---
title: 'Biggest Shoulder Training Mistakes (that keep you small forever)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=7aqTcNB79Nk'
video_id: '7aqTcNB79Nk'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 486
---

# Biggest Shoulder Training Mistakes (that keep you small forever)

> Source: [Biggest Shoulder Training Mistakes (that keep you small forever)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7aqTcNB79Nk)

## Summary

This video breaks down the biggest shoulder training mistakes that keep lifters from building strong, well-developed shoulders. It covers pressing technique, grip width, warmup habits, isolation exercise control, and how to balance front and rear delt training to avoid injury and imbalances.

### Key Points

- **Don't Set the Bench Too Vertically** [00:14] — For the dumbbell overhead press, a bench that is too vertical puts your shoulders at risk. Adjust the angle so it is not overly upright to protect your shoulders from injury.
- **Drive Your Head Through the 'Window'** [00:27] — As the barbell passes your head during the overhead press, move your head and torso slightly forward into the imaginary window. This keeps the bar path efficient and helps you press more weight, but don't overexaggerate or you'll look like a chicken.
- **Use a Shoulder-Width Grip** [01:18] — Gripping the bar too wide puts you in a disadvantageous position and makes you weaker. Grip shoulder-width apart or slightly wider so your forearms stay vertical to the bar — the strongest position for lifting maximal weight.
- **Shoulders Are Highly Injury-Prone** [02:38] — Shoulder injuries are very hard to fully recover from, so prevention is key. Always properly warm up before hammering your shoulders — you only realize how valuable healthy shoulders are once it's too late.
- **Warm Up Before Heavy Lifting** [03:17] — Simple warmups like bodyweight push-ups, arm circles, or a few reps with an empty bar are enough. Never go into a heavy lift with completely cold shoulders — that's when disasters happen.
- **Use Lighter Weight for Isolation Exercises** [03:42] — Using weights that are too heavy on shoulder isolation exercises ruins the movement — the weight gets lifted by traps and momentum instead. Use a weight you can fully control, even if that means 5 lb dumbbells.
- **Don't Overwork the Front Delts** [04:57] — The front delts already get significant work from pressing exercises like the overhead press, bench press, and incline press. Adding extra front delt isolation is a waste of time and can create an imbalance with the rear delts.
- **Add Rear Delt Isolation Work** [06:14] — Neglecting rear delts worsens the front/rear imbalance and causes the 'silverback gorilla' posture. Add the dumbbell rear fly, reverse pec deck, or face pull to your routine to prevent this.
- **Train Shoulders Before Chest** [06:26] — If chest is always trained first, shoulders stay on the back burner. Alternate which body part comes first each workout, and if shoulders are lagging, prioritize them entirely until they catch up.

### Conclusion

Fix these common mistakes — bench angle, the head-through-window press, proper grip width, warmups, controlled isolation weights, rear delt work, and training order — and your shoulders will finally get the stimulus they need to grow.

## Transcript

wrong with it. Any ideas? Yeah, I made it in MS Paint, but that's not what I was asking about. Take a look again. More specifically, take a look at the angle of the bench. Yes, the bench is set up way too vertically. And if you
are setting up the bench like this, when you do the dumbbell overhead press, you need to change this immediately before you get hurt. The bench needs to be in a to cook your shoulders. That is the first mistake you need to avoid. Now,
when doing the barbell overhead press. There is a technique called pushing your absolutely vital if you want to perform the barbell overhead press correctly. Honestly, the amount of people who are not doing this is absolutely crazy. So,
pay attention to what I'm about to explain. This so-called window is a moment that appears right when the bar passes your head. So, as you press the bar up and it fully passes your head, your goal is to move your head and your
torso forward a little bit into this imaginary window. This is absolutely crucial if you want to get really good and strong at doing the overhead press, you are not overexaggerating this forward movement. I like to use the
don't want to look like a chicken when you do the overhead press. That's when you know it's wrong. Now, we absolutely need to talk about the grip width when it comes to the barbell overhead press because when you grip the bar way too
wide, you are putting yourself in an extremely disadvantageous position. This is literally a self-sabotage because you are making yourself so much weaker by doing this. You need to grip the bar shoulder width apart or slightly wider.
This will make your forearms vertical to the bar and that's exactly what you want position to lift the most weight possible. Before we move any further, I advanced bundles that I have released very recently. These bundles cover
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injure them, you will most likely have to deal with it in some shape or form really difficult to fully recover your shoulders back to 100% once you get injured as the shoulders are just so
part of the shoulder to get messed up should always make sure that you are properly warming up before you start hammering your shoulders. And I honestly can't emphasize this enough. You don't
have healthy shoulders. You only realize it once it's too late. That's why I don't have to go through all the problems that can be so easily avoided. For your shoulder warmup, you really don't need to do anything fancy. You
shoulders warm, which can be done in a ton of different ways. You want to do bodyweight push-ups to warm up? Sure. You just want to do some arm circles and a couple of reps with an empty bar? Sure, go ahead. No matter how you do it,
just never go into a heavy lift with your shoulders completely cold because that's when disasters happen. A big part of building your shoulders is isolation work, but that's where a lot of people fumble the wall. The most popular
mistake is using weight that is simply way too heavy for you. This is bad for any exercise. But it's the absolute worst thing, especially for the isolation exercises. The difference between doing the exercise properly and
getting a ton of gains and just swinging around like a madman for absolutely zero gains is separated by just a couple of pounds. And people need to realize that these shoulder isolation exercises because the most important thing is the
proper technique. Of course, you don't want to wait to be so light that you can be somewhat challenging, but you just need to be able to control the weight on these isolation exercises and trying
to lift something that you clearly can't is just a terrible idea because when you you, you are not working out your shoulders anymore anyway as all the weight will most likely be lifted by your traps and momentum because you just
keep shrugging and swinging and that doesn't lead anywhere. You need to make are in full control of the weight as it is moving. If you can't cleanly lift the weight, then just drop it down. It's not a competition. If you have to use 5B
dumbbells to do later raises, then just do it. There is no reason to try to look tough and lift something that you clearly can't because you won't look tough. You will just look silly. The next mistake we have to talk about is
going way too ham on the front delts because nine times out of 10 that is already get worked a lot by other pressing exercises in your routine. Just the overhead press and your flat and incline chest presses are hitting your
front delts a lot. And then going out of your way to add even more exercises for the front delts is not only a waste of time, but it could actually negatively impact you over time. Because the front delts are getting already worked so much
by all the other presses, you probably already have really well-developed front delts without ever directly isolating them. And if you try to push that even further, it could create a big imbalance between the front and the rear delt. You
can spot people with this imbalance in the gym if you look for one very specific thing, and that is their posture, which is very similar to a silverback gorilla. And you really don't want this. Maybe if it also came with
the muscle mass of a gorilla, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Which segus perfectly into the next mistake, which is neglecting your real delts. A lot of makes the imbalance we just talked about even worse, because your front delts are
already welldeveloped, while your rear delts are non-existent. You absolutely order to prevent this imbalance from happening. So if you don't have any rear delt isolation exercise in your routine, I would recommend adding either the
dumbbell reel fly, the reverse spec deck, or the face pull. Adding one of these exercises to your routine will prevent you from turning into a skinny gorilla. And now the best for last. If you are struggling to grow your
whole video thinking, I'm not doing any of these mistakes, but my shoulders are still super small. then I'm pretty sure I know why that is happening. My guess is is that the training plan that you are doing was created in a way which
always prioritizes chest over shoulders. Meaning in every single workout where you train chest and shoulders, the chest is always trained before the shoulders. And do you know what this does? It shifts all the priority to your chest
burner. Just think back to when you do the bench press and after that your overhead press that you have to do after that feels absolutely miserable. Feels familiar, right? That's why you need to make a switch. If you are working out
then make sure that one day you start with the shoulders and do the overhead press as the first exercise and then in the second workout you start out with a chest exercise. This way both chest and shoulders will get equally developed and
part while the other one is left in the dust. And if you have been neglecting after your chest, you might even want to do a little more radical switch where shoulders and chest will now take the place of the body part that is more on
the back burner. And you can keep it in this order until your shoulders catch back up. And once they do, simply switch to the balance setup that I recommended before, where one day starts with shoulders and the other one with chest.
And this should cover all the biggest shoulder training mistakes. Don't forget in the first link in the description. Thank you for watching and I will see you next time. If you enjoyed this video, then I'm sure you will enjoy this
video, then I'm sure you will enjoy this one too.