BRING UP THE REAR

Dear M&F,
I’m having problems with my shoulder development. When I take off my shirt and look in the mirror straight on, my shoulders look great, very full and thick. But when I turn to the side, my delts appear to end about halfway back — it seems like they should be more complete all the way around. Here is my typical delt routine [far right]. Arnold presses are my all-time favorite exercise and always go first in my shoulder workout.

Dear Shouldering On,
The first thing that jumps out in your workout is the overemphasis on front deltoids. Arnold presses, upright rows and front raises all target the front part of the shoulder, the anterior head. If you have an imbalance that favors the front delts, don’t do more than one or two such movements in the same shoulder workout until you’ve balanced things out.

The other glaring characteristic of your workout is the absence of even one exercise that focuses on the rear delts. To round out your shoulder development, you’ll have to bring up your rears with some isolation work — try the bent-over lateral raise. Lastly, you shouldn’t do Arnold presses every workout, or at least not first in every workout. You’d be better off substituting in a behind-the-neck barbell press or Smith machine overhead press. Behind-the-neck presses don’t actually target the rear delts (the middle delts take the brunt of the load), but they do de-emphasize the front heads.

Check out the “pimped-out” routine below. Since you like the Arnold press, we didn’t do away with it completely — instead, perform it every other workout, and don’t do it first in your routine, at least until your rear delts catch up to your front delts. Also, we made the behind-the-neck press and the bentover lateral raise the first two exercises, and limited your front delt work to only one exercise per workout. For good measure, we altered your superset to include a rear delt cable move. These changes will promote some muchneeded balance in your development.