Building Big Shoulders for Sports
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.
Mark Rippetoe teaches the power shrug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0t_hCzUgvM