PEERtrainer Fitness

How To Build Shoulder Muscles

This is article is designed to answer a very common questions many men have- how to build shoulder muscles. If you look at a guy like Terrell Owens, you see that his deltoid muscles look like someone put a deck of playing cards under his skin. They pop right out.

And a lot of guys want that look. The secret to developing these muscles is to work them smarter, not necessarily harder. Most men are familiar with things like pushups, shoulder presses, bench presses etc. The important thing to realize is that those muscles work the big muscles primarily. In order to really work the deltoid in the optimal way, you need to do two things.

1) Get a set of resistance bands and do sets of bicep curls combined with shoulder presses. For some reason this works the entire shoulder and upper arm in a way that you simply cannot get with conventional weights. Do your other workouts as well, but also add sets with the resistance bands. The best resistance bands are the ones that T.O. actually developed- the T.O. Bands from Bodylastics. Less than $100 for an insanely good piece of equipment.

2) Find a Total Gym. Again, the idea is that you want to hit these hard to isolate muscles in ways they have not been tested before. With the Total Gym, you workout on an incline. The resistance is a combination of your bodyweight and the level of incline you are using. Total Gym allows you to do a shoulder press where you get on your stomach and push your body up along the incline. It works incredibly well to isolate your shoulders and upper body. Total Gym usually has good deals on their website. You can often find equipment 50% off as well as factory refurbished units.

With both these pieces of equipment you will be able to do a wide array of exercises beyond just working out your shoulders.

Can You Get A Good Shoulder Workout With Total Gym? | How To Get A Good Shoulder Muscle Workout

The shoulders are relatively small muscles in comparison to many other ones in the body, but they important for a number of reasons.  
 
Strong, healthy shoulder muscles can help prevent a lot of common day-to-day injuries that come from lifting or throwing (think lifting groceries, lifting kids in and out of the car, mowing the lawn or playing ball with kids).  
 
The shoulders (in combination with the neck and upper back muscles) also figure prominently into having healthy posture.  If the shoulders and upper back muscles are weak you could be prone to rounded, slouched posture. This can lead to an achy upper back and sore neck muscles.
 
Beyond these injury prevention and posture enhancing reasons to have strong shoulders, there is another reason to enhance your shoulder muscles- well developed shoulders look good!  Well developed shoulders add to strong looking arms and a chiseled looking figure.  This applies equally to men and women, though the degree of muscle development they seek may be different.  
 
In the video on this page, we show you a number of great shoulder strength building exercises using the Total Gym XLS system.  At PEERtrainer, we have become big fans of this product and method of woring out. It is easy to so, you do it at home for a few minutes a day. It works well for people who are busy with "real life." The reality is that you often only have a few minutes to get a workout in, and if you have this in your home odds are you will use it.

Here are some of the shoulder building exercises you can do with the Total Gym.  By the way, we highly recommend you also watch our video on strengthening your back muscles using the Total Gym as these two muscle groups are intimately connected.  Several of these are featured in our review video:

Shoulder Press (Military Press)- This is probably the most basic and fundamental shoulder building exercise where you simply press weight (dumb bells or a barbell) over your head. The Total Gym XLS

actually offers a unique (and fun believe it or not) way to do the shoulder press.  It’s featured in our video.
 
Front Shoulder Raise/Side Shoulder Raise- Again, very basic but highly effective shoulder building exercises.  Using the Total Gym XLS pulley system, you lift your arms straight forward or to the side, depending on how you want to work you shoulder muscles.
 
Serve-  A basic Pilates exercise that that works other arm muscles as well.
 
Inverted Front Shoulder Raise/Inverted Side Shoulder Raise (aka: Inverted Iron Cross)- Different variations of the above while lying down on the Total Gym XLS glideboard. It’s easy to quickly find the variations that best suit you.   
 
Upright Row- This very effectively works the shoulders and upper back muscles.