So, there's no debating here, dumbbells
are absolutely going to help you to build bigger shoulders, but if you really
want to see some gains from time to time, at least you're going to have to put at
least one of those dumbbells down.
What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, anthleanx.com.
We continue our series today. I'm going to show you how to build the perfect shoulders
with just dumbbells. The thing--
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, is that my
cue? All right, so perfect shoulders -- wait you're going to have to move out of the
way because you're not going to fit in here. Ugh, look at these delts.
Oh my God. Perfect Jesse? Listen, maybe improved, perfect no.
Are you sure? Look at that, the profile.
From any angle, honestly, from any angle. Listen
guys, obviously perfection is in the eye of the beholder, right? It's relative. However, even
if you get close to perfect you're going to look really damn good. And what I'm going to show
you here today is eight things that you can do with just dumbbells. As a matter of fact,
dumbbells enable you to do this more than anything else in the gym. So, with that said,
let's start breaking them down one by one.
So, look, if you want to build big shoulders,
you've got to make sure you can actually train your shoulders. And it's important that
we warm the shoulders up before we even do that, because we know that's the most vulnerable joint
in the body of injury, given that it has some of the most mobility of any joint in the body. So, we
start right here at the light side of the dumbbell rack with a light dumbbell to do this little
warmup. It's a simple dumbbell halo that, again, is perfectly done here with a dumbbell because
it's very convenient. You go around your head both clockwise and counterclockwise with the end
goal being to work on warming up the rotational aspect of your shoulder. Extra rotation and
interpretation, something that is very much ignored by most people, which sets them up for
injury when they attack their shoulder workouts. Secondly, you want to come across your body with
this dumbbell sword raise. And here again, we're working on getting some of that extra rotation,
but also transitioning to getting your arm across your body, which, as you'll see here in exercise
three, is another very important requirement of healthy shoulders. And that's what this right
here with the dumbbell cauldron we're working on, bringing those shoulders really far across
our body as far as we can, by making these big sweeping circles or caldrons, as the exercise is
called. The bottom line here, guys, is warming up your shoulders is a requirement for making the
gains that you're seeking here. The dumbbell makes it really, really easy to do.
Okay, so that you're all warmed up, the next thing we're going to do is actually start
building those shoulders up. And for God's sake, guys, do me a favor, start training your front
delts. Look, I've heard it before you don't have to train your front delts as long as your bench
pressing. Well, you don't have to train your front delts as long as your bench pressing if you're
not looking for perfect shoulders. If you want perfectly developed shoulders, you're going
to have to start to include some additional front delt work with some direct exercises.
We're not talking complicated here, guys. Dumbbell press outs will work incredibly
well here. Dumbbell front raises a classic front delt builder. The fact is we can apply some
focus tension to the front delts and get more hypertrophy. And again, when the goal is building
the perfect shoulders, we're not looking for just good enough, we're looking for the best.
Which brings us to another important point here. If you want to explore the maximum capacity
of growth in your shoulders, figure out a way to get more stretch and more range of motion like
this. This is the leaning side lateral raise. You can see that by simply just changing the
orientation of my body, that the dumbbell is actually crossing midline and applying a greater
stretch to the middle delt before I go into every single repetition, I get the benefit of the
stretch reflex for better growth. The second exercise we can do can target the front delts in
much the same way, and it's just an incline front dumbbell raise. So instead of always doing them
standing up, just sit down on this slight incline, and you'll see that your shoulders will
naturally fall back behind your body, placing again that slight stretch on the front
delt that leads right into every repetition, each one a more powerful contraction because it takes
advantage of that stretch reflex once again.
Tip number four, if you want to build those big,
perfect shoulders, is to make sure that you're not limiting the heavy stuff to just the overhead
pressing exercises. That will be the same thing is if you just did a heavy close-gripped bench press
when you're trying to build your triceps and you went light on every other exercise you did: dips,
skull crushers or maybe even tricep pushouts. There's a bigger capacity to grow here if you
extend those heavy exercise options in your arsenal. So, what I'm suggesting is you increase
the weight on all of the raises that you do front, side and rear raises. Let's talk
about the front first. This exercise is just a heavier than usual front dumbbell raise.
Again, what's actually interesting here is it's not necessarily what you're doing on the way
up, but what you're doing on the way down that sparks the muscle growth. Because we know that a
forced, heavy eccentric is going to be one of the three main drivers of muscle growth and it's
one that you don't want to ignore when you're trying to build perfect shoulders. Likewise, we
can pick up a heavier than usual dumbbell here and do a lateral raise the same way, we call
this a Cheat Lateral. And again, even if I had to utilize a little bit that momentum to muscle
it up to the top, the goal is trying to slow the descent of the dumbbell down, control that
eccentric and provide that impetus for growth.
And we don't limit it to just those two heads of
the delts guys, because we can attack the rear delts in very much the same way. As a matter of
fact, we know one of the best ways to build the rear delts is to overload extension of the
shoulder. Because a simple seated cable row is actually one of the greatest ways to build your
rear delts is typically done with heavy loads. But if I wanted to go and stick strictly to dumbbells
here like we are in this video, I have two other options here. I could simply sit at the end of a
bench and do this little bit of an abbreviated or scarecrow row, where I'm just bringing my elbows
up to my sides, very short range of motion, and I could feel that because again, these muscles don't
typically use heavier weights. Or I could do the rear delt row, which is one of my favorite ways to
train the rear delts heavier by simply leaning up against a rack, pulling that arm back behind the
body with a little bit of a twist on the shoulder external rotation, which will absolutely light
up your delts. But the fact of the matter is, guys, none of these have to be done with light
weights and the additional weight here is enough to spark the growth that is you're seeking.
Ok, now, having just said that, tip number five is actually to work your way down to this end of
the rack and start using those light dumbbells to, particularly for those raises. Look, it's
important to overload the eccentric portion of the rep, especially on those delts that don't
typically get that eccentric overload. But just as important is to make sure that when you're trying
to build a muscle, that you're training that muscle and not relying on momentum exclusively
to build the muscle up. So, what I'm suggesting is on a front raise sometimes you want to grab
those light dumbbells, really light dumbbells and go really slow. Eliminate all momentum,
initiate every single inch of a contraction from that dumbbell, from your side to shoulder level,
by and with the front delt only. And of course, the lateral raise that you were doing standing
before can be taken down to the floor for a much different effect. With the lighter dumbbells
you're performing only that upper 75% of the range of motion, which in this case is going to keep the
focus and attention directly on that middle delt. There's no reprieve of the dumbbell down at
your side in this case. You keep that focus and tension on from the very beginning of every
rep to the very end of the last rep. And finally, the rear delts guys, the W Raise done with very
light dumbbells as one of my favorite ways to hit this muscle group. The key here is try to form
the W with your arms to ensure the rotation of the shoulder and more importantly, the extension
required to hit that rear delt with that really laser focused effort. Guys going light is going to
be a requirement, there's no choice between heavy and light, both of them are going to be needed.
Tip number six, you guys know how much I love the face pull, but we don't have cables are band,
you do have dumbbells. We have the Urlacher.
Is there a fly in here?
Uh, don't mind me.
Urlacher is your face pull equivalent when you
have dumbbells and dumbbells only. And you're not sacrificing very much in the process because we
know that the face pole is one of the best ways to build up the entire posterior chain, particularly
those rear delts in the upper back musculature. Well, guys, you can do this with Urlacher by
simply sitting with a pair of dumbbells at the end of the bench. And you'll notice that the mechanics
of the movement are very similar. They start with that straight arm out in front of your body and
they pull up nice and close to your body, maybe a little bit more of a bicep hammer curl activation
in this Urlacher. But when we get to the top, the elbows are staying nice and tight,
tucked to the body, palms facing back, just like they do on that face pole and we get
the activation of the same muscles. Face poles, Urlachers, you're never going to get away
from it if you're training with me.
So, by now it's apparent that you could definitely
build your shoulders up by using dumbbells only. The fact is, if you really want to build them up
at some point, you're going to want at least put one of them down. Let me explain what I mean. If
you were to press a pair of dumbbells up overhead, relatively heavy, you're going to be
limited by how much your core can stabilize in the two dumbbells going up over your head
at one time. Let's say you had a pair of 50s pushing one 100 overhead is always going to
be more challenging on your core stability than pushing 50 pounds at one time. And what that
means is if you want to increase the weight that you can press overhead, if you simply put one
of them down on the ground, you're going to be able to do that to the tune of 10 to 15 or
even 20% more weight in that single hand. And what happens is if you train that over
and over again, you will actually build up the strength unilaterally then when you bring them
back together again, in that bilateral press, you'll have more pressing strength overall.
We know as we get stronger, the gains will come more easily. Guys, make sure you're not
always pressing overhead two arms at a time, mixed in that one arm at a time for the best and
most perfect shoulders that you can build.
And speaking of pressing guys, make sure that
you're using your dumbbells to your advantage when you are pressing with them. Because they give
you one of the most distinctive advantages that dumbbells have overhead pressing that barbells do
not and that is the quick switch between weights and the opportunity to do that seamlessly as a
drop set. Look, pressing with a barbell is great, but when we're trying to utilize drop sets with
barbells that precious time lost, switching place on and off can be made up easily by using the
dumbbells. As a matter of fact, optimally by using the dumbbells, we simply perform a set to failure,
put the dumbbells back in as quick as it takes us to reach for the next ones, we can get right back
up into that next set. When we're looking to train to and through failure to really tap into those
muscle fibers and create the overload needed for growth, dumbbells give us an opportunity that
barbells just make a lot more difficult.
So, there you have it, guys. If you're trying to
build perfect shoulders, there's eight things you don't want to do, and you just need dumb--What
is wrong with you. I got a stiff neck. From what? From that tackle. What tackle. Just go on, go on.
Guys, listen, perfect shoulders again in the eye of the beholder, but with these eight tips, you
can get there yourself. If you're looking for programs that break it down step by step guys,
all of our plans will show you how to build the perfect body, all available over at athleanx.com.
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