Thanks for the shout-out, OP. I’ll throw my routine into the ring.
Important background info first:
+My current goal vis a vis shoulders is size/width. I don’t give a damn about strength.
+My current routine is tailored to my split, which was devised with two things in mind: 1) To work everything once every 4 days (is the best frequency for me), and 2) to give my biceps and triceps tendons as much time off as possible. (I’m 58, but my tendons are pushing 80.)
The split:
Day 1: Push (triceps) day: Rear and Front delts (also Chest, Tris)
Day 2: Conditioning; Legs; Abs
Day 3: Pull (biceps) day: Medial (or lateral
) delts (also Back, Bis)
Day 4: Abs
As an aside, I also get 10K steps/day.
Push day starts with rear delts. Why? Because it’s the most important muscle of the day. (Why would you work anything but the most-important muscle first?) Just one set of one exercise–band rear-delt raises. Fix a band at about knee height, take a step or two back, then start pulling the elbows back (and out) without overly involving the scapulae. Basically, I put the rear delts under tension and don’t let up until the set is over. I will adjust the amount of tension based on pain level, and will randomly switch between isoholds and short flexions for the same reason. At no point during the set will the muscle significantly lengthen, ie, I keep them in or near the maximally contracted state the entire time. How long is the set? It’s one-song long, chosen more or less at random–I admit I intentionally skip over epics like, say, Stairway to Heaven on my playlist. (A >9 minute TUT set? No thanks. I’ll leave existential-crisis inducers like that to @T3hPwnisher.) When the set is over, my rear delts are so pumped, I swear they glow.
Next I move on to seated DB presses for front delts. I do 3 sets based on Paul Carter’s 350 concept. I force myself to do them in a slow and deliberate fashion, with a short pause at the bottom and the top–doing so makes the movement more difficult, which in turn makes me use lighter weights, which in turn saves wear-and-tear on my hinky shoulders.
Chest pressing is next, the incline portions of which involve a fair amount of front delt. Likewise, my first triceps exercise (occluded band kickbacks) looks an awful lot like the rear-delt work I do, so it’s probably fair to say they get another bite of the apple as well.
Pull day starts with medial delts–again, I work the most important muscle first. Similar to what I do for rears, the first exercise is a one-song set of TUT lateral raises–5# per hand; hands never come down. It’s unpleasant. Next are strict lateral raises done in 350 style, but modified thusly: The goal is 100 reps (not 50), the number of sets is 5 (not 3), and the breaks are 30-s (not 60). I’m currently using 8# DBs for this exercise. I call these ‘strict’ because I scrupulously avoid using ‘body English’ to get the DBs moving, and try to get a bit of a pause/flex at the top. I finish medial delts off with 3-4 sets of conventional lateral raises. These are heavy (relatively speaking)–I’m using 20#/hand lately. The rep range here is 15-25; the breaks between sets are 60-s or so. No attempt to pause/flex at the top, and I’ll start swinging a little toward the end of the set to eke out a few more reps.
Thank you for listening to my TED talk.