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For many serious weight lifters and bodybuilders, shoulder is the most breakable and injured part in the human body. It has been a real problem for me too.. Actually I’ve been struggling with some kind of shoulder pain more than few times within the 11 years of lifting weights. Luckily, there wasn’t any surgery operations needed…yet! I just realized that I made these few mistakes that I’m going to reveal soon
Recently, I’ve looking for ways to rehab my shoulders and I found a great article that covers how to train shoulders injury free and still get the massive looking shoulders. Since I started to follow these techniques, my shoulder pain was almost disappeared, and I could still maintain a strong and impressive looking shoulder muscles. There are a lot of people that are facing great amount of difficulties in their life due to the weak health. IF you do not want to face such kind of conditions then you should opt for the Theislandnow for getting best result in your life.
Main reason that causes shoulder injury
There’s one huge mistake that I’ve learned from trial and error; doing less work directly for shoulders! Let’s face it! When you are performing any pushing movements, your shoulder muscle are partially involved. If you’re using wider grip than a shoulder width, you’ll put more stress to your shoulders and less to your triceps. This occurs the bench press also, so check the width of the grip in the first place!
Let’s say you’re hitting chest, shoulders and triceps in the same workout (a traditional mass building routine). A typical routine look like this:
Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets
Dumbbell Incline press: 3 sets
Barbell Military Press: 3 sets
Dumbbell Lateral Raises: 2
Parallel Bar Dips: 3 sets
Triceps Extension: 2 sets
Now as you can see, 5 out of 6 exercises are pushing movements that targets your shoulder muscle and tendon either directly or indirectly. So what exercise is the most dangerous to your shoulder? It’s not bench press or dip press. It’s not upright rows or dumbbell raises. So what is it??
Believe or not, it’s an overhead press. This got me a bit confused because it was definitely my favorite shoulder exercise of all time. Overhead presses done either behind the neck or front are the biggest reasons that causes rotator cuff tears and shoulder joint problems. This may sound ridiculous, because heavy presses are supposed to be the meat & potatoes of the shoulder exercises.
I’m not saying that you should completely eliminate overhead presses from your workouts. Instead doing them using light to moderate weight following higher rep scheme will do the work. However, if you already have pain in your shoulder, or you’re recovering from an injury, you should STOP doing any kind of shoulder press movements immediately.
Next, I’ll show you some tips that I’ve learned from the pros and the “real shocking principle” to speed up the recovery process and at the same time develop the shoulder muscles…
Healthy ways to train shoulders
So, how you should train bench press if it risk your shoulder to get injured. First of all, you should have a proper form and basic knowledge how to perform bench press. You can check the video here.
I recommend to train bench press like a powerlifter. Instead of keeping your back flat on a bench. Squeeze your shoulder blades together keeping your upper back tight, arching your lower back so that your chest gets higher. Keep your elbows tucked under and lower the bar slightly below your upper chest preventing too much workload to your shoulders.
In order to have a strong bench press, you must train back like an animal. Lot’s of rows with a strict form by squeezing your shoulder blades together and achieving a maximal stretch at the bottom of the movement, unless you want to put more stress on your biceps. Use moderate weights and isometric holds at the top of the movement. A number of volume should be higher that pushing movements.
Warm up your shoulders properly. I always do 2-3 sets of rotator cuff exercises in a cable where I keep my my elbow close to the side and rotating my forearms to each side . Another exercise will be the same except I’m keeping my arm parallel to the floor and rotating forearms vertically.
A proper stretching is also important following your strength training and shoulder rehabilitation process. There are two exercises that I’ve found to be very effective to your shoulders. Remember, the goal of stretching is NOT to rape your muscle, and when it’s come to shoulder muscle, it should be done with a good feeling. Hold each stretch for about 20 seconds, relax and repeat with another stretch.
A Shoulder Shocker
This is by far the most demanding and strenuous shoulder workout, I’ve done so far. And guess what? I was able to hit entire with no shoulder pain. The idea of the shocking workout is to completely exhaust your shoulders at a minimum amount of time! This workout heavily emphasizes on the isolation movements like side laterals and front delts.
This shoulder workout is very joint friendly and you don’t need to go heavy in order to get massive shoulders. I always make sure I warm up my shoulders properly and do some sets with a light weights.
How many sets: Total of 3 sets that consist of 3 exercises. If your newbie, 2 sets would be fine. You should not do more than 3 sets in one exercise. Do this once a week.
How much rest: Do 3 exercises in a row without rest. Before the next, rest 2-3 minutes depending of your condition. Do some light stretching to your shoulders between each set.
How many reps: 8-12 reps/exercise.
- Seated Plate Raises.
- Seated dumbbell laterals.
- Dumbbell shrug & pressing combo.
Hints –
In the exercise 1 and 2, emphasize on negatives. In third exercise, follow a brisk and controlled range of motion. Do not pause the movement. This is what I call a therapy movement to your shoulder joint.
