Shoulder Training | ETP#138

What's going on guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome to episode 138. This episode is titled Shoulder Training. This is part two in our design series. Last week we covered back and lats. So if you did not catch the first series, I would highly recommend it going back and listening to that episode. Brian, can you kick us off with some updates before we get into today's episode, please? Yeah, man, for sure. First update, it's snowing a lot here in Boulder these days. We've had three snows now, and because of the time of year it is, or maybe it's global warming or whatever, I mean, it is December, it shouldn't actually be warm. But we've had a series of really nice days before and after these snow days. So one thing I did not expect going into the kind of winter of this year, is the ability to be able to actually ride my bike. And I've been pleasantly surprised that I have been able to do that. And so one thing I've really enjoyed and taken just a lot of pleasure in is taking my, I don't wanna call it a fat tire mountain bike, but it is a fatter tire mountain bike than like a standard mountain bike. It's got 2.6 inch wide tires. So it's not like one of those fat tire bikes that you see people riding around in inclement weather with. you know, four inch tires, but it's also not, you know, a thin tire. So I've been able to take my mountain bike out on the gravel trails covered in snow. And, you know, it's been in the mid 40s, high 40s and sunny the day after snowing. And it's just been this incredible, beautiful experience, completely engrossed in just riding over this incredible white powder, looking at the mountains covered in snow around me. and no pressure of going fast or trying to hit any metrics that I've created in my head. It's really just kind of one with nature and physical exertion and really been enjoying that. So I don't expect to be able to do this throughout the season the whole winter, like January and February are gonna get really, really cold, but really enjoying taking advantage of it at this time. Okay, so rowing updates here. in taper week officially. Today is my first taper workout. So we're like six weeks in. We've done a whole bunch of progressing. Last week I hit some really solid numbers on the rower that, shit, if you would have asked me six or seven weeks ago if I'd be able to do, I would have probably told you no. So today starts taper week. We have one week of tapering with lower efforts and stuff like that. And then next week we test the 2K row. And I don't know who remembers or who even listened, but I noted a couple weeks ago that Mike Nelson and I, my coach decided that the goal for this off season of our work together is gonna be for me to row a sub seven minute 2K row, which is just an insanely fast row. My PR all time was 713, this was in 2011. And then since then, I did a 7.23 a couple months ago and a 7.14 at the beginning of this training cycle. So one second off my all-time PR, but still 14 seconds away from ultimately our long-term goal. And so this 2K row test that I have coming up next week, I don't expect to go sub 7, but I definitely expect to see some improvement from 7.14. And I'm already nervous about how much that one's gonna hurt. So jumping into the next update here, we talked briefly last week about the quote, intelligent bro split. And then I went on to Jeff Haines podcast, the mind muscle connection. And I talked about the intelligent bro split a lot on there. We talked about it on here. And then I put a post on Instagram about it. And I'm just beyond excited for this thing, man. If y'all have missed my post on the intelligent bro split, it's... It's a bro split, like it's like, it looks like chest, back, legs, shoulders, arms type thing. But it's organized a little bit differently with, you know, using certain movements on certain days to have a little bit of crossover effect. And obviously, I'll have more details on that as we get into it here. It should be mid January when the beginning of that drops. But go check that post out and comment if you have any questions. I think it's going to be a really cool thing. And taken a bit of inspiration from Aaron and the fact that he's been running a bro split mostly for the last year as well. And I had great success with that. So excited to jump on there. And then my final update, man, these have been fast today. I mentioned last week, the Paragon 21 week hypertrophy cycle that's starting January 1st. And so just a reminder, since this episode is gonna drop, you know, late-ish December. January 1 is our transition week, and then January 8th actually starts the official 21 week hypertrophy cycle, where we're going to alternate specializations between, the first one is gonna be a lower body specialization for seven weeks, then a push specialization for six weeks, and then a pull specialization for seven weeks. So the whole cycle itself is a five day split, for those following the five day program, we'll also have a three day version of it, but it's gonna go lower, push, pull, upper. lower. So five days of training, which we haven't done in Paragon in a couple years. We had a specialty cycle in 2021 that had a five-day split, but for the most part, we've been doing four-day splits and three-day splits. So something new on the horizon here. And we also have some counseling on how you could swap that five-day split down into a four-day split. Lots of more information coming, but exciting stuff all around. And then, yeah, as I said, Brian's program is gonna jump onto the Intelligent Bro split around the same time. So that's it, man. What's going on with you? So, the first thing I will say is this has been my first, like really, or I guess I should say I had my first kind of tough week with dieting. I could just feel it, like desire to train lower, performance training lower, the DOMs from training like considerably higher. And Typically the training sessions are pretty fun and we might make some jokes in between and stuff, but we literally... It'd be like three hours of like, Jackson would do a set and then we wouldn't say anything and then I would do a set. I could tell it was me, but it's just like, I don't have anything to say. I'm just getting through here and then I'm going to go home and eat. I just felt empty is a really good way to put it. And then that's kind of like persisted. And some of the refeeds, I basically have two weekly refeeds. They pick me up a little bit, but it's just, the fatigue has accumulated, like officially accumulated, and I am feeling it. Which kind of leads me into my second, this isn't necessarily an update, but because I know we're getting to the end of the year, many people are framing up their January 1 diets and those sorts of things. And I do wanna talk about it really quickly. I just checked. I have just wrapped up my 21st week of dieting, right? And week 20 is where I could really feel some of the like diet fatigue. The biggest thing that I have used in this diet is like a framing, a frame of mind on it, right? I am in control. I am choosing to do this, right? And I think I'm choosing to approach it from a very, very positive, you know, standpoint. I think so many people where they shoot themselves in the foot is approaching their diet from a very negative outlook. I had to have this conversation with a client. Her and I will be commencing our diet in January and she's like, I'm just mentally preparing for how miserable and how shitty this is going to be. And I'm like, you're mentally persuading yourself into it being miserable and shitty. Unless you're getting like really lean or... let's say we're crossing a very large threshold. Like I have a client, we're coming up on 40 pounds down. We started sub 200 pounds, right? That's a big gap to close. Like we, he has justifiable diet fatigue. You know, if you're losing four and a half percent of your body, body weight, maybe seven, 8%, it might take you 10, 12 weeks. It does not need to be miserable, unless you're doing endless cardio or something like that. the physiological adaptations of sustained dieting will not likely set in too strongly. It's mostly going to be from a frame of mind standpoint. So just a gentle reminder for everyone out there to approach it from a positive frame of mind. Set hard goals, set big outlooks or reasons why you are doing it, and then I would recommend like approaching that from your lifestyle. So it's not like the... Oh, am I going to deviate this weekend or not? It's like, I have a commitment, a contract, whatever you wanna call it with yourself that I'm sticking through to like this date or this body composition. And you turn it into a kind of an iterative objective approach as opposed to this pie in the sky. And then this comes from dealing with so many clients. People are like, I'm really hoping this diet works. I'm like, what do you mean hoping? Right, like we. It's a science. We have an executable plan. All you have to do is hope that your environment doesn't make things necessarily harder than they need to be, but I think it just goes to show it's so difficult for so many people because so many people are kind of like misled or have poor environments or mindsets around it, but it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah, I think the frame of mind piece is huge because like I try to look at the beginning of dieting as something that I'm actually looking forward to because you've likely been in a surplus or you've been feeding yourself sufficiently for so long that there's actually something kind of endearing about the early stages of that more empty feeling. And you do see a lot of the biometrics, the feedback that you're that you're getting from your body, you see a lot of that improve in the beginning of dieting as you're going from like an extenuated off season where maybe you're pushing food too much, you're getting a little sluggish, lethargic, all that stuff, clothes aren't fitting the way that you want them to. And then you kind of dive into that diet to begin with. And it's almost like this honeymoon phase in the beginning where it's this beautiful experience and everything feels better. You feel lighter, your mental clarity increases. I'm a huge fan of those first few weeks. And yes, eventually it does get hard, but going into it already thinking about how awful it's gonna be is really setting yourself up for failure. So I love how you frame that where it's like, hey, I chose to do this. Like I want to be here. And then also look at it at the light at the end of the tunnel is it's like, hey, I go through this diet and then I get the beauty, the benefit of building back up my food intake. And so it's, I kind of analogize it to If you just had sunny days, 365 days a year that were 65 or 70 and sunny every day, you begin to not appreciate those sunny days. But when you have some cloudy days or some rainy days or some snow or whatever it is, then when that beautiful sunny day comes around, you're like, ah, that is amazing. So yeah, I totally agree with you. spot on. And obviously I shared that Instagram reel of me learning to do some posing and some potentials there. And I've gotten some questions around like, well, when is the diet going to end? How many weeks are you doing? What's the goal weight? And I really, I don't have one, but something that I set out with, and I believe I may have touched on this in the podcast, like number, number of weeks back. This one's, it's a little bit potentially depressing, but this may be like my last rodeo, you know? And I think if I were to ask you, Brian, right, in all honesty, do you think that your like best, most muscular, leanest physique is still in front of you? Or do you think that day has actually passed already? It's a good question. If I continue prioritizing cardio and quote health in the longterm, which I don't see changing, then I think it's probably likely that my best physique is in the past because I just think there's probably too much cortisol and body comp negative effect from doing all this cardio as you get leaner and leaner and leaner. However, I'm not completely, I would say there's like a five to 10% chance that I'm still romanticizing this idea of really going all in on hypertrophy and possibly stepping on stage again and really like five to 10%. Like it's a small point at this point, but I do think there might come a point where three, four years from now I'm like, ooh, this cardio adventure is fun and all, but like, hey, you know, my passion has been hypertrophy training for two and a half decades, three decades at that point. do I want to try to achieve my best? And being very inspired honestly by Jeff Alberts because Jeff, the 3DMJ godfather on Instagram, he just competed at 53 years old, not only won a couple shows, but made it to WNBF Worlds, placed fifth at Worlds in the open division at 53 years old. And whether that's his best physique ever, or just, you know. close to or equal to his best physique ever, whatever it is, it's extremely impressive. And he's done it on a low volume of training with mostly just steps and diet manipulation. And granted, this guy's a legend. Like he's done 14 seasons of competing and like, fuck, I don't know, 80 shows at this point, whatever it is. And I know I'm round about not answering your question, but yeah, very unlikely that my best physique is ahead of me. But I think that that's mostly a result of me and my lifestyle and what I've chosen to prioritize. And there is a small possibility that I think I could exceed my best physique ever if I really line up all my ducks in a row and prioritize it once again. Yeah, so really, really good answer and sorry to kind of put you on the spot there. I have been, I could say struggling with that. And as we age, you get this cumulation of all your life's decisions that kind of brings you to this point. And some of the things are like, I'm turning 36 soon. I have a lot of entrepreneurial pursuits going on in this next 18-month period. I need to start a family in like two years sort of thing. Like I'm, and I'm realizing like this might be it. Like I might be in my final rodeo where this, I don't, I have the time and things to dedicate to it. So that is the kind of pie in the sky. That's really anchoring me to like all this. I mean, I can't call it suffering, right? All this, what I'm doing, like it's, it's worth it because this might be like a culmination of the 20 years of Aaron in the gym. these sorts of things. I may be in that time right now. Let's try and enjoy it. We're going to take the photos. We're going to take photo shoots because this may be effectively a part of whatever legacy I end up do have for myself or potentially to show my kids when maybe they're getting into lifting and fuck, I'm probably like 60 at this point. You know what I mean? So like this may be it and I'm in the thick of it. So that one I have been kind of struggling with a little bit, but... has been really anchoring me for the diet and training sort of thing. Yeah, so a couple of questions here just before I let you go since I know the people are going to want to know. Are you intending on getting any sort of DEXA or body comp analysis at the end of the diet? There's just nothing here. The best thing I can get is like a, what the hell is it called? A BIA. Yeah, and they're just not good. And I don't think it's helpful. So I won't know. Where would you estimate your body fat is right now? And then in the same question, I'm sure you've talked to Jackson about this, how much further do you think that you guys would have to go to get to a point where you could step on stage? I say I'm sub 10 right now, like high nines. I'm very, very flat in those sorts of things. You can just tell when you have a good pump and your veins come out, it's just not happening. Very flat. What we've decided is we're gonna run, push three more hard weeks and then kind of see. If I wanted to step on stage, It would be, I mean, I could peak effectively at the end of that. And that would be good enough to step on stage, but it would be more so like, you know, where is a show and you know, what, what division and, and it's that I'm still way too kind of green to any of that. Um, I'd get my ass kicked and I'm, this is a, this is a conversation. This is something I'm saying that I say in business is like, I don't play a game that I can't win. I'm, I don't have. much interest in like stepping on stage like just to do it. If I am going to do it, I want to be competitive in it and I know I can't be that in like three weeks so I don't have any interest sort of thing. think that it's a timing piece too, because the season just wrapped up, they had WMBF Worlds. So I don't even think there's a series of shows starting again until, you know, mid spring 2024, like maybe April-ish, and you're not gonna sit there and die it for another four and a half months. So, yeah, that's interesting. So, but you did allude to getting on stage potentially in that post where you were working on your posing. So at least it is something in the back of your mind. It's in the back of my mind. I've committed to learning for if and when that time comes, I will be somewhat prepared in not starting from ground zero. Yeah. Are you thinking bodybuilding or classic? Should that opportunity come? I have to compete in men's physique realistically. Yeah, I just don't. Yeah, I don't have the physique to be competitive in anything else. Right. And I don't want to be. have a really competitive physique for men's physique though. The way that you have the small waist and the broad shoulders and the really jacked arms and shit. Like, I mean, you would rock that look. And like this has been one from like meeting Branden Kempter has been absolutely amazing just because it's given me such an another insight into just natural bodybuilding. And man, I wish I could have prepared for this, but if anyone's interested in this, like message me, Brandon has a business partner. I apologize. I cannot remember his name, but one of his Instagram posts pop up and Brandon shared it and it was him in his 2021 prep, right? peeled, dude is peeled, right? Striations in the chest, striations in the delt, way leaner than I am right now. And in the post, it's like 17 weeks out. 17, right? That's four months still, and he's already leaner than I am. And Brandon was like, that's just what it takes, you know, and I was like, you're right. And that's not for me. It's a whole new level. like when I did Men's Physique, and this was granted 2015, but I did an NPC show, meaning that some of the people were probably enhanced around me. And the feedback that I got from all the judges was that I was too big. And so I was 5'10 and 180 or 179 at that point. and most of the guys around me were in the 150s, low 160s. So I was like 20 pounds bigger than most of those guys. If you did men's physique, man, you would be in the high 180s. Like you would be even larger than I am. And you'd be doing it natural. You'd probably be doing it at a natural show. So you might just stand out and look like this gigantic thing next to all these other guys doing men's physique, you know? Yeah, I haven't seen much of the men's physique in the natural world. I typically only ever see the bodybuilding stuff from there. Yeah, big one, a little aside there. Last thing this one will make quick. So this one is kind of puzzling for me. I have been getting insane pumps and stimulus in my Rec Femme from my Pendulum Squat sets. Do you have any thoughts there, Brian? Yeah, from what I understand about the pendulum is that the way that it kind of runs on that arc is that you're actually getting quite a bit of knee extension going on. And so it's a bit of a hybrid between like a standard squat, which would prioritize the other three quad muscles, and a leg extension, which hits all the quad muscles, but also prioritizes the rec fem. So I do think through the pendulum, especially when you're doing it with your knees forward So you're not going like a little wider with toes pointed out where you would get more of an adductor stimulus. I do think you're getting quite a bit of actual knee extension when you push out of the bottom of that pendulum. That is such a simple explanation. And I was like, it's a perfect explanation, thank you. But yeah, I would come off and then like, you know, it's like you finished a set and then it takes a little bit for like the blood to really set in and that sort of thing. And they would be on fire and like killing me. And I'd be like, dude, what is this? I've never had my rec fems feel like this from any kind of squat pattern. But like you said, you're actually getting like a good amount of knee extension because of the arcing motion, which makes perfect sense. Okay, thank you. All right. Should we jump into some delts? We should. All right, well, like we did in the back episode, we're gonna take it from three angles and we're gonna talk most of the time about how we would train delts in a commercial gym. And then we're also gonna spend time in a home gym and in a dumbbell and bands only program. I will say that it's likely that for the delts specifically, we're gonna see a lot of crossover between home gym and the dumbbell bands program, just because delts and specifically the lateral delts, the side delts, they respond to abduction, meaning the arms moving away from the body. And it's quite difficult to move the arms away from the body without some dumbbells. There are definitely some barbell movements we can do, such as different upright rowing variations and things like that. But for the most part, we are probably going to see pretty solid similarities between those two home gym programs. And then we'll obviously have a lot more creativity that we can discuss here with the delts in the commercial gym program. The other thing I'll add is we did cover the rear delts in quite a bit of depth last week in the back and lats training. And so yes, the rear delts are a piece of the three headed delt monster with front, side and rear delts. But I don't think we need to belabor the rear delt point. We can probably gloss over it a little bit because it... I think in almost all programming, the rear delts are a part of the back training. You generally are not going to include rear delt training on your delt day, so to speak, unless you're really trying to bring up your rear delts. And then that's like a different conversation we can kind of get into along the way. Yeah, something, that's a really, really good point. Something that helps me, or helped me kind of categorize how I want to explain this to people, and something that I find this, having this conversation with clients is, and 100% I was guilty of this, is people learn movements, right? You do this movement for shoulders, or you do this movement for chest, and instead of breaking things down, kind of like your movement pattern. So, what I wrote down here that I think is helpful for some of the listeners kicking off is like when we have, we talk about like the front delt or the anterior delt, we are going to have some pressing movements, right? Which are going to target the anterior delt. And then you can have raising movements, which are still going to target the anterior delt, but typically with a straight, with a locked elbow, right? So think about, you know, anterior delt press or, you know, shoulder press, neutral grip, shoulder press for lack of a better... a simpler explanation and then you can do a dumbbell front raise, right? We're also going to have in a lateral raising like Brian alluded to like a dumbbell lateral raise or something like that. And then we don't really have like a pressing for the, you know, lateral medial delt, but you do have like an upright row, which again is going to be like the bent elbow. And then for the posterior delt, we do have a posterior delt raise where that elbow is going to be pretty much fixed. in your arcing emotion to get into the posterior delt. And then we don't have obviously pressing for the posterior delt but you will have like a rowing there. So it's a very pretty straightforward way to conceptualize breaking each of the three heads of the delts into like a raising or arcing pattern and then either a pressing or effectively rowing pattern with a break at the elbow. Yeah. No, that's a really good way of describing it. Um, I think one thing we could say to just clarify the pressing piece is that from what I've seen on analysis of biomechanics is that the bottom of a pressing motion, especially if you go really deep, you get a lot of medial sli- I guess lateral delt would be the proper way of saying that, in the bottom range of that motion. So when you begin your press from the bottom and your humerus, your tricep essentially is angled down, as you initiate that press, we're getting a lot of lateral delt. And then it continues to be lateral delt until the humerus, the tricep upper arm, gets to about parallel to the ground. So if you wanted to do a more lengthened approach for the medial delt that I think really is under discussed across you know, the industry in general that you don't really hear about too much. You could do lengthened partials where you're probably working the bottom 40% of a pressing motion. And that would be a pretty solid stimulus for the lateral delts in that manner. So that's something I actually haven't really messed with. Like I've always used pressing for anterior delts, like you said, but as you were discussing it, it kind of popped into my head and something that shit I might introduce into my own programming would be like some bottom partials there in what would usually be considered an interior del press. Yeah, that like a Smith Machine variation or something like that would be wonderful there where your leverage really drops off to generate like quality force, you know, once you kind of get above the head, where in the bottom position, like you have a lot of good strength there. So even like programming like partials down there, you could load that quite well and it's stable. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. And then also I think it kind of goes without saying for a lot of our audience, but I'll say it anyway, is that most delt training is probably gonna be focused on the lateral delts. Because we discussed the rear delt, like the rear delt is a huge piece of it too, but given that we are gonna mostly fixate that onto back day, you don't see a lot of people really spending a ton of time and volume on their front delts. And the reason that is, is because the front delts get hit so much. through all pressing. Like, yes, you can bias them a little bit more through the quote, anterior delt pressing, where you're at a 70 degree incline or whatever it is, or up to vertical and doing your pressing that way. But, you know, even on a flat dumbbell bench press, a flat barbell bench press, an inclined bench press, a decline bench press, I mean, a dip, like the front delts are hit really, really hard. by almost every pressing movement that we do. And thus, you know, unless you're doing a cycle where there's significantly less chest pressing overall, maybe you're a female athlete and you're not doing any chest pressing, but you do care about your front delts. Maybe you're a male who is doing chest pressing, but your front delts are weak. There's certainly a number of situations where... you would do front delt training. But I think if I were to like be put on the spot and ask like, hey, how many people should really be prioritizing front delt work? I would say it's like 20% or something like that. So it's not a high number. And thus the majority of the discussion today, I think should probably be centered around the various ways that we can attack the side delt. That is very, very eloquently put and I do agree. Even as someone though, I am that person who my anterior delts just suck relative to chest. Yeah, I mean, you are very chest dominant. You've always had a really good chest. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's genetically? Do you think you've done more flat pressing than incline pressing? I think it's only, and I'm almost kind of ashamed to say this, but maybe in the last two years have I really started thinking about doing a movement and then I rack it and then I'm like, okay, where do I feel that? You know? Whereas so long, it was just, this is the movement, I do it, and I move on. And even when I'm doing a lot of pressing, I don't have an anterior delt stimulus from it. It's chest, overwhelmingly chest. So I think it's just maybe it's a little bit of like, you know, a mental or biomechanics a little bit or how I press, but it's just like, yeah, yeah. right, cool. Well, let's dive into front delts first, um, since we're on the topic and we'll get through that relatively quickly. And then we can spend the bulk of the time on the lateral belt here. So, um, front delts, we each pick a favorite exercise, right? I kind of think we should pick a pressing one and a raising one just for the sake of giving people the options, right? Um, so the pressing one. We may agree here. I know you do a lot of interior dumbbell pressing and you've actually gotten quite strong at it. I think during the end of your. bulking cycle before you got into the deficit, you were doing the 88 pound, the 40 kilogram dumbbells, is that right? I don't know if I ever got to the 40. I think I maybe did, I remember I did the 38 kilogram dumbbells for a set of 10. I remember checking that off and I don't know if I ever got a stab at the 40s or not. Cool. Well, that's like 83.6 pounds, I think, something like that per dumbbell. So that's a pretty hefty overhead press, especially because you were doing it relatively vertical. Like, yes, you were leaning back a little bit into the bench, but it wasn't a I wouldn't call it like a 60 to 70 degree press. It was much more of like an 80 degree press. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Why do you select that angle versus like a slightly lower angle? It's just what feels comfortable. When it's a slightly lower angle, I find that if you're watching on YouTube, I kind of lose this here a little bit where it's like, I get a lot of, the dumbbell wants to move forward and it's hard to keep it in place where if I'm just up a little bit more, I'm not coming to here. It's like, it just feels more natural for me, is the best way to put it. going to be slightly different. I remember Cass talking about this to me a couple of years ago, and it came down to kind of the size of your ribcage and how that changes the way that it sits in your torso position. So he noted that my anterior delt press would be potentially as low as 45 degrees, which is really low. I mean, that's how I used to incline dumbbell chest press back in the day. But since then, I've kind of reallocated it. Reallocated is the wrong word, but I've switched my anterior delt pressing more to like 60 degrees. So it's still quite a bit lower than what you're using, but I do find that at the 45 degree, I was getting a lot more chest than I wanted. And then at the 60 degree, it felt like it really shifted significantly into the anterior delt while still providing a bit of that like upper shelf for the pack. But also probably worth noting that the anterior delt and the upper shelf of the pack are connected based on the way that they insert. You can't really directly target one without getting some stimulus into the other. And so by you using an 80 degree, you are probably limiting some of that upper pack stimulus more than I would be at 60 degrees. But either way, we're still both getting a bit of both. And so that's probably something important to keep in mind as you kind of look at the stimulus that you're creating or if you're counting total work sets or something along those lines. But definitely my number one movement for anterior delt pressing is going to be the anterior delt dumbbell press, but a really close second and even maybe equal to it would be a cable or a machine press. There are a lot of really good overhead pressing machines now that are not completely vertical. They used to be set up in such a manner that you were literally sitting directly vertical and it would always feel like it was jamming my shoulder when I was doing it. And now I go into commercial gyms on the rare occasion that I'm traveling or whatever and I see these machines that are slightly leaned back. So there are more of that like 70 to 80 degree angle and then they have an arc, a convergence. of the arms on the machine, which is so dope too, because you see this a lot on chest pressing machines where they'll start wide and come narrow for that adduction across, but you want adduction as well for the front delt. You want to start wide and come narrow. And so when you look a lot of these new machines in these commercial gyms that are being designed, you'll see A, a leaned back position to more prioritize the anterior delt, and you'll see a converging arm path. And so I hesitate to say that that is my number one, because I think it very much depends on the quality and the set of that machine for your body. And it's difficult to advise machine work for chest pressing and for anterior delt work just because it is so dependent on your individual anatomy and structure. But if you can find one that works really well, I might say that that's my number one instead of going with the dumbbell. But the dumbbells are just so great because you can manufacture that ideal. I love that this came up because I don't remember if I got to say my choice. It's the anterior dumbbell press. It's a dumbbell anterior press. And the reason why is I find probably more so than any other piece of equipment, the strong distaste for many overhead pressing machines. Even ones with like the arcing pattern, the resistance curve is very, very just... wildly off or they're just, I find they're designed really poorly, very frequently. So that was really interesting. I would love to chat off air, Brian, and if you know any machines with that you really like, just to send them to me, because that is a hole in the gym machinery right now that I need to fill, one that I really, really do like, because I pretty much hate. the majority of the ones that I use. So I'm like, okay, I can finagle some things to get this one done, but like, I find the line is just way, way off and that the dumbbells are just a rare scenario where they're significantly better because you can modify them pretty good. Yeah, I think it was a Jeff Nippard video recently that I saw one that looked really dope. That was, like, you know, slightly leaned back. It had independent moving arms, and, uh, it may have even had the multiple loading where you can, like, the prime machines, where you can change the resistance profile and load high or load low. Uh, I could be wrong on that, but the other two elements of convergence, independent arm work, and then the more laid-back position were definitely intact. I can't remember if that was a nippered video or if I saw it somewhere else, but I will keep an eye out and let you know if it comes back into my view. Cool. Yeah, so then if we go into the next way that we discussed how you could anterior delt prioritize, it would be in the raising motion. And so my number one, no question, is the wide to narrow dual cable front raise. And this is just an amazing movement because... You can change the resistance profile based on how high you set the cable. And this is something you'll notice that we discuss in the lateral delts as well when we get into that section. But if you stand, you know, with the cables coming behind you, and so they would be one in each arm. The right cable would be in the right arm and the left cable would be in the left arm, which is not what was going to happen in the lateral raises that we discussed next, where you want to come more across the body. cable front raise. You'll grab one in each hand. If you see me on YouTube, you'll see I have this kind of wide arrow-like position in my body. And the first thing you'll feel when you step forward is you'll feel a nice tug and a stretch on that front delt there. And as you raise up, you know, your arms are starting wider in that arrow position. And when they come to center, they're gonna be up, you know, just above the head where the front delt shortens completely. I like to think of it more as like, you know, forehead level-ish, where the arm probably is reaching a 30 to 45 degree angle above its horizontal position to the ground. And then as far as adjusting resistance profile, if you put the cable set really low at the bottom of the cable stack, you're going to get a much more short overload, where it gets really, really hard at the top of the rep and you have to kind of grind through to get there. Whereas if you want more of a lengthened overload where it's really a ton of tension at the bottom of the rep, then you're going to set the cables at about wrist height. So when you walk out, it forms a straight line in the cable almost. And what you'll notice whenever you're doing a single joint movement with cables, I wonder how many people even know this, but when you're doing a single joint movement with cables, the point of maximum resistance is when your arm is perpendicular to the line of the cable. So if you just can picture walking out. from the cable machine with the cable at wrist height. As you walk out, your arm is basically perpendicular to the cable from the beginning. Whereas if that cable is set really low and you walk out, the perpendicular position doesn't happen until about mid-range or slightly short position. So anytime you're doing a single joint movement, keep in mind the relation of your arm to the cable line and the point where it's perpendicular is gonna tell you where the most overload takes place. So to back up a little bit, yes, I agree. This is by far my favorite, you know, raising exercise in that I would highly encourage you if Brian's last little segment there, your eyes just kind of glossed over and you didn't quite understand it, rewind and listen again. Like that is so such a, like I literally learned this like last year. I've been lifting weights for literally like 18 fucking years before I learned this, you know what I mean? And it's so. It's so, it just makes sense. And essentially like where, the shoulders are great one because it effectively forms like a 90 degree angle, right? You keep your arms straight, your elbow straight. I mean, in like Brian said, like wherever that perpendicular point is, like that's where you have the greatest overload. And when you are putting together programming and stuff, and you're like, well, you know, I have, I'm doing maybe this exercise in my program that challenges the medial delt in the, or well, sure, let's stick to the interior. anterior delt in like the shortened position, maybe on, you know, push day one, for example, on this push day two, I might want to challenge them like the lengthened position. And you can just literally change the height of the cable relative to your wrist position or your standing position, and you can achieve that. So these like little things when you have a good understanding of it can really change just one, the variations that you can create in your training and then just understanding why like, hey, why is this one so much heavier when I put the thing here and I only get four reps or if I put it at the ground, I can get 10 reps or something like that. Yeah, yeah, totally. One thing also to consider there is I like to program in partials at the end of sets for especially single joint movements, if not some compound movements as well, but if you're doing this anterior delt raise and you have it set lengthened where you're perpendicular at the bottom, once you fail, you go back down and you try another rep and there's just nothing. Like it's literally like how you would fail on a pendulum squat or something. Like you can get a little bit of movement but there's not a lot happening down there. So if you are somebody that enjoys going into partials and doing things like that past failure, you will want to set that up with a short overload so that you can manufacture a little bit of range of motion after failure as well. another wonderful addition to put in there. Cool. And then I guess I don't have much else to say on the front delts. Do we want to go, should we do all commercial gym, now go into lateral delts and then come back to home gym for all the movements? I guess in this case, it's really simple. Like the dumbbell press stays the same. We're still gonna do a dumbbell press, whether you're at home or in the dumbbell program, it doesn't matter, you're doing a dumbbell press. For the front raise, you just don't have an option to do them with a lengthened overload because, no, I know, I'll let you go in a second, because dumbbells tend to fight gravity. But yes, go ahead and talk about how we can provide more length with a dumbbell. So let's go dumbbell, because I think it makes the most sense. And this is how I would use them most often. If I were to want to do them slightly more lengthened, I would use a supine incline bench setting, where similar to maybe approximately how you would set up for an incline dumbbell press. you are going to then do your front raise or anterior delt raise there, still go kind of wide to narrow like Brian said. I think that just makes the most sense for the orientation in the joints. But you get a little bit more...the resistance is going to be as you're getting closer to your face, but the way that you're sitting, it's a little bit more lengthened. It's not nearly as lengthened as the cables, but more like maybe mid-range to mid-lengthened there. Yeah, so let's add a little clarity to that because it's a good point and it's something that I'm gonna talk about in the lateral delts as well once we get there. But I think it's important to note that there's a difference between the resistance profile and the strength curve. And so when we are doing, we'll use an incline dumbbell curl, for example, because I think it's really simple. When you're at the bottom of an incline dumbbell curl, your arm is still hanging. neutral against gravity. So even though the bicep is lengthened per se because it is behind your torso, it's still not receiving any tension stimulus there. And we can see this in the study that was done by Pedrosa and colleagues, I think, that compared the incline dumbbell curl to the preacher curl. And it, I could be wrong on the author, but basically they compared those two movements And they found that the incline dumbbell curl, despite training the muscle at a longer muscle length, produced less growth than the preacher curl, which trains at a shorter muscle length. But the rationale for that is that there was no tension on the muscle in its lengthened position in the incline dumbbell curl, whereas the preacher curl puts maximum tension at the point where the muscle is most lengthened. So because the elbow is in front of the body, it's not achieving its maximal length, but it is achieving more tension at the point where it does achieve its most lengthened position. So again, hopefully that's not a brain twister for people and they're not too confused by it. You can rewind and listen to that again. But I think the exact same principle applies to what you're discussing with the dumbbell front raise on the incline bench is that, yes, it does change your orientation to the weight in space. And thus, yes, you're getting a longer front delt by doing it on an incline, but you're still not receiving tension on the front delt at the lengthened position. So it's just something to keep in mind. I do think that when you're working in the confines of doing a dumbbell only program, that that is the best you can hope for is, hey, let's train this muscle at a longer muscle length, but we're still going to be essentially. overloading it, like you said, at about the mid-range. It will, the nice thing about that incline that you said is that it does actually drop tension off as you get to the top. So as you get to the short position, because the weights are moving back toward your body at that point, because you're sort of supine leaned back, you will have tension drop off at the short position, which does make it more mid-range overloaded. Whereas if you are standing straight up with a vertical torso and doing the same movement. it will be much more short overloaded as it gets harder as your arms move up. So very subtle differences in torso position being able to manipulate that movement for you. But yeah, I mean, if you're using dumbbells on an incline bench, you are training at a longer muscle length. You're just not necessarily achieving more tension at that muscle length. very, very well set. The best you can do. And then to, if I wanted to train, you know, more of the shortened position, which everything that Brian just said applies, and even more so in this scenario, we would just flip around on that incline bench and put your chest on it. Where we would then. reach the, you know, your arm would be perpendicular with gravity, right? Or the floor, I guess I should say, um, at a shorter muscle length, but you would have even less tension at the longer lengths. But if you wanted to specifically train the short position. One thing while we're on the topic too that I could note would be, you know, bands follow a resistance profile where the further that you pull the band up, the more resistance is gonna happen there. So in theory, if you're trying to do a banded front raise, you would reach a point where you just like, like, oh shit, the band won't move anymore as I approach the short position. However, if you were to... this is gonna get a little complicated, but if you were to manipulate your torso position by being in that supine position that Aaron mentioned, and you had a band connected behind you, much like you would connect a cable, and you did bottom partials with that band, then now what you have is you actually have tension at the length and position for the front delt. And because you're, I mean, it's still, so the... The resistance profile is still gonna be short because as the band raises, it's still going to get harder. However, it does allow you to have some tension at the length and position which you wouldn't have with the dumbbells. So there's another possible solution for the home gym dumbbell only people. Yeah, I feel like we've covered the home gym. Well, so the interesting thing here is with the shoulders, and I might end up eating these words a little bit later in the episode, I think a lot of the home gym slash functional training facility and the DB bands, I think my choices might be the same. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I, I, I, I don't think there's, especially with the interior delt pressing, like you, you, you're going to choose a dumbbell regardless across the board. And then, yeah, I mean, if you're not in a commercial gym where you have access to cables, then yeah, I mean, your options are dumbbells and bands. I can't see a, a, a place where I would prioritize a barbell front raise over a, uh, yeah, I, I, I can't think of anything creative enough to do anything better than using dumbbells and bands, even in the home gym setting. And maybe we'll just quickly kind of highlight why we wouldn't want to use a band there. For you, you're basically fixed into a pronated position or supinated position, which is neither of which... Oh, I apologize. A barbell. Thank you, Brian. You're fixed into either a supinated or pronated position, both of which would be non-optimal for pretty much just joint comfort in lining that up. And also you cannot move in a more natural kind of wide to narrow arcing you are locked into a fixed kind of path. Both of which I think I feel decently comfortable saying over enough repetitions performed in time will probably lead to some joint related issues because you're effectively moving in a in a plane of motion that is not how your shoulders would like to move, you know, if they had the choice. you're locked into training the short position as the primary target with the barbell, because you can't actually, you know, bring your arms behind your body. You can't change the resistance profile or anything like that. So yeah, I agree. The last thing I'll say on this is that I think for joint comfort and even for front delt stimulus that keeping the hands in that semi pronated position is seems to be best. So neutral would be fine in my opinion as well. But if you can maintain that kind of 45 degree hand position, almost like coming up into this arrow where your thumbs form a, I don't even know how to describe that, you'll have to watch it on YouTube. But basically keeping a 45 degree hand position the whole time where your palms are half facing each other and half down, that's probably where we wanna be there. So we've completely butchered front delts. Let's... Let's move on to laterals. Why don't you start this time? Let's do commercial gym and let's talk about our favorite movements. Yeah, so I mean, commercial gym, my favorite is going to be a behind the back cable lateral raise. That or a... This one is a toss-up, right? I do really like that. However, I do also really like a seated version where you have... or that or a seated cable Y-Race where I can put my back against something. Those would be my top two choices there. You have your back against a bench for a Y-Raze. facing the cables. facing the cables. Yep, that makes sense. Okay. I think that... is, sorry, I'll just finish really quick. What I like there is because you can, you don't have to worry about like the balance of, you can like sit back into it and you let gravity do its thing on your body, you know, and you can, I feel like you can generate a little bit more torque at the shoulder there and train them a little bit heavier because of your, how you're seated there. And then you can obviously, like we talked about with the, with the The pulley heights, you can modify the height to bias where you want the overload there as well. Yep, yep. One thing I will add to that, or maybe play devil's advocate to, is that Cass has always been a huge proponent of not locking the scapula down when doing movements that involve movement from the scapula. Um, so back in the day, before I even ever went to end one, one of my favorite movements was to do a lying why raise where you would have, it'd be cuffed and you would have them cross cable and you would be lying down on your back as you do them. And it really is like you said, very stable because you're, you can't go anywhere. You can't cheat. Um, cast kind of scolded me for that because it was locking the scapula in place and told me that the better solution to provide support for the torso during any sort of movement that involves the scapula like that is to have the chest support beyond the front instead of the back. And so in like an interior delt raise, you could have the support beyond the back because you're training the front of the body. But in a movement where you're training more of the back of the body like you would in a Y raise, his argument was that you wouldn't want to trap the scapula in that manner. So what I tend to do Y raises, I'll usually do them. standing prone against like an inclined bench where it's a chest support instead of a back support. At the end of the day, like, I don't necessarily think that there's a whole lot of limitation by having the scapula supported like you mentioned or doing it on the floor like I mentioned or even, you know, laying down on a bench on your back. But. maybe something to keep in mind for some people, especially those that may have like a sticky scapula that doesn't tend to move as freely as they want it to. So yeah, moving on to my favorite movement, it is also a behind the back cable lateral raise. My question for you is do you have a preference on doing it single arm or dual arm? I prefer the behind the back version dual arm. I haven't, in full disclosure, this could be just because I've never really set it up well enough unilaterally. I just don't, I would probably do like more of a Y-rays-esque approach if I was going to do it like unilaterally. Hmm, where you're coming across the front of the body. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting, yeah, I actually prefer the single arm behind the body for the lateral raise. And it's only a slight change, a slight preference. I actually have both in my programs almost all the time, where I'll have one day be the single arm and one day be the dual arm. But as far as training at longer muscle lengths, When you're doing a dual arm cable lateral raise, you're limited by where the cables cross over behind your body. So the longest position you can get to really is the point where those two balls connect with each other. And so it's somewhere around your side. Like you might be able to get to like your outer butt, but not really to like the back of your butt, right? Whereas when I'm doing the single arm version, I usually use it to prioritize more length. And so I'll set the cable at wrist height, whereas for the dual, sometimes I'll set it a little bit lower so that it's more short overloaded. And I'll often just lean into the fact that I can get a deeper stretch in the length and position with the single arm one, and I'll rotate my body around. And then when I get to that length and position, my hand, like say I'm working my left hand, my left hand in the length and position actually goes and touches my right butt cheek. So the stretch on the lateral delt, is much more, by a matter of six inches even, than I would get if I was doing the dual cable lateral res. Yeah, that's a very, very valid point. Yeah, so I love that. And then I love both versions of both of those movements where we can do the full range where we get up almost until the cable is basically running along the tricep or the underarm as you reach the top. That's kind of like the short position. But I also love doing these with bottom range of motion. And so a lot of people have pointed out to me that my bottom range of motion laterals, they basically go up to arm horizontal to the ground. And that's actually how most people when you say lateral raise, they just inherently stop. at arm parallel to the ground. But the way that I'm doing them, because I know the short position is gonna be arm a lot higher up, that when I stop at horizontal, that is biasing that length and position, especially with the single arm version where I'm getting more of that stretch behind the back. So the first 12 inches of the range of motion, I'm barely even making it out away from my butt. And then it's, you know, the rest of the range of motion is kind of moving out to the side. So, you know, very... great movement because you can manipulate it in so many ways to provide a deeper stretch, more length, less length, just a whole ton of ways that you can use that movement to benefit your side delt training. You're muted. Thank you. So, I think we hit that pretty good from like the lengthened side of things and then from a shortened position. This one is hard, right? And I know a lot of personal preference comes into this, but I think if I'm being honest, I think if I'm training in targeting that short position, I want a seated dumbbell lateral. For some reason, right? And like I said, personal bias, it just... It lines up a little bit better with me. I get a better stimulus. And I just, I do particularly like that exercise, even though I know objectively, that would be another one where I think, you know, if I were to make a blanketed statement for the majority of people, I think it would be another cable setup would be best for most. But personally, for myself, I just feel a little bit different. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a ton of value in prioritizing the short position in general. Like, I've talked a lot about here how I love to go short lengthened as my sequencing for a muscle group. And so what you'll often see me do in my programs and in my own programming is starting with a dumbbell lateral raise that involves no loss of tension at the bottom. And so the thing with the dumbbell lateral raise is that when your arm is hanging vertically... there is no tension on the side delt. The tension is on your upper traps as far as like having to support your scapula and keep you from collapsing over. So when I do the dumbbell lateral raise, no loss of tension, it basically goes from parallel where the arm is horizontal to the ground. And then we come down until the arm is about 30 degrees off the torso. And these are, man, these will crush your ego because there's so much... subtle momentum that you can use even if you're not using your torso just by starting at the bottom and then aggressively pushing out You can get a lot more weight than you can when you're starting your rep with your arm already 30 degrees A B ducted away from the body So I love doing those as a starter movement and I do those either seated like you said I'll do them standing sometimes but I think my preferred way of doing them is actually to lean my chest against an inclined bench. So kind of like you mentioned with the front raise, if you wanted to make it more short overloaded, you would shift your body around and lean into the bench. That's what I do with this lateral raise because I'm already trying to prioritize the short position anyways. So why not make it even shorter? And then I'll do those where the arm comes down to that 30 degrees away from torso or from bench and then up to lateral. And so you're really only getting a, you're going from like 30 to 90. It's kind of the way I would describe that. You're only getting about 60 degrees range of motion there, which is a lot less than you could be getting, but the point is to prioritize the short position. So I'll usually sequence workouts going from that movement for higher reps, call it the 12 to 20 rep range. And then I'll go into one of the ones we talked about prior with the single arm or dual cable lateral raise, and I'll do those with more of like a wrist height position where I'm prioritizing more of the length and position. And so... Those are definitely my two favorites. Anything to add to that before we kind of generalize that down into the home gym setting. No, okay. Yeah, so I think you are on mute, but yeah, you're shaking your head. We got it, we're cool. So as far as home gym dumbbell programs, for me, the no loss of tension lateral raise, regardless of whether you're seated on a bench or standing, same idea, that doesn't change. You can do that in any of the programs that you're doing. As far as moving on to the second movement, this is one where actually bands, are really not a bad idea. And I'll even let you know that you can set your band up in a manner, because I've experimented with this and I have a video on it as well on my YouTube somewhere. But if you set a band at wrist height and then you walk out so that there's a little bit of tension in the bottom of the lateral raise and you're literally using the band to emulate a single arm behind the back cable lateral raise, it actually changes the resistance profile. So what I mean There's some tension at the bottom, the band's at wrist height. Your arm is perpendicular to that band at the bottom, just like we talked about in the last section. So the most, well, a lot of tension is at the bottom position. As you begin to raise your arm up, yes, the tension is gonna increase because it's a band and the band is moving further away from your center of mass, your AB ducting your arm. However, once you pass arm parallel to the ground and you begin continuing up, that tension is actually gonna drop off in the band. So this is one of those weird occasions where you can manipulate band tension to actually be more of a mid-range overload, even though 99% of the time that you're using a band for anything, it's gonna be a very short overload. So hopefully that makes sense. As your arm raises past parallel, the arm moves back toward the body, which releases some of the band tension. So the point of maximum resistance is actually gonna be more in that mid-lengthened range, which is kinda crazy with a band, but I think it's a really great tool to use in this situation for my... people. Yeah, I think like as we're going through this episode, like our shoulders are one of the muscle groups. Like I would say maybe one of the fewer like, I would say the trade-offs aren't massive in training from the home gym or, you know, dumbbell and band only setup. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly some manipulation of cable height that, uh, and, and resistance profile and yeah. But you're right. Like if you just did say banded partials at the bottom and you just went up to arm parallel to the ground and back, um, you get some pretty decent tension throughout that whole range. So yeah, I mean, there, there definitely is a drop off, especially in the, the evenness of the resistance profile. Like, in the cable, you just really can't beat that. But yeah, I mean, you can do a decent job with the bands at home for sure. I guess I should have said like trade off relative to other muscle groups. Yeah. if you're trying to do back work with a band, you're just always gonna be limited by the short position. But because of the single arm nature and manipulating band height in relation to torso position and things like that, yeah, you can make some decent changes there. And then another one that's probably just worth mentioning because we discussed it in the beginning of the episode is that idea of using the incline bench, like you said, to get a little bit more length. in the lateral raise as well. So it's the same way you said you could use an inclined bench sitting back to increase the length a little bit or make it more mid-range for the front raise. You can do the same thing for the dumbbell lateral raise. And then I'll just throw one more into the pot that we're actually including in our next Paragon training cycles are going to be the sideline lateral raise where you're lying on an inclined bench on your side. So it's a single arm It actually does change the resistance profile where the most tension is in the bottom half of that movement, because as your arm raises up and begins coming back toward your body, the resistance profile does drop off and become easier in the short position. So if you're on a sideline lateral raise, bring the arm in front of the body slightly, you'll feel a bit of a stretch in the bottom. You're not completely absent of fighting gravity. So there actually is some tension there in that sideline version. where you don't have that tension if you're just sitting on an inclined bench, you know, with both arms lean back. And so the sideline lateral raise is a really great way of kind of adding a little bit of tension in the length and position for the home gym people. Yeah, a quick question for you, Brian. I would make the argument that with that particular exercise, you really kind of have to reduce your load, or you run into kind of joint discomfort rather quickly. Have you found that to be true yourself? I haven't used this movement personally long enough. I've experimented with it for videos and shit like that, but I haven't actually had it in my program to really note whether that would become an issue or not. What is your thought on why that would be? I think it might be more relative because it's like you're moving in like a very, like when we, if we're talking about someone doing a lateral raise, right? We're like, Hey, we're going to put you in the scapular plane. You know, it's a little bit more appropriate for, for joint comfort. I feel like with this one, you have to, you can't really perform it that way as much. And it's a little bit more, you know, straight to the side. I do think too, because of how it's, how it's loaded and your, it's I don't know, I'm kind of fumbling over my words here. I feel like it, I don't know, it just bothers me all the time whenever I try and do it. And I have to really, really kind of reduce the load any time I have used it to get around the increase in joint discomfort. So potentially just a disclaimer for those guys to, yeah. of options that we've provided throughout this episode though. So there should be a number of solutions that you guys can use regardless of your gym setup. Sweet, that's all I got. Yeah, and like Brian said in the beginning episode that I kind of forgot about, we covered the rear delts last week, and I mean, there are some potentially more modifications we could've walked through, but a lot of the same things apply, and fortunately for the shoulder, it's like one of the more complicated joints, obviously, with injuries and stuff like that, but whether you're training the anterior head or trying to target primarily the anterior delt. the anterior delt, the medial delt, the lateral delt, a lot of the same principles apply, like Brian said, with the wrist height, or the pulley height relative to the wrist to the ground, whether that's going to bias the lengthened position or the shortened position more. And just kind of understanding that goes a very, very long way in how you approach your training and performing exercises in the gym. It's massive. Cool. And then any questions that arise, guys, drop them in the YouTube comments or send us a DM or whatever, and we'll expand on it. Definitely. Next week, I believe we are going to host our final Q&A of the year, if I'm not mistaken, and then we will take a week off during the holiday week as Brian will be traveling with his family and we want to give him time away, and then we will pick up after that in January for what will be the fourth year of Eat, Train, Prosper? Wow. Yeah. Alright guys, as always, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week.