Just about every Muscle & Fitness reader knows that to build bigger fuller shoulders you need to start with heavy presses followed by an isolation exercise for each of the three deltoid heads. Astute readers even cycle the order in which they train each deltoid head from one workout to the next, knowing that the move that comes first will be trained harder as energy levels and focus are higher earlier in this full shoulder workout routine.
This shoulder workout routine takes that training philosophy one step further for hardcore gains. After a pair of compound moves, you’ll do two shoulder exercises back-to-back for the targeted deltoid head (Shoulder Workout No. 1 focuses on the front head, Shoulder Workout No. 2 the middle and Shoulder Workout No. 3 the rear delt head).
The first of the “focused delt” moves is done just slightly heavier than what you may be accustomed to for three sets of eight reps, followed by a machine move where you just have to push a weight, not balance it, for that same delt head. You’ll also be doing drop sets on each set of the machine move.
Finish off with exercises for each of the remaining delt heads done for straight sets, and don’t forget to rotate the shoulder workouts next time you train shoulders. Pretty soon, we’ll have to start writing even more advanced programs for you. Trust us, we will!
For each workout: Choose your weights to approach muscle failure by the rep range listed.
* Perform 1-2 warm-up sets, but do as many as you need. ** Train the second move for the targeted delt head with drop sets. After reaching muscle failure, quickly reduce the weight.
