice these two movements

before I go into my workout. They will contribute to better gains. I have a little bit of a because I teach, actually teach all of these in my mobility class when I teach it. I have a little bit of a protocol that I'll share even though you're right, so I don't need to count anything, but for somebody who would like some guidance in that, hand cover rotation is such a full range of motion exercise. I do that really slow and controlled and with intent for five complete reps, and I'll do that for two rounds. So five complete reps of taking it all the way through its full range of motion really intense Five times rest do it again five times. I move on from that Yeah, you're and you're done in like five to ten minutes. Yeah, if that doesn't even take that long probably takes three to five minutes tops

Shoulder dislocates. I do 15 to 20 reps of that same same thing two rounds I do 15 to 20 reps Relax a little bit do it again 15 to 20 reps, relax a little bit, do it again, 15 to 20 reps, move on from that. Thread the needle, I thread through 10 times one direction, 10 times the other direction, I do that two times. Reach roll lift, I lift up, 10 times, 10 times on each side, I do that for two rounds. That's right there. You get a full on mobility workout. Yeah, but you could actually, you could get, I mean, for two rounds. And that's that right there. That's a full on mobility workout.

Yeah, but you could actually, you could get, I mean, probably all four of those would take 20 minutes. So like you said, take two of them, you're probably done in 10 minutes. Yeah, and I'd say if you have lots of shoulder problems, right, the history of shoulder problems, that's how I would decide this. Like if you're somebody who is just,

like if you're, let's say you're someone who's young, and you don't deal with any shoulder pain, but you, you respect the importance of mobility, and you don't deal with any shoulder pain, but you respect the importance of mobility and you don't want to lose that mobility. And you want to develop better looking shoulders. Right, you might be someone that I encourage one or two of these, one to two rounds of it, get through it, just warm up the shoulders.

And you're gonna do like half the reps and get a nice prime round of it. Right, and so, and if you're not doing anything right now, absolutely do this first. You will notice a difference the first time you train your shoulders, 100 if you're not doing anything right now, absolutely do this first. You will notice a difference. The first time you train your shoulders, 100% you will. Oh yeah.

And you get a better pump, better connection. I mean, you'll see, the first time you do it, you'll get that much better. And the more time that you spend, the better the workout will get. So if you're going in on like one of those Saturdays when you got an hour and a half and in your no hurry,

I challenge those of you listening right now that don't do a lot of mobility work, but are interested in developing your shoulders and having very healthy shoulders. Do that, spend 20 minutes. Do all the exercises that we're recommending right now. Take your time, really wake those shoulders up, get them moving through full range of motion,

get really connected to them, and then go do your training sessions. And I promise it'll be one of your best shoulder workouts that you've ever done. Now, let's give them a workout. So you have your 10 minute, you know, priming mobility session that you do before your workout. Now let's talk about the actual workout itself. So we're gonna add some load to this.

Yeah, now we're trying to build the shoulders. If you get them stronger, we're gonna develop develop them. We're going to build nice balanced looking shoulder. Now, I want to start with something that's kind of controversial because I think that any trainer listening right now, everybody would probably raise their hand and say, you've got to have a shoulder press as like the main like a traditional standing overhead press. Yeah, standing overhead press or a seated over press, if you want to develop great shoulders, and I would agree with them.

But because I think that we have the general population listening to this podcast, and I think, and even Doug was mentioning this before we started this episode today, for many years, when he was lifting his shoulders, he never felt it really well on his shoulders. And I think that's because when you're pressing over your head, very few...

So many conversations get in the way. Yes, very few people have a really beautiful standing overhead press, including myself. Mine was awful. My arched my low back. I couldn't get my hands all the way back by my ears until I started addressing them, I'm only even being a trainer and lifting for as long as I have. I didn't have a really pretty good looking shoulder press. When I was introduced to the

Z press years later, I fell in love with this exercise because it forces you into a good posture and you can't cheat it. And you have to kind of stabilize at the top, which I think is an area that a lot of people neglect when they do a show. They go up to the top and come right back down. Right, they press up the camera right down. They go to their end range for them,

which is typically not full extension, and then they come right back down. And I love to teach a Z press with a lockout and stabilization at the top and then come all the way down to a full range of motion, extend on it. Now you can't load it as much. So of course, I'm going to keep my trainers and fitness professionals out there that are going to argue with me that building you build way bigger shoulders, heavy loading a standing overhead press. It's all about the tension.

Right, exactly. And the range of motion, you're gonna develop better shoulders if you go through a full range of motion with lighter weight than you will with a heavy, this has been tested by the way, they've tested this. There was a bit of a controversy in the 90s where this book came out that talked about

the benefit of load and the scientists said, hey, why don't we just have people lift a shit ton more away and do partial reps? That should build more muscle. And they tested it and it didn't work. Partial reps with more load, even though the tension is high as hell, it's like, okay, I could squat 500 pounds for a half squat.

Am I gonna build more muscle than if I do a full squat with 300 pounds? No, you're wrong. Full range of motion builds more muscle. And the Z-press encourages, I mean, you can't, you can't not work on that full range of motion. And it means you're gonna probably have to start off and we're like,

highlight the bracing mechanism that has to happen. And that's something that I think a lot of people, unless you, you know, you get it right away and you could teach somebody like how to, like properly brace to support their back when anything's overhead. It's do or die. You have to learn that before stepping forward. So I like the Z press for that because it really, it does. It forces the issue. You can't even get anywhere with it if you're not like really summoning and activating those core muscles to be able to contribute. And it's an excellent place to start with the intention of eventually progressing

to a standing overhead press. So for the fitness professionals that are like, oh my God, how could you not have a standing overhead press as the staple best shoulder exercise? I'm gonna challenge that and say that 95% of the people will benefit more from doing a Z-press first to get the mechanics down really well, run that for like four weeks, and then if you want to replace the Z press with a standing overhead press after you've taught those good behaviors,

then I said. Now that being said, it's pressing overhead. If you do a good job pressing overhead with a standing overhead press, or an Arnold press, or a kettlebell press, and overhead press is an important aspect of working. It's got to be one of the main movements. Yes. Well, and I'm always arguing and so we'll get into this a little bit, but you know, with the Arnold press was the first kind of bodybuilder version of adding that rotation in that press, which I really enjoy that, you know, he brought that to popularity because

for me, kettleettlebell's presses are pretty much ideal to get that spiral line type of a press movement to be able to also get that kind of function because your shoulder is set up to have that type of rotation. And so rotation has to be something considered. And this is why actually I would start this workout with something we've actually done a video on this on kettlebell halos, but you can also do it with a plate,

with a plate, with dumbbell. With dumbbell. So it's something that is accessible. It's not like a super unconventional. I like that to start before even the press, because you kind of, again, like the hand cover rotation movement, it really kind of warms up all.

You can even use it as a finisher. You can even use it at the end and do some halo, some high rep halos, and you will get a shoulder pump, like you've never had. Now, this is a very, it's a lesser known exercise. A lot of people listening are probably like, what's this movement? We have a video, we did a long time,

it was way back in the early days of mind pump, where Justin is demonstrating this using a kettlebell. It's an easy exercise to learn, and you can do it with almost any form of free weight resistance. Yeah, this is just, I mean, I'm just very passionate about this in terms of being able to prevent injury and prevent further damage.

So you can keep working out. You can keep building and developing on top of this muscle and this joint needs to remain healthy. And this is one of those ways, it will remain healthy long-term is to be able to express that rotation, but also add strength to that rotation. So Halo is a great one for you. Right, now we need to throw in a reverse fly.

I think a reverse fly has to be in there because it's really, in my opinion, the best exercise to work the back of the shoulder, the posterior head of the shoulder. It's also extremely, it's neglected constantly. It's not fun, you don't use a lot of weight doing it. It seems like a small muscle, why waste time doing it?

I don't see it myself anyway, but I'm gonna tell you something right now, if you have a very well-developed posterior head of your shoulder, your shoulders look round. They look very, very nice. This is what I was known for in competing and this also highlights a point that we make on this show where exercise order, you know, we have these basic rules of like, you know, the major compound lifts first or what you can load more barbell-wise, typically as first, but here's where I'll make an argument where I would do things a little bit different. When I have a client or addressing my own shoulders, which is this is how I did this,

and that was the weakest part of my shoulder, not just weakest as far as strength, but also weak the way it looked, because it was underdeveloped. I actually started my workout with the reverse foot. I did that for years. So, and this is what really brought my full, I already had a pretty good into your dealt. I hit laterals a lot, but I really hadn't learned to really target my rear delts well. Once I did, and I really got connected with them understood the mechanics of it And there's a really good video that I did with Jordan shallow on this on the proper way to do a reverse fly

We'll link it in there once I got that down then I started to really I wanted all my energy So I'll start my shoulder workout because that's an area of focus I would start there and once you and because I And because I start there, I can go heavier because I have all my energy. And then when I went to those other exercises, I know that it's already burnt a little bit, so it's gonna get even more work when I do the, you know, Z press or the halo and other movements.

So keep that in mind, you know, even though the way we're talking about the order of this, you know, the priority of what you're trying to build and develop, I may lead with an area, especially if I'm aesthetically full. And this is an exercise that you don't just do the movement. I mean, you can get away with that with certain exercises like a deadlift, for example.

Just do perfect form, follow the movement. It's all about the movement. With the reverse fly, it's all about feeling the muscle. You gotta feel this in the posterior head of the deltoid. If you feel this in the posture your head of the deltoid. If you feel this in your mid back or your traps, you're doing it wrong. Yes, you can look almost the same, but there's small differences in your form

that will dictate whether or not you're doing a lot of your shoulder. Maybe one of the hardest things to teach, and that's why I referenced that video because I think Jordan does a really good job in that video with me describing how you need to position your body, to start that, to really start to feel that. One of the keys, I think I say it in the video, but I know that I would give to teach people to feel there, is the natural thing for you to do when you see a reverse fly is to fly back.

And the cue that I give is to stay forward and fly out. And when you separate the dumbbells, yes, fly out, separate the dumbbells and stay forward. And that will use the rear delt versus allowing the traps and the wrong boys to keep. Absolutely. And then of course, we have to throw in your good old fashioned lateral, or as I like to

call them, side laterals, and you guys make fun of it. That's how I learned them in Arnold Schwarzenegger's in sex with the Abadi building. But side laterals or laterals, bringing the dumbbells out to the sides works, the side of the shoulder, the side head, the lateral head of the shoulder. Now with this exercise, this is an easy one to mess up. I see a lot of people going for weight on this exercise and developing nice traps, but terrible shoulders. So this exercise right here, forget about the weight. This is one of the movements I almost never give a shit about the weight. I will literally yesterday I worked out and I grabbed 15 pound dumbbells. Most

you lateral, bro. Yeah, I grab 15 pound dumbbells and this, if I wanted to, I could do laterals with 40 pound dumbbells. It wouldn't look the same, but I'd get them done. Well, to the same point that we just made with the rear delts, this is another smaller muscle of the shoulder, a smaller part of the shoulder, that it's really easy for other muscles to overcompensate to get it up. And this is a super common one.

Everybody has that guy in the gym, the big meathead dude that grabs the 40 pound plus dumbbells and he's doing ladders with it and he's loud as he's doing these ladders. It's a high clean. Yeah, you see, you see his shoulders shrugging at the same time and he's getting as much if not more trap worked and he's actually getting that. When you do a lateral, your shoulders, your shoulder structure should stay stable, like locked, that's it. Now, the only thing that's moving is my arm. My arm is bringing the weight out to the side.

My palm is constantly facing down. Now Arnold used to say, imagine pouring water out of a glass. What he's trying to say is, keep your palm facing down and keep your elbow up. In fact, if your elbow can stay slightly higher than your hand as you're coming out to the sides, that's probably little better in terms of feel. But the shoulders should be locked and it should be light. I mean, like again, I could go 40 pounds with this no problem. I rarely go over 20 pounds because I feel it more when I go lighter and isolate and squeeze.

I also recommend that people start the same way with the rear delt tip that we are just talking about, too, because it's such a small muscle and it's so easy for other muscles to take over. Now, mind you, I have gotten to a point where I can actually lift pretty damn good weight. I can actually rear fly 40-pound dumbbells. That's been years of me connecting that. I started it with like 10-pound. I started with 10-pound dumbbells and really learning to years of me connecting that. I started with like 10 pound. I started

with 10 pound dumbbells and really learning to get connected and use that. Over time, I've worked my way up to be able to do really heavy weight, but always when I'm teaching those movements, both the ladders and the rear delt flies, no matter how experienced of a lifter you think you are, I always teach it first with lightweight first to really get the technique. And again, I can't stress this enough. Greater ranges of motion with control will develop better shoulders. Okay, so let's talk about rep ranges and frequency. Now, studies will show that the best frequency to train body parts is around two to four days a week. So in my experience, I agree with that. My experience training clients, training myself,

it's about two to three days a week. It's what I found. Four days a week, feel really advanced, but about two to three days a week is how often you should hit a body part and the shoulders are no different. So if it's three days a week, a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine involving those exercises that we just listed with the mobility movements that we talked about,

you would get probably great development. As far as rep ranges are concerned, all rep ranges build a lot of muscle and you are between one to 25 reps. I recommend, we typically recommend staying within a particular range for a few weeks, get used to that rep range. So if you're in the lower rep ranges, six reps or so, that's fine. Do that for a few weeks and then move to a new rep range to prevent your body from plateauing. That being said, I will say this, we talked about reverse flies and laterals,

both of which tend to not be very good for low reps. They just don't, they're not, they don't lend themselves well to low repetitions. I rarely, rarely, I'll go the lowest I'll go with the reverse fly and the lateral is eight reps. Anything lower than that and it starts to get too heavy and I start to use muscles that I'm not necessarily trying to work.

So keep that in mind, that's just from my own experience. You may be one of those rare people that can do five reps with perfect form. Now on the same way, even rear delts, laterals, I don't think I ever drop below eight to 10 reps. It's all intubidly. It's usually around 12. It's usually around 12 in a sweet spot.

Yeah. So there you go. There's your full workout. You have your mobility component. We have already made the case for the shoulders and why you need to work in a particular way. You have your mobility component. You have your exercises that we recommend.

You could do the ones we recommend or versions of them. I'll recommend that you stick to the ones that we told you, because we've been doing this a long time, we know what we're talking about, but variations of them will work fine also. Stick within a particular rep range for a few weeks, and train your shoulders between two to three days a week and watch what happens.

Well, not to mention that, this is also, I don't know if you guys know this, I'm always looking at numbers and tracking what's happening on the backside of our business. Our number one most downloaded free guide is actually our shoulder guide. Oh, yeah. So, those of you that are wanting more, it's completely free, et cetera, mind pump free.com. You can download the guide. There's even more information in there pertaining

to what we're talking about right now. Yeah, it's called the guide to developing or to building big shoulders. Mindpumpfree.com, download it, and then also if you want videos of all the stuff that we discussed, if you go to our podcast page, you can find it mindpumpmedia.com under the show notes, there should be links to all the exercises in us Demoing these exercises. You can also find us on Instagram You can find Justin at my pump Justin me at my pump Sal and Adam at my pump Adam Thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body

dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal and I'm in Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.

The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. is Mindbomb.