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Don’t Do These Moves to Build Your Shoulders. Do This Instead. | The Don't List | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
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30/05/2024
Don’t Do These Moves to Build Your Shoulders. Do This Instead. | The Don't List | Men’s Health Muscle
Category
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Sports
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
If you want big, super strong, super heroic shoulders,
00:03
then these are the five exercises
00:05
that you absolutely don't want to do.
00:07
Welcome to the don't list,
00:08
where we're gonna tell you the exercises
00:10
that just aren't worth your time.
00:12
Yes, Instagram and gym bros,
00:13
and everybody's gonna tell you
00:14
to do certain shoulder exercises,
00:16
but if you really, really wanna maximize your gains,
00:18
these are five exercises that you can completely cut out.
00:21
First off, we have behind the neck presses.
00:23
So behind the neck presses are basically overhead presses,
00:26
except they're not done in a pattern
00:28
that's really comfortable for your entire body.
00:30
We don't get our elbows into something
00:32
called the scapular plane,
00:33
and we're basically at the polar opposite.
00:35
Now, if you can do behind the neck presses,
00:37
if you think you're doing them right, yes, it's great,
00:39
but in the long term,
00:40
you're putting your shoulder health at risk.
00:42
You're getting yourself out in this high five position
00:44
where a lot of injuries happen, and it's just not worth it.
00:47
Instead of doing behind the neck presses,
00:49
what you're better off doing
00:50
is just a standard barbell overhead press.
00:53
When you do it in front of your neck,
00:54
you're gonna be able to move more weight,
00:55
you're gonna feel a lot more comfortable,
00:57
and in the long run, those two things
00:59
are gonna help you build a lot more strength.
01:01
Exercise number two that you absolutely should not do
01:04
is the barbell upright row.
01:06
So when we think about barbell upright rows,
01:08
again, we're winding up in a lot of internal rotation.
01:11
It's just not comfortable,
01:12
and the barbell's not giving us the freedom that we want
01:14
so that we can move through the pattern appropriately.
01:17
Now, upright rows can work,
01:19
but it's just not worth doing them as barbell upright rows.
01:22
Instead, grab dumbbells,
01:24
and you can work through that same pattern.
01:26
We can also make sure that we're pulling back,
01:28
so we're gonna get a little bit of back action in there.
01:30
You're not getting any of that
01:31
with the barbell upright row,
01:32
so just cut that out, leave that to all the bodybuilders
01:35
who don't want their shoulders to work in the next 10 years.
01:38
Exercise number three is another bodybuilder favorite.
01:41
That is the heavy lateral raise.
01:43
So look, lateral raises themselves
01:45
are really great for building
01:47
the medial head of our shoulder,
01:48
but very often you're gonna see guys in the gym
01:50
picking up 40, 50, 60-pound dumbbells,
01:53
and they're gonna start swinging.
01:54
They're actually doing another thing too.
01:56
Instead of getting the weight away from them
01:58
so that we create a nice long lever
02:00
to really work our medial head of our delt,
02:02
they're going to start bending their elbows more and more
02:04
to compensate for that really heavy weight.
02:06
Now, a couple things happen there.
02:07
One, we get a whole ton of swinging happening,
02:10
which just isn't really working the muscle,
02:12
and two, we're getting into that position
02:14
where if we lose control again,
02:16
you wind up in internal rotation.
02:18
That's another position
02:19
that just isn't great for your shoulders,
02:21
so we want to avoid that.
02:22
Instead, pick up a lighter weight that you can control.
02:25
Get your arms fully extended,
02:27
pause at the top of every single lateral raise rep,
02:29
and you can even do these on an incline bench too
02:31
if you want a little bit of extra stimulus.
02:33
Exercise number four that you've got to cut out,
02:35
the standing dumbbell external rotation,
02:38
and I really just don't know why anyone does this one at all
02:40
because it's working absolutely nothing.
02:43
It looks really cool if you're moving a dumbbell
02:46
out to your side and you think you're warming up
02:48
your external rotators and you're doing all this great stuff
02:50
for your rotator cuff,
02:51
but there's actually no real force being applied
02:54
to the rotator cuff at all.
02:55
All we're really training is isometrically our biceps.
02:59
We're not here to do biceps curls
03:00
if we're trying to get big shoulders,
03:01
so what you want to do instead on that one
03:03
is we can grab a cable or a resistance band,
03:06
do your external rotations with that,
03:08
then you're going to get something out of it.
03:09
And the final exercise you've got to cut out,
03:12
this is something that a lot of people don't think of,
03:14
is the front raise,
03:15
and yes, it seems like it's going to work
03:17
your front shoulders,
03:18
and it technically does work your front shoulders,
03:20
but one, if you're training
03:22
for really, really balanced shoulders
03:24
and you really want to look like a superhero,
03:25
the last thing we need is oversized front delts.
03:28
You want to build your medial and side delts out
03:30
a lot more than that.
03:32
And two, your front delts are going to get plenty of work
03:34
if you're doing your overhead presses correctly,
03:37
especially if you're doing them the way we said,
03:39
where you've got the barbell out in front of you
03:41
or the dumbbells in that scapular plane,
03:42
your front delts are going to get plenty of work.
03:44
So you can completely cut out those five exercises.
03:47
That makes up the five exercises
03:49
on our shoulder don't list.
03:50
If you eliminate those,
03:52
you're going to build a lot more muscle,
03:53
you're going to waste a lot less time,
03:55
and you're not going to wind up
03:56
on some Instagram fails list in the long term.
03:59
(upbeat music)
04:01
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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