Fussy Shoulders and Low Weight Lateral Raises

Bigger Stronger Leaner
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My shoulders are incredibly weak, as in injury-prone. I’ve never had a serious injury, but I get inflammations in my shoulders quite easily. It’ll usually pass within a week and does not interfere with my workouts, other than I have to ditch most shoulder work.

I used to do seated DB OHP as my primary, but when I reached the 75s (or was it 80s), I could not lower the DBs without hurting. I then tried seated military press in the Smith to spare my cuffs, which I worked on the side. It did not work. Regular standing military press was no better.
Arnold Presses quickly gave the same problems.

I then did cable cross overs, standing erect and lowering to my hips - not in front of my hips. While I was happy with this setup, as I did not hurt my shoulders, my buddy consulted his father - a phys - and told me, that the exercise did not work my shoulders at all. This was weird to me, as my mid-delts never began to lack. He had a good point nonetheless.

Next step was trying high-rep, low weight seated DB OHP (5x10 at 60 pounds - I had developed considerably more overall strength since I lifted 75/80s for 6-10 reps, so 60s felt light) was moderately successful, but ultimately gave me inflammations as well.

As you can imagine, I’m in a pickle now. Front delts are taken care of by benching, and have good development, rear delts lack but I do face pulls to good effect making up for this.
I use clean and jerk to keep it up on my mid delts, but the movement is not economic time wise and the delt involvement is not really primary (I lift about 190 pounds) while thinking about a way around my problems.

My newest idea has been to use lateral raises as primary (along the C&J), now doing 5x10 with 11 pounds (!!!), focusing on contraction.

My mid delts are keeping up, but I can’t imagine they’ll do that forever working out like this.

Does anyone have some suggestion to what on earth I can do?

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I’m pretty sure there are quite a few on here who do no OHP work and rely on laterals and face pulls for their shoulder work. So I would go with what you’re doing and see how it works. Plus you might consider heavy partial laterals a la John Meadows. Gives a good pump. But I’d also question why your shoulders are so fucked up. Have you had them looked at? Do any rotator cuff work?

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[quote]Tyler23 wrote:
I’m pretty sure there are quite a few on here who do no OHP work and rely on laterals and face pulls for their shoulder work. So I would go with what you’re doing and see how it works. Plus you might consider heavy partial laterals a la John Meadows. Gives a good pump. But I’d also question why your shoulders are so fucked up. Have you had them looked at? Do any rotator cuff work?[/quote]

I go to a muscle therapist who gives my whole body a regular check-up and instruct me on what stretches I need to do atm, and I do my cuff-work. My best guess is, that I just have slightly curved acromions. Since I’ve never been directly hurt, I haven’t visited my doctor to have a check-up on it, though.

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Having dealt with lots of shoulder impingement issues at this point, I’ve found that focusing on upper back work (face pulls and pullaparts especially) have helped. My shoulders aren’t excessively rounded forward, but enough that lateral raises even hurt, unless I get my hands rotated just right, with my arms going in an exactly perfect path somewhere between straight out to the side and 30 degrees forward… and if I don’t, something pinches and hurts for the next several days.

A couple things that have worked though.

Wide grip upright rows: use an overhand grip; at the top of the movement your arms should be at 90 degrees, your forearm perpendicular to the ground and your upper arm parallel. You can do holds at the top to increase TUT, or really however… but try to keep your elbows below your shoulders. That keeps the emphasis on the delts rather than the upper traps.

(It’s basically just the bottom part of a cuban press, but can be loaded quite a bit heavier.)

Z Presses are my current movement for hitting shoulders: butt on the ground, legs straight, no back support, bar from the chest to overhead. These do a lot more than target shoulders, but they can be loaded heavy, and they will force you to use good positioning.

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I do something similar to John Meadows’ approach. Lots of high rep lateral raises to blast the side and rear delts and pre-exhaust the muscles. Then you can go lighter on military or OHP to save your shoulders and still get a great workout.

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high reps can be great for shoulder development, I didn’t see you mention ever trying up right rows, make sure to use a wide grip though and if it doesn’t give you trouble it can be a good addition, try dumbells, barbell, and cable versions

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can i recommend dr clay hyght’s delt triad?

you pre-fatigue the delts with isolation moves and finish them with light presses ( it doesnt feel light after 30 reps of front & side laterals )

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[quote]Bosse101 wrote:
I used to do seated DB OHP as my primary, but when I reached the 75s (or was it 80s), I could not lower the DBs without hurting. I then tried seated military press in the Smith to spare my cuffs, which I worked on the side. It did not work. Regular standing military press was no better.
Arnold Presses quickly gave the same problems.[/quote]
Re-read this and see that every single press variation gives you trouble. Ever hear the definition of insanity, repeating the same thing and expecting a different result? Look, I’m a big believer in presses as a great all-around movement, but there’s no rule that says everyone in the gym must overhead press.

Like the others have said, you can totally build great delts without including presses or without emphasizing them. However, being healthy enough to perform a press should still be an concern.

Interesting that you gravitated towards this as a possible solution. What does your back workout look like?

Err… clean and jerks are very economical as an exercise that uses a lot of muscle in one shot. From a strictly “medial delt-building” perspective, I agree they’re not the best. Any reason you decided to include them in the first place, instead of a basic clean and press?

My suggestion is to make shoulder health as much a priority as muscle building. Fucking up your shoulders now would set you up for a world of trouble for years to come. Shoulders, like the low back, are an area that tend to flare up over and over again if not properly sorted out ASAP.

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[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Re-read this and see that every single press variation gives you trouble. Ever hear the definition of insanity, repeating the same thing and expecting a different result? Look, I’m a big believer in presses as a great all-around movement, but there’s no rule that says everyone in the gym must overhead press.[/quote]

Like the others have said, you can totally build great delts without including presses or without emphasizing them. However, being healthy enough to perform a press should still be an concern.

I simply looked for a way to include OHP, since it’s really effective. The movement in different presses is not the same, so I gave each a shot.

[quote]
Interesting that you gravitated towards this as a possible solution. What does your back workout look like? [/quote]

The figure on the instruction showed delts, so I thought “sure, why not”.

My back workout consists of deadlift, one arm rows, reverse grip incline rows (and sometimes close grip hanging rows). This is recent. My focus is lats at the moment.
My regular back-workout is deadlift, close grip rows, wide grip pulldowns or wide grip rows.

[quote]
Err… clean and jerks are very economical as an exercise that uses a lot of muscle in one shot. From a strictly “medial delt-building” perspective, I agree they’re not the best. Any reason you decided to include them in the first place, instead of a basic clean and press?[/quote]

They are not economic time-wise, that’s what I meant. I do the jerk to spare my shoulders - it’s primarily from ear-height to 15 cm (7 inches) higher, which will bug my shoulders eventually. I get around that with the jerk.

[quote]
My suggestion is to make shoulder health as much a priority as muscle building. Fucking up your shoulders now would set you up for a world of trouble for years to come. Shoulders, like the low back, are an area that tend to flare up over and over again if not properly sorted out ASAP.[/quote]

That’s pretty much what I’m doing/trying. I want to stress, that my shoulders are perfectly fine for everyday living and they do not hurt, but they don’t take well to pressing.

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[quote]Gorillakiv83 wrote:
can i recommend dr clay hyght’s delt triad?

you pre-fatigue the delts with isolation moves and finish them with light presses ( it doesnt feel light after 30 reps of front & side laterals )

The Delt Triad [/quote]

This sounds interesting. I might consider face pulls instead of front raises, since my front delts really don’t need more work for quite some time.

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[quote]Bosse101 wrote:
I simply looked for a way to include OHP, since it’s really effective.[/quote]
It’s not effective for you. For now. The inflammation is your body’s way of saying “Dude, I don’t like that.” Listening to that recurring signal and adapting your plan accordingly should bring the kind of results you’re looking for.

The movement pattern is identical. The variations - dumbbell vs Smith vs standing barbell - don’t change the anatomical function of the shoulder joint.

[quote]My back workout consists of deadlift, one arm rows, reverse grip incline rows (and sometimes close grip hanging rows). This is recent. My focus is lats at the moment.
My regular back-workout is deadlift, close grip rows, wide grip pulldowns or wide grip rows.[/quote]
I’d try to incorporate more not-wide-grip pulldown variations, to work the full ROM of overhead shoulder flexion/extension.

Definitely a good sign. I’d still avoid movements/movement patterns that irritate it, even if the irritation always seems to go away quickly (for now).

Consider DeFranco’s Shoulder Shocker. It’s a triset of plate raises (yeah, still a front raise), lateral raises, seated clean and press (same weight as laterals).

I suppose you could drop the plate raise, but I’mma guess DeFranco has a solid reason for including it.

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Try palms-up front raises and lat raises.

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Your priorities are screwed. Getting better is #1, nothing else matters.

You can figure out what to do, once you are better.

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Ditch overhead pressing and ditch Barbbell Flat Bench press. Your shoulders will feel better for it.

Read up on Eric Cressey and Tony Gentilcore as they work with baseball players where shoulder health is the number one priority.
Joe DeFranco is another who dislikes overhead pressing and gives plenty of better alternatives.

Do your research and you will come up with a pretty good chest and shoulder routine that wont mess up your shoulders anymore and might actually make them feel better.

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I found that I could do OHP dumbbells pain free if I kept my palms facing each other with the dumbbells parallel.

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I second the shoulder shocker recommendation.

Heaps of band work. Dead hanging from rings have helped my shoulder health. Take a ego check when pressing, but I think it would be good to include the movement if you can do it relatively pain free.

*tweet *

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As said above, pain is a message - heed it. You mention pain when lowering the weight, do you have pain on pressing up? If it’s only on lowering could you just use bumper plates and drop the weight?

You mention doing all your pressing seated. Can you comment on your experiences with:-

  • Clean & Press DB and BB
  • Pressing with or without layback
  • Oly style slump pressing
  • Pressing using sets with 3 reps or fewer (heavy!)
  • Push Press
  • Side Press (stiff or bent legged)
  • One Arm Press with a Barbell or Kettle Bell

Somethings that are helpful for healthy shoulders:-

  • Farmers Walks (the weight tries to pull the humerus out of socket - muscles work very hard to keep it in socket).
  • Two Arm Waiters Walks (aka DB Press Walks). These jam the humerus into the socket and demand the muscles around the joint keep it stable whilst walking. You can do these as a dropset at the end of training working down the rack. Start with jerking the DBs, then push pressing, finally two arm swings and you’ll add some volume to those movements.
  • One Arm Snatch is wonderful for strengthening the rotator cuff
  • Dumbbell swing maybe good too (5 reps or less per set, go heavy)
  • Bent Pressing will do wonders for the entire deltoid and other muscles that stabilise the joint… and with training you can expect to Bent Press 2.5 times your best One Arm Press. This will blow lateral/posterior raises, facepulls, and anything to do with cables out of the water. Use a barbell.
  • Stopping Bench Pressing - tight pecs and front delts can pull your shoulders forward leading to a poor vertical pressing path
  • Get Ups (with a barbell), lie down, grab the bar, stand up, drop the bar, repeat. Similar benefits to the Bent Press… just can’t lift as much (bodyweight is a reasonable target)

These are just suggestions. Can you comment on whether they may be of use or not? What purpose do your shoulders need to be fit for?

If the above is too much. Bent Press! Big weight, with big movement, big results.

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Try handstand pushups, handstands and pike pushups, theyll strenghten your shoulders greatly with little to no injury risk, never seen such a shoulder development as when i began doing them.