How to build shoulder muscle using the best deltoid exercises and training techniques
The shoulder muscle assists in moving your arm forward, sideways, and backwards. It is an important supporting muscle group with a high level of endurance that requires a special type of training. Learn how you can build the muscles of your shoulders with the right exercises and techniques.
Which muscles make up the shoulders?
The shoulder muscle or deltoids (or delts) consists of 3 heads:
- Frontal deltoid head
- Lateral deltoid head
- Rear deltoid head
To fully develop and build shoulder muscle, you must train all 3 heads of the deltoids.
Mass building shoulder muscle exercises
In general, basic, compound, or multi-joint exercises are the best exercises to build muscle. For the shoulders in particular, this means doing all sorts of pressing exercises.
Some very good pressing exercises to build shoulder muscle are:
- Military Presses – Starting with a shoulder-width grip on a barbell with your palms facing forward and the bar resting across the front of your shoulders, push the barbell directly up past your face until your arms are locked out straight and the barbell is directly above your head. Slowly lower the barbell back to the starting position and repeat.
- Behind-the-Neck Presses – Performed as Military Presses, but the barbell rests behind your neck and you push the barbell directly up past the back of your head.
- Dumbbell Presses – This exercise can be done either standing or seated, and is performed as Military Presses, but then using a pair of dumbbells.
All pressing exercises will pack muscle on the frontal and lateral heads of the shoulders, while all rowing exercises will pack muscle on the rear head of the shoulders.
The frontal head of the shoulders is trained when you train the muscles of your chest, while the rear head of the shoulders is trained when you train the muscles of your back.
A very good muscle building exercise for the frontal head of the shoulders is Incline Presses with a barbell or dumbbells.
The rear deltoid head is a muscle that is often neglected and difficult to develop, but it can add a nicely capped-off shape to your shoulders, so make sure you give it the attention it deserves.
A few good muscle building exercises for the rear head of the shoulders are:
- Bent-Over Barbell Rows
- Seated Pulley Rows
- Bent Lateral Raises
While Bent Lateral Raises is an isolation exercise (so not involving multiple joints or muscle groups), it is one of the best exercises to add shape to the rear part of your shoulders.
And finally, to isolate the lateral (or outer) head of the shoulder muscle, you can do Lateral Raises with dumbbells or a cable pulley.
High intensity training to build shoulder muscle
Often times you’ll notice that while other muscle groups and body parts may get sore after an intense workout, the shoulder muscle may often seem hard to fatigue. This is mostly because of the large amount of muscle fibers that are packed on the small surface of the deltoids.
The deltoids are a muscle group that is known for its high endurance, so the best technique to use with the delts are super sets, where for example you do Military Presses for 9 reps and then immediately thereafter do Lateral Raises for 9 reps, without resting between sets.
Other ways to increase the training intensity for the shoulders are to perform exercises in a deliberate slow manner, use the Peak Contraction Training Principle, or use the Burns Training Principle.
Preventing and correcting a shoulder muscle imbalance
Beware of neglecting and underdeveloping any of the 3 heads of your shoulder muscle, because you could wind up with a muscle imbalance and/or rotator cuff issues.
The frontal head of the shoulder muscle is easily overtrained with all of the chest exercises you do. It is much harder to overtrain the lateral and rear heads, but still, you can wind up with a shoulder muscle imbalance.
