can a brother get some delt help?

[18echo]

okay all you liftin' fools. i'm hopin' someone will come through with an answer that makes sense to me. i'm 6'4", 240, and look to be a sizeable guy. could use a little tightening up, but do okay with chick feedback, and have a fine one of my own.

here's the deal. my delts are, by far, the weakest part on my body. can someone tell me how this could be so. i can do the front and lat raises and upright rows with the best of 'em, but when i try to press bb's or db's, i'm weak as shit. a few good reps, but to get to 10 with 110 lbs. for more than one set is kickin' my ass!

i use strict form in lifts, and my feelings aren't hurt by having to use less because of that. but i see dudes doing 135 or more for sets that are no bigger than me, and not much harder, if at all.

when i do the lift , it's always in front of the head and i lower to all the way to the base of the neck, unlike alot of others i see. i figure, you know, full range of motion and all that.

can someone suggest something to unfuck this. i'm at a loss. my bench doesn't seem to suffer. although if the delts are weak, i guess it really does suffer, huh? and they look sizeable enough. wtf?

jon

 

[Bigsatan13]

What are you benching? How long have you been training? How big are your triceps?
Is there delt pain or just normal burn? If you are an experienced lifter you should be pushing alot more. If you are just staring out, this is something you are going to half to build on.

 

[KONDOR9]

Maybe it has to do with the order of you exercises. If you go from heavy chest work straight into shoulders and triceps then they will be weak. I think this espescially true when doing shoulder presses because a lot of the same muscles are used.
KONDOR

 

[18echo]

i'm not sure what my max is. this time last year is was probably about 330. maybe. then there was an inconsistant first 6 months of this year and a summer in central america w/ the military.

i'm definately not a novice lifter. i would consider myself experienced, and (once again) consistent. even when i was pushing 300+, my delts seemed to be ..... the...weakestlink....g'bye! i crack myself up!

tri's seem to be just as strong as those around my as well. i usually only work out with up to 225 for sets of 10-12 or failure. then drop 30, do 2 sets to fail, then 30 more, and 2 sets to fail. when i can get the second set of 225 for 12, i increase the weight for the next workout.

i've wondered whether smoking myself on the bench is the cause of shoulders being weak when i get to them. 2 of 3 workouts are based on every set to failure! i had good increases with this last year, and am doing it again. when i got off active duty last year, i was doing 240 for 11 and 9, and still climbing. started the whole workout months before with 200.

i have to try to maintain a balance of looks, strength and stamina, doing what i do in the military. that's why, presently i'm doing such high reps. it seems to work for me. my natural build is slender/athletic. i weighed about 190 in the corps a few years back. (okay, nine years.) today it's 240 give or take, and i'd like to drop to 225. presently, i'm at a 49 inch chest, and 18 inch neck. 36 waste, on the way to 34. don't know about the arms, but they seem to come across as pretty good sized. legs are a trip because i've always had these long but big thighs, even while thin, but have to KILL myself to get any sort of calf definition.

sorry bout the blabbering. just trying to give an idea of where i am in the physical standings. in the end, maybe i'll just give shoulders a try on a day other than chest. whaddaya think?

 

[MrMuscle]

ok so are you looking for size? or strenght? ive never lifted to get stron, and i see no point in trying to lift the maximum amount of weight when you train.

what ive found helpful are a bunch of special targeted exercises..many will say this is crap, mostly because the trend is go heavy all the way. but i belive that while you should do at least one heavy press movment fro shoulders. you should also do one exercise to target each delt head (frond, medior, rear)

try doing a workout looking like this:

Db presses or military presses
2 warm up sets - 3 working sets (12-8-6 reps)
Front raises
3 working sets (12-10-8 reps)
Side lateral raises
3 working sets (12-10-8 reps)
Bent over rear lateral raises
3 working sets (12-10-8 reps)
Db shrugs or bb shrugs
3 working sets (12-10-8 reps)

then do triceps afterwards..

 

[GRIMMER]

18echo

Ya, for starters you might want to do them on a diffeerent day but watch out for overtraining them and your tri's. As is with all pressing movement your tricepts play a huge role espessially at lockout for both bench and Military press. If your tri's are week then that will hurt your weight. Also if your going to failure on most of your benching it sounds like your just prefatiguing your shoulders and tri's before you even get to military. Try doing military first and see what happens. I'll put money on it that you don't fatigue as fast and can do more weight. But then again your bench won't be as high. It's kind of a trade off. Good luck

 

[MonStar1023]

18echo-
Whatsup bro? I definitely would have first tell you that everyone has a weakest bodypart and everyone's is different.. for me I would have to say that my bench is pretty weak. I personally have never lifted more then maybe 250 lbs. on flat bb presses and I weigh around 225 lbs. my chest is probably my BEST bodypart but not when it comes to flat bench. My chest is very strong with dumbbells, dips, and flyes.

Anyway aside from that there are some things that you can do to help out your delts. The first being that I would not train your delts anywhere near the same day that you train your chest. At least 2-3 days in between the workouts. For example if you train your pecs on Sunday, I wouldnt train delts until Wednesday maybe.. Your chest workout will flame your front delts completely- and training them after that would result in an overtrained state.

Also I would suggest try using a pyramid. For example sticking to BASIC exericises like seated db overhead presses or seated bb overhead presses or push presses. Behind the neck presses are also good in my opinion. Try starting off with 2-3 sets starting off with reps around 8-10, then increasing the weight and going for 6-8 reps, and then finish with 4-6 reps. I wouldnt use more then 8 sets TOTAL for your delts. I only do 6 total sets on the same day as my chest and my delts are probably my best bodypart.. maybe not #1 in strength but definitely #1 in size/development.