Got Built?

Once upon a time, I had no delts.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

In fact, in the eighties, I was the queen of shoulder pads.

DAMNED GENETICS!
When I started lifting, I could NOT connect to my delts. I tried millies, all the machines, lateral raises, laterals with static holds… nothin’. Invoking once again the wisdom of Dave Tate: “you can’t flex bone”. (I’ve noticed you can’t flex fat either. So much for “toning exercises”!)

Flash forward a couple of years. My buddy Glenn suggested I start doing hang cleans. Keep in mind, I had never actually HEARD of these, but hey – I’m always up for a challenge! (Besides, I had Google.)

Funny movement, cleans – everything else I had done up until this point was a controlled lift.  Olympic lifts are different. For one, they’re not lifts at all – they’re throws; furthermore, there’s just something FUN about tossing a heavy piece of metal up into the air and catching it!

I fell in love immediately.

The love grew when I saw my delts blow up – and by “blow up”, I mean I finally HAD delts. Cleans worked – but the thing that didn’t make sense to me was “why?”

See, I wasn’t doing clean-and-press at this point. I could see my traps coming up; this part made sense to me since there was a pull involved. But without a vertical pressing movement, it wasn’t obvious to me why hang cleans would stimulate delts. Nonetheless, my delts WERE indeed growing, and like I said, tossing and catching iron – I mean, it’s ADDICTIVE!

LOOK MOM – MY GENETICS IMPROVED!
I chalked my apparently magical clean-induced delt-growth to yet another example of “Things That Make No Sense To Me” and did ‘em anyway. After all, ya’ can’t argue with success!

Now – another thing I noticed from these lifts was forearm strength. Okay, backing up, at first, I noticed forearm PUMPS and WICKED forearm DOMS. I also noticed I could open a lot more jars than I used to: hubby’s utility as “portable vice-grip” was slowly being eroded!

I gave this another think.

There are several ways to stimulate hypertrophy. Usually we consider explosive concentrics and slow eccentrics for the hypertrophy-stimulating microtrauma they cause, but the literature suggests fast eccentrics cause the most damage – and the most growth.(1) The problem is, of course, that they’re not particularly safe through a full range of motion.  But what about a partial-range?

Well guess what happens with an Oly lift! Think about it: the weight is accelerating through the pull when you begin, and again when you end the lift. At the start of a hang clean, you are tugging at the bar with your arms straight, forcing your grip to suddenly tighten against the drop while the snap sends a strong tug through the insertions of your delts. Your delts get it again on the catch, acting like springs (think “eccentric brake”) as you catch the bar with your elbows up. The insertions get a second big hit as you drop the weight back to the hang.

Fast eccentrics and microtrauma everywhere…

…OH THE HUMANITY!!!

And with this realization, another of life’s little mysteries was solved, at least in my little mind.

The next “magical delt move” comes courtesy of Christian Thibaudeau – the Oly bar corner push-press.

There are so many things I like about this lift it’s almost hard to itemize them all – but I’ll try:

• It’s a unilateral movement – which means the right and left side have to move and train independently. It also means I don’t have to press as much weight as I would with a bilateral movement, which makes this old woman’s back very happy.
• It hits core – I like it that so many of the lifts I do hit core. I rarely do any direct ab work at all, and still, my abs are pretty good. Now you know why.
• My slightly destroyed right rotator-cuff loves this press (and hates regular barbell Millies). The pattern of the corner-press is unstable, but because the radius described by the Oly bar is fixed at a point, all pressing is ultimately forward, which serves to further protect the RC from harm while conditioning the hell out of it. Seriously, ya’ gotta try this movement!
• Imagine, all that AND killer delt growth. What could be nicer?

The finisher in this little sequence is a superset: Arnold presses followed by lateral raises. My friend Glenn Hargrove taught me this combination many years ago and it’s a keeper.

With any shoulder pressing, the anterior delt does most of the work – it is, after all, the primary mover. Thing is, it’s the lateral deltoid that provides the illusion of width, and not only is this head not a big mass-mover, it generally has a larger proportion of slow-twitch muscle than the anterior. Enter the Arnold press.

With Arnies, the first part of the movement is when the weight is held closer to the body, shortening the moment-arm. With less torque – and the outward movement of the elbows – this part is, for all intents and purposes, a lateral-raise that gradually becomes a dumbbell-press as the top half of the arc is completed. Pretty sweet, really, since you get side-delts tossed in for free with each press of the anterior delts! As an added perk, the semicircular movement of the Arnold press can feel a lot less herky-jerky on the rotator cuff than the ordinary dumbbell shoulder-press.

Since the lateral delts are proportionally more slow-twitch than the anteriors, they may still have some life in them after a 5-8 rep set of heavy Arnies. Superset ‘em with some lateral raises and you’ll get the most out of both these exercises.

I’ll show you how I knit these movements together into what has become my favourite shoulder workout. Enjoy bitching about how they don’t make clothes to fit athletes when your jackets no longer fit.

SHOULDER MODULE
Power cleans – done from a hang, 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, going heavier with each set as possible.
Optional: two or three sets of clean-and-press or push-presses with your lightest power-clean weight, either before or right after your power cleans.
(For reference, I might do these as 5×95 lbs, 5×105, 4×115, 3×125, 1×145 for hang cleans, then 2×95 for push-presses.)

Olympic bar corner press – 3×8 each side
(For reference, I generally do these with a 35-lb plate on the “business-end”.)

Arnold press supersetted with lateral raises – 3 supersets of 8 reps each.
(For reference, I typically do the Arnies standing with 35-40 lbs a side, and the laterals with 10-12 lbs a side.)

1. Farthing, J. P. & Chilibeck, P. D. The effects of eccentric and concentric training at different velocities on muscle hypertrophy. Eur J Appl Physiol 89, 578-86 (2003).