7 PRESSES FOR PUMPED DELTS

Last Updated on January 7, 2021

Hoisting heavy iron overhead is the best way to build thick, striated shoulders. Here’s seven ways to keep it interesting.

Remember that story about how Arnold Schwarzenegger built his delts using nothing but dumbbell lateral raises?

Yeah. Neither do we.

OVERLOAD YOUR DELTS

That’s because maximizing growth on all three delt heads requires some degree of overhead pressing. Overhead presses allow you to overload your delts with heavy weight, which calls more total muscle into play and increases growth hormone release. Each of your shoulder workouts – unless you are limited by injury – should begin with one or two presses. This handy guide lays out some options that you can rotate in to keep things fresh. By swapping out your presses, you can slightly alter the muscular emphasis and keep your delts from getting too comfortable.

1- Standing Military Press

The Emphasis: Middle, front delts

The Breakdown: This foundational overhead pressing exercise has been around since before presses were cool. To many of us, this is the first variation of pressing overhead that we learn in our high school weight rooms and for a good reason. The standing military press blasts the shoulders but in order to stabilize the weight overhead, your core musculature (abdominals and erector spinae), lats and traps are called into play. If you have lower back problems, a weak core, and poor upper back strength, your strength and performance on this lift will suffer. The old school standing military press will never go out of style and is a tried-and-true, overhead strength builder for lifters of all levels.

The Plan: To best execute this lift, start with the bar in a power rack at shoulder height. This is a much safer alternative to cleaning it up to the front rack position. A split stance is also encouraged during this lift to maximize stabilization of the core and shoulder complex. You can use this as a shoulder strength and mass builder at the beginning of your workout by using a 3-8 rep range, for 3-5 sets. This exercise is also valuable as a finisher with lower weight and higher reps (8-15 reps), to cause maximum muscle stimulation to improve muscle growth.