Shoulders:Week 4

This week, I’m introducing supersets into your shoulder training. This is one of my favorite intensity techniques. For supersets you’ll perform one exercise followed immediately by another for the same body part. Then you’ll rest for 3 minutes before you perform your next superset. Supersets drive up intensity and thus muscle growth because your target muscle spends considerable time under tension for each set.

NOTES:

* Make sure you set up your equipment so you can go directly from one move to another during supersets. That’s especially crucial for the first superset today since you’re using a pec-deck followed by a move with a barbell.

* Set up the pec-deck seat so when you grasp the handles your wrists, elbows and shoulders are all in line and parallel to the ground.

* Note that with front barbell raises I bring the weight up above parallel—over my eye line. Do this without momentum, and check out my video to see how this works.

EXERCISE	COMMENT
Reverse Machine Flyes	4 SETS / 15 REPS SUPERSET: You’ll perform all reps for rear pec-deck flyes followed immediately by front barbell raises, and then you’ll rest 3 minutes before you start your next superset.

Front barbell raises	4 SETS / 15 REPS

Dumbbell Lateral Raises	4 SETS / 15 REPS SUPERSET: You’ll perform a set of side dumbbell raises followed immediately by a set of standing barbell presses. Then rest for 3 minutes between supersets.

Standing barbell presses	4 SETS / 15 REPS

TIP: You should remain mentally focused throughout your entire workout, bringing a sense of urgency to everything you do while you’re training your shoulders. You want to be able to look back on this 12-week plateau-busting video series and know you did everything you could to improve your shoulders as much as you could over a relatively short span.

CREATINE HCL

Creatine is an amino acid compound that provides multiple training advantages. Primarily, it helps your body generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for better workouts, allowing you to perform more reps or lift more weight. It also helps draw water into muscle cells for enhanced training sessions. I add a dose of Creatine HCL before and after workouts. This Kaged Muscle product is more soluble than creatine monohydrate, and it helps re-load your muscles for better workouts in the coming days.

Check out my video for detailed tips and my commentary on how to perform these supersets.