Get Them Boulder Shoulders

Get Them Boulder Shoulders

            Shoulders help you in life with so many things, like lifting, pulling, raising, and lowering.  They make your shirt tighter and make your shoulders wider so you don’t look like a lanky wuss.  They create the whole form of your arm so you look more evened out in your arms, instead of being all biceps.  There are tons of exercises for shoulders and certain chest exercises also help with shoulders…  I’m getting so tired of saying shoulders, doesn’t even feel like a word if you keep saying it, I’ll just call them by their technical name, deltoids (delts).  You deltoids are the outside part of your shoulder, the one connecting to your bicep and tricep, but the other muscle that connects from your deltoid to your neck is your trapezius, but we’ll but we’ll just call it your traps. 

Shoulders

·         High Pulls – High pulls are an exercise that will help work the outside of your deltoids.  You use a barbell and start with the bar hanging out in front of you then in a quick athletic style you pull in up till it’s to the height of your upper chest them bring it down quickly.

·         Shoulder Press – The shoulder press is the most common exercise for delts and for good reason.  You start with your barbell up at shoulder level with your hands on it at shoulder width.  Then you push it up till it’s up above your head and your elbows lock or almost lock. Then bring it back down and repeat.

·         Lateral Dumbbell Pulls – Lateral dumbbell pulls are simple and burn like crazy.  Use one dumbbell in your hand hanging at your side, then while keeping your arm straight, lift it to your side until it reaches shoulder height.

·         Linear Dumbbell Pulls – Linear dumbbell pulls are a lot like lateral dumbbell pulls but instead of pulling the dumbbell off to your side you pull it straight in front of you.  This works a whole new muscle in your deltoid.

·         Arnold Presses – Yes, this is named after Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Start with two dumbbells curled all the way up to your shoulders, then push them up to till your shoulders almost lock.  Although when you do this you rotate your arms from a reverse grip on the dumbbells to a regular grip at the top.

·         Behind The Head Shoulder Presses – It’s the same as you might think.  Do a regular shoulder press but keep the bar behind your head to target a different muscle in your shoulder.

·         Bent Over Laterals – Use two dumbbells as you lean over a little bit and starting with the dumbbells hanging down in front of you.  Then you pull the dumbbells up to your sides while keeping your elbows locked in a slightly bent form.  This helps burn your back and also your shoulders at the same time.

Traps

·         Shrugs – About the only exercise to help you build your traps are shrugs.  Leave dumbbells hangs in each hand at your sides, and them just simply shrug up and down.  The slower you do your shrug the more burn you will get out of the exercise.  Your traps aren’t a very easy muscle to build and this is about the only way to do it without a big expensive machine.  To help build all angles of your traps, you can do this exercise but roll your shoulders in circles instead of just up and down.  Rotating both ways will affect all sides of your traps.

If you can think of a different way to work your traps or you want to share an experience you’ve had with shoulder exercise, or you can think of an exercise I missed, COMMENT!  Remember, we’re all in this together, keep your stick on the ice.