Workouts come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re a beginner or nearly a professional athlete, weight loads, rep ranges, rest, and many other variables dictate your training session. The following workout has its own place for those that are experienced but don’t have a concrete goal. For those that have been serious in the past but an injury has taken its toll over time. I call this the Simple Shoulder workout, but Simple is relative to an experienced athlete.
It will help you maintain and develop range of motion by using an array of exercises that challenge you to work on both stability and mobility. Short rest periods will help you work on some muscular endurance in your shoulder girdle, but the principles of progressive overload will lead to increases in strength. You’ll also see some hypertrophy here, but remember, this is a well-rounded workout.
That means, if you’re trying to maximize growth, endurance, or strength and, therefore, are in a performance or competition mindset, this isn’t the workout for you. This is for everyone else that has experience, recognizes the importance of maintaining a healthy shoulder girdle, and wants to stay functional in that regard.
You’ll be doing four working sets of every exercise. You won’t be performing warm-up sets in any exercise because you’ll be starting with 4 sets of 20 reps of incline pushups, preferably on a smith machine at a significant angle as a warm-up. You’ll be increasing weight every set while decreasing reps, starting with 12, moving to 10, then 8, and finally 6. Remember, the key is that you can ONLY hit that rep range with the weight you’re using. You need to be honest with yourself, not cheat on your reps, and not convince yourself that you can only use 20 lb dumbbells for 6 reps, when after the 6 reps, you clearly have a lot more left in the tank.
Rest periods are no more than 1 minute after each set within each exercise and no more than 2 minutes after the final set of each exercise. Ideally, you should take more rest as you use heavier weight for less reps, so try 30 seconds after the first set, then 45, moving to 60, and finally about 2 minutes, which includes the set-up for the next exercise.
Simple shoulders
-Incline Push-Ups 4×20
12/10/8/6 reps through your 4 sets for each
-Lateral Raise (with dumbbells)
-Shoulder press (machine)
-Rope face pulls (with cables)
-Seated press (with dumbbells)
-Shrugs (with a barbell)
-Overhead press [OHP] (with a barbell)
-Overhead squat [OHS](with a barbell)
-Shadow boxing
-Assisted wall handstands
We use machines, dumbbells, barbells, cables, and our own body weight to challenge ourselves in many ways, but keep the weight load relatively low, and allow plenty of rest to develop some endurance, stability, mobility, strength, and more.
If you have any questions, please let us know. This would not be a good workout for beginners or anyone who hasn’t tried some of these exercises. OHP and OHS require a significant amount of technique to be done properly so I recommend having a coach in your gym show you how to do it. I’ll try to get a video out demonstrating all of these on YouTube, but one-on-one coaching from a professional in person is key to staying hungry and fit!
