Chris C.
re: 1-arm cable cuban press
That’s why I love these discussions!! That’s one I’ve not heard of. I initially had a hard time visualizing it, but I can see it now-- I assume low pulley and you’re offset (L or R) from the ‘line’ of the cable (ie to the side)?
Do you ever go heavier/lower reps with the face pulls? Do you do those just for pre-hab or do they fit into a hypertrophy regimen at that rep range (for you)?
hang clean’s 3 x5
hang clean and press 3x5
standing arnold press 3x10
super setted with side lateral raises 3x10
Standing ovehead presses. Bench press too. 3x6-8
My shoulder day consists of
front lat pulldown
rear lat pulldown
double lat raise
db shoulder press
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Chris C.
re: 1-arm cable cuban press
That’s why I love these discussions!! That’s one I’ve not heard of. I initially had a hard time visualizing it, but I can see it now-- I assume low pulley and you’re offset (L or R) from the ‘line’ of the cable (ie to the side)?[/quote]
Thats it pretty much exactly. The foot of the working side is in line with the low pulley, standing a step or so away from the stack (facing the stack), using a single handle. The tempo is pretty slow and deliberate.
Basically it’s a wide upright row (stopping when the elbow is parallel to the ground), smooth transition to a 90 degree external rotation (careful not to let the elbow drop), smooth transition to an overhead press. Then reverse the three-step process to lower the weight.
It’s just pre-hab and a solid warm-up movement, since it’s my first exercise of the day. Lately I’ve been doing more computer work than usual, and my posture is starting to suck donkey balls.
I was playing around with 4x10, without a pause, and trying to go heavier each time, but I was starting to use body english to start the movement, so it was counterproductive for what I wanted.
Now I use just one or two plates, sometimes a plate plus a 5-pound removable doohickey, and hold the peak contraction to build static strength in the upper back and knock my posture back into place.
And I use a neutral-grip with the rope attachment, so at the peak contraction, my palms are facing my ears. I stole this right from Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson:
http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1426252
Today was “Push” day with shoulder emphasis, so I tried the 1-arm cable cuban press. Took a few times to get what I thought was right-- mostly just positioning to get my arm at a 90 angle on the rotation, but I got it.
That’s a keeper! Certainly don’t need a lot of weight with those (read: humbling), at least during the external rotation portion…
Ive been doing military press singles rest-pause for the past 3 weeks (variating the rest time), and have already made more progress in that 3 week span than i have in MONTHS. I feel like ive finally found what works for me. My shoulders fatigue very quickly during sets, traditional rep work just hasnt worked. My fist rep i’d always feel real strong in, but then i’d plummet quickly…leaving myself very frustrated as i feel like i shouldve gotten more reps. Just doing singles has worked out great.
My problem is out of the hole-- from chest to about nose.
Today I went strict Military Presses and my weight/rep was down. Past few months I’ve been going first couple/few reps strict MP, and then finish out with Pushpresses, then just do pushpresses.
Did some seated Smith Machine presses to work on that lower R.O.M.
Anybody else work through that?
TC used to suggest doing 1 1/2 rep schemes, where you’d do a full rep, then a partial. This would allow you to essentially work your weaker ROM more than by just doing standard full ROM repetitions.
S
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Notably missing from the responses are Arnold Presses… ?
[/quote]
That’s funny you say this because I tried doing them for my workout yesterday. I’ve had difficulty recently finding a good set of shoulder exercises to stick with consistently, so I’ve been experiment just about every workout with different exercises until I find a few that are comfortable to me. I have a pretty narrow AC joint, so certain shoulder exercises give me problems. The Arnold Presses felt okay, but not enough for them to be a primary movement.
Here’s what I’m going to try to stick with a for a few weeks after trying just about everything I can think of.
I do around 5 sets of each movement. After seeing some of the suggestions here, I may experiment with cuban presses as that sounds like that might work well for me.
I also do rear delt raises on a machine, but I usually do those at the end of my back workout.
axle presses
scarecrows and face pulls
front delts are fine from presses
Oh, here’s something,… my brother used to do what he called ‘peekaboos’. He’d basically do his front raises holding a 45 lb plate between his hands. Essentially raising it until he could see though the opening directly in front of his face. It had a nice way of keeping your thumbs up so that you felt your anterior head stress more than if you just did DBs.
S
ive gotten the best results from the following
hang clean 4x8-12
Side Lateral 4x8-12
Heavy Upright row 3x6-10
Military Press 3x4-6
the hang cleans and upright rows really develop the traps and the side laterals done before the upright rows and military press activates the priority principle, meaning that the medial deltoid is worked with more concentration and then again during the rows and press giving the wide shoulder look bodybuilders go for. the upright rows also use the front and rear delts to a small degree and the traps to a greater degree.
i do this twice a week.
after about a month i will switch to
behind the neck press 1x15 warm up then 4x10,8,8,6
side laterals 4x8
rear laterals 4x8
db shrugs 3x10
this one i do every t/th/sat
i have gotten good results from these programs
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I’d like to hear what folks are doing for their shoulder routines these days.
How do your shoulders fit into your general goals and workouts? What have you found works best for you for strength/growth gains (rep ranges, freq, etc). Working through injuries?
You get the idea… thanks.[/quote]
Shoulders are an essential part of my goals. I compete in strongman, so I generally overhead press 2-3 times a week.
Right now I am on an 8-10 day split where I’ll train OH twice during that time (DE and ME) and every 7 days I do a pressing event (usually log press) but I consider that RE.
On my DE day I do standing military press with different grips (close, medium, wide, reverse) for 8-12 triples. I follow that up with weakness training, which is a tricep/delt intesnsive bench press (reverse grip, close grip, 2 board in rotation)
On my ME day I do some kind of push press (BTN, regular, looking for more variations) for a 5rm, 3rm, or 1rm. I follow this up with push jerks for technique.
I don’t do any kind of lateral raise. I don’t get much out of them and don’t have training volume to spare. I’ve seen real good improvements (aesthetic) doing something similar to this, my shoulders have gone from non-existant to something people comment on.
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
My problem is out of the hole-- from chest to about nose.
[/quote]
I really like military presses with a pause for this. I can get anything to my forehead with decent speed now after doing them for a few weeks.
They also feel really good. Dunno how to explain it better than that, but it feels different than a regular military press without the break in eccentric concentric (obviously) and the feel is good. Try them.
3WL-
re: MP with a pause
Do you mean just doing the movement to the forehead and holding there even if you can ‘break the plane’?
AngryVader -
Yeah the neutral grip db raises are great. I hold a shrug while doing them as well. Today I supersetted these with the cable cuban presses that Chris C described.
detazathoth, what’s are “scarecrows”?
Seated dumbbell press 1 set total failure in the 4 - 8 rep range.
Side raise done same way
Rear delt fly supersetted with laying rear delt raise for several sets only because I have a hard time feeling this muscle when using any amount of weight.
No, I mean bringing the bar to the chest and hold, take a second to get air and get tight, and then press, trying to explode at the bottom.
This breaks the eccentric-concentric chain and gets rid of all the elastic energy stored in the muscles, putting a lot more emphasis on the bottom of the movement. It’s like benching with a pause on the chest to strengthen the lower part of the movement (though I’ve never liked paused benching, even in competition). It really helps with bottom end explosion.
As for scarecrows, they are for rear delts.
I explained it, but a picture is worth more: