Define your delts

Muscle & Fitness, July, 2008 by Felicia Romero

1. I've been training shoulders twice a week for about 18 months and have noticed some real improvement. I've always had broad shoulders from playing sports, but the twice-weekly workouts have helped develop and separate the muscles, giving me nice shape and definition.

2. Well-developed shoulders make a competitor stand out, so every time I train I make sure I hit my front, middle and rear delts with at least one exercise each. I want my shoulders to look great no matter which side of me is facing the judges.

3. I like to superset dumbbell front raises and lateral raises to really burn out my delts. Typically I do this superset during my competition prep to exhaust and carve detail into the muscles.

4. Sometimes I feel as though my front delts get neglected. I train chest only once every couple of weeks, so to keep a nice balance within the shoulder I try to isolate or target the front delts at least once per workout.

5. I change my shoulder routine every 3-4 weeks to keep progressing. I do everything from overhead barbell presses to Smith machine presses to all different kinds of lateral raises--anything to shake things up and keep it interesting.

6. This shoulder workout is just one example of how I train delts. I do a wide variety of shoulder exercises to keep the muscles guessing. Don't get into a rut of always doing the same thing in the gym.