Don’t Do These Moves to Build Your Shoulders. Do This Instead. | The Don't List | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00 If you want big, super strong, super heroic shoulders,
00:03 then these are the five exercises
00:05 that you absolutely don't want to do.
00:07 Welcome to the don't list,
00:08 where we're gonna tell you the exercises
00:10 that just aren't worth your time.
00:12 Yes, Instagram and gym bros,
00:13 and everybody's gonna tell you
00:14 to do certain shoulder exercises,
00:16 but if you really, really wanna maximize your gains,
00:18 these are five exercises that you can completely cut out.
00:21 First off, we have behind the neck presses.
00:23 So behind the neck presses are basically overhead presses,
00:26 except they're not done in a pattern
00:28 that's really comfortable for your entire body.
00:30 We don't get our elbows into something
00:32 called the scapular plane,
00:33 and we're basically at the polar opposite.
00:35 Now, if you can do behind the neck presses,
00:37 if you think you're doing them right, yes, it's great,
00:39 but in the long term,
00:40 you're putting your shoulder health at risk.
00:42 You're getting yourself out in this high five position
00:44 where a lot of injuries happen, and it's just not worth it.
00:47 Instead of doing behind the neck presses,
00:49 what you're better off doing
00:50 is just a standard barbell overhead press.
00:53 When you do it in front of your neck,
00:54 you're gonna be able to move more weight,
00:55 you're gonna feel a lot more comfortable,
00:57 and in the long run, those two things
00:59 are gonna help you build a lot more strength.
01:01 Exercise number two that you absolutely should not do
01:04 is the barbell upright row.
01:06 So when we think about barbell upright rows,
01:08 again, we're winding up in a lot of internal rotation.
01:11 It's just not comfortable,
01:12 and the barbell's not giving us the freedom that we want
01:14 so that we can move through the pattern appropriately.
01:17 Now, upright rows can work,
01:19 but it's just not worth doing them as barbell upright rows.
01:22 Instead, grab dumbbells,
01:24 and you can work through that same pattern.
01:26 We can also make sure that we're pulling back,
01:28 so we're gonna get a little bit of back action in there.
01:30 You're not getting any of that
01:31 with the barbell upright row,
01:32 so just cut that out, leave that to all the bodybuilders
01:35 who don't want their shoulders to work in the next 10 years.
01:38 Exercise number three is another bodybuilder favorite.
01:41 That is the heavy lateral raise.
01:43 So look, lateral raises themselves
01:45 are really great for building
01:47 the medial head of our shoulder,
01:48 but very often you're gonna see guys in the gym
01:50 picking up 40, 50, 60-pound dumbbells,
01:53 and they're gonna start swinging.
01:54 They're actually doing another thing too.
01:56 Instead of getting the weight away from them
01:58 so that we create a nice long lever
02:00 to really work our medial head of our delt,
02:02 they're going to start bending their elbows more and more
02:04 to compensate for that really heavy weight.
02:06 Now, a couple things happen there.
02:07 One, we get a whole ton of swinging happening,
02:10 which just isn't really working the muscle,
02:12 and two, we're getting into that position
02:14 where if we lose control again,
02:16 you wind up in internal rotation.
02:18 That's another position
02:19 that just isn't great for your shoulders,
02:21 so we want to avoid that.
02:22 Instead, pick up a lighter weight that you can control.
02:25 Get your arms fully extended,
02:27 pause at the top of every single lateral raise rep,
02:29 and you can even do these on an incline bench too
02:31 if you want a little bit of extra stimulus.
02:33 Exercise number four that you've got to cut out,
02:35 the standing dumbbell external rotation,
02:38 and I really just don't know why anyone does this one at all
02:40 because it's working absolutely nothing.
02:43 It looks really cool if you're moving a dumbbell
02:46 out to your side and you think you're warming up
02:48 your external rotators and you're doing all this great stuff
02:50 for your rotator cuff,
02:51 but there's actually no real force being applied
02:54 to the rotator cuff at all.
02:55 All we're really training is isometrically our biceps.
02:59 We're not here to do biceps curls
03:00 if we're trying to get big shoulders,
03:01 so what you want to do instead on that one
03:03 is we can grab a cable or a resistance band,
03:06 do your external rotations with that,
03:08 then you're going to get something out of it.
03:09 And the final exercise you've got to cut out,
03:12 this is something that a lot of people don't think of,
03:14 is the front raise,
03:15 and yes, it seems like it's going to work
03:17 your front shoulders,
03:18 and it technically does work your front shoulders,
03:20 but one, if you're training
03:22 for really, really balanced shoulders
03:24 and you really want to look like a superhero,
03:25 the last thing we need is oversized front delts.
03:28 You want to build your medial and side delts out
03:30 a lot more than that.
03:32 And two, your front delts are going to get plenty of work
03:34 if you're doing your overhead presses correctly,
03:37 especially if you're doing them the way we said,
03:39 where you've got the barbell out in front of you
03:41 or the dumbbells in that scapular plane,
03:42 your front delts are going to get plenty of work.
03:44 So you can completely cut out those five exercises.
03:47 That makes up the five exercises
03:49 on our shoulder don't list.
03:50 If you eliminate those,
03:52 you're going to build a lot more muscle,
03:53 you're going to waste a lot less time,
03:55 and you're not going to wind up
03:56 on some Instagram fails list in the long term.
03:59 (upbeat music)
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