Stubborn Delts: The High Tension Solution

Building big, healthy shoulders goes beyond just overhead pressing a city bus. Sure, that’ll get the job done if you’re capable of it, but there’s a better way. We’ll get into some of the exercises you probably aren’t doing, but there’s something we have to talk about first… Maximizing Tension There’s a handful of reasons you might find it difficult to develop a stubborn body part. Lack of mind-muscle connection, poor execution, poor movement selection for your structure, and poor overall programming are a few. The old bodybuilding adage, “train a muscle at different angles,” was basically a way of saying that you need to take advantage of the length-tension relationship within different movements. Different exercises will provide different resistance curves to the muscles being trained, so they’ll train those muscles at different lengths within the movement. Maximizing development is about creating as much tension as possible in those different lengths. The key is to find exercises that best suit your structure and best train the muscles in various positions: lengthened, mid, and shortened. But it’s also important to use movements that stress the targeted musculature appropriate within those lengths. Here are four exercises that’ll satisfy this approach: 1 – Banded Dumbbell Press The dumbbell overhead press is a proven delt strength and size builder. But both strength and physique-focused lifters could be doing it more effectively. The most common way people do the press is seated (which is fine), then they lock the elbows back by using external rotation, and press from the shoulders to the overhead position with the dumbbells arching together over that range of motion. There are a few problems here. To start, you can’t get away from the fact that this exercise predominantly hits the anterior delts. This means you should be making sure to get the anterior delt loaded maximally in its most lengthened state. Doing this will keep you from going into excessive external rotation and instead let the elbows come forward a bit, allowing you to work in your natural scapular plane. While pressing, you want to avoid that common arching motion because it actually takes the delts out of their active range of motion very quickly. It’s the traps that adduct the arms in that overhead arching motion. This arching motion also shortens the lever arm in the movement, making it easier as you reach lockout. And that’s cool and all if you aren’t trying to stress the actual delt muscles. But if you are, it means you’re not spending as much time in the area where the movement is actually difficult. The better way to perform these is to press directly upwards with the dumbbells staying in line with the elbows. It’s no different than if you stacked the elbows and wrists in a vertical line with one another like if you were doing a barbell press. Lastly, to make these more productive, add a band to flatten out that descending resistance curve. By adding in the band we’re eliminating that dead area in the range of motion at the top and creating a longer torque curve. Now you’re maximally loading the anterior deltoid in the bottom, you’re staying in a longer active range of motion, and you’re eliminating that dead range of motion near the top where there’s very little tension. 2 – Rear Delt Row with Supination I’ve done my fair share of bent-over lateral raises (rear delt raises), but the truth is that they fall short as a rear delt movement. With a bent-over lateral raise, the rear delts never actually get fully shortened. A key component in maximizing an exercise is to get the target muscle fully lengthened and then fully shortened within a movement. But some exercises don’t do that as well as others. A better option is the rear delt row with supination. With this exercise, you’ll be rowing (as you might expect) to bring the elbow behind the body as far as possible, which will shorten the rear delt. But you’ll add a twist, literally, by supinating as you perform the row. Why the twist? Because it’ll bring about a certain amount of external rotation in the shoulder, which is one of the components of the rear delt. Supination at the forearm is actively linked with external rotation of the shoulder, just like pronation is linked with internal rotation. This isn’t an exercise you’ll go super heavy on, but you won’t need to so long as you’re using the appropriate resistance with it for the mechanics, and making sure to get the rear delt fully shortened. 3 – Incline Lateral Raise It’s nearly impossible to cheat with these, unlike the standing lateral raise. Not that cheating is bad, and I actually do add cheaty lateral raises into my programming from time to time. But for most guys having trouble getting a strong mind-muscle connection, the incline version is a better choice. This exercise will also naturally put the resistance in line with the middle fibers of the delt. When you use a standing lateral raise it’s
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