Developing The Delts

Oct 20

training-delt-bodybuilder-shoulders-dumbbell

Takeaway Points:

The deltoids are an important muscle group that work in conjunction with the back, shoulders, and pectorals.
They are a small muscle group and therefore they grow more slowly. Training them is a long term goal that requires patience, strict form, and more patience.
The trapezius muscles (traps) are also key in developing the delts and are also difficult to isolate and train individually.
There are many excercises that help specifically build up the delts and traps, but they can also be trained during your normal lifting routine. The posterior delts are the least targeted during regular training so if you want to develop the delts, make sure you focus on this area.

The delts are a tough muscle group to develop, and often a very frustrating one. Today I wanted to cover how exactly I approach delt training, with about 15 years of training experience as well as 10 years of experience working with clients as a coach.

Understanding the Delts

The delts are a muscle group which acts on the shoulder, helping to raise the arms over the head.

Commonly, the delts are divided up into 3 groups - the front (anterior), middle (medial), and rear (posterior) delts.

While these three groups may not be initially very evident, they can become very pronounced in very lean and muscular individuals like bodybuilders.

In the above image, for example, we can see the division of the muscle heads.

The delts perform a lot of important functions, but one crucial thing to understand is that they are a relatively small muscle group, similar to the biceps, triceps, and calves. This means that while they can still grow in terms of strength and size, they do so typically more slowly, compared to larger muscle groups like the pectorals, quads, glutes, and so on.

Folks with lower testosterone balance and higher estrogen balance may also experience a phenomenon in which their upper bodies are proportionally a bit weaker than their lower bodies, compared to folks with higher testosterone and lower estrogen balance. This can lead to a situation in which, on top of the existing slow pace of building shoulder muscle mass, it becomes excruciatingly slow to develop your delts, and you have to take a very long term approach to see much change.

Another problem with the delts is that they partially share some movement with the much bigger and stronger pectoral muscle group. The front delts, in particular, help to perform a lot of the same movements that the pectorals do. While this is a good thing in terms of training this muscle group regularly, it’s a terrible thing in terms of isolating this muscle group.

In particular, a common delt developing exercise type (overhead pressing), suffers from this relationship. When you’re attempting an overhead press, the body wants to follow the path of least resistance in order to get the weight overhead. If a weight is light enough that the delts can handle the weight, this isn’t a problem. But if the weight gets heavier and the delts can’t handle it alone, your body will start to follow the path of least resistance, shifting the weight over to a larger muscle group - the pectorals. As a result, you’ll naturally have an urge to lean over as far backward as possible - this enables the body to engage the pectorals more, essentially turning this movement more into an incline bench press - and then you can complete the movement by engaging the larger pectorals.

This is devastating for the back though, and can quickly put you in a very compromising position. In fact, the only time I’ve seriously injured myself in the gym in all my years of training is due to this phenomenon. I was trying to do some heavy overhead pressing, way too quickly, and as a result I leaned over very far backward to attempt to complete the lift, felt a popping in my mid back, and suffered from back pain and an inability to do any heavy lower body work for a month afterwards. I learned my lesson from that injury, and was much more careful about keeping my back tight and fighting that urge to bend over in the future.

Thus, while doing any kind of overhead pressing, there can be a big risk of injury, especially if loading up the movement heavy, especially if you’re not careful about keeping your body tense and fighting the urge to bend backwards. In order to do so, it often helps to actively cue the glutes to engage during the movement - this helps to engage the lower back, and by extension, the core as well. If doing a seated version, this is less possible, but you can instead focus on keeping your low back “stapled” to the bench so that you don’t get too bent out of shape. Seated variations are a little bit safer in general, since the presence of the bench to support you makes it easier to maintain good form and fight the urge to bend over.

Understanding the Traps

The trapezius muscles, or traps, are another important muscle group when it comes to the developing of the delts. These muscles connect your shoulders to your neck, and are responsible for stabilizing the shoulder joint (for example, when deadlifting or carrying a shopping bag) as well as elevating the shoulder joint itself when needed, also called shrugging. They’re also responsible for allowing you to move your head around.

The traps also connect to the upper back, and as a result, they serve a kind of weird, in between role - they do some of the things that back muscles do, and they do some of the things that shoulder muscles do, and they do some stuff on their own. These muscles are hard to isolate and train individually, and the preferred exercise which does train them directly, also called the shrug, doesn’t have a huge range of motion. As a result, it’s easy to load up the exercise very heavy, cheat a ton of reps, look very silly, and get almost nothing out of it.

Because the traps often work alongside the shoulders, they will also often be trained alongside the middle delts in many movements. Lateral raises, overhead presses, front raises, snatches, clean and jerks, etc. - all of these will also train the traps.

This can be a challenge similar to the front delts and the pectorals above. Isolating one or the other isn’t always easy or possible, and very often, exercises for one will also train the other. This can be frustrating when you’d want the effort to mostly be developing your delts and not your traps, but ultimately all you can do is keep training both and see them develop together.

At the end of the day, it’s generally smart to see the traps as a kind of extension of the shoulders, or another muscle group of the shoulders, and thus something that should be trained alongside the delts.

Training For Each Muscle Head

Now that we’ve got a sense of the challenge at hand, how can we train each of these muscle groups individually?

Stuff That Targets Everything

At the end of the day, many movements will basically target enough of the deltoid muscle mass that it becomes somewhat irrelevant which muscle heads you’re working. This includes the major strength movements for the delts, like:

Snatch
Clean and Jerk
Overhead Press/Military Press/Strict Press
Push Press

These movements should be the basis or staple for delt and trap focused training, and will be the movements in which you see the most rapid progress in terms of strength.

The snatch and clean and jerk are relatively advanced movements, skill-wise, that would be difficult for beginners to pick up. Thus, in practice, most of the clients I work with will start off with some kind of overhead press/strict press (either seated or standing, though seated is better for beginners due to the above mentioned issue with standing presses). For slightly more experienced lifters, I’ll work in a combination of strict presses and push presses. For more advanced lifters who need it, I might work in the snatch or clean and jerk, but this is rare as these movements are a lot more specific in their applications.

Stuff That Targets The Anterior Delts

This is a tough one, because for most folks, they absolutely don’t need ANYTHING to target the anterior delts.

Thanks to the fact that this muscle head is worked alongside the pectorals, and the fact that most people are already bench pressing, there’s not too much to add there. Likewise, in standard overhead pressing, you’re already going to be doing a lot of front delt work too. Doing a lot of front delt work will probably be a waste because you’re already doing a lot of it.

At the same time, there certainly are ways to focus on this muscle group. This can include exercises like:

Front raises
Flyes
Low cable flyes
Cleans

However, if you’re training these movements, it probably shouldn’t be because of their benefits for the anterior delts - it should be for other reasons primarily, because your anterior delts probably don’t need the work.

Stuff That Targets The Middle Delts

The middle delt will also likely get trained a lot in your staples above, including the overhead press, the push press, snatch, clean and jerk, and so on. So, in many cases, it’s not necessary to really isolate the middle delts either. However, you can still get good benefit out of adding in some extra movements specifically to target the middle delts, and it won’t be nearly as overdone as your front delts are:

Lateral Raises
Upright Rows
Cleans
Muscle Snatches (this is a pet favorite movement of mine, which I’ve written about previously)
45 Degree Bench Supported Upright Rows

Classically, the lateral raise is a movement which is often used for this purpose. One important note is that the lateral raise is a very weak movement, takes a very long time to develop, and requires a lot of patience. You may need to start out with very little weight, and focus on very slowly adding reps over time instead of adding weight.

I tend to use lateral raises and upright rows a lot in home training with dumbbells, and add in muscle snatches when I’m in the gym and have access to a barbell. Many clients may not actually need to individually target the middle delts, but more advanced clients looking to improve their delt definition can definitely benefit from adding in this work specifically to target the middle delts.

Stuff That Targets The Posterior Delts

The posterior delt is probably the one that’s least targeted in your training, and can require real attention. While you will likely train the posterior delts with wide grip rows, most other back work won’t really target the posterior delts too much, and most direct shoulder work won’t target them too much either. As a result, you typically need to actually target this muscle. This includes:

Rear Delt Fly/Reverse Fly
45 Degree Bench Supported Upright Rows
Face Pulls
Band Pullaparts

This is also crucial because very often, folks overwork their front and potentially their middle delts, but they don’t do much for their rear delts. Training for the rear delts goes a long way towards keeping the shoulder joint healthy from all that front facing pushing effort, and will protect you against injury and shoulder issues in the long run.

Stuff That Targets The Traps

Lastly, again, training the shoulders should be seen as an extension of the training of the traps. Many exercises which work the middle delts listed above will also target the traps. However, if you want truly impressive traps, you’ll typically want to add in more exercises specifically to target the traps. This can include:

Shrugs/Power Shrugs
Muscle Snatch
Snatch
Overhead Shrugs
Upright Rows
Neck Exercises

In general, I recommend avoiding the shrugs - they’re a classic exercise, but they’re so easy to do wrong, and they can go wrong very disastrously. Keeping a lighter weight and doing some kind of upright row variation with good form can go a lot further, target the muscles a lot more effectively, and also have the added benefit of training your delts a bit alongside.

Upright rows get a lot of hate on the internet because they’re often misused, folks go too heavy or try too large of a range of motion, and that can risk injury. Take the exercise cautiously and it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Another special mention goes out to neck exercises. Neck exercises are often looked down on because they look weird and basically no one actually does them, but they can also be a very effective trap developer, and I would argue that they’re a more natural way to train your traps in many ways. I’ve written a solid guide on neck exercises as well that you should check out if you’re interested.

Summing It Up

Your delts, as a reminder, are a slow to develop muscle group. No matter what, you need to apply patience, train the muscles in a variety of ways to target the various heads, and then, like any other muscle group, continue to increase your training volume slowly and steadily over time.

Since the delts develop slowly, it’s generally best to focus on adding reps and sets more than weight, since it can become too easy to overload the exercise too quickly to the point that you risk bad form, limited range of motion, or injury. Play it safe if you want to truly develop your delts over time.

About Adam Fisher

Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.

During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.

Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.

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