So you're hitting that shoulder press hard, in your shoulder workout, trying to build bigger and wider shoulders. But here's the thing that might disappoint you: The shoulder press, whether a shoulder press with dumbbells or a shoulder press with a bar, might not be giving you the shoulder development that you're looking for.
Most of us have been told that the shoulder press is the king of all shoulder building exercises, that you have to absolutely have to include in your shoulder workout, because it hits all three heads of deltoid, the anterior delt on the front deltoid, the middle delt, also called the lateral deltoid, and the posterior delt or rear deltoid.
Now, here's the thing: In the shoulder press, you are engaging all three heads of the deltoid, but to varying degrees. The reality is most of the work is being done by the anterior delt or the front of your shoulder.
Now, we're all told when we're trying to do the shoulder press that we want to bring our elbows really far back and that's going to help us target more the middle deltoid. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Not only are we still working the anterior deltoid more, but it can actually make the problem worse.
Now to target the middle head of the deltoid more, we want to abduct our arm. So that is why the shoulder press is a little bit counterintuitive because we are getting abduction here when we do a shoulder press. But here's the thing. When we rotate our arm outward, we are putting that anterior delt in a much stronger or dominant position, which is why we're working the front of the shoulder more than we are the side.
We have muscle tendons from our rotator cuff that run between a very small space, between the tip of our shoulder called the acromion and our upper arm bone called the humerus. When we lift our arm over our head, like in a shoulder press, especially with our arm back, that very small space gets a lot smaller. As a matter of fact, so small that it can pinch the tendons in our rotator cuff. Now, pinching of the rotator cuff tendon or rubbing of the tendon results in tendinitis, which causes the pain that most people feel in their shoulder. The shoulder pain you feel is coming from the tendons, not the muscle.
So let's cover some small tweaks where we can make your shoulder workout as productive as possible. Now, when you see most people doing shoulder press, they are pressing all the way overhead and extending the arm. But here's the thing. The deltoids are working the most only in a small range of motion up until our arm is parallel to the ground. We can actually limit the range of motion in our shoulder presses to target the deltoids more effectively by going with a little bit smaller range of motion in our shoulder press. By not lifting our arm all the way over our head, we're minimizing some of that pinching in those tendons.
The next thing that we want to do is we want to find a more neutral arm position in our shoulder press. So instead of our elbows back, we're going to bring them forward just slightly. Now, we're going to add one more step to that. What I want you to do is squeeze your shoulder blades together or retract your scapula. And that is going to open everything up in that joint again, further reducing the risk of injury.
The last tweak that we want to make to our shoulder press is with our hand position relative to our body. What I want you to do is bring your hands out a little bit wider. And you can see here that I have a lot less movement at the elbow. Therefore, that means I'm engaging the triceps less and making the deltoids do more of the work.
Now, everything that we've talked about here applies the same to free weights, like doing your shoulder press with dumbbells as it does to resistance bands, which is what I prefer to use. The reason being is resistance bands give me a lot more freedom of movement with hand and body position to find that perfect angle in my shoulder exercise where I really feel it in the deltoids and not in my joint.
All right. Last but not least, when training with dumbbells, sometimes the biggest risk for injury isn't in the movement itself. It's in the setup and the takedown, meaning getting that dumbbell in position or when you finished bringing the dumbbell down - and even racking it. Now, with resistance bands, in contrast, I can have up to 120 pounds of resistance in a single resistance band that only weighs about a pound. It's also easier for me to get into position without any kind of tension when using the bands. This really minimizes the risk for injury and a lot of these similar exercises between free weights versus resistance bands.
I'm James Grage. Make sure to keep coming back for more content just like this. To get the most out of your resistance band workout