Body And Fitness Blog

Wednesday - shoulders

I’ve moved my shoulder workout from a Thursday to a Wednesday so that I can do legs on a Thursday, leaving biceps and triceps for Fridays. The reasoning being that I wanted to have enough time between chest and back (Monday/Tuesday) and biceps/triceps for recovery. Last week I did my biceps on Wednesday after a gruelling back workout on the Tuesday and I didn’t have a good bicep workout…

Shoulder press

My aim with my shoulder workout today was to increase the weight slightly on some of the exercises and also to swap a heavy duty set of shoulder press for a couple of normal sets with more weight on. Here’s the weights and reps for shoulder press:

• 15kg x 12 reps (warmup set)
• 25kg x 12 reps (warmup set)
• 37.5kg x 12 reps (heavy duty set lasting 1:30)
• 47.5kg x 10 reps (not heavy duty, only took about 40 seconds)
• 37.5kg x 9 reps (heavy duty set lasting 1 minute)
• 47.5kg x 9 reps (not heavy duty, only took about 35 seconds)

I used to really struggle with 40kg on the shoulder press so it’s nice to see that the last few weeks doing this exercise heavy duty style have lead to some significant strength as well as muscle gains. My gyms’ shoulder press machine only goes up to 67.5kg so I would think I’ll be doing that by end of June.

Lateral deltoid raises

I did two good sets of twelve reps on 8kg dumbbells last week on this exercise so decided it would be good to increase the weight on this today and just aim for two good sets of eight reps.

• 10kg dumbbells x 8 reps
• 10kg dumbbells x 8 reps

I was pleased with that, it’s more signs of progress with the shoulders, an area of my physique that I had felt was a bit poor compared to other areas, and as such the last few weeks I’ve been focusing on them a bit more.

Upright rowing

• 14kg dumbbells x 10 reps
• 14kg dumbbells x 10 reps

Anterior deltoid raises

• 10kg dumbbells x 10 reps
• 10kg dumbbells x 10 reps

Posterior deltoid raises

• 12kg dumbbells x 12 reps
• 12kg dumbbells x 12 reps

Next week I will attempt to increase the weight to 14kg dumbbells on the posterior raises and just aim for 8 good reps each set.