While I’ve been sitting here trying to come up with content, thinking about how I have trained and the things I have done, it has dawned on me that nothing I ever did was all that special.
While thinking about how I built my shoulders, I only had 4 exercises to write about. Three sets of four different exercises and that’s it. The entire plan could be written on a post-it note. The same goes for my workout split in those early days. four days a week, about 1 hour every day and that was it.
My rep schemes didn’t change all that often, my exercise selection didn’t either, neither did the days I worked out or the time I spent in the gym. The only major change was the change from using lighter weights to using heavier weights as I progressed. It was all part of a very simple, but very repeatable formula. Almost too simple it seems……
This is the fitness secret that everyone keeps asking for but no one wants to see. Everyone is hoping for that magic exercise, or magic diet or secret supplement that can allow them to reach their goals, but ultimately they hope that they can reach their goals by doing less work as well. Ultimately this seems to be the goal, to achieve their goals but without working for them. The problem is that if they spent just a little less time working for the secret and a little more time working out in the gym they would already have those goals or be well on their way to them.
To get bigger and stronger you need only two things: A simple routine made up of big movements that you can add weight to easily, and a plan that you can easily stick to every week. If that is a three day plan then so be it. Four day plan, fine. If it is easy for you to do then go 5 days a week. The point is that going to the gym and deciding what movements to do should be the easiest part of all this.
Everybody wants to have big shoulders. For aesthetic purposes they are one of the muscles most responsible for the fabled “v-taper” that so many people are after. They are vital to a strong bench press or overhead press but they also have another function, one that I came to realize and appreciate very well, they help protect the shoulder joint from injury and they help heal an injury to this joint much more rapidly then someone with weaker, less developed shoulders. The same can probably be said for many other muscle groups as well but in particular I personally benefited a lot from having strong shoulders.
Growing up the two sports I was most into were wrestling, and BMX riding. A common injury in both of those sports is an injury to the rotator cuff. A common denominator with everyone I saw who had shoulder problems in either sport was that they had no interest or saw no value in weight training. That is not to say that people who weight train never injure their shoulders or that no one ever got hurt weight training on it’s own but in general I believe that having big strong shoulders helps prevent damage to the rotator cuff and in general almost acts like shoulder pads as far as reducing impact related injuries.
I was always a dramatic risk taker in BMX and consequently I had some very hard crashes more then a few times, often times much harder then some of my more skilled, or more reserved peers. The few shoulder injuries I had were quickly healed up not by staying off the weights, but by embracing them and using them to speed my recovery. My shoulders are stronger, bigger and healthier then they have ever been and the following program was what I used for 10 years to build them.
This can be used as a shoulder specialization plan or as part of a traditional 4 day training split. This sort of plan will also fit well with a Wendler 531 plan as well. Basically the plan is this, this was a Thursday workout which at the time was shoulders and arms and it went as follows:
1: seated dumbell shoulder press-3 sets of 6, pyramid up in weight
2: seated side laterals: 3 sets of 8-12
3: seated rear laterals: 3 sets of 12-15
or
1: seated barbell military press: 3 sets of 6
2: seated dumbell press: 3 sets of 8
3: seated side laterals: 3 sets of 8-12
4: seated rear laterals: 3 sets of 12-15
Off and on I would alternate between these two workouts. What gym I was working out at and what training partners were with me influenced which routine I used but as you can see they aren’t much different. The overhead presses were the main meat of the program and here is where I tried the hardest to constantly add weight.
That was basically all there was to it. Now this seems like a very cookie cutter program and is less then perfect but this is exactly what I did for a very long time to build healthy shoulders. While I personally didn’t use a very scientific loading scheme at the time I did always strive to add weight to the primary exercises which were the barbell military press or the dumbell press. On barbell days I would focus on adding weight to the barbell, and on dumbell days I would focus on adding weight to the dumbells. The weight used for the other exercises wasn’t nearly as important. While I always attempted to add weight or reps when I could it wasn’t always linear, as new weight on the primary movements sometimes made me too drained to increase the weight more on the auxiliary movements.
Here is what my whole program looked like so you can see it in context to the other training days as well.
Monday: Legs
squats: 3 sets of 6
leg presses: 3 sets of 8
front squats: 3 sets of 10+
leg extensions: 3 sets of 12
leg curls: 3 sets of 10
Tuesday: Chest
incline barbell or dumbell bench: 3 sets of 6 pyramid
flat dumbell bench: 3 sets of 6
barbell bench: 3 sets of 6
Thursday: Back
deadlifts: 3 sets of 6
bent over rows: 3 sets of 6
weighted pull ups: 3 sets of 6
hyperextenions: 3 sets of 10
Friday: Shoulders and Arms
dumbell shoulder press: 3 sets of 6
side laterals: 3 sets of 8-12
rear laterals: 3 sets of 12-15
Triceps:
close grip bench press or weighted dips: 3 sets of 6
seated french presses: 3 sets of 8 to 10
cable push downs: 3 sets of 12-15
Biceps:
standing barbell curls: 3 sets of 5
seated or incline barbell curl: 3 sets of 8
cable curls: 3 sets of 12-15
*often times i would superset the bicep and tricep work as they are very easy to do that with.
* all workouts take less then an hour. Try to add weight as often as possible on the big core lifts.
Now this is what worked for me, it is not exactly the optimum way to train for obvious reasons. Dumbells have a lot of limitations as far as adding weight in a linear fashion and there are better exercises for accomplishing more then one goal at once.
As you can see it sounds like a very typical bodybuilder style plan. While I would definitely do things different now, the fundamentals were there and it was a very balanced plan that was easy to fit into college life. The key to the shoulder health for me was always the heavy overhead presses of one kind or another. These are vital to building shoulder strength and protecting the rotator cuff. Additionally, using this format for a long time left my bench press slightly less then I would have liked but it kept me from having any shoulder related problems that can come from too much bench pressing and it let me build a good foundation of muscle and strength so that when I finally did a bench specialization plan a few years later I was able to add 55 pounds to my max in a fairly short amount of time.
Now like I said, knowing what I know today I would pick a slightly different plan than would allow me to incrementally add weight more often but that would also allow me to train with more frequency throughout the week which I personally like. The problem with a 4 day split like this is that for beginners it places a whole week before you hit that muscle group again and you can make gains faster then that.The good thing about using the big basics as I have always done is that all great plans are made up of them; a little bit of reordering and all these excercises can fit into most popular and effective plans. The smaller excercises can be dropped altogether and the bigger ones can be focused on in a way that guarantees progress. From there frequency and volume can also be manipulated to achieve different goals.
Now if you are intent on using this exact shoulder plan your self here are the changes that I will recommend:
Just do one workout, there’s no need to alternate workouts.
That workout is this:
A: Standing or seated barbell overhead press (standing is better overall in my opinion) 3 sets of 6: use the same weight for all 6 sets
B: Dumbell shoulder press: 3 sets of 6 to 8. same weight for all sets
C: Side Laterals: 3 sets of 12 increase the weight when you can
D: Rear Laterals: 3 sets of 12-15 increase the weight when you can
For the barbell press, add 2.5 pounds each week. For the dumbell shoulder press once you can do all sets with the same weight and not miss a rep then move up to the next weight of dumbells and repeat until you can do all 8 reps for all three sets then go up in weight again.
An alternate plan that I would recommend that can fit into many of the 5×5 style plans looks like this (I’m leaving out all the rest and just showing you the shoulder stuff since shoulders overall is the point in this article)-
Monday:
Standing overhead press: 5 sets of 5, add 2.5 pounds each week.
Seated dumbell press: 3 sets of 8, once you can complete all 8 reps for all sets go up to the next heaviest set of dumbells.
Friday:
Standing overhead press: work up to a max set of 5 reps, add 2.5 pounds each week.
Heavy Shrugs: 5 sets of 3, add 5 or 10 pounds each week.
There you have it, a few proven methods to add some strength and muscle to the shoulder area to help prevent injuries while in sports and to fill out a t-shirt. Big basic heavy overhead work was the key to my shoulder health and size and I feel like you can use these plans and have a lot of success.
A lot of my posts so far on this site have been motivational in nature, after reading thru them a few times I feel like I really need to write something that is more instructive and more useful. Hopefully this will be the first of many posts that will give beginning weight trainers the info they need to get started, stick with it and progress.
So on the the meat of the issue, you want to start lifting weights to get stronger, get buff, build confidence, impress members of the opposite sex, perform better at sports or some combination of all of the above. The first step is going to be actually lifting some weights. Luckily for me my dad had been lifting weights his whole life so I had access to his free weights and some machines early on in my training so it was pretty easy for me to get to it. Also luckily for me, in my opinion, is that I can’t ever remember my dad ever giving me any real instruction on the matter. He had tons of books on the subject and magazines and he left me to my own devices as far as researching how to progress and what exercises to do. This helped ingrain a sense of self reliance that became valuable when I picked up BMX riding and later in other endeavors later in my life. He was always there to encourage or lend a spot but never to preach or make me conform to his own ideas. His main advice was always get stronger and stay consistent, and frankly if you only listen to those pieces of advice you will make it pretty damn far.
Not everyone has a parent or older brother to help them so hopefully in this aspect I can be of assistance. If you don’t have access to some free weights at your home the next best option is to see what your high school has available. My high school actually had a really good weight room and strength training program that was part of the regular PE curriculum, but many schools have an afternoon weight lifting program as well. I would consider something like this to be your best option however I would still encourage you to research the proper methods as high school weight training today is not what it used to be. Do not even consider a program that leaves out heavy squats.
Another option would be to look into joining a local gym or YMCA depending on your age and driver’s license status. If this isn’t an option the last option is to buy some weights and equipment of your own. For less then 700 bucks you can acquire all the basics that you will need to carry you forward. I would suggest trying to find a way to earn the money somehow yourself as opposed to just asking your parents for it. Even if you have to do work around the house for your parents this is the best option as it shows you are serious and more importantly it will convince yourself that you are serious about pursuing this. The basic equipment you will need will be an olympic bar with 300 pounds of weights, a squat stand, and a bench. Shopping around online you may be able to obtain these items fairly cheaply.
What routine should you do once you’ve obtained these items? Although I started with a different routine I would suggest a simple full body style 5×5 routine. Something along the lines of a Starting Strength plan or a Bill Starr 5×5 will work very well for you. If for some reason you can’t afford those books or you are adamant about doing something different the basic exercises you should be doing will be the same. The meat of your training should be made up of squats, over head press and or bench press, deadlifts and or rows, and an olympic lift variation like power cleans. You can also throw in some barbell curls and close grip bench presses to hit the arms. These are the big basics that will suit you well for a long time. While I never did power cleans as a kid, mostly because I was never taught why they were beneficial; the power clean teaches you to apply the strength that you have built with the deadlift, quickly. It teaches you to turn on and accelerate the weight in a way that the deadlift cannot. This helps build athleticism and power, and power is basically strength displayed quickly as Mark Rippetoe says.
The two routines I mentioned above will show you the proper loading that you will need and what days you should lift. In an effort to not plagiarize their work I will recommend that you look those programs up to find out more about them. The absolute most important aspect of any of these plans will be adding weight each workout or each week. This increase in weight is what is going to drive your progress. Do not get mixed up in a lot of bodybuilding magazine info about advanced techniques that allow you to get a burn with lighter weights. There may come a time when stuff like that can be helpful but that is very far down the road. You will not maximize your ability to grow and get stronger using techniques like that as a beginner.
It will be important to leave your ego out of the equation and don’t waste time with a lot of one rep max attempts. You will just be wasting your training time. Instead focus on between 8 and 5 reps for everything and focus on increasing the weight you use for these reps. There will come a time when you will need or want to know your one rep max but again, this is not the time for that. You will not be skilled enough in the lifts to be able to demonstrate an efficient one rep max attempt and you certainly won’t be impressing anyone. Also, except on the arm exercises it will be best to stick to 8 reps or less because in beginning lifters their form tends to break down dramatically after 8 reps. Between 5 and 8 reps should provide all the strength and muscle gains you will need.
The last main point will be to resist adding more and more exercises to your routine. At best these will be a distraction and at worse they may shortcut your gains in the bigger lifts and hinder your ability to recover from workout to workout. A lot of the fluff exercises like flyes, and tons of variations of arm curls and things like that are basically a way to achieve a certain muscular look in the short term at the expense of serious strength and muscle growth in the long term. For beginners these are methods to create a small visual increase in muscle size to impress nonlifters and an excuse to not strive to lift heavier and heavier weights. Build up to a 150% bodyweight bench press, and double bodyweight squat and deadlift and a bodyweight overhead press and you will have much bigger muscles then a guy who spent his time doing shit loads of arm curls and chest flyes. Every kid’s favorite muscle hero spent the time to get big and strong at these basics long before they switched to more isolation, bodybuilding style exercises. Every one of them!
As you can see I’ve left out any mention of nutrition, as that can be an entire article on it’s own. Meat, vegetables and carbs like rice or beans are your friends and I would encourage you to eat lots of these things. If you start to become unable to progress each week then eat more, if you start to become a lot fatter then you intended then cut back on some of the carbs. Do not be obsessed with having abs or staying too lean as these things will hinder progress. If you are fat and wish to lose a lot of weight I would suggest doing that first and then begin training with the weights. Muscle burns fat so an increase in muscle mass will help you lose fat but if you are at an unhealthy weight and believe me you do know if you are or not then I would lose the weight first.
Those points above are all the basics that you need to get bigger and stronger. Be patient and consistent and the gains will come. Things may seem slow at first but in fairly short order the gains will come and they will be dramatic. Resist the urge to over complicate or change the program and continue it until it stops working.
Below are some helpful links. These are not affiliate links.
Today we have a very important topic to discuss, one that is very close to my own initial motivations for beginning weight training and that is how do we build confidence with weight training.
First off, what is confidence? Confidence is the probable certainty of a positive outcome of a specific endeavor that has been determined thru repeated practice and experience. An example would be a willingness or confidence if you will, to take repeated 3 point shots in a basketball game. This readiness to take a higher risk shot is reinforced by one’s previous experience with making 3 point shots. Confidence comes from experience. The difference between confidence and arrogance is that confidence is reinforced by experience where as arrogance is an unrealistic display of confidence.
Weight training is a very good way to begin to build confidence but it must be understood properly and taken into context. Weight training will make you stronger, it will make you more muscular which in our society is a desirable trait to many people in addition to having practical benefits such as protection from injury, weight training shows the value of using incremental increases to drive improvement which is an important lesson that is valuable in many other areas of your life. What weight training will not do on it’s own is make you better at talking to girls, or independent of specific practice make you better at sport skills. It will not improve the way you dress, or your facial structure (other then making you lose fat from your face which can actually help your looks tremendously.)
The two biggest benefits from weight training are 1. All the physical muscle and strength related changes to your body, and the creation of an appreciation for fitness that will stay with you and improve your quality of life in the future, and 2. The confidence that comes from setting goals and doing the work to achieve them and creating a habit of that.
I first decided to get into weight lifting to impress a girl i had a crush on. I was 13 and a very small and nerdy guy, at least to conventional high school kids. I got picked on a lot and was too small and scrawny to attract this girl’s attention who was accustomed to hanging out with the athletic football and baseball guys who were older. This was my initial motivation for picking up the weights.
Within a year the changes to my physique dramatically improved how people looked at me. I was attracting the looks of more girls and I was becoming less and less a target for older kids to pick on. This increase in size and strength pushed me into high school wrestling where my new love of weight training helped me greatly and as my strength and size increased and my wrestling got better and better my confidence grew more and more. This increase in confidence spilled over into my BMX riding as well because my experience with changing my physique and increasing my strength encouraged me to push the limits on my bike more and more. The increase in my resilience to injury and my ability to rapidly recover from injuries further helped build my confidence in BMX to a point where I was able to overcome extreme fear fairly easily. Overall i was getting much more confident in a variety of areas in a large part due to the lasting effects of my passion for weight training. Oddly enough my initial motivation of wanting to impress someone else quickly faded away as a significant external motivator. As I got bigger and stronger my weight lifting goals became more and more focused on benefiting myself and less and less as a means to impress or gain approval from others. This is a healthy step in the road to confidence as it is causing you to accept yourself as having more and more value and you begin to realize that your value is not dependent upon the approval of other people.
Fast forward a few years and I am now 31, and my confidence in many areas has increased dramatically. It’s not to say that I am confident in everything I do all the time, no one is but I am very confident in a lot of situations where I can relate the experience somewhat to my weight training. I’m not the strongest guy in my gym, by a huge amount, or the biggest, or the most ripped, or smartest but I can walk into my gym or any gym anywhere and hold my head high among the best because I know that i have the ability to achieve goals in this aspect of my life. Being confident doesn’t mean you think you are the best, it just means that you act and know that thru experience that you have a high probability of a successful outcome in a given endeavor. I could walk into Westside Barbell tomorrow, home of the strongest powerlifters in the country and be confident, confident that I can learn from these guys, confident that I have some experience that can add to the discussion, confident that I can endure being the weakest guy in the room and still not let that diminish my own value.
An aspect of confidence that is rarely discussed is the ability to accept your failures and short comings and re position them into a positive vehicle to help achieve the results you want. I made a lot of mistakes during the years I’ve been lifting weights, lots of mistakes. These mistakes have allowed me to make positive changes so as to avoid them in the future and it has shown that I can still make progress despite not being perfect, or the smartest, strongest, or whatever.
Enough about me, now on to you, here are some ways that you can build your confidence thru weight training. Obviously you need to start weight training, that should be your first step. I would encourage you to use a simple beginner plan focused around the main compound lifts, and the Olympic style lifts, good examples of plans like this are Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength plan, or Bill Starr’s 5×5 of which more info can be found in his book “the Strongest Shall Survive, Strength Training for Football.” A plan that is good for beginners that is more similar to what I used in high school would be Jim Wendler’s 531 program. I have included links to where you can obtain these resources and these are not affiliate links and I am not associated with these people or their products in any way, this is strictly for your benefit.
If you try programs like this and stick to them and be patient and dedicated then you will see results very fast. The good thing about a beginner linear progression plan like these is that you’re going to be making improvements during every workout, you will actually be able to see more and more plates going onto the bar each week and this will begin to show you that by using manageable, incremental increases that you can make significant changes to your physique and your strength and this lesson is applicable in many other areas of your life as well.
Ultimately weight training will teach you that hard work and dedication will take you farther then you can imagine, and as you accomplish more and more goals in this manner it will make you less fearful of striving for new goals in the future, that kids, is confidence.
