---
title: 'How I Blew Up My Shoulders'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=MT9ZeE5JJsI'
video_id: 'MT9ZeE5JJsI'
date: 2026-06-29
duration_sec: 846
---

# How I Blew Up My Shoulders

> Source: [How I Blew Up My Shoulders](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MT9ZeE5JJsI)

## Summary



## Transcript

What's the difference between these
three physiques? It's the shoulders,
right? This person has underdeveloped
delts. This person has well-developed
delts. And this person has 3D delts. And
in this video, I'm going to show you
seven shoulder training tips for 3D
delts. So, we'll start with a few tips
that are a bit more common, and then as
we go, they'll get more and more
obscure. So, I'd say most of you have
tried the first tip before, but I'd bet
less than 1% of you know about the
seventh tip. Of course, these things
that I'm going to show you aren't as
important as simply training hard and
being consistent, but they are
techniques that I use in my own
training, and most of them have at least
some scientific support, which I'll
highlight as we go. All right, the first
tip is to take your traps out. This
one's pretty obvious, but if your traps
are taking over on your shoulder
movements, your delts could be getting
robbed of precious tension. Now, you'll
hear some coaches say that since most
guys want bigger traps anyway, getting
some crossover work isn't actually a bad
thing. And the argument goes, as long as
you go to failure, your delts will grow,
even if your traps help out. There's
some truth to that, but I do think that
for some trainees, their delts go nearly
silent if the traps take over. And in my
coaching experience, a lot of female
trainees want to avoid growing their
traps. So, this will help with that.
Over the years, I found one cue to be
most effective in helping people engage
their side delts over their traps. Here
it is. Picture that you have this long
shovel and you're scooping sand out to
the side. This will force you to keep
your shoulders down and sweep the weight
out using your side delts rather than
shrugging it up using your traps. To be
sure though, I went to the gym and I
asked random people to try out two
different cues. For the first queue, I
just told them to just get the weight
up. Use whatever muscles you need to use
to move the weight.
>> I just want you to focus on getting the
weight up. So, use whatever muscles you
need to to move the weight.
>> Perfect.
>> I'm already thinking too much.
>> Good. It looks nice. For the second cue,
I told them to think about keeping their
shoulders down and sweeping the weight
out like you've got this long shovel and
you're scooping sand out to the side.
>> Jesus. Wow.
>> It makes it way harder, right? Did you
notice any difference in like how it
felt?
>> Harder.
>> It was harder than the second.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Hey,
>> I felt it a lot more on the second one.
Like I could feel tension more on the
way up when I'm like
>> Yeah.
>> down at the bottom.
>> Good. Cuz you can like this motion will
take your traps out from the beginning
and then Yes. as you start to get
through the range of motion, they have
to come in because your scapula had to
rotate. But
>> if you can initiate this way, I feel
like you can turn the side delts on
faster. Now, this is obviously not a
scientific survey, but every single
person I showed this to said they felt
more side delt activation when they
focused on scooping the weight out
rather than just lifting the weight up.
The second tip is to train your
shoulders more often. According to this
poll of my audience, most of you train
your shoulders twice per week. 24% of
you hit them just once a week. But
here's the crazy part. Only 11% of you
hit them three times per week and just
4% more than that. That's a low
frequency. And I think that's a mistake
if you're trying to maximize their
growth. Here's why. The amount of truly
effective volume that you can do for a
single muscle in a single workout is
lower than most people think. It
probably starts to cap out at around
six, maybe eight sets in a workout. In
other words, after you've done six to
eight sets for your shoulders in a
single workout, doing more than that
probably isn't doing much, if anything.
A recent meta analysis from this year
suggests that the cap could be as high
as 11 sets per muscle per workout, but
once you get above six or so, the
returns are greatly diminishing anyway.
Because of this, the best way to get in
more effective shoulder work isn't to
throw more sets on top of the workouts
you already do. It's to hit them more
often. Rather than cramming the volume
onto just one or two days, spread it out
across three or four days. Earlier in my
bodybuilding career, I used to do three
sets of dumbbell lateral raises after
every single workout, 5 days a week. I
think that made a difference. But what
about recovery? Well, this is anecdotal,
but from my coaching experience, your
shoulders do recover pretty quickly.
They almost never get sore. Like, do you
remember the last time your shoulders
actually got sore? And in my coaching
experience, they can tolerate quite a
beating. My shoulder strength bounces
back really fast, even after super hard
workouts. So, even if you hit them hard
with 3 to six sets on one day, you
should feel ready to hit them again
within 24 to 48 hours, especially if
you're focusing on isolation exercises
like lateral raises and rear delt flies.
And if you want to pause and screenshot,
this is how I'd set up a higher
frequency shoulder plan, which borrows
from my new Minmax program. Okay, tip
three is to get a brutally strong
shoulder press. For me, that's this
machine shoulder press, but it can be
any vertical press that you can
overload. machine, dumbbell or barbell.
Load it up with a weight that you can do
for five or six reps and add a little
weight each week. Stick with that for a
year, a full year. And if after a year
you haven't gained some serious shoulder
mass, come back to this video, take your
leg back, and swap it for a dislike.
You've earned it. The reason why this
works is simple. As you progressively
lift more and more weight on the
shoulder press, you're increasing the
mechanical tension that your delts
experience. Mechanical tension is the
main driver of hypertrophy. It isn't
that strength directly causes more size,
but they are linked. If your delts are
getting stronger on the same exercise
with the same reps and the same form,
you have in all likelihood added new
contractile tissue to be able to produce
that extra force. Now, you'll often hear
that you don't need a vertical press
because they only hit your front delts.
And your front delts already get all the
work that they need on horizontal
presses. And yes, your front delts do
get a lot of work on horizontal presses,
but your side delts are a lot more
active on vertical presses than people
realize. In fact, I tested this out for
myself with EMG and actually saw more
side delt activation than front delt
activation on this machine shoulder
press. And as we'll see when we get to
tip six, since you can only add weight
to lateral raises for so long, having a
strength focused shoulder press makes
sure that you keep progress moving.
Okay, tip number four is to bring your
waist down. And it's funny because out
of every tip on this list, this is the
one I think most people will skip, but
it's also the one that'll have the
biggest impact on how 3D your shoulders
look by far. Here I am at 20% body fat,
and here I am at 9% body fat after using
my Smart Nutrition app macro factor for
my cut. My shoulders are definitely
broader and rounder at 9% because my
waist is smaller and there's less body
fat around my deltoid muscle. The cuts
are deeper. There's more separation
between the heads. And that creates the
illusion of a more 3D look. Honestly,
you could ignore every other tip in this
video and just get leaner while training
your shoulders hard, and they'll look so
much more 3D. So, if you need a little
help with your nutrition, you can try
out Macroofactor for 2 weeks for free at
the first link in the description box
below, and I'll have a little more info
about that at the end. The fifth tip is
to lift through a variety of muscle
lengths. Real quick to get everyone on
the same page. A muscle is shortened
during the contracted half of the range
of motion and a muscle is lengthened
during the stretched aspect of the range
of motion. That's because the muscle
gets longer as you stretch it and
shorter as you contract it. So the
deltoid is shortened from here to here
and lengthened from here to here. But
here's the thing. For the front delts,
when most people do shoulder presses,
they go from here to here and back to
here. That's a pretty short range of
motion. For the side delts, most people
do lateral raises from here to here and
back to here. There's some length here
at the bottom, but peak tension doesn't
hit until the delts are pretty short.
And for the rear delts, it might be
worst of all. Instead of going from here
to here and back to here, most people
just go from here to here and back to
here. That's a lot of short length
emphasis. But longer length training
really seems to have benefits. These
three studies showed between 130 and
190% more growth when training at a
longer muscle length for the quads,
biceps, and calves, respectively. For
the delts, there's only one 8week study
that kind of looked at different muscle
lengths, and it compared the dumbbell
lateral raise to the cable lateral
raise. Dumbbell laterals provide more
tension when the delta is short. Cable
laterals provide more tension when the
delta is long. And based on prior
research, the authors hypothesized that
cables would result in more growth since
they offered more lengthened tension.
But there was actually no difference.
Both cables and dumbbells grew the
shoulders about the same. That's why I
think as the research stands, you should
include both short length and long
length exercises. But since most people
overemphasize short length deltraining,
here's the fix to balance things out. On
your shoulder presses, go deeper. Don't
stop once your arms hit parallel. Sink
your arms as low as they can comfortably
go. On lateral raises, use a cable and
stretch it across your body rather than
stopping at your side. So, sweep it
across your body like this and the range
of motion here rather than stopping at
your side. In fact, they actually did
stop at their side in that 8week study,
which I think might be part of the
reason why they didn't find a difference
with dumbbells. One of the potential
advantages of using cables is that you
can increase the adduction range of
motion and sweep the cable across your
body while keeping tension. You can't do
that with standing dumbbells. Or you
could try crossbody cable Y raises. I
love these and they offer about as big
of a range of motion as you're going to
get for your side delts from fully
lengthened to fully shortened. If you
don't have cables, lie back on a 20°ree
incline bench and do cross body Y raises
with a dumbbell. For rear delts, just
make sure you're crossing your arms over
across your body and sweeping the weight
back until you feel a nice rear delt
squeeze. Whether you do that with
cables, dumbbells, or a machine. Okay,
tip number six is to pick the right
progression scheme for the right
exercise. We all know that progressive
overload is the key to keeping a muscle
growing. You need to add a little more
stress to the muscle each week over
time. If you keep using the same weight
for the same reps week in and week out,
the muscle has no reason to keep
growing, but there is a slight problem
with progressing on shoulder exercises.
Isolation movements like lateral raises
are really hard to overload. If you
start with 15s and just add 5 lbs each
week, by week eight you'd be up to 50 lb
laterals. That's simply not realistic,
even if you get some serious cheating
going. So, you need to make sure that
your progression scheme actually matches
the exercise that you're doing. For your
heavy shoulder press, use a simple
linear progression. Add 5 or 10 lbs each
week at a fixed rep count of five or six
reps. Every 4 to 8 weeks or so, do a D
lo week where you drop the weight back a
bit and don't go quite as hard. For
isolation exercises like lateral raises
and rear delt flies, that linear
progression won't work because you'll
quickly max out how much weight you can
add. So instead, use something called a
double progression. In this case, you
pick a rep range rather than a rep
target. Let's say 10 to 12 reps. Start
in week one with a weight that you know
you can do for 10 reps and hit failure
or get close to it. The next week, do
that same weight, but this time for 11
reps. Then the next week, 12 reps. Once
you hit the top end of that rep range,
add some weight and go back to 10 reps
again. The next week, at the new weight,
add one rep again, and so on and so on.
And if you're doing three sets, you
don't need to add a rep to all three
sets. Just one rep to one set is enough
to keep progression moving, especially
as you get more advanced. But
eventually, you won't even be able to
add one rep to one set without your form
breaking down. At that point, here's the
fix. Rotate in a new exercise and start
your progression over. If you were doing
dumbbells, switch to cables and run a
new double progression there. Once you
max out what you can do on cables,
switch to a machine and run a new double
progression there. You'd be surprised
just how much of a difference actually
having a planned progression scheme that
you actually track and stick to makes
over time. Okay, we've gone through
keeping your traps out, increasing
frequency, getting a brutally strong
shoulder press, bringing your waist
down, including some longer muscle
lengths, and picking the right
progression. At the very bottom of the
iceberg, we have the seventh tip, which
is to target all heads of the delts.
This anatomy research took 60
cadaavvers, dissected them, and found
that instead of the commonly known
anterior, lateral, and posterior heads,
they're actually seven intramuscular
segments to the deltoid, each with its
own separate tendon. What we think of as
the posterior head actually branches
into three separate tendons. The middle
head has just one tendon, and the front
head also branches into three separate
tendons. So each of these seven segments
has a slightly different function. So
instead of your usual front, side, and
rear raises, add in some movements for
the planes in between. To bias the
fibers of the A2 and A3 segments, I do
incline dumbbell Y raises by lifting up
and out in a Y. You'll place the path of
resistance directly in line with those
in between fibers. For the P1 and P2
segments, try a movement like the 45°
cable rear delt pull. Stretch your arm
across your body at around a 45°ree
angle and sweep the weight down and back
almost like you're pulling out an arrow
to use for a bow and arrow. As a ball
and socket joint, your shoulder has a
massive amount of freedom of movement in
all three dimensions. So, if you're
trying to build some 3D delts, make sure
you're training them in all three
dimensions. Okay, huge announcement
before we go. The MacroFactor Workouts
app is launching in January 2026. Most
people just pick a weight at random and
go for however many reps are in their
program. This can work for a while, but
eventually you just spin your wheels,
doing the same weight and the same reps
week after week and month after month
with no actual progress. Actually,
tracking your workouts makes a massive
difference. And I promise you,
MacroFactor Workouts is going to be the
very best app for doing that. There'll
be a massive discount to the workout app
for current users of MacroFactor. Like a
huge discount. So, if you haven't
already, get started with MacroFactor
today. You can get a twoe free trial
using code Jeff to see if you like it
first and then if you do, you'll already
be a member for when the workout app
launches. And yes, the two apps sync
together. It also isn't just for
tracking. Just like the nutrition app,
it'll use science-based algorithms to
update your program over time, just like
a coach would. It'll have more analytics
and detailed feedback than any other app
on the market. And if you're a current
user of my programs, yes, there will be
a way to load those within the app. So,
click the first link in the description
box down below to get started with
MacroFactor, or you can scan this QR
code over here next to my head. Don't
forget to leave me a thumbs up if you
enjoyed the video. Subscribe if you
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all here in the next one.