Henry Cavill, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans or any other person portraying a Hollywood super hero with a jaw dropping physique all have one element in common that makes their physique stand out for the general public. That element is… a pair of strong, masculine, boulder shoulders.
Well-developed shoulders play such an important role in creating an attractive male physique because they signal strength, dominance, security, protection and firtility. This can actually be scientifically be supported with the golden ratio, also known as the Adonis index.
The Adonis index refers to the optimal shoulders to waist ratio, which states that the most attractive proportions to make a man attractive are a shoulder circumference of 1.6 times bigger than the waist circumference.
Even without having ever heard of the Adonix index or golden ratio, it’s pretty much instinctive for people to find that broad, muscular shoulders are attractive on a man. It catches women’s attention and it makes men respect you more.
BUILDING SUPERHERO SHOULDERS
The shoulders are made up of 3 large heads. Those are the front head, the side head and the rear head. Developing each of these heads will require three different training components which we will break down here below and is important to create that full, round superhero look that we’re after.
Heavy presses for the front delts
The front delts are best worked by getting stronger on major compound pushing movements. The number one shoulder builder is the overhead press. The overhead press, or shoulder press as it is often referred to, is an anterior delt dominant pressing movement that will leave it no other choice than to grow when executed correctly.
By regularly performing this movement you will stimulate your muscles to grow larger and therefore stronger. When you notice your strength going up on the shoulder press, you know your shoulders have gotten bigger. The side delts, traps and triceps also get a great growth stimulation from performing the overhead press. This compound movement will make sure to grow multiple areas of your body with one single movement, which makes it a great upper body muscle builder.
The shoulder press can be performed with a barbell or with dumbbells in both a standing or seated position. The best overhead press variations to stick to are the standing barbell overhead press, the seated barbell overhead press, the seated dumbbell shoulder press and dumbbell single arm standing overhead presses. These will allow you to apply optimal force without balance becoming in issue.
Even though the overhead press is called the shoulder press, horizontal pressing movements such as the bench press and incline bench press also deserve a serious amount of credit in developing strong anterior delts. While they may be more known as great chest builders, since the chest is the primary mover during these movements, the anterior delts are absolutely heavily involved in horizontal presses and will grow as you perform these movements regularly while applying progressive overload.
A properly structured workout routine already has a sufficient amount of pressing work programmed into it, which means that the front delts will get a sufficient amount of volume to make it grow larger. For this very reason, isolation work isn’t necessary for the front delt as it will simply be junk volume and won’t contribute to getting bigger shoulders.
Want big front delts? Build big presses!
Heavy pulling for big rear delts
Heavy compound pulling movements are the rear delt recipe for greatness! Whereas you should aim to get stronger on your major presses to sculpt large and powerful front delts, you should train to become very strong on major pulling movements such as chin up/pull up variations and rowing movements to grow bulging rear deltoids.
My favorite muscle builder for overall back size is the weighted chin up. When performed perfectly from a fully stretched position and with a full range of motion where your chin reaches over the bar, your overall back musculature and rear delts will get hit very hard. Supplement your weighted chin ups with rowing movements such as T-bar rows, weighted inverted rows or chest supported dumbbell rows and your rear delts will blow up, since rowing movements are mid and upper back dominant.
For many people, performing big compound pulling movements alone will take care of their rear delt size. In some cases though, there are people that find that their rear delts are lagging and aren’t fully growing through compound lifts alone. Most of the time I notice that this is due to bad exercise execution where people don’t fully contract their muscles through a full range of motion, and stop the movement pattern before they should. This likely occurs because many people start out with weights that are too heavy for them and they should lower the weight initially and gradually build up to heavier weights. Always make sure to perform your exercises with a full range of motion.
If your form is good, yet you find that your rear delts are still lagging, then supplement your compound work with rear delt isolation exercises such as rear delt flyes (dumbbels, cables or machines) and facepulls. Throwing in a little extra volume purely targeted to the rear delts will solve this problem.
Growing the stubborn side delt
The side head of the deltoid is the superhero head as it is the one that makes you appear more wide and dominant. The side delt is also the one that causes the most headache for most people since this one is the hardest to grow. Even though it gets stimulated and will grow from getting strong at overhead presses and it will get some stimulation during pulling movements, it will require direct work in order to make it pop and fully develop.
This is goal is best achieved through higher rep work on certain exercises. My favorite side delt builders are lateral raises and upright rows. Perform these movements within the 8 to 20 rep range and really focus on executing each rep as good as possible with a full range of motion. Your shoulders will blow up when doing these consistently as a supplement to your heavy pressing and pulling movements.
Examples of a shoulder building workouts:
Workout A
Overhead press 3 – 4 sets of 6 – 10 reps
Chin up (weighted) 3 – 4 sets of 6 – 10 reps
Lateral raises 3 – 4 sets of 8 – 20 reps
*optional: Facepull 3 sets of 8 – 20 reps
Workout B
Bench press 3 – 4 sets of 6 – 10 reps
T-bar row 3 – 4 sets of 8 – 12 reps
Upright row 3 – 4 sets of 8 – 20 reps
*optional: Facepull 3 sets of 8 – 20 reps
Building a fantastic pair of superhero shoulders is not rocket science, nor does it require anything special. It comes down to getting stronger on basic compound pushing, compound pulling exercises and supplementing those with side delt specific exercises to fully develop all three shoulder heads in order to make them pop.