This series is going to be based on exercises you can do besides the bench press. Everyone knows if you want to get a bigger upper body you want to do tons of bench presses. That is at least what is thought of as common knowledge. Well, that is not entirely true. You must think of the upper body as an entire package. You have a lot more than just the pectoral muscles and the triceps. There is the entire shoulder girdle and its muscles as well.
Underdeveloped anterior deltoids can really hold your bench press strength back, as well as your upper body size. You are going to want to focus on building these up as they can serve as a tremendous force in proper bench pressing (and also stabilization). The exercises you are going to do most in order to develop them will be overhead pressing type movements.
Introduction to the Anterior Deltoid
In case you didn’t know, the anterior deltoid is the muscle that juts out on the front of your shoulders, just between the pectoralis major and the middle deltoid, which is located in the middle of your shoulder. It is often the muscle referred to when people say you have a “shelf” when you are overhead pressing. There are some key exercises you can do to help build this shelf so big you can rest a pop can on there. Ok, so I am exaggerating a bit, but you get the point. Often times, this is the muscle that makes people look a lot bigger than their pectoral muscles do. It happens to be a little bit higher placement-wise so it stands out a little bit more.
What Exercises can Help Build the Anterior Deltoids?
1. Push Press
This is the king of all exercises for building up the anterior deltoids. I prefer it over exercises such as the military press, seated shoulder press and front raise because it allows you to lift more weight and put a bigger load on your deltoids. Forcing your deltoids to be able to handle more weight is something that can really cause them a lot of stress and produce a lot of growth. The other exercises are still solid for building mass and will be discussed later. The difference with a push press is just that you use a dip and drive with your legs to get the weight started off your chest, then you finish with your deltoids and triceps. The load that you can handle because of the nature of this lift makes it the king of all deltoid exercises. Be sure to insert this first into your deltoid workout so you can lift as much weight as possible. Try to stay in the 5-8 rep range with this exercise for optimal mass building. On rare occasions, you can do a set of 1-3 just to really overload the deltoids, but I don’t recommend doing a ton of max lifts with these.
2. Standing DB Shoulder Press
This can be a great exercise to do directly after doing push presses. It can cause a great pump and really get a lot of blood flowing to the muscle. We all know the pump can be the key to gaining more mass! It helps to deliver more nutrients and oxygen to the muscle all while being worked to its capacity. The reason I prefer standing to seated is because it also helps to activate your core and upper body stabilization muscles. After all, this is about building a big upper body altogether. Standing up makes your lower back and abdominal muscles work to keep the rest of your upper body stable. For this exercise, I would recommend staying in the 8-12 rep range. Anything more, and the weight will not be heavy enough for optimal growth and any heavier and you are probably going to start to cheat by using your legs as with the push press, which defeats the purpose of the exercise.
3. Standing DB Shoulder Press (with a neutral grip)
By neutral grip, I mean a grip with your palms facing in towards your head, so your hands are turned as if you are doing a hammer curl (but, you are holding the dumbbells over your head). This really targets the anterior deltoids, and 1-2 sets after your normal Standing DB Shoulder Press can absolutely fry your anterior deltoids. Changing the position of your hands will target the muscle from a whole different angle, and this can really help to round out the development of the muscle in the long-term.
This is by far the best “finishing” exercise for the anterior deltoids. If you are looking for an exercise to top off your workout and leave you feeling like you’re are on top of the world, this is the one. Just like doing a set of push-ups after a chest day, try doing a few maximal sets of Front DB Raises at the end of your workout. You’ll want to keep the weight lighter (usually anywhere from 10-25 lbs.) and try to perform somewhere between 10-35 reps. The key to doing these is that you do NOT rest between reps. Keep the pace of the reps the same, and continue to perform them at that pace throughout the entire set. This is what will make it the best finishing exercise, since keeping a constant tension on the muscle will result in an immense amount of work done by the end of the set. Sometimes HOW you perform the exercise is more important than the exercise itself.
Sample Program
Now, I am just going to combine what I recommended and put it into a sample day for your anterior deltoid workout. This can be modified slightly of course to meet your individual needs. It can serve as a tremendous outline though in terms of order of exercise selection and rep/set schemes.
Push Press – 3 sets x 8 repetitions
Standing DB Shoulder Press – 3 sets x 12 repetitions
Standing DB Shoulder Press (neutral grip) – 2 sets x 15 repetitions
Front DB Raises – 2 x max (grab a weight that you can do approximately 25 repetitions with)
Summary
This should give you a great start to your anterior deltoid workout program. You won’t have to dedicate two full days to your anterior deltoid. This can be thrown in at the end of a legs day and finished in less than 20 minutes. It doesn’t require nearly the attention that something such as your legs require. However, the quality of the attention spent on your deltoids is the most important factor to take into consideration.
Be sure to stay tuned for the rest of the Build a Huge Upper Body series, where we will focus on the other two heads of the deltoid (middle and posterior) as well as the trapezius /rhomboid muscles and the latissimus dorsi muscles.
David Spitz – David is the founder of California Strength Academy in San Ramon. This former high school football player was also a USA Junior National Team thrower in track and field. He is currently working towards his CSCS certification. Clients he has recently trained include Chris Cooper (just resigned with the Oakland Raiders), TJ Ward (second round 2009 / 2010 NFL Draft pick) and Cameron Colvin (former Oregon Ducks and San Francisco 49ers player).