Breaking Shoulder Plateaus

Once again Rob Riches provides us with a video that shows you all the effective exercises you need for your workouts. This time the exercises are for your shoulders, as questions about shoulder development are very common in the bodybuilding community.

The problem with working the shoulder for many bodybuilders is that there comes a point when your efforts don’t seem to result in noticeable gains. This is called a plateau, and what you need are some simple exercises for you to break them. Quite a lot of people experience this problem, and sometimes their proposed solutions such as switching routines simply don’t work.

So let’s get right to the video while we pay attention to some of the key highlights:

  • The first exercise involves a pair of dumbbells for a sort of seated curl and press exercise. While sitting up straight, you have to raise one to your shoulders and then lift it straight up over your head as you rotate your hand.  Alternate with your left and right arms. The video shows Rob doing 4 reps for each arm, but it’s not in real time. It’s actually recommended that you do at least 6 reps for each arm.
  • The second exercise will need a kettlebell. For this position you should make sure that your legs are spread wide when you stand. You just simply lift the kettlebell to your shoulders as you pull it in, and then drop it through your legs until you raise it again. Here the video shows Rob doing 15 reps in real time. For you, at least 12 reps are recommended. You can match his pace, while making sure to copy his stance and posture.
  • These two exercises may seem a bit rudimentary, but they also focus on the three heads of your deltoid muscles (anterior, lateral, and posterior). All that pulling and squeezing really works the deltoids, and that’s the key to superior arms and shoulders. The first is more controlled when you do the reps, but it’s quite fast nonetheless. The second requires quick explosive action. The tension these exercises create on the deltoids is what you need for your workout.

Keep in mind that plateaus happen because your body can quickly adapt to stress and tension. So make sure that you change the reps every now and then. There should be some days in which you put in more reps, so that your muscles don’t get accustomed to the same things. You can also “drop set”, which means you do set to failure, and then you drop the weight for a bit and then again do set to failure. Just don’t do this too often, because it leads to overtraining. Overtraining can be a big problem, and in fact it is also one of the more reasons for experiencing shoulder plateaus.

You should also make sure that you change your exercises as well. Now that will really surprise your body, which will help break the plateau for your shoulders.