How To Widen Your Shoulders
Once you reached adulthood, your skeleton will have stopped growing, and as such it is impossible to widen the various bones that give you that width across your shoulders. However, this does not mean that you cannot widen your shoulders, you can, but it will be through increasing the amount of muscle there is around the shoulders.
So how do you build muscles around the shoulders?
There is one main shoulder exercise that will increase the size of the shoulder muscles and that is the shoulder press. This will build up all of the three muscles that make up the shoulder, and should be done at the start of a shoulder workout.
In addition to the shoulder press, you should also look at doing some lateral deltoid raises or if your gym has a machine that can isolate the lateral deltoid, use that. This will make your shoulders bulge more along the sides, which increases the width of them.
An alternative to lateral deltoid raises is standing upright rowing, which you should be able to use heavier weights on (as there is no levering effect), but be careful how you do this exercise as you can aggravate the shoulder joints or by doing it wrong, work the traps more than you meant to.
As well as doing shoulder exercises, you should work the chest and back, especially the lats, to give your upper body that v-taper, which will accentuate the width of your shoulders (assuming you don’t have a great big beer belly!).
7 Responses to “How To Widen Your Shoulders”
March 30th, 2009 saat: 12:52 pm
Don’t forget specific exercises for your posterior (rear) shoulders! They are easily neglected (I’m guilty) but when done will give you a fuller more rounded shoulder. Essential for them looking good from behind too. Most exercises that target the rear delts call for quite low weights so keep that in mind.
April 22nd, 2009 saat: 5:56 pm
Great article and important comment, too! Thanks also for contributing to the Hardgainer Blog Carnival!
April 22nd, 2009 saat: 10:28 pm
Cheers Bill, thanks for posting my article on Hardgainer Blog Carnival!
I don’t agree that you have to go light on rear deltoid exercises, you saw from our session in the gym this evening that you can use heavier dumbells on the rear delts.
April 23rd, 2009 saat: 7:59 am
I meant lighter than you’d use for your front and lateral delts. The same theory on progressive overload applies to the rear too but they tend to be weaker than other areas of your shoulders I find.
April 23rd, 2009 saat: 12:23 pm
I find that it’s my lateral delts that I can lift the least on when doing raises, and it’s my rear delts that I lift the most on, but that’s probably because of all the back work I’ve done in comparison to my chest.
However, I’ve taken the plunge and joined a much more serious gym now so will be doing proper bench press each week, that should see my chest and front delts get bigger in the coming months!
May 11th, 2009 saat: 8:08 pm
FYI - I do a modified lateral where I’m bent not at 90 degrees, but more like 45. I sit on a bench and bend at the waist and I find that I get good stimulation in both the lateral and posterior heads. Just something I’ve found works both heads equally well.
I’m all about efficiency in the gym (and outside of it, too).
May 12th, 2009 saat: 10:33 am
Funnily enough, I’ve seen people in the gym doing a similar thing, but stood up, lent with their head against the mirror doing lateral raise, but (like you) with their back bent at around a 45 degree angle.
I find when doing laterl raise, I get a better workout if I lean forward slightly, but the best way of training lateral deltoids is with a specific lateral deltoid machine, where you lock your elbows against a pad and really isolate the lateral deltoid.
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