Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2024-10-20

Let's talk about shoulders. I used to have very small shoulders. I just didn't think shoulder size or shape was important, so my training consisted of only three sets of only three exercises:

Lying arm raises for rear delts.
Seated side lateral raises.
Overhead presses.

What I liked about this workout was the time-efficiency. It was easily my shortest workout. I almost considered shoulder-day a day off from training because this was done in about 10 minutes. But investing the extra time to get good-looking shoulders would have been a much better way to go. Now shoulder day is my longest workout.

I went through several years of frozen shoulder, which resulted in significant atrophy of my right shoulder and an overdeveloped right trapezius. After freeing my shoulder, I took shoulder development seriously (thanks to Janet, who got me to thinking that way and invested her own time in getting me up to speed on how to do it).

If you look at my climbing videos from about that time, you'll see shoulders with absolutely no curve to them and side delts that are flat and stringy. After three years of correct shoulder training, my shoulders looked like this a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UI1AFvlIz0.

Not bad, but look at how much mass I added by only a year later, including a 6 week "light duty" period due to a hernia repair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2gNHS3IFN4. Or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AsPZaKP_QM. In only a year, the size of my delts about doubled--despite having to reduce training for about 6 weeks.

Keep in mind my shoulders were bigger than average to begin with, and I am 64. Do not let anyone ever tell you that muscle loss is an inevitable result of aging. I just proved it's not. Yes, at some point a person moves into the geriatric phase of life and muscle loss there is probably inevitable. I will let you know in 15 or 20 years!

I don't have "boulder shoulders" but getting there is the plan. Had I done 40 years ago what I am doing today, I would have had boulder shoulders for almost all of my adult life. While muscle loss in old age isn't inevitable, muscle gain at this age requires extraordinary effort, discipline, and attention to detail. It is much harder won for a 64 year old than for a 24 year old.

OK, but how?

Now (for the past three years or so), I do four sets of four exercises for the rear delts, four or five sets of three exercises for side delts, and four sets of three exercises for front delts. Front delts get a lot of stimulation in other ways, so I am thinking of replacing one of those front delt exercises with a fourth exercise for side delts.

Back when my shoulders were small, I used a lot more weight per exercise. Looking at the ones in the bullets above, the poundage was 15, 20, and 40. Now for those exercises I use 8, 10, and 30. Why less weight if I want more size? Here are some reasons:

I super-set. This pre-exhausts the muscles so less weight is needed to get the same adaptive response.
The heavier weights meant less isolation. I was recruiting my traps a lot, thereby defeating the point of the exercise.
The heavier weights mean less range of motion. We are weakest in the stretched position, putting a muscle under tension here produces the greatest gain in muscle by far compared to at any other part of the movement arc.
The lighter weights allow me to forcefully squeeze near the end of the range of motion, as opposed to struggling with the weight.

I said "correct shoulder training." Does that mean I stumbled upon the ideal workout and secret methods? No. There is no ideal workout. The body adapts all the time. One of the adaptations is you unknowingly recruit the traps. So I introduce small changes all the time. I don't do a total rework of a workout plan, because it takes time to learn the plan and execute it well. But I might swap the order of two exercises, do six sets of X and only three sets of Y, or whatever. Not every time, but often enough. Some people call this introducing "muscle confusion", but it would be more accurate to say that you are avoiding training adaptation.

Getting that tension while in the stretch position and while pushing that stretch position as far as is practical is one of my key principles now. You cannot do that with heavy weights, and you cannot to that by counting reps with the idea you must do X number of reps per set. I do track how many reps, but only as a general guide. I want enough so I get ample time under tension, but not so many that the tension is inadequate. So instead of thinking I have to do exactly 8 reps (or whatever number), I try for a range. For most of the shoulder exercises, I want to do at least 5 reps. If I can't do 5, I might take an additional 30 seconds of rest or I might use less weight. What I won't do is allow my form to suffer just to crank out X number of reps. If I can't make the rep count, then I don't do it.

Mindconnection eNL, 2024-10-20

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