My shoulders have always been my weak point, so I’m thinking about trying to give them that extra stimulus to even out. This far I’ve been working a chest/shoulders/triceps - legs - back/biceps (push/pull/legs) style split with cardio between each day. I was thinking though, as chest work is essentially hitting the front deltoids pretty hard, would it be overdoing it for the shoulders to change the split to be more like:
chest/triceps
cardio
legs/shoulders
cardio
back/biceps
cardio
OFF
Alternatively, how about focusing on chest/anterior deltoids/triceps that day, and just grouping legs and medial deltoids work on the other day?
If I were going to work shoulders twice a week, I would do this:
Legs
Shoulders and Chest
Back and Biceps
Shoulders and Triceps
(3 rest/cardio days wherever)
However, we don’t know what your stats are or your training routine, so your problem could just be that you’re training your shoulders incorrectly and we have no way of knowing.
If you want to bring them up vs. everything else, 2 full shoulder days (and everything else once a week) or some such works very well… Or at least have one full shoulder day and one where you train the rear and side delts together with some other muscle-group.
Agree with Mr Popular’s last point. Doing delts twice a week I’d personally do it like this though:
Delts
off
Chest / triceps
Back / biceps
Delts
off
Legs
One overhead press, lateral raise variation and rear delt exercise per session.
Not a fan of doing shoulders and chest together or shoulders and triceps together (mainly due to close grip benching being weak as piss after overhead pressing though).
[quote]Zillah wrote:
Agree with Mr Popular’s last point. Doing delts twice a week I’d personally do it like this though:
Delts
off
Chest / triceps
Back / biceps
Delts
off
Legs
One overhead press, lateral raise variation and rear delt exercise per session.
Not a fan of doing shoulders and chest together or shoulders and triceps together (mainly due to close grip benching being weak as piss after overhead pressing though).[/quote]
That’s why you do CGBP first. I have done these together and I actually like the fact my triceps are fatigued when I move to OHP. I feel my delts working more this way. My triceps have a big tendency to overtake the OHP when they are fresh.
[quote]cueball wrote:
My triceps have a big tendency to overtake the OHP when they are fresh.
[/quote]
Never had this problem. If I don’t start overhead pressing fresh my numbers suffer badly so delts get shit all work. I tend to do it in the lower 2/3 of the movement though staying well away from lockout. Find that helps take the load of the tris but then again I have long arms anyway.
For me if my delts were lagging that badly I’d give them 2 sessions on their own each week. Doing something similar with chest for now… and for the next couple of years.
Combining chest and shoulders is jut a personal preference for me, because I know that my shoulder joints would hate me if I was pressing 3 times a week.
It doesn’t really matter how you split it up, as long as you’re still able to increase your poundages.
[quote]cueball wrote:
My triceps have a big tendency to overtake the OHP when they are fresh.
[/quote]
Never had this problem. If I don’t start overhead pressing fresh my numbers suffer badly so delts get shit all work. I tend to do it in the lower 2/3 of the movement though staying well away from lockout. Find that helps take the load of the tris but then again I have long arms anyway.
For me if my delts were lagging that badly I’d give them 2 sessions on their own each week. Doing something similar with chest for now… and for the next couple of years.[/quote]
Well, I’d agree that the numbers go down if you do CGBP first. But don’t you think that’s just because your tri’s are fatigued? In my opinion, your delts will get MORE of the work this way, even though the weight is lower due to reduced tri involvement. Numbers aren’t always everything.
With that said, when I ran two shoulder days a week, I had a shoulders only day so my OHP was fresh and the other was coupled with tri’s where CGBP was before OHP.
I have long arms as well, and I’d agree that not locking out really helps. Along with a wider grip.
I have always believed, and have also read that shoulders respond to high training frequency and should be done twice a week. Also, along the same lines I have found that using higher reps helps dramatically with development.
[quote]cueball wrote:
Well, I’d agree that the numbers go down if you do CGBP first. But don’t you think that’s just because your tri’s are fatigued? In my opinion, your delts will get MORE of the work this way, even though the weight is lower due to reduced tri involvement. Numbers aren’t always everything.[/quote]
I’m not big on pre-exhausting like this. Personally if I do any tricep work at all before OHP they end up doing the work (activation perhaps?), fatigue way too quickly, stability suffers and delts get bugger all work. I find I need to be completely fresh before any OHP. Goes both ways though, my CGBP is shit if I’ve hit delts hard first hence why I never pair them now. The other way i.e. pre-exhausting with lateral raises before OHP totally hammers my delts it makes my head look smaller for an hour or so but again technique in OHP suffers and I can’t progress as well. Anyway… what was this about again? Oh yeah, laggin shoulders. Sorry OP.
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
higher reps helps dramatically with development.[/quote]
and not getting injured. : )
How high are you talking? I don’t really go below 8 reps on shoulders but there’s a lot of 12s and 13s noted in the logbook recently along with some decent gains.
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
I have always believed, and have also read that shoulders respond to high training frequency and should be done twice a week. Also, along the same lines I have found that using higher reps helps dramatically with development.[/quote]
I have noticed this too, my thoughts are that higher reps are better for growth in general, but muscles that experience a ton of very low intensity stressors throughout the day (core, legs, calves, other muscles depending on occupation and hobbies) are used to that, thus benefit from lower reps (as I can attest with my legs and abs).
And I never really, during the day, use my shoulder muscles as much as the previously stated muscle groups.
Although anecdotal, I knew one guy who worked at a grocery store (loading shelves, lots of overhead stuff) who had pretty good shoulders. They NEVER grew with higher reps, but exploded when he did low rep/high weight.
[quote]mr popular wrote:
Combining chest and shoulders is jut a personal preference for me, because I know that my shoulder joints would hate me if I was pressing 3 times a week.
It doesn’t really matter how you split it up, as long as you’re still able to increase your poundages.[/quote]
Then it sounds like you need to teach your shoulders to adapt. My shoulder workout alone takes an hour. My chest workout alone is at least 40-45min.
Eventually, you may not be able to train them together…so what then?
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
If you want to bring them up vs. everything else, 2 full shoulder days (and everything else once a week) or some such works very well… Or at least have one full shoulder day and one where you train the rear and side delts together with some other muscle-group.
[/quote]
So if I could only spare 3 days for weight-training (the other days I train cardio for sports), would a chest/tri - legs/shoulders - back/bi split be half decent?
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
If you want to bring them up vs. everything else, 2 full shoulder days (and everything else once a week) or some such works very well… Or at least have one full shoulder day and one where you train the rear and side delts together with some other muscle-group.
[/quote]
So if I could only spare 3 days for weight-training (the other days I train cardio for sports), would a chest/tri - legs/shoulders - back/bi split be half decent?[/quote]
Wait…what are your GOALS?
Training three times a week is NOT ideal for muscle gains. It simply isn’t.
You guys with all of these contradicting goals trip me out sometimes.
[quote]mr popular wrote:
Combining chest and shoulders is jut a personal preference for me, because I know that my shoulder joints would hate me if I was pressing 3 times a week.
It doesn’t really matter how you split it up, as long as you’re still able to increase your poundages.[/quote]
Then it sounds like you need to teach your shoulders to adapt. My shoulder workout alone takes an hour. My chest workout alone is at least 40-45min.
Eventually, you may not be able to train them together…so what then?[/quote]
I didn’t mean to imply that I currently train them together. I don’t.
What I meant was that if I felt my shoulders were lagging behind the rest of the body, I would use the routine I outlined in my first post. Assuming my chest was up to par, I wouldn’t have any problem training it after shoulders (incidentally, Flex Wheeler did this).
I get problems when I do heavy pressing more than twice a week because of a shoulder separation I had over a year ago. I would love to adapt my shoulders to a higher frequency of training, but how do I get around the nagging aches and pains? Any ideas?
With Prof. X on this one. I had the same discussion on another board… legs are the lower half of your body, they should get a day on their own. A good leg workout should be pretty intensive. Where to put the shoulders? At minimum a 4-day split is opted for muscle gain in my opinion.
On the other side if you have 3 days to spare for weight training, it says something about your priorities. Or set them straight or be realistic about your goals.
@mr popular… what exercises do you do for shoulders? And in what reprange?
chest/triceps
cardio
legs/shoulders
cardio
back/biceps
cardio
OFF
I’ve followed that split except without days of rest in between.
Chest/tri
legs/shoulders
back/biceps
repeated twice in one week.
I found that as long as I didn’t focus too much on anterior delt on shoulder day and made sure to do rotator cuff exercises, my shoulders took it fine.
just my .02
[quote]Blaze_108 wrote:
chest/triceps
cardio
legs/shoulders
cardio
back/biceps
cardio
OFF
I’ve followed that split except without days of rest in between.
Chest/tri
legs/shoulders
back/biceps
repeated twice in one week.
I found that as long as I didn’t focus too much on anterior delt on shoulder day and made sure to do rotator cuff exercises, my shoulders took it fine.
just my .02[/quote]
To put shoulders after legs is silly IMO and even worse if shoulders are a lagging body part.
Why? Maybe if you’re doing push press, but if you’re doing seated presses and maybe even seated raises, i don’t see the problem. Unless you’re talking about on a pure exhaustion note, in which case I think that would be for the lifter to judge.