Your shoulders do a fair amount of work whenever you perform back and chest exercises, but performing exercises that single out your delts are also important for the following reasons:
- Real-life benefits: Strong shoulders make most arm movements easier, whether you’re beaning your brother with a snowball, passing the potatoes across the table, or lifting your “a little too heavy” suitcase. Virtually every upper body exercise involves your shoulder muscles to some extent, so strengthening your shoulders enables you to lift heavier weights on chest and back exercises.
- Injury prevention: If your shoulders are weak, they’re going to take a beating even if you perform chest and back exercises perfectly. Shoulder exercises also can prevent weekend-warrior type injuries, such as shoulder tears from swinging a sledgehammer, a torn rotator cuff from a softball tournament, or slapping a puck into the garbage can that serves as your hockey goal. If your shoulders are weak, you can even injure yourself while opening a dresser drawer.
- Self-confidence factor: Open up any bodybuilding magazine and you see headlines such as, “Grow Those Big Caps Even Bigger” or “Delts to Die For.” Bodybuilders take their shoulder training seriously because they know that these muscles play a big part in their appearance, which, after all, is what bodybuilding is all about. Even if you don’t want to build competition-level delts, you can still develop toned, shapely shoulders and reclaim your confidence to wear sleeveless shirts. (Although you should wear sleeveless shirts any time that you please. But a toned shoulder muscle may put a little pep in your sleeveless step.)
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