Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1407: Build Amazing Shoulders With These 10 Forgotten Exercises

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin cover ten ways you can build impressive shoulders using exercises that very few people do. Why shoulders are the most sought out body part to develop. (2:15) A moment that changed the game for Adam. (4:30) The importance of having healthy shoulders. (8:05) How Sal was motivated by negative feedback to train properly. (12:00) The 10 Forgotten Exercises to Build Amazing Shoulders. (13:44) Prime and mobilize first. (14:50) #1 – Handcuff with rotation. (19:07) #2 – Loaded heart swing with Indian clubs or kettlebell halos. (20:00) #3 – Overhead carry. (23:19) #4 – Kettlebell bottoms-up press. (26:58) #5 – High pulls. (30:12) #6 – Hang clean to a press. (33:19) #7 – Z press. (34:32) #8 – Alternating shoulder press. (36:53) #9 – Incline lateral raise. (41:18) #10 – Reverse fly. (45:12) How to incorporate these into your routine TODAY! (47:53) Related Links/Products Mentioned October Special: MAPS Anabolic and No BS 6-Pack Formula Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump TV - YouTube Prime Your Shoulders with Handcuffs with Rotation on a Bench Best Exercises for Strong Shoulders (UNCONVENTIONAL STRENGTH) | MIND PUMP Improve Your Overhead Press & Build Your Shoulders with Unilateral Kettlebell Carries Bottoms Up Kettlebell Press Tutorial for SVKO Wild Card Event Shoulder Health Series- Build More Shoulder Mass!- High Face Pull (Video 3 of 5) Z Press to take Your Shoulder Development to the Next Level How To Dumbbell Lateral Raise - The Right Way! (BIG SHOULDERS!) How To Do A PROPER Dumbbell Rear Delt Fly Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You're listening to MIND Pump the Worlds, number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. In this episode, we talk about how to build amazing, round, full, sculpted shoulders with some of the best exercises you've probably never heard of. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Viori. Now, Viori makes some of the most amazing ethylizio where you'll find.

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return it for a full refund. One more time, it's mapsoctober.com. What would you guys say in terms of like body parts of the body, right? What would you say is probably the most universally seeked out body part in terms of focus of development. Like, you know, we could say both guys' anger owes you. Yeah, so just across the board, what is the body part that universally contributes the most to aesthetics to both men and women and is most commonly searched for by everybody? So I don't know if it's the most commonly searched for.

The unisex muscle. The way it is, too, if it did. What? Yeah, made of mine. I don't know if it's the most searched, but I do think that, so I almost always, both male and female when I'm coaching like competitors. And you know, a lot of times obviously I use the protocol

from Maps aesthetic, which has like focus sessions and the ideas that between shows, we pick one or two muscle groups that we're gonna build and develop and as we then present it on stage and then get judged, always. One of the muscles that I always focus on both male or female is shoulders. Now I don't know if that is something that is the most

widely searched or what people think are one of the most important muscles for them to develop for aesthetics. Well, you know what, based on our guides, so we have, you know, for people who don't know, we have a lot of free guides that we offer on training different body parts, on alleviating pain, fat loss, muscle gain,

just as a way to provide more information for people. They're very valuable, and the one that is downloaded the most by both men and women, because we can look, we have a Build Your Buck Guide, right? More women download that by far than men. Build your arms guide. More men download that body. Yeah, I was going to say arms, but yeah, I could see shoulders. Shoulders. Shoulder is taking that for sure. Shoulders is by men and women. And it makes sense because I'm going to go back to what you're saying at them. And let me know if this is, you know, because I never was in the competing world

although I did admire the competing space. But men develop shoulders, gizm the V taper, looks masculine, women are attracted to it, women when they develop shoulders, it's what makes the arms look good. A lot of women think it's the biceps and triceps that make it, the arm looks sculpted. No, that's what I said.

The shoulders separates those. Yes. Makes a huge difference. No, I, so I've told this story on here before, when I had a female competitor when I was in my early 20s, she worked for me. And she was like, I don't know, good 10, 15 years older than I am, and incredible physique she competed.

And I asked her to take a look at my physique and critique it and like she'd like just she's honest Oh, yeah, yeah, she was too honest I think I was looking for you I think it was actually be searching for compliments actually that's I like hey tell me what you think about There's actually nothing Yeah, yeah Yeah, so I think I will I think I was searching for compliments because I had been on like a kick for a while and I think I was being consistent and felt good about my physique and she just totally fucking,

just let the air out. Yeah. Well, she just, she said that my shoulders were terrible. She said that I was. Those were words. Yeah, right? So she said, well, she said it in her real thick German accent too, it was funny.

And. even worse. Yeah. Be shoulders at dinner point. Yeah, just like that. And she said specifically in my rear delts, she says, you know, you have great arms, so your biceps and triceps, you can tell that you train a lot and you've developed them, but they're overdeveloped in comparison to your delts. And so then it gives you this like sloping arm look and then your physique would be far

more impressive if you have shoulders. Now, the truth is, the way my training looked back then, this is what I was guilty of. I didn't put a lot of focus on shoulders. I figured I do a lot of rows and back stuff and I do a lot of pressing things like chest exercises. So, anterior delts, rear delts are getting worked in both those movements. And so, every once in a while, I threw in lateral raises.

I'm like, okay, make sure I throw some lateral raises and put that was the main focus for my shoulders. The rest, I figured they are getting work every time I do chest, I'm getting workier time to do a back. So, I just didn't focus on them. It was after that comment. I was like, man, okay, well, I've never really tried to program

with the intent of building my shoulders and I began to do it. And it completely changed the way my physique looked. Yeah, the irony of this is that as a competitor, your shoulders were probably when you're strongest. If not, you're strongest. Body part, I would say. Yeah, and that was, and it all stemmed all the way back to this

because once I went on this kick of, okay, shoulders need to become a priority and I began to work on it. It took a long time. It didn't happen overnight. It wasn't like she said that to me, it changed a couple of things in my routine and then boom, all of a sudden I had impressive shoulders.

It was years of working and training and focusing on that. But I started to notice such a massive difference. And I also realized that I lost a couple inches, maybe a couple inches more like an inch, right? I lost on the size of my circumference of my arm, but yet I was getting all these arm compliments. Oh my God, your arms look so impressive. And I remember thinking like, that's so crazy

because measurement wise, I've lost size because I wasn't putting as much time and energy on building my buys and tries because that's what she told me. They were overdeveloped. My shoulders were underdeveloped and yet I'm getting more arm compliments that I ever had. So yeah, that set me on this trajectory

of really focusing on shoulders as a focal point of my training. And to this day, when I take on a competitor and I'm helping them for competing always, male or female, there's always room I feel like for improving on shoulders. There's anomalies, right? There's a few people out there that I look at and go, oh man, those shoulders are crazy. But most people neglect either the shoulder in general or in most cases, I feel the rear delts, I think the rear delts are overlooked.

Well, I honestly feel and I get, and I get where we're going in terms of muscle development and the aesthetic of it and everything, but I look at the shoulder as being just as crucial as the glutes in terms of function and athleticism and power. There's so many different aspects to the shoulder to consider, and it needs a lot of attention that people aren't giving the shoulder.

And in turn, that actually helps to then build a more symmetrical, a more filled out shoulder that you'd be more happy with. Well, no, that's a great point, Justin. I think I started on the aesthetic path first. And then I think as I became more educated, more experienced, I learned just how important it was to have healthy shoulders in general. I mean, when you'd look at the joint of the shoulder, and we see more issues stemming from either the hips

or the shoulders than any other place as a trainer. So when you're people complaining of neck pain and shoulder pain and upper back pain, much of that is all related to what's going on with the shoulder, right? The capsule, how it moves and how what kind of much of that is all related to what's going on with the shoulder, right? The capsule and how it moves and what kind of range of motion that you have or the lack of in your shoulder. And so like the hips. So as I started to realize how important it was

to keep my shoulders mobile, then I started to focus even more on them. So yeah, I mean, the more complex the joint is, the more challenging it could be for the average person to develop, right? Because when you look at the shoulder joint, it's probably of the major joints, I would say it's the most complex, right?

You have the humorous, the top of the arm that moves around, you have the scapula, okay, so this is part of the shoulder girdle. This is why they refer to the shoulder girdle. There's so many moving parts. Then you have the scapula that can rotate up or down or retract or protract. You have the clavicle that adds some stability.

So it's a pretty complex joint. Part of the reason why it's complex, by the way, is that humans evolved doing something very, very well is actually a very important part of our evolution that made us apex predators. Predators, excuse me, is it allows us to throw things with tremendous force and accuracy. So if you look at the shoulder joint, very complex.

If you don't understand this, or if you don't balance out the shoulder in terms of its function, and then you go work out, you're not going to have develop shoulder muscles. You're not going to be able to train and develop your shoulders properly because they're just not moving properly. So one of the more important aspects of shoulder development that people overlook, because when you look at your typical muscle building routine, they don't include this component, is mobility, priming, stability, and all these different ways that the shoulder works.

If you don't have that, then you can do all the overhead presses you want and all the laterals that you want. You're not gonna be able to develop good shoulders. In fact, what you'll end up doing is developing upper traps. You might develop your arms a little bit more. More crater imbalances. But you're gonna end up with shoulders that don't really stand out,

or you may think to yourself, man, my shoulders are a stubborn body part. This is a body part that is just, I'm a hard gainer when it comes to my shoulders. And the people I've worked with who've said that to me about their shoulders, nine at a 10 times, it didn't have anything to do with the fact that their shoulders didn't develop

as fast as their biceps and triceps, had everything to do with the fact that they just didn't develop as fast as their biceps and triceps had everything to do with the fact that they just didn't have great movement patterns in their shoulders. So this is an important thing to really pay attention to. It needs to be a well-rounded approach. So totally. You can keep your posture in good upright position.

And that's one of those things. Like if you're presenting your body just in everyday activities, you're walking around, like people notice how good your posture is, and that in turn, it builds up your own confidence. And one of those factors is, like, are you training to promote better posture, are you training to put yourself in balance, so in a in balanced position?

Yeah, and as a kid, for me, I, you know, when I first started working out, I skinny kid really wanted to build muscle. And I got a couple bad, not a couple, quite a few bad comments on my shoulders as a kid. So like you Adam, I was motivated by negative feedback, right? Now I have naturally narrow bone structure. So I'm not a wide person, plus I was skinny.

And so people would say, you know, my kids are right, it looked like a coat hanger or you're really narrow. And so I'm like, I'm going to develop my shoulders. Luckily for me, I was really, I really valued educating myself on how to train properly. So I had Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia bodybuilding, which lists every free weight exercise you can think of for every body part. And so the shoulder section in there was huge. I also read books by Vince Coronda,

and I read other old publications. And I also looked at athletes who I thought had great shoulder development. So I looked at boxers, if you notice boxers always have really nice looking balanced shoulders, makes sense, they're always throwing punches, gymnasts tend to have really well developed shoulders. So at a young age, luckily I trained my shoulders through stability and balance without even

knowing what those things meant. And I did a wide variety of exercises, which resulted in, for me, also my delts tend to be one of my stronger body parts. But it really has to do with the fact that, when you talk about training and training different angles and using exercises that train joints through different ranges of motion with different types of tension,

it's probably more important for the shoulders than it is for almost any other muscle because there's such a complex joint. Now, here's the thing, there are some great exercises that people do a lot of, standing overhead presses, dumbbell overhead presses, standard press, military standing, or side laterals and stuff like that.

Yeah, those are great exercises, but there's a lot of forgotten exercises in movement. I say forgotten because they were popular at one time, or other athletes did them a lot, or we just haven't really seen them be very popular nowadays, and maybe at one point people did them, they're forgotten, but they shouldn't be,

because they have tremendous value for anybody. And I utilized a lot of the exercises that we're gonna talk about today to develop my shoulders, and I found them to be very, very valuable. In fact, you'll get more out of your standard military press, dumbbell presses, if you incorporate some of these forgotten movements and get your shoulders to function and move optimally.

Then when you do a military press, all of a sudden, your shoulders really respond well. Well, we listed off the 10 forgotten or the 10 best forgotten exercises for your shoulders. I think there's also an order of operation. So I do think that the first thing that I want to focus on is mobility. Is the ability to be able to first move your shoulders through its full range of motion. If you're going to maximize the potential of them,

and then also for healthy joints like Justin always alludes to, it's important that we prime and we mobilize first. Yes, now, now, priming, what priming does is priming essentially encourages better movement patterns and turns on, for lack of a better term, because I know there's trainers and experts who say, oh, muscles aren't turned on or off, okay, I'm using the term turned on or off,

but what I'm referring to is the fact that you can feel the more and you're more connected to better movement. That's what Priming does. So if you Primed properly, you are mentally more connected to the shoulder muscles, to the function of the shoulders. And this studies will show that this Priming lasts for about an hour. So when you Primed properly, then you get into your workout. What you're essentially doing is unlocking

more benefits from all the exercises you're about to do. So if your overhead shoulder press is worth 10 points, proper priming is going to ensure that you get all 10 points. Not priming properly and having poor movement patterns might mean that you get six points out of an exercise that could potentially give you 10. And priming doesn't take a long time. You're talking about 10 minutes before your workout to squeeze out 10 more percent out of your workout, which adds up, adds up big time over time.

Yeah, I was just trying to think of an analogy for that, but I was just thinking if you're putting together a race or something in your head at time, you're putting all the signs out and directing where you're putting together a race or something and you're ahead of time, you're putting all the signs out and directing where you're gonna go. Priming, for instance, ahead of time, we're just directing where all this recruitment is gonna go and we're doing this in a way that's more efficient. So that way, when you're going into your workouts,

you're properly stabilized, you're in good position and you're really lighting up and getting everything to move up and you know getting everything to move accordingly. Yeah, so here's an example of that. So if you've ever practiced balancing on something, maybe back when you were a kid or maybe you do it now with your kids and you're walking on something and you're trying to balance, you'll notice the second time around you have better balance, right?

So you practice once, follow off, try it again, second or third time, all of a sudden you have better balance. What's happening is your central nervous system, you're priming it by attempting to do something. The central nervous system now is communicating a little bit more effectively to your muscles. I remember years ago there was this FAD product that was around, and there was some professional athletes that actually promote this product,

and it was like a bracelet or a necklace, and I had some special, you know, plant the magic magnet. Yeah, I was like a bracelet or a necklace and I had some special, you know, the magic magnet. Yeah, I was like some magnet or, or it was like some plastic that had these properties and what you do is you put on this bracelet and all of a sudden you had better performance. And I remember they, they sell these at the mall and I walked by a kiosk and there was this dude who was selling these bracelets and he was proving how effective this bracelet was and this is what he did.

He, you go up to him and I remember seeing this, I'm like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go have fun with this guy. So he says, okay, stand on your right foot and balance, hold out your left arm and I'm gonna push down on your left arm and so I did and you know, I fell over. He said, now put this bracelet on and try it again. And of course, my balance is better when I had the bracelet on. And now the average person was like,

oh my gosh, I'm gonna buy this bracelet, this thing's magic. I understood the central nervous, I'm like, well yeah, I'm gonna be better the second time around. No matter what, because the first time, tells my CNS what's gonna happen. Right, now take the bracelet off, let me do a third time. That's right, so that's what, until you fatigue, right?

That's what priming does, so priming sets you up to get a better workout, and it's important for all your muscle groups, really important for a complex joint like the shoulder. Well, I have a way, maybe a simpler way to explain to clients is like, the shoulder is floating, right? Essentially. And so you have all these muscles that are around it that are supporting it. And before we go do a shoulder press, a lateral rise, any movement, we ideally want it to

be floating, like evenly floating evenly in the center. What ends up happening if you have these muscles that are dormant, that are responsible for helping keeping it neutral like that, it leans to the front more, or it leans to the back more, or leans to the side more, and then it catches and it feels weird. You hear clicking noises or you hear pain. This is what happens when all those supporting muscles are not woke up. The very first thing, and this is why I love the handcuff with a rotation

as like the ultimate priming movement for the shoulder because that entire exercise takes the shoulder through its fullest range of motion, both internally and externally rotated. And that wakes everything up before I go into any movement. I want all those supporting muscles to be awake and keeping that shoulder nice and neutral and balanced.

Yes, so when you do handcuff with rotation, as the first rep you're doing it through and you're going through slow and connecting, it'll feel at some point tight, you might feel like you get a little stuck, that doesn't, I don't know how that feels, you're moving through. By the second, third, fourth rep, now everything's moving the way it's supposed to, now the shoulder's functioning more optimally because the CNS is firing things a little better. And the second, third, fourth rep, you're now everything's moving the way it's supposed to. Now the shoulder's functioning more optimally because the CNS is firing things a little better.

By the third, fourth, fifth rep, things feel a lot better and more connected. So this is a, this is a great way to start your shoulder workout. Start with handcuffs with rotation. Yeah, this is unloaded. And this kind of leads into the next area where I'm very passionate about. And I just want to bring it up because I know I see this in the gym all the time. I don't see many people adding in types of especially loaded rotational moves. It's and it's hard to come up with because it's not very, you know,

top of mind for a lot of people. And it's not in a lot of programming. But now we take that same concept that you guys are talking about with handcuffs of rotation, but that's unloaded. Now we want to apply a reasonable amount of weight to also actually work those muscles, work those rotator muscles and muscles, yeah, it's like bubbles, please, muffles. Yeah, and so we're working those now to add strength and have that, you know, be active also when you're going into your overhead presses. So if I, it's a lot of times it's too similar to like sleepy butt syndrome was we call it,

right? So a lot of times you're going through squats, you don't feel it in your glutes as much, you're quad dominant. You may be a little bit dominant, let's say in your anterior delts where where if I'm pressing, that's all I'm feeling it. But if I now apply movements like in Indian clubs, I caught the heart swing. So it takes your your arm and your shoulder through the entire rotational movements that your shoulders capable of. But now it's loaded. So if I'm going through that process, I'm more likely to feel those muscles contribute

in my standard overhead press. Yeah, Indian clubs were very popular among Indian wrestlers, who at one point were quite dominant in the world. And wrestlers require, they need incredible mobility, I mean, in the truth sense, right? Not just flexibility, but strength in wide ranges of motion, especially in the hips and the shoulders. If you ever watch a wrestling match, you see some of the positions that they get in, and

they used Indian clubs quite a bit, along with May spells, which is another movement that kind of works that area. And it's great exactly for what you said. It loads kind of that full range of motion. And I think, too, to make it, because I know these are both things that are unconventional and you don't have a lot of access to this in your gym. So if you do have a kettlebells,

another good exercise for this is a kettlebell halo, and that just rotates it behind your head and you express all those different rotational movements through that, also with the dumbbell. So there's options for that, but it's definitely one I wouldn't skip over. Well, what I love about this too is that if you've done your due diligence and you've done a lot of priming and you've done a lot of work on keeping your shoulders mobile, a lot of times you can skip handcuff with rotation and go right into Indian clubs, mace

bells, or like halos, which is how I typically warm my shoulders up now. So, I put a lot of work in with mobility to make sure that I can express my shoulder and it's full range of motion and the ability to rotate it like Justin's talking about. So now I can just go grab some light Indian clubs or mace ball and kind of swing it and kind of wake it all up together. But if you're somebody who has limited range of motion or has shoulder issues, you definitely want to start with something unloaded, right?

Just your body and do that intrinsically first. Get good at that to kind of wake everything up and then you load it with something like Indian clubs mace or the halo. Right, now the next movement, which would be, I think it makes sense to kind of do it after you would do your hand cuts with rotation or your halo, for example, is an overhead carry.

An overhead carry, literally just like it sounds. You would take a pair of dumbbells or kettlebells, press them straight up out of your head, straighten your arms, stay tight, walk for maybe 50 yards or 25 yards, but stay tight and controlled embrace your core. Now what this is doing is it's really stabilizing your shoulder joint, it's turning everything on. You're not supposed to use a ridiculous amount of weight. You want to use some weight that's challenging,

but really the idea is to brace and express your strength in that fully extended position. This turns things on like nothing else. I didn't do these as part of a routine until I met Justin. This alone, I probably added about 10 pounds to my overhead presses, just because when I remember when I lifted, after I did overhead carries, just pressing a barbell overhead, I just felt more stable. It felt like I could push harder because things were more tight.

Yeah, more acclimated to having weight over your head. And you know how to navigate with that and be able to brace and your body responds once you start doing that, when you go back to overhead presses, you're just stronger in that lockout position. One thing I like to add to this is they call it sort of shoulder packing. And I know that there's different ideas about this, about letting your shoulder elevate up as you bring your arm up versus just packing your shoulder and creating an anchor with your shoulder blade. I prefer the anchoring. So that way when we're pressing too, you have your shoulder nicely secure and stabilized while you're locking your arm all the way overhead. I also love this as an opportunity to address other cues of the rest of the body, right?

So when someone's doing a continuous movement like a shoulder press, it's really hard to get them to focus on other parts of their body while they're also pressing at the same time. They're focused so much on just getting the weight over their head that they're thinking about their arms, their shoulders, their upper body where there is a big part of like standing overhead pressing that is also related to like your core and your hips that people neglect and also see a lot of issues with like low back. Because what you see is you see a press over the head on the natural tendencies for a lot

of people is to get like a ribcage flare. So the ribcage will flare out and the low back will arch. It's like they're leaning back almost. Exactly. And it's very natural for that to happen if you just tell someone to press over their head where if I have them put dumbbells or kettlebells above their head, they're in that shoulder pack position, they're stabilizing there. Now I can cue below.

I can say, okay, activate your core. So tighten your abs up. Tuck the, let the ribs come down. Don't let them flare out to where you're arching. Activate your core, so tighten your abs up, tuck the ribs, come down, don't let them flare out to where you're arching. Activate your glutes, squeeze your butt, so just like if we do like on a glute bridge, I want you to squeeze your butt so you don't have this excessive arching low back,

now walk forward. So that's, I love to do teach a client this, and I'll get them holy, and I'll start lighter, right? I know I could probably challenge them with a heavier weight because I'm looking at all these cues. I don't want it to be so hard, it's hard for them to hold their head for a while. So I'll do light dumbbells or kettlebells.

Get them in that complete full extension over their head. Make sure their arms are lined up with their ears so they're completely extended. Then I'll look down at their ribs, make sure their ribs are tucked in, the core is tight, abs are tight, and then squeeze your glutes, and then start to walk.

You're emphasizing adding intensity to the stabilizing muscles. That's really the focus. So that way, they do what they're supposed to do once you're doing the gross motor movement. Right. Now, the first exercise that I think some people do, but it's definitely not common, has a tremendous amount of value for shoulder development. It's a kettlebell bottoms up press. So typically with a kettlebell, when you press a kettlebell overhead,

what you'll see most of the time is the kettlebell is resting on the forearm and the handle is on the top, right? So they press up with the kettlebell in that position. And bottoms up press literally is upside down. You take the kettlebell, you flip it so that the handle is at the bottom and the weight is at the top. Now you think what's the difference? It's the same amount of weight.

Huge difference. In order to press with the weight at the top, I have to really balance my arm and my hand underneath the weight of the kettlebell. If I move it too far forward or back, the weight is gonna flop forward or flop back. I have to balance. It also slows me down a lot. A bottom's up press is not fast. It's very slow and very, very controlled. It also requires a very full tight grip. Now, one problem a lot of people make when they press is their grip gets loose, like they're resting the barbell or the dumbbell

in the palm of their hand. Tightening your grip turns on the central nervous system, even more. The CNS, the central nervous system, is more powerful the more you turn it on in your whole body. In fact, if you were to exert yourself right now, if you were just to squeeze your hand as hard as you possibly could with every bit of strength

You would naturally tense up your entire body including your face That's because the the when you turn on the whole body the CNS turns on more for every part of your body Rather than just turning on for one part of my body So you're squeezing the handle you have to balance your elbow and your hand underneath it and it slows the rep down It's like you can't do a bottoms's up press without really good control in the perfect form. Yeah, and to make a nice tight fist is something that is so protective. It's so supportive on the wrist, the elbows, the shoulder. If you can emulate that too in your barbell lifts as much as possible, making that nice tight wrist,

but not having that break when you're doing other exercises as well, that's gonna be massively beneficial. So this is one of those types of exercises that really has a lot of carryover and a lot of other exercises. So I told you originally that I was focused heavily on the aesthetics and then it was later on, like the control and the movement of the shoulder

and mobility and all that came to play. And once that came into play for me was when I actually got to express power movements and to see how that and what that did for my shoulders. Oh, boy. And this was another pivotal moment in my shoulder training journey was starting to incorporate power exercises. Because I didn't identify with power lifters or Olympic lifters, I neglected a lot of these exercises.

I trained much like a bodybuilder, a lot of hypertrophy, pumping type of exercises, super sets. I didn't spend a lot of time doing explosive type stuff, especially for my shoulders. And I remember when I started to introduce these next two exercises into my routine, my shoulders blew up. And so that first one is the high pulls. It's something that I never practiced before,

something I never did in my routine, but couldn't believe, especially how much my lateral, delt and rear delt blew up doing these movements, it blew me away. Yeah, and rear delt blew up doing these movements. It blew me away. Yeah, and you know, it's funny is the old time lifters, they did almost all their shoulder exercises exclusively. I would want to say all, but almost all were exclusively power.

It was about explosive movements, pushing things up overhead, bringing things up off the ground. Well, they had to bring everything off the ground first. They didn't have racks. They didn't have racks. So anything that went overhead, bringing things up off the ground. Well, they had to bring everything off the ground first. They didn't have racks. They didn't have racks. So anything that went overhead, they had to start on the ground. And so they needed these elements, like this type of a clean movement or a high pole, for instance, for here, just to get it up into the rack position to press.

Yes, there's two ways to turn on to really activate the, what are called the fast twitch muscle fibers. Now I'm gonna simplify because it's a little bit more complex than this, but generally speaking, there are two general categories of muscle fibers in the body, of your slow twitch and your fast twitch. The fast twitch ones are the ones that build, they're the ones that add size.

The slow twitch ones, they are good for endurance, they become more efficient, and they don't add a lot of size because bigger muscle fibers use more energy, and if you want lots for endurance, they become more efficient, and they don't add a lot of size because bigger muscle fibers use more energy, and if you want lots of endurance, you don't want to, you want to become more efficient with energy, not less efficient. This is why long-distance runners have skinny legs with very little muscle versus sprinters who have big muscular legs, right? So it's the fast twitch muscle fibers that grow. There's two ways to really activate

fast twitch muscle fibers. One is through heavy weight where you're maximally exerting yourself, whether it's for three reps or ten reps, you'll turn on more fast twitch muscle fibers. The other way is speed, power. Like you're, if you're throwing a baseball, a baseball weighs, you know, I don't know how much it weighs, but it's definitely less than a pound. But if you're throwing a baseball as fast as you can, you are turning on as many fast switch muscle fibers as if you're doing a heavy bench press.

For example, speed does this as well. Power movements turn on fast switch muscle fibers, and it's really effective at getting fast switch muscle fibers that might not be getting super activated. A high pull definitely does this. It requires explosive movement. You're not using a super heavy weight. In fact, the weight should be low to moderate.

The idea is speed and explosivity. It turns those muscle fibers on for the shoulders. And if you do do this exercise, you have to have good control, of course, good form. Do this at the beginning of the workout. You don't want to do a power movement at the end when you're super fatigued or super pumped. You want to do it when you've got good energy.

Well, on the benefit too, with power movements like that, where it really stretches your capacity now to generate even more force from your central nervous system. That's beneficial going back into a strength phase where now I can start in a bottom position, but now I can recruit an even more amount of muscle fibers. So I feel stronger, I feel more powerful to get more weight up and it just sort of bleeds all the way into that. Now the next one, very similar,

is a hang clean to a press. So hang clean literally is this. You imagine standing with the barbell, with your hands holding the barbell, but it's down past your hips, right? So, it's like you finished a deadlift or whatever you're just holding a barbell. A clean is bringing the barbell up to your shoulders

and then the press part is pushing it overhead. There is a technique to this. So, it's not just a slow reverse curl up to the shoulders and a press. There is speed involved in that cleaning part and then you do an explosive press. Back in the day, this is how people shoulder pressed. In fact, if you didn't clean the weight,

it wasn't considered a full rep. It wasn't until later that people ended, stopped the clean aspect and just did the press. This is unfortunate because although it is technical and requires a little bit more skill, the clean part works the shoulders just like the press part does. So, hanging clean to press for power, this is an excellent exercise for developing the shoulders. There's pull rotation and then press in there, that's why.

I mean, it's one of those movements that kind of incorporates a lot of what the shoulder can do and expresses it all in one movement. And you're doing it in a power way, right explosive. So that was a massive one for me. I love that. The next one is the Z press. The Z press wasn't something I found until way later. In fact, I'm trying to remember. I think it was when Justin and I started hanging out again.

I think it was, yeah, I think you came to my jam and we started doing it there together. Yeah, somebody, I think, I know there were so many of the guys that you were working with. It's funny too, because when you look at a Z-Press, you think, what's the difference? Yeah, you know?

You do think it's silly, and I wish I would have found it earlier in my career because it became a staple move that I used on clients going forward, because I realized that in order to do a Z-Press properly, it forces those things that I talked about earlier about like the rib cage flare and keeping your glutes tucked

and then good core stability. And then also being able to fully extend over your head. So when I think of all the things where clients, cheetah wrap or they struggle with the movement when it comes to a shoulder press, I think of the arching of the low back, I think of the rib flare, I think of the lack of full range of motion

and locking out. It hits all three of those, really, really well. You can't do a Z press and not go full range of motion. The only way you stay balanced is to fully extend it over your head. So then you've got the stability portion and the full extension portion there. The only way that you're gonna stay standing up

or seated upright is also if you have great trunk and core stability too. So I love this move. It really does require you to, you know, what lifters will say, put your head through the window, right? When you press a barbell up, as it passes your head, you got to bring the head through and really get your arms up next to your head. This will work your shoulders like nothing else. The irony of a Z press is it's, I, in my opinion, it should be the bodybuilder press. This is what bodybuilders should do more of,

because it forces you to squeeze your shoulders. How often do you feel a shoulder squeeze at the top of a military press? The reason why you don't is because you're not getting that full extension and you're not really straight with your body, the Z-Press forces that. You're literally forced to have that kind of an overhead press, and you actually get a squeeze in the shoulders of the top

of a press and you get this crazy pump. Yeah, it's one of my favorites for addressing all those stability points that you mentioned. I mean, if you did, a bottoms up press and you're focused on that for just your rest, and then basically the Z-Press covers everything else. And it's so beneficial as a teaching tool, but also just, you

know, to sort of reassess what's going right and what's going wrong in your own overhead press. Yes. Now, the next one, this one was popular in the 70s and 80s. In fact, if, you know, again, I was a, I used to love reading, you know, training publications. And I would even go to, there was this comic book store that I used to go to, that sold old magazines and old comic books and rarely did they have old muscle building magazines, but when they did, I was, I mean, every dollar of my allowance was spent on that.

And I remember seeing shoulder presses in body building and muscle building magazines from the 80s. And oftentimes, I say, I have the time, they showed shoulder presses, they were alternating shoulder presses. To me, this was weird because in the 90s, in the magazines that I was reading that were current, shoulder presses with dumbbells, both dumbbells, excuse me, went up at the same time.

So it's both at the same time. But when I'd see these ones in the 80s, you'd see bodybuilders and people teaching alternating where one is being held at the bottom, staying tight, and the other one is pressing all the way up, and then coming back down, and then alternating to the other hand, or they would alternate at the top, or one would stay at the top, one would come down, come up, and then you'd switch. And I thought to myself, what's the difference?

You're pressing them or you're not pressing them. It doesn't make a big difference. Then I tried them out. Makes a huge difference. The arm that's staying at the bottom is required to stabilize. You're doing an isometric tension movement on the shoulder, either at the bottom or the top. The other arm is moving and then you switch arms and now you're doing an isometric movement. On the other arm, the pump and the burn I get from this is tremendous. In fact,

even today, I'd say 30% of the time, I'll do alternating shoulder presses. I can't use as much weight as I do when I don't do a alternating, which shows me that it's definitely harder. It's definitely a more difficult type of shoulder press. It helps to eliminate a bit of body English and momentum-based lifting.

I think it's a good tool for that, especially for those points you mentioned with creating more tension, but really it's the control aspect. So can I control one side of my body while the other one's doing the work and then do that in a very controlled, efficient way, or is the weight having control over me? And so it's sort of one of those things that it's a great tool, but also it creates a great strength and hypertrophy pump out of it. Now, do you guys prefer to teach this seated or standing? I'd like to do them standing, but seated is great also. Yeah, I like to teach seated because because you're alternating back and forth, you're

focused on on the a lot of things to think about. Yeah, there's a lot of things to think about, and then that just kind of takes the bottom portion up, because this is probably one of the, and you're going to hear me keep talking about this, because I think with most clients that struggled with the overhead press, especially when you talk about extending it all the way up, most of them lack that shoulder mobility, and then the rest of the body starts to break down below. And that's what I don't like. So if you do some of these exercises, keep that in mind. That's why things like the Z press, I think, are so important.

It's because there's so much breakdown below that people don't pay attention to. Because you're thinking the shoulders, everyone's watching the shoulder heels raise. They're pressing it up and things like that to look out for. Yeah, yeah. You do make a very good case for that now that I think back I it is Now that I'm thinking about I did take a lot of clients from standing to see it so I watched their form But why don't we do this yeah, I love standing. I'm gonna give you that's how I do it's more functional if you if you're an advanced Lifter and you're listening to all these tips like by all means go for it standing

But if I'm teaching this and I'm teaching these principles, yeah, I like to, I like people sitting down at first so I can teach them the mechanics and what we're trying to accomplish. Once they understand how to tighten their core, light up their glutes while they're also pressing and they can do those things together, then it's okay.

And then I like things like the circus press. I know Doug put the highlight of that up on the notes. It's like similar, similar. It's not an alternating press because you're not holding one dumbbell on the opposite side. But it is a one on press. Yeah, circus press might fall in a category

closer to being like the hang clean to press. Like that, it incorporates that internal rotation and you also get the external rotation and then you get the pressing and pulling. You don't want going on with the exercise. Right, I love that movement too. So that belongs somewhere in here, whether you do it in alternating

if you're doing unilateral work or if you're doing it up somewhere where the hand clean press, that belongs in there too. Now the next one, I can see why all these exercises or a lot of these exercises are forgotten. Like a Z-press, you sit on the floor, looks kind of funny. Power movements require a lot of skill

and people who think they just want to sculpt their body, sometimes think powers and something that's important. Bottoms up presses counter-intuitive. If you press the kettlebell, why the hell would I press it? Upside down, Indian clubs and not that popular. I can get why a lot of these are forgotten. It's definitely not because they're not effective,

but it's because they look different from traditional exercises. But the next one, I do not understand. It baffles me why this movement is not more popular and it's the inclined lateral raise. Lateral raises in general are very popular, right? It's one of the most common shoulder exercises that you see done in gyms everywhere.

It works the side of the shoulder, which gives you that nice width that can give you a great pump. Typically it's done standing or seated. But one of the drawbacks, I would say, of the lateral raise is the fact that the rate, the tension is typically due to gravity. So at the top of the lateral is typically due to gravity.

So at the top of the lateral raises, where you're gonna have the most tension, because that's where I'm fighting gravity the most. At the bottom, there's not much. Like to swing a dumbbell from the bottom up, you know, a little bit, it doesn't take that much strength. It requires more strength as I come up to the top.

Not a bad thing, again, lateral raises are phenomenal, but what if we took a lateral raise, and rather than making the top of the movement the hardest part, make it more at the bottom where you're kind of stretching the side of the shoulder. That's what an incline lateral raise does. I didn't learn about these early on because, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger was somebody I looked up to and again, I read his book and then there was another bodybuilder by the

name of Serge Nubray. This was a, I believe he was a French body builder. Till this day, I mean, he passed away, I think a couple years ago, he competed in the 60s and 70s. Till this day, he's considered one of the most aesthetic body builders of all time. He had this incredible physique, very, very balanced, round looking muscles.

And he loved doing incline lateral raises. So I tried them out myself. And essentially you land on incline bench on your side, you do your lateral raise. Now the bottom part of the lateral raise is difficult. And let me tell you, if you always do lateral raises standing and you never do them on an incline, try them on an incline, watch what happens

to the side of your shoulders. It'll fry them, you'll get a pump like you've never had. Well, I think that's the main reason why though, right? I mean, when you agree, it's just because it's not normal. Like you rarely ever see somebody doing that exercise and you're manipulating the strength curve. Absolutely. And you have most people think of lateral rays and they just think of your basic standing,

you know, lateral rays or a seated lateral rays machine and that's how you do it. Like, maybe there's some debates on people abending their elbow or completely extended or how heavy they go, but it's all pretty basic. Everybody does it. Nobody really manipulates the strength or that much with, especially with free weights because we do with cables, right?

Cables changes, yeah. You release in cables. Right. Cables changes that, which I think are also a great tool when doing laterals, but to manipulate that with a dumbbell, I think is very unique. Yes, and it's also one arm at a time. And this is really good when you're doing a kind of a sculpting isolation exercise like

a lateral raise, because it allows you to really, because here's the value of these kind of single joint sculpting exercises. The value is connecting, really connecting to a particular part of the muscle, much harder to do with a compound movement. And it's even, you can connect even more when you do one arm at a time. So you do a one arm, because you can't do two arm incline

lateral raise, right? It's impossible. You're laying on one side. So it forces you to really focus on feeling this side of the shoulder, very hard part of the shoulder to feel. And in my opinion, the incline lateral raise one of the best ways to do it. Now the last exercise is a reverse fly

done with either cables or bands. Probably one of the most underutilized exercises I can think about, you can tell by looking at people's shoulders. They don't work the rear delts very much. Well, I think a lot of that is because it's less that everybody doesn't exercise or work this muscle. It's that it's a harder muscle to target. And I think most people that do reverse flies

or do rear delt movements tend to allow their back muscles to engage and do the work. It's like a rear row or a shrug. Yeah, so we did a good video, Jordan Schallow, and I did a good video a few years back on our YouTube channel, so you can look up on my pump TV and we discussed this, right? And it's really kind of counterintuitive the way you do a reverse fly. You actually want to promote the shoulders being rounded forward. When you're flying, you're not thinking about flying back, you're thinking of flying out, and you're keeping that forward shoulder position while you do that.

In order to really target the riddles, the moment you allow the back to retract and you fly back, which by the way is natural. So if you can sat in a peck deck, reverse and do a reverse fly, if you're doing the cable machine, you're doing that, it is natural for you to use momentum and allow your upper, your lower traps, your rhomboids

to all kick in and squeeze. They're bigger, stronger, more dominant muscles. So they're gonna wanna take over the movement unless you know how to keep them out of the movement, which most people just don't understand the biomechanics of that. So first, I think, is understanding that. So if you haven't watched that video, watch that video,

that's important. It's important to know how to do the movement properly. Then after that, it's just purely incorporating it into your routine and your right cell. It's probably one of the most neglected. And I think it looks like it's the most neglected because even the people that are doing it aren't doing it properly.

And so you have a lot of people with underdeveloped rear delts. Yeah, if you want really round shoulders, it's really about the rear delts more than anything. I mean, when you look at someone from the side, what gives the shoulder a round look is the rear delt. Even when you look at them from the front, everybody thinks it's the side head of the deltoid and that does play a role. But if you have no rear delt. Even when you look at them from the front, everybody thinks it's the side head of the deltoid,

and that does play a role, but if you have no rear delt muscles, or if you have rear delt muscles that are underdeveloped, even with well-developed side delt muscles, you'll still get a forward sloping shoulder look. It's that rear delt that gives that really round, bubbly look to the shoulders. And like we talked about earlier in the episode,

it's what creates that illusion of definition throughout the whole arm. bubbly look to the shoulders. And like we talked about earlier in the episode, it's what creates that illusion of definition throughout the whole arm. So definitely do not neglect this part of your body. Now, we went through a lot of exercises and movements. There's 10 of them here. You may be wondering, how do I incorporate these into my routine? I'll tell you what, easy way to do this.

Take three or four of the movements that we talked about today, put them in your routine consistently for five to six weeks. Don't just throw them in ones, try them out, and then go back to your normal routine. You're not going to see the benefits of them if you do it that way. Get good at them. Pick three or four. That's all three or four of all the ones we talked about, and then put them in your shoulder routine regularly. Every time you work out shoulders, get good at them for the next five, six, seven, eight weeks, and then watch what happens to the development of your shoulders. And if you want more information and more detailed written information, you can go to mindpumpfree.com. There is a shoulder guide on there. There's

a guide on how to develop nice looking shoulders or massive shoulders. I don't remember the wordage that I was on there. You can download it. It's totally free. And it goes through other aspects of shoulder development in detail in writing. And again, it costs absolutely nothing. Look, MindPump is recorded on videos as well as audio. Come find us on YouTube MindPump podcast.

You can also find all of us on Instagram, including the producer, Doug. You can find Doug at MindPumpDug. Just in at MindPump. Just in me at Mind Doug, you can find Doug at Mind Pump Doug, just in at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Salon Adam, at Mind 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 Mind Pump

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