Looking for some ideas on best exercises for growing rear and middle delts.
For now, I have been using dumbbells mostly for rear delt flys and lateral raises. I have tried cables for these, and like those options too…db are just quick and easy to do with no real additional setup time (home gym).
Behind the neck presses don’t feel great for me so I tend to avoid these…despite wishing I could do them more often.
Any set / rep / tempo schemes you seem to find work better for delts?
Wondering if this also could be my problem. I tend to get bored with slow, steady, high rep training but maybe that’s what I need to do here. For instance, I have found biceps and triceps to be entirely different mechanisms to get them to grow. Triceps seem to grow by just going as heavy as possible and form takes a back seat…biceps seem to be opposite for me. Slow purposeful reps with as much attention on the eccentric as the concentric…weight doesn’t seem to matter as much as total time under tension. Are delts similar in this aspect to biceps and needing more time under tension, perfect form vs load???
What suggestions do you have?
Chest-Supported Rear-Delt Raises, and Lateral Raises mostly.
Accentuated eccentrics, iso holds, Gironda 8x8, Rest-Pause, the usual. High rep tends to work better according to research, but my personal experience says heavy weights do better (still at 8+reps/set).
I also found extreme stretches to be quite helpful for shoulders. Both in size growth and making them not feel like shit after abusing them during training.
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A nice compound exercise is what is called a Parrillo Strap Pull, performed on a seated long pull machine. Use either a two looped strap or a rope. Pull your hands to the side of your ears. You are directly hitting your side and rear delts and traps. I used relatively heavy weight with a little “rock” to initiate the pull.
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Excellent, thanks gentlemen!
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A nice dumbbell exercise (if you have multiple sets)
You take a heavy weight and just do partials for 60 reps, cut it in half and do 30, cut it in half once more and do 10 full range.
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What does an extreme stretch look like for rear delts? Holding DB at peak contraction for a 10 count?
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DB’s…Got lots of them. Will give this a go…meadows approved and all!
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