Shoulder Building Workouts for Huge Round Delts  

Building a super huge pair of round shoulder muscles can widen frame giving an impressive appearance of both size and strength.  It’s about the only muscle that you can you can show off and sticks out without having to wear tight short sleeve t-shirts.  It’s tough to show off big arms or a well developed chest but huge deltoids stick out and make you looker much bigger.  The best shoulder building workouts include heavy pressing exercises as well as some additional exercises to make sure you are hitting all three heads.  Some people build use their delts too much on chest movements giving them impressive shoulders but a flat chest.  The other mistake guys make is not training the entire muscle.  Focusing too much on pressing movements is a good way to end up with rotator cuff problems and tendonitis. 

Standing Barbell Presses 

This is a great muscle building exercise for delts because it will force you to use your stabilizers and core muscles.  Some guys like to do them seated but there is nothing like picking up a barbell and pushing it over your head to build power and size.  Remember Lattimer from the movie The Program?  If you like football and haven’t seen that movie go out and rent it.  Lattimer is a scene that sticks out in many guys minds when doing this exercise.  Standing presses are a great way to build functional strength for sports and to build your muscles for other lifts.  If you do them without a belt you can actually get a great ab workout from the stabilization but you will need to use lighter weight to keep the form strict. 

Upright Rows 

Use a medium grip because if you go to close you may start to strain your wrists from putting them into a non friendly ergonomic position.  You’ll probably need some straps for this exercise so that you can go heavy.  Make sure you aren’t starting the movement with your legs by launching yourself off your toes to get the weight up.  Once you are starting to reach failure you can do a couple extra reps by cheating the weight up a little with your legs but only to get that last rep or two after failure.  This will hit your front delts and trapezius muscles.  You want to have your traps tie into your shoulders to give your delts and back a fuller overall look.

21’s for Super Growth

This exercise is something that you can use to hit all 3 heads.  It’s great for building huge round shoulders and gives your body a break from pressing movements.  This is a tri-set of side laterals, front laterals, and rear laterals.  Pick a weight for side laterals where you can do 7 strict reps.  Drop the weight and do 7 reps with the front, drop it again and do 7 reps for the rear deltoids doing bent over rear laterals.  Do not rest in between these sets.  Once you have done 21 reps you have completed 1 full set of 21’s.  Your shoulders will be burning and on fire.  Do 3 sets of this at the end of your should building workout to finish them off.

These 3 muscle building exercises can be put together in a variety of rep and set schemes.  Here are a couple suggestions

Shoulder Building Workout #1 

Standing Barbell Press  Reps 10,8,6,4,4

Upright Rows                           Reps 6,6,6,6

21’s                                         3 Sets

Shoulder Building Workout #2 

Standing Barbell Press 5x5 (5 sets of 5)

Upright Rows                           4 x 12 (3 sets of 12)

21’s                                         3 Sets

Shoulder Building Workout #3 

Standing Barbell Press  4 x 8

Upright Rows                           3 x 8

21’s                                         3 Sets

You could even do this series of 3 workouts every 5 to 6 days depending on how quickly your shoulders recover.  Or choose 1 workout and go 4 to 6 weeks straight.  It’s important to keep a workout log and force yourself to make additions to the weight or by adding an extra rep.  Continuing to force your body to exert greater loads with additional weight is the key to gaining muscle mass over the long run.  If you do the same thing week after week there is no reason for your body to adapt by adding additional muscle.  Get in the gym, workout hard, and get out.  Don’t train for more than 45 minutes or your natural testosterone levels will start to drop by as much as 80% and that is the last thing you want to happen.  Once you put the work in to force the muscles to grow make sure to give it the raw materials it needs for growth in the form of plenty of healthy foods.