21 Reasons Your Shoulders Won't Grow (Simple Fix)

all right hi everybody john meadows here hope everybody's doing great get a little cold outside here but it's all good so today we're going to talk about shoulders specifically what you're doing or not doing that might be detrimental to your shoulder development so I've got a lot of tips for you stay tuned let's get to work okay you may have noticed a theme and a lot of my videos around the sequence of exercises this is something you really can't learn in a book you know there's no scientific text that talks about how you sequence exercises shoulders is another big one being involved with body building I very quickly saw the value of rear delts you know the back your shoulder back here the guys that didn't have rear delts they've really heard him onstage they'd stand to the side like this and their shoulder would look like it just sloped down in the back and did not look impressive then you had these guys that had what I call sledgehammer rear delts they will come out and their shoulder would be full and round all the way to the back and that just creates this really nice dense thick look from the side I was very fortunate I had a guy he used to help me out his name was Nick Bowman that really taught me the importance of rear delts and how you just got to punish them and that's how you should start off every shoulder workout I don't know anybody that has rear delts that dominate the front delts so I have no hesitation at all I'm telling you to start with your rear delts okay shoulders now one of the interesting things about shoulders is they don't ever seem to get sore or it's hard to make them sore now generally what we were taught in the science world is that heavy centric work or work where there's a real like elongated range of motion like for example stiff legged deadlift for your hamstring or a big fly for chest something that's really stretching the muscle out creates a lot of muscle damage if you think about shoulders there's not a lot of stretching here here here you're not really stretching so I just want to show you how you can put your shoulders in a better position to stretch so let's start with a rear delt now my favorite thing to do for rear delts is the reverse PEC that I feel that a loads it contracts really hard and even though I'm not getting back real far that's okay it still demolishes my shoulders and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people I've worked with would agree that that machine reverse fly is pretty good having said that though it doesn't give you a stretch when your rear delts so if you want to get a little bit more of a stretch on your rear delts you have to use a cable I mean you could hold a dumbbell like this but there's no tension going laterally so you could use a cable and stand here now see where I'm at here as opposed to like let's say I had dumbbells I'd be right here but you see the difference in a range of motion now I'm getting more of a stretch these are fantastic I love this I think the only reason why I don't do it more is that the reverse PEC deck just works so well for me I like to stick with those but that's one way to put your rear delts on the stretch and just make them burn and work hard now if your side delt kind of the same concept you know you're usually just from here to here sometimes people put them out in frown but that's not really stretching your delts so you got several alternatives you can actually do it this way behind your back now see when you stand out right here see how my shoulders are stretch so you can do it like this or you could use you could do that this leaning version the bodybuilders have done for many many decades where you just lean and come up here now you know I don't necessarily like this one because again the tension it's a dumbbell so there's not a lot of tension going this way so personally I'd rather see use the cable I better see use the cable come this way but where you could use the dumbbell is now we're moving around to the front of your shoulder anterior deltoids now normally again you start right here that's your range of motion if you do these on an incline now look where I'm starting from so now I've put a really good stretch on my shoulder so come up until the tensions if you come up here the tension will start going away so come up just high enough to keep tension on the delt and stay right there that extra range of motion sometimes can make a huge difference your shoulders so that's how to increase your range of motion that was a little bit of the kind of the science on how to stretch your shoulders and now let's talk about the experience part of this there are certain things I like to do with with intentionally with a short range of motion okay now there's reasons for that you can put yourself in a really strong position and you can use heavier weight and just get a lot of reps sounds simple but everybody thinks it's kind of silly when they see it and I'll give you a couple of examples now I want you to think about partial reps okay so let's start with this again let's start with our rear delts so one of the approaches you can use is you can use a weight that's a little heavier than you're normally use like let's say you use 20 pound dumbbells on a rear delt raise you could use 30s and you can do partials like that notice how I'm not gonna notice I'm not going all the way up I'm focused right here when you do that there's another thing you can add in that makes these ultra nasty and that's high reps so instead of doing partials for 8 reps for 10 reps I want you to try 20 reps 25 reps maybe even 30 reps I'm the guy who taught me these NIC each time you do sets of 60 that really burned okay so experiment with some partial reps heavy shorter range of motion everybody's gonna laugh at you and tell you you'll know what you're doing but trust me you do know what you're doing you're just finding a very high intense way to scorch your shoulders okay now let's take you the side delts same thing just randomly say you normally use 20 pound dumbbells for a side lateral okay we're going to use 30s but we're only going to come up halfway not even halfway just a partial I like to tilt my head back like this and just swing just like that high reps 20 25 30 so it's higher apps with a heavy way in a short range of motion okay absolutely devastating but let the people laugh at you but they're all going to start asking you for help once they see how big your shoulders are getting doing that alright so we have learned how to progress the resistance Rubik's Cube so we're going to time this alright I was interning around yo [Music] [Music] all right so let's talk about overhead pressing I've wrote many times that I don't know that it's really necessary to get really big shoulders as long as you're doing all the lateral variations it's not that I'm totally against shoulder pressing the problem is is that there are certain positions but I think call solar issues in the long term may not hurt real quick but in the long term and the shoulders are really delicate joint you ask anyone with shoulder injury and they'll tell you man it's very easy to inflame hurt your shoulders get labor and tears your rotator cuff strange there's all kinds of stuff that happened when you do overhead pressing that's maybe where your form isn't where I would like it to be or what I want to start with though is a dumbbell press okay when I do a dumbbell press what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to keep the dumbbells out in front of me a little bit so this is much more of a natural movement right here I'm kind of bringing them up together if you watch my arc the dumbbells are kind of coming up together like that okay as opposed to you know getting real high up and push them out of all that honestly that kind of hurts my shoulder just doing that same thing with a barbell you know I see people doing the behind the neck press I know I know a lot of people only a mad with me saying this but I'm just not a fan of behind the neck press mainly because every single time I did it I wake up and my shoulders feel like a bomb went off in them I would much rather see someone in a natural strong position right here then forced back here impressing I just think that it's not a good idea how long-term so I'm not anti pressing I just want you to press my tip is when you press try to keep the weight on front of you your elbows on front of you right here okay you'll notice when I do a lot of my pressing that I don't come down all the way I stop right here one of the things through the years that really inflamed my shoulders as well was using a barbell or whatever Smith Machine and taking a roll all the way down see how my shoulders started rotating over again that was another thing that caused a lot of pain and I started having my clients cut him in half maybe 15 20 years ago with great success much you know shoulder pain relieved so it's okay to not come down all the way if you want to stop in fact in fact I would advise you to stop here okay so come right here press you don't have to let it come down all the way okay alright another really cool thing that I enjoy is thinking about exercise profiles I know everybody talks about it now this company Prime has been doing a really nice job designing equipment and when you say exercise profile I mean basically when you're doing when you're going through a range of motion there's certain parts of this range of motion you're stronger certain parts where you're weak or it's as simple as that and what people try to do is they try to match the strength curve so basically what they're trying to do is they're trying to make the weight heaviest when you're your strongest and make the weight lighter when you're at your weakest so let's say on an exercise like a side lateral here your shoulders you know there's this type of machine here you can set it up so that it's heavier at the bottom and then it gets lighter as it goes up you're matching the exercise profile so theoretically you're keeping more tension on the muscle all the time I think that's a great way to do these so if you have the ability to use machines that allow you to manipulate that exercise profile I think they're fantastic now I also do this backwards the gurus will say to do it that way I also like to do it a little differently I also like to load the weight and the contraction even if I'm weaker and honestly I'm getting I'm probably using a little bit of momentum and cheating getting the weight up so so in other words I will make the weight so that's heavier at the top and on this machine here it's setting it at 2 but basically what that's doing is this lighter at the bottom but then it gets heavy as I'm contracted but since it's lighter as I come up I can actually get it up there and then all of a sudden there's a heavy load that I'm working against it's almost like I'm building in and I so hold into the exercise it's really like a nice hold but I like doing that to again people going to tell you it's backwards I'm doing it wrong but I'm actually doing it for a very good reason so your tip is I want you to match exercise profiles but then I want you to experiment experiment try some different things with the exercise profile okay and see what you like I had a superspinatus injury that was pretty bad when actually when I started at this gym about three years ago it was actually really bad I couldn't even do a lift a 10 pound dumbbell from here to here and if you know superspinatus function you know that's a big part of going here to here so what did I do I came over on this machine I set it on too so that this part was easy and then they got heavier as I came up I also did that with their chest presses and a month later my shoulders were healed just from unloading them where they were vulnerable and letting them heal and I haven't had really a shoulder injury since so I like thinking outside the box and playing with exercise profiles so match the profile and then also experiment with doing it the opposite like I'm doing where you're loading the weight in its contracted position even though you're weaker you got to fight okay now you may not have all this equipment that's fine there's different there's very very basic things you can do so another tip would be if you want to work the top for example like when I have my supraspinatus injury you can work the top part of range of motion right here right now the thing is is you're weaker so you'd rather use a lighter dumbbell so work the range of motion right here that's tremendous tension right there just okay and I already showed you the heavy partials and hopefully you've already tried them and your shoulders are already burning so now this would actually be a good superset you could go heavy on the partials and then go pick up a lighter weight and work here so another thing to think about is just work different parts of the range of motion as well and I've talked about that I don't I don't think every exercise has to be full range of motion I don't think every exercise should be partial range of motion I think a good intelligent combination of mixing it up is the best option okay I want to hone in on a little bit of basic technique stuff now because I think it's important let's start with a side ladder so I want you to think about your shoulders and in terms of what's getting worked as opposed to what's at what's facing up so if your shoulder is up right here you're probably getting a lot of work right here if your arm is right here you're probably getting a lot of work right there that's why it drives me crazy when people say you build big rear delts by doing overhead presses now you don't you hope that big rear delts but I've been in this position right here you work this my thumb okay so if your goal was to work the side part of your shoulder that part of your deltoids you've got to make sure that this is up when you're contracted alright now you see me doing the wide raises when the incline bench right here but let's just start with something really basic just a side lateral so I see a lot of people do this look at look at the position arms in that's not side delt that's that's front doubt and maybe a tad bit of side Dale what if I kept my palms down now look at where I'm at that's side Dale you don't need to overly rotate this way by the way I see a lot of people doing that I don't know that that's the best for your shoulder been in a position pulling up so I try to keep my hands flat and make sure the easy way to do it is to make the dumbbell come straight out okay so straight out to the side I feel that riding my side Dale you know the other thing I see with shoulders and I've gotten kind of uh kind of going against what I'm saying here but I see a lot of people that are real they're really truly isolating and they're not letting the rest of their muscles work together it's okay sometimes they use a little bit of cheating a little bit of traps a little bit I would just rather see you do some of the lighter stuff with us see so you make sure you're getting the targeted muscle so I'm not against a little bit of cheating when your dumbbells I'm not against that but if you're going to do that just make sure you get some of the lighter stuff in so cheating is okay as long as you're doing a little bit of lighter stuff so you can really focus on the right head that you're working all right I want to show you something else I like for range of motion I really like working on range of motion for your shoulders it's one of the reasons why I get the deep tissue worked on every every week these are called over inbox basically you can get a band and what I want you to do is simply go like this over and back okay so all the way back I feel like this helps your shoulder girdle flexibility I feel like just contributes greatly to shoulder health so what I like to do is you know maybe you might maybe do a little bit of it when you're warming up but I have to get a lot of blood in your shoulders and they're real tight then throw in then throw these in tortilla sets of 10 so that's a 15 you will be amazed at how your shoulders are on fire now as you go you'll notice that you're getting more flexible so what you do is you start bringing your grip in more and more and the more you bring your grip in the harder sement see now am I here and set it right here so now it's much more difficult right here well I'm still able to feel able to do so these over impacts are one of the things I think have helped contribute to keeping my shoulders healthy and flexible okay so speaking of shoulder health again you really have to pay some attention to your shoulder health because that joint can get banged up pretty easy there's another exercise that Dave Tate taught me it's called spider crawls now I'm making do today with this nor you don't want to use this you want to use one of those short bands there's the lead FTS short bands you can you can look up my spider crawl video I've got an exercise index on it and I explain it in great detail but a spider crawl basically is you pull your hands far apart as you can and I want to break this so I'm not gonna do that but you pull your hands apart as far as you can clear out here then you walk down okay I come down to about my waist then I come up over my head okay and what is doing is it's fighting this this position right here coming out and it's making a lot of your stabilizers a little subscapular muscles and a lot of really cool stuff in your back just turn on and stabilize your shoulders this isn't exercise that when you do these for three or four weeks you will notice your shoulders definitely feel stronger your rotator cuff everything feels stronger and again I credit the power lifters for teaching me this so start here all the way down all the way up I normally go up and down three times that's one set and by the way these will smoke your rear delts too you know particularly if you have your hand like that very very very sneaky exercising spider crawls and anybody's ever done I'm will tell you these are sneaky they hurt but they're great for shoulder health so between these over and backs and the spider crawls you've got two great exercises for maintaining shoulder health or improving it if I start getting away from these I do notice my shoulders don't feel quite as good but as long as I'm doing I'm good okay let's talk about rear delts a little bit more so we talked about the side laterals let's talk about it bent over lateral in your hand position so I've done a lot of rear delt raises this way and that's okay that's rear delts and side delts you'll feel it more in the rear delts but just by virtue of your hand being in this position you do get some level of side delts if you want to get a little bit more isolating on your rear delts simply turn your hands in like this okay that little hand position makes a huge difference okay now not only that not only that I want you to also think about your traps and rhomboids when you're doing these okay I think sometimes we try to force ourselves into a position to really isolate and we don't let the muscles work together so I don't want you to think about being locked right here we're locked right there I just want to let everything move okay let everything move don't come up here and just sit here and do this or relax and do that then everything moved only think about that think about your rear delt contraction so when your mind I want you to think about I'm squeezing my rear delt I'm squeezing my rear delt so just let everything new the one thing I don't like though is when it turns into a shrug and usually this is because people have really weak rear delts in our traffic signal so if you start doing this you've gotta lighten the weight up okay so the tip is if you're shrugging lighten the weight up you have to and the other tip is don't worry about being shoulders retracted or so we're just protracted you're overthinking it just let everything move let your rhomboids that your traps let everything move freely then that's where mind-muscle connection really matters so just overall on bodybuilding I think it's a good idea to just let body parts move because if you have a really good mind muscle connection you can nail the muscle and you can just let everything move so you're not developing these kind of these weird patterns they're called shoulder issues and scapula shoes and all this kind of stuff so anyways the last one is I know that in my programs I put chest and shoulders together and the reason why I do that is so your shoulders don't get too banged up from just from getting loaded twice in one week but having said that I do not think it's a bad idea to have a separate shoulder day if your shoulders are lying that is okay I would only say this be careful with a ton of what we read pressing if you're already doing a lot of pressing for your chest barbell worked so you know you don't want to kill your joints with tons and tons of pressing multiple times during the week with a barbell so if you're going to do a separate shoulder day focus on a lot of lateral variations focus on some high intensity techniques some partials some drops that's things like that and use more dumbbells that move freely when you're pressing down a barbell and you can absolutely demolish your shoulders everything you can do when you think about your split it's not a bad idea to train your shoulders before your chest if your chest is great your shoulders aren't yeah that's okay train your shoulders first you just got it they're going to be tight when you go to your chest so just be ready that's kind of a weird feeling if you've never had that before but overall my tip is don't be afraid to have just a separate shoulder day if you don't like the idea of going one body part that's cool too just do whatever you're going to do after your shoulders so that they gets priority that's it I appreciate you watching another 21 tips we've still got to cover legs quads hamsters so got to cover that we have a couple more cover but anyways I hope you're enjoying this series thanks for all your support and we'll see you next time

Channel: mountaindog1

Views: 776,161

Rating: 4.9546857 out of 5

Keywords: 21 reasons your shoulders won't grow, how to grow big delts, how to get big delts fast, get big shoulders, shoulder workout, 21 reasons, how to get round delts, how to get round shoulders, best shoulder workout, exercises for bigger shoulders, john meadows shoulder workout, athlean x shoulder workout, jeff nippard shoulder workout, greg doucette shoulders, shoulder exercises for mass, best shoulder exercises, how to grow bigger shoulders, 4k hdr

Id: xmRvehXB6jc

Length: 25min 21sec (1521 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 10 2020