So You Want to Overhead Press a Car?

Shoulders for the Masses

Before I was a software engineer, before I was a personal trainer, before I was a nutritionist, and before I could shoulder press my own bodyweight, I cleaned playgrounds to help pay my way through college. You know, those tall, colorful, fun playgrounds at your local McRestaurant or Burger Fling? Yeah I cleaned those. We needed a modicum of strength and endurance to climb all around the outsides of these things, so I would frequent the weight room several times a week. Over the course of a couple years I had actually built myself a pair of respectably sized shoulders using machines and side raises with dumbbells. These were shoulders that received questions such as, “dude, have you been going to the gym?” and “hey, you lift weights right?” Wow, please guys don’t let the praise rain down too hard!

As if the disbelieving attitude towards my gym attendance wasn’t bad enough, August 1998 brought forth a day that changed my life forever. On this day I was cleaning a playground with 40-year-old Pat, whom probably never had been inside of an actual gym in his lifetime. We were rebuilding a section of wire mesh fence, and I was tasked with handing a 120 lb roll of wire mesh fencing to the boss, who was waiting on a ledge just over my head. Needless to say, I struggled and I struggled, and I got the wire up to my head, but could not jostle it up over the ledge. Pat came over and shoved me out of the way, tossed the wire up over the ledge with moderate but not overly taxing effort, and proclaimed to me, “It’s a good thing that you look really strong, because I’m way stronger than you.”

At that moment I wanted to do one of two things: a) pick this man up and throw him off the playground to be impaled by the spikey hair of the giggling children below, or b) hide my head like an ostrich and, with any luck, suffocate myself in the dirt. Because I could do neither, due to my lack of throwing strength and the fact that I could only find concrete for miles in any direction, I was forced to suffer through the rest of the day knowing that I was inadequate as a man when compared to this lanky 40 year old.

That night I went home and decided it was time for a change. No longer would I focus on building “caps” on my shoulders, or defining the separation of my front deltoid from my medial deltoid. I wanted to be able to pick up men and throw them. I wanted to use the 100 lb dumbbells for shoulder pressing at the gym. I wanted to shoulder press cars! Hell, I wanted to be able to lift the wire mesh fencing over my head!!! Yes, it was time to get strong, and my research led me to 3 fundamental rules that would help me formulate my strength training for years to come.

Rule #1: Lifting Heavy Weights Will Make You Strong.

Find the exercises that allow us to lift as much weight as possible. We want to focus not only on the shoulders but all of the muscles that will work in conjunction with the shoulders during maximal exertion.

Rule #2: High training frequency will make you strong.

Perform our strength training as many times as possible in a certain time-frame, allowing for both active and inactive recovery.

Rule #3: Injury prevention will keep you healthy.

Obvious and simple: if you have muscle imbalances you will get injured. Training for injury prevention will keep you in the gym rather than on the couch or in the OR.

These rules are very easy to understand and even easier to implement. First we must choose between the options we have for training our shoulders: upright rows, pressing, lateral raises; then throw in a bit of power: high pulls, cleans, push press; and finish it off with some injury prevention: internal and external rotations. Clearly any form of pressing or compound exercise will allow us to move a maximal amount of weight. We want to work our shoulders from as full a range of angles as possible.

The Program

Given these conditions we arrive at the push press for maximal power and shoulder socket stability. Standing behind-the-neck shoulder presses will target muscles that are not ordinarily used in military presses and dumbbell presses. Standing alternating dumbbell presses will be utilized to train the shoulder stabilizers as well as provide maximal unilateral stimulation. Internal and external rotations are our best choice for saving our precious rotator cuffs. Finally, those tried and true lateral raises are great for raising work capacity and assisting with active recovery.

We will not be employing the use of upright rows due to their lack of transference to pressing and their predisposition to cause trauma to the shoulder capsule.

Notes

This program is designed to focus solely on shoulder strength. It should be performed for either 40 or 80 days before switching your focus to another muscle group. Remember rule #3: muscle imbalances = injury; by switching up our focus we are allowing the rest of our muscles to catch up with our newfound shoulder strength. I recommend focusing on lower body for a couple months after this program is over.

The program is set up as a 3 day split over the course of 8 days. Ideally, the main workouts would occur on M/W/F/Su/Tu/Th/Sa/repeat, but for the sake of scheduling it is acceptable to take a 2-day weekend, inserting the additional off-day as necessary, resulting in a M/W/F/M/W/F/repeat split.

The active recovery sessions are optional, but by skipping them you are limiting the total effectiveness of this program.

Thanks to my own personal experience, I know that abs and calves tend to be problem areas for most people. To combat these deficiencies I tend to use a super-set scheme wherein I perform sets of abdominal and calf training in conjunction with my other exercises. If you decide to do this, simply add in your sets of abdominal and calf training as outlined below, resting only after the abs and/or calf sets. These can also be ignored if you so choose, but I have not otherwise allowed for abs or calves throughout the program.

1-2 additional sets may be added as warm-up sets before performing your working sets for each exercise. Only the final set should be your maximal intensity attempt. Do not attempt to go to failure on all sets, and in fact attempt to avoid going to complete failure in most cases. Use your own instinct to decide if you can perform the next rep without help, if not, do not try it.

You should never, for any reason, reach the point of failure on an active recovery session. If the prescribed rep range is 20 you should use a weight that you can handle for 25-30.

Workouts should not last longer than 60 minutes from the time you execute your first work set. You should not take longer than 2 minutes rest between super-sets, and in fact shorter rest periods are recommended based on personal work capacity.

Editors Note: For those unfamiliar with training programs, the numbers following the exercise name are your (sets x reps). The reps are the number of repitions you should do, and the number of sets are how many times you repeat the repitions. For example, (3 x 7) would mean 3 sets of 7 repititions, with rest in between each set.

Days 1-8: Testing your 7 Rep Max

Day 1: Power & Strength (Shoulders, Chest, Triceps)
• Push Press (3 x 7)
• Flat Bench Press (3 x 7) & Seated Calves (3 x 10)
• Incline Dumbbell Press (3 x 7) & Abs Exercise (3 x 10)
• Skull Crushers (3 x 7) & Standing Calves (3 x 10)

Day 2: Active Recovery
• Cardio: 20 minutes (optional)
• Dumbbell side raises (2 x 20) & Dumbbell front raises (2 x 20)
• Fly Machine (2 x 20) & Reverse Flies (2 x 20)

Day 3: Leg Day (Legs, Horizontal Back, Biceps)
• Squats (3 x 7)
• Bent Over Rows (3 x 7) & Abs Exercise 1 (3 x 10)
• Stiff Leg Deadlift (3 x 7) & Standing Calves (3 x 10)
• Bicep Curls (3 x 7) & Abs Exercise 2 (3 x 10)

Day 4: Active Recovery
• Cardio: 20 minutes (optional)
• 1 minute of bodyweight squats (3 sets) & Neutral Grip Cable Rows (3 x 20)

Day 5: Maximal Strength (Shoulders, traps, triceps)
• Standing Behind Neck Shoulder Press (3 x 7)
• Barbell Shrugs (3 x 7) & Calf Exercise 1 (3 x 10)
• Standing Military Press (3 x 7) & Abs Exercise (3 x 10)
• Close Grip Bench Press off Pins set 2 inches above chest (3 x 7) & Calf Exercise 2 (3 x 10)

Day 6: Active Recovery
• Cardio: 20 minutes (optional)
• Dumbbell side raises (2 x 15) & Dumbbell front raises (2 x 15)
• Fly Machine (2 x 15) & Reverse Flies (2 x 15) – Use Same Weight as Day 2

Day 7: Uni-lateral & Injury Prevention Shoulder, (Vertical Back, Legs)
• Standing Alternating Dumbbell Press (3 x 7)
• Deadlifts (3 x 7) & Standing Lateral Rotations (3 x 10)
• Pull Ups (or downs) (3 x 7) & Abs Exercise 1 (3 x 10)
• Lying or Cable External Rotations (3 x 10) & Cable Internal Rotations (3 x 10)

Day 8: Active Recovery
• Cardio: 20 minutes (optional)
• 1 minute of body weight squats (3 sets) & Neutral Grip Cable Pulldowns (3 x 20)

Days 9-16: Learning to Push the Limit

• Replace all (3 x 7) with (4 x 5) and (3 x 10) with (4 x 7)
• Keep active recovery the same

Day 17-24: Full on Strength Training

• Replace all (4 x 5) with (5 x 3) and (4 x 7) with (5 x 5)
• Keep active recovery the same

Day 25-32: Full on Strength Training

• Same as Days 17-24

Day 33-40: Active Recovery Week

• Day 33: Same as Day 1, but 2 x 10 on everything
• Day 34: Cardio optional
• Day 35: Same as Day 3, but 2 x 10 on everything
• Day 36: Cardio optional
• Day 37: Same as day 5, but 2 x 10 on everything
• Day 38: Cardio optional
• Day 39: Same as day 7, but 2 x 10 on everything
• Day 40: Cardio Optional

Days 41-80: Doing It One More Time

You should strive to use more weight than the first 40 days for every set of every exercise. After the 80 days it might be a good idea to take an entire week off, utilizing active recovery for all muscles during that week.

Now go out there and overhead press a car!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Weight Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.