Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

Continuing the series today, we’re talking about the perfect shoulder workout.

I have a guest here with me.

Raymond.

You guys know Raymond.

Raymond, say ‘hello’.

What’s up, guys?

Raymond, ATHLEANX.com…

Okay, enough.

The fact is, guys, we’re going to use Raymond here because, as always, we’re putting the

science back in strength to show you how to construct the perfect shoulder workout.

Of course, I’m breaking out the muscle markers in a second.

I’m going to talk about that in just a little bit.

The fact is, there are some components, just like in our chest and bicep, and every other

video we’ve done in this series, some requirements to claim the ‘perfect workout’.

Right off the bat, if we’re going to do this, we need to start including exercises

that activate the shoulder properly, before you train it.

Why is it such a big deal here, when we talk about the shoulder?

Because the shoulder is a 3-dimensional joint.

Not just that.

If you look at Raymond here – this is why we brought him – we have all the freedom

of the ball-and-socket joint here.

We get all this freedom in the shoulder because of the type of joint that it is.

But it’s not just that.

The socket is actually the shoulder blade.

So, we realize all the muscles that are affected by the shoulder movement, we realize it’s

not just things that attach to our humerus, but also the things that attach to the scapula,

too.

So, there are so many muscles at play here.

We need to know how to activate them and get them to work together properly.

The next thing we have to do is use the foundational strength moves.

For this particular muscle group, it’s the overhead press.

You can’t get around overhead pressing, but we want to make sure that even when we

do that, we do it properly and we have a way we can scale the weights when we do it.

And then end with another important component for neuro-muscular reeducation to make sure

we’re locking in what it is we’re trying to establish with that first set of warmups.

We continue on.

We want to make sure, of course, that we count for the stretch.

Why is that such a big deal?

Because in the shoulder itself, it’s probably the biggest muscle group that gets avoided

and overlooked when it comes to stretch.

Why?

Let’s take a look.

If we look – breaking out the muscle markers – here at the shoulder, if I were to do

this and push up here you can see the front delt is right here.

You can see that line right up, in through here.

Now, what I have in the back here – let’s use a different color.

What I have in the back is the rear delt.

You can see that popping out.

Down, and around like that.

Then all the fibers coming down this way.

Which leaves, in the middle, that big area of the middle delt.

Which would be right in through here.

They all come down and they all feed down into this portion of our upper arm, right

here.

So, all of them feed down and around into that point.

Well, if I look at any movement of the shoulder, whether it be a side lateral raise where my

arm stops on the side of my body, or whether it be a front dumbbell raise where my arm

stops here on the side of my body.

Or a shoulder press where my arm stops, pretty much in the same position; they’re all lacking

the stretch placed on the deltoid.

Any one of those heads that we can incorporate if we do a few things.

If I were to do some exercises like this – the front delt raise – you can see if I take

my arm back behind the body, look what’s happening here to the fibers in the front

delt.

They’re getting stretched.

Well, we’re going to do that and apply that to all heads of the delt as we go through

this workout to make a perfect workout.

We now also have to understand if you want to train yours shoulders, or any muscle in

your body completely, and you’re going to follow this channel; you need to train like

an athlete.

That means it’s not always about isolation.

We talked about ways to hypertrophy a certain muscle group.

Sometimes dropping the weight down, leaving your ego at the door, making sure you isolate

that muscle to gain a maximum hypertrophy.

However, if you want to be an athlete, at some point you’ve got to figure out how

to tie it all back together again.

We mentioned all the muscles in the shoulder girdle.

At some point you’ve got to get those muscles to be allowed to train together to allow for

powerful movements.

I’m going to show you exactly how to do that, too.

Finally, face pulls.

Guys, you know we can’t end a shoulder workout – especially when we’re talking about

the rear delt – and not include face pulls.

Let me put all this together for you, show you exactly how to do this step by step.

We kick this one off, like I said in the intro, with that all-important warmup.

It’s important because of all the freedom we have in that range of motion in the shoulder.

That means we’d better have it before we attempt to do these exercises.

So, we have to warmup the shoulder properly.

We do that with the overhead band press.

It looks like an overhead press< but look where the resistance is coming from.

It’s not from the ground up like a typical dumbbell, or barbell would be.

It’s pulling you toward the front.

That means you have to activate the muscles on the backside of your body.

The rear delt, and more importantly, the rotator cuff.

This is a good activator to get your shoulder to start working properly.

We know that we need the support of the rotator cuff because we do overhead activities.

So, we want to warm it up.

We do that here with a three second hold.

Very deliberate.

Good, quality reps.

Two sets before we move on.

We move onto, what else have we talked about in the beginning?

The value of those foundational exercises.

The ones that you can overload the most.

Which, in this case, would be the overhead press.

When we do our overhead press here, we really setup to target four sets and we do it in

a descending fashion.

So, 10 reps, 8 reps, 6 and 6.

Ideally, you’re going to add some weight to the bar and not just having fatigue bring

your reps down.

If you do that, again, we’re working on trying to overall build our strength.

Now, if you’re training at home and you don’t have access to a barbell for a press,

don’t think you’re getting off so easy.

You can always do the handstand press.

Guys, this is not easy.

As a matter of fact, anybody that does this will tell you it’s a difficult exercise.

The key here is that we’re lighting up the entire shoulder girdle in a way that you can

clearly overload.

For some reason, if this is too easy for you, throw a weighted vest on and you’ve just

made this thing harder.

Before we’re done, we come back one more time to that same exercise here with the band.

It’s done more as a reinforcer.

Neuromuscular reeducation.

You just went through this exercise with the weights, with that vertical force up and down,

now you want to reinforce it once again.

Get the rotator cuff awakened again.

Make sure it’s working.

So, we can integrate that better, and better from session, to session and make sure we

avoid any of those injuries that usually come with an inaccurate warmup prior to training.

Next, we have to incorporate this stretch that I said we’re often overlooking when

it comes to shoulder training.

We don’t do it, most of the time, in any of the other muscles that we train because

it naturally works its way into the exercises.

Here, as I mentioned in the shoulders, you have to force it into what we do.

But it doesn’t make it any less important.

So, we can do that here in a tri-set.

Basically, a 21.

We’re doing cable raises.

We’re doing them for the front delts, the middle delt, and the rear delt.

Now, the key again is, where you’re finishing and starting.

Not necessarily what’s happening in the middle because in the middle of the exercise

it’s going to look just like what you do with a dumbbell.

But because of the cables, and because of how we can position our body we can place

a good stretch on the muscle as we do it.

Watch as I do this rear lateral raise here.

Again, a couple of things to point out.

You guys know that I think in order to get the rear delt the best you have to get extension

of the arm behind the body.

Get shoulder extension, and then let it come out in front of your body, across the front

of your body.

Get a full stretch.

We’re not really going to do that if we’re just doing dumbbell raises.

We’re going to stop at midline.

But we work our way around from the weakest to the strongest.

So, we have energy when we get to the 14th or the 21st rep.

So, we go to the middle delt next.

Again, I’m not just raising my arm up to the side and dropping it like I would be in

a regular dumbbell lateral raise.

What I’m getting here is the position of my arm behind my back, getting that extra

stretch on the middle delt every, single time.

You can see I’m starting with a big stretch and I’m exploding it out of there to get

to the top.

We wrap around to the front, we do the same thing.

Again, by positioning myself in a split stance and allow my arm to go back into extension

behind my body, I’m placing a better stretch on the front delt fibers.

So, I get that more powerful contraction when I come out of that position.

So, it’s a different way to apply the same stretches that you normally would with a dumbbell

and get the added benefits of the stretches that are often overlooked every time we train

them.

Moving on, I mentioned in the beginning – and always on this channel – if you want to

look like an athlete, you’ve got to train like an athlete.

One component of that is that you have to train explosively.

When we try to train explosively it’s not time to try and isolate individual muscles.

At this point, you want to make sure you’re including something that allows all these

muscles of the shoulder girdle to work together.

We can do that with a combo of a cheat lateral, going into a dumbbell push press.

What we do is load up our weight higher than what we would normally use a for a lateral

raise.

Again, we’re not specifically looking to activate the middle delt to do this exercise.

We’re allowing the traps to help here.

I’ve talked before about the trap strap.

When you’re looking to strictly develop the middle delt you want the traps out of

it.

When you’re trying to train power and explosiveness, you want the trap to help because it’s trying

to help.

All these muscles are situated in this area together because they prefer to work together.

At least have one component of your workout that focuses on that.

We’re going to do that with that cheat lateral.

Again, we’re trying to eccentrically control.

This weight is not out of my control.

Even though it’s heavier, I get the chance to swing it up, but I have to control it on

the way down.

If I can’t control it on the way down, I’ve used too heavy of a weight.

But I go right from there into a dumbbell push press.

I clean it up to my shoulder, and now I’m trying to press up overhead explosively.

I’m allowing the legs, I’m allowing the hips, I’m allowing my entire body to help

me in this movement.

Just like I would if I was out in the field of competition and I had to push somebody,

or something away from me.

I’m not just going to try and isolate the middle delt.

I want all the muscles at my disposal to kick in.

We’re going to do that and take advantage of that in this set.

We take that for three sets on each arm to double failure, and we move onto the last

exercise here, which is the cable face pull.

I’ve talked about it – I’ve made a whole video on it – on why you should end every

workout, not just this one, with the face pull.

Of course, it’s going to show up here and wrap up the perfect shoulder workout.

The key in doing this exercise is your mindset.

I have for your to do three sets of 15, but you know what?

You should focus doing 15 sets of 1, three times.

Which means, quality trumps everything.

Make sure that every, single rep you do, you’re not focused on pulling, but keeping the knuckles

facing backward to demand external rotation.

And to provide that support for the shoulder, to incorporate the rotator cuff with the rear

delt.

These are so important.

Again, you’re not just trying to throw these reps away and call them a finisher and be

done.

You’re not looking for a burn.

You’re looking for high quality repetitions every, single time.

So, there you have it, guys.

The perfect shoulder workout to make sure you hit all heads of the delt – oh.

This, here?

A little bit of a casualty.

If you haven’t been following me on Instagram, guys, you’re going to want to make sure

you do that – @ATHLEANX – to see the whole story of how that happened.

I’ll leave it at this: you’ve got to at least see what I did to Jesse.

I’ll leave it at that.

Guys, the fact is, if you’re looking for science-based training, this is the place

to come.