Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

I cringe when I see people work shoulders in the gym. I don't want people to make the same mistakes I have made along the way, but it is everywhere! I see people doing DB shoulder presses with their palms facing forward, damaging the shoulder joint as they go. People don't do any research, otherwise they would know that having your palms face the side of your head or ears is the correct movement for the human body to help avoid shoulder injury and chronic pain. People also don't realize that you can have full shoulder development without ever doing an overhead press. You can perform safer movements such as chest pressing, dips and side raises and get all you will ever need. The shoulders get hammered when you work the chest! Delts are one of the most over trained muscle groups. I noticed my shoulders grew when I stopped concentrating on shoulder workouts.

The other thing I see people doing is using a smith machine. YIKES! Never use anything that locks the shoulder into a dangerous path. The shoulder is a complex joint and when pressing you don't always move in a perfectly straight path, there is a little bit of an arc. Don't get sucked into the smith machine BS.

Completely agree about the smith machine... honestly can't remember the last time I used one.

Can you provide any links to support the palms in vs forward statement? I'm not at all doubting you or disagreeing, it's just that I've had sports injuries in my right shoulder in the past and want to make sure I'm not aggravating anything...

My favorite shoulder exercise is the push press. I experience by far the best growth in my shoulders when this movement is part of my routine.

This is intriguing. I'm going to reassess just how much my delts are actually working in my current routine and see if I can scale back. Thanks!

Baby Herc

Here's my old shoulder work out...

Dumbbell pressing 3x10
Front plate raise 3x10
Front rows 3x10
Side raise 3x10
Cable side raise 3x10

Pathetic....now all I do is a proper strict military press 5/3/1 then boring but big military pressing. 

People wonder why their bench pressing lacks progression. I see endless people destroy their shoulders, also anything behind the neck makes me cringe.I have seen such huge increases just by reducing shoulder workouts, hitting more pull/chin ups,dips & deads.

It boils down to people not educating them selves on what muscles get worked with other lifts eg front delt on bench pressing 

Also if I had my way i'd ban smith machines full stop

Need to chip in with this...side raises over a proper military press. Sorry dude but no

I will have to get some links. I have a few books on bodybuilding, strength training that also talk about the same thing, in fact two of the books say to avoid overhead pressing all together. For me? I can tell you from experienc....since changing my hand position.....my shoulders have NEVER been stronger or more PAIN FREE! This is the best advice anyone has ever given me for shoulders, I thank my sports medicine doc all the time! What a difference!!!!!

I haven't done military pressing in years, and my shoulders are thanking me! Plus, they are stronger than ever. It amazes me how bodybuilders and power lifters, etc suddenly become experts on the human body, biomechanics, etc.

Everyone can do what they want but I know what I now do to avoid injury and it has made a huge difference!

I'll switch up my routine a bit and give it a shot for a few weeks to see if I can notice a difference. Thanks for the tip!

It's very interesting, let us know if you see any difference, darcy

Well this is it...if you can't/don't want to press you work round it.

If a book told me not to military press I'd return it, personally

Great tip their about hand position thanks for sharing. I shall remember this in my routines.

Regarding smith machine is it not a good idea to use this then? The reason I ask is that I had a microdiscectomy on the l4/l5 disc and worry about causing any more back injury. I love the squat and thought using a smith machine might be a safer way to do this would it be wiser just to continue with regular squats?

Smith machines are a huge hated of mine.

What I don't like is how it tells you where the bar will track. It's a given that there's a standard form for say, Low bar squatting. Though the principles for the technique are what they are every person is going to move a little different. That's why I hate smith machines, squatting, pressing, behind the neck pressing is wrong to me because of the fixed posistion. But people believe it's safer or what have you...

well as long as you space your weekly split correctly, there is room for a shoulder workout. I have seen many people do something like chest on monday, and having a shoulder/tricep day later in the week on thursday or friday. As long as people realize what muscles are affected and don't overwork you can't deny that anything is a "bad" thing to do

Or burn it.

Lmao I actually grinned at that