Building a set of boulder shoulders at home can be achieved with a well planned, best home workout for shoulders. In fact, you’ll see that if you follow this guide, it really isn’t that hard; all you need is patience, sleep, diet combined with the right exercises and most important of all, consistency.
Consistency is the ability to keep at something, over and over; for example, finding an effective routine and sticking to it, training for an hour every two days or more, and always staying true to that routine as time goes by, only adjusting if it is really needed.
If you already do Calisthenics, you will understand how having strong and stable shoulders is important to various skills like the handstand, human flag or various types of planches. This will be a complete bodyweight routine as it is completely possible to build an impressive and strong physique with limited material and space. If you want to, you can perform this routine anywhere from your office to your garden, your bedroom, or even a prison cell.
All the following exercises that compose the workout, with the exception of planche push ups, require absolutely ZERO equipment. However, they can all be modified and made even harder with tools like gymnastics rings, or other handy calisthenics equipment.
The exercises
Pike push ups
Pike push ups are one the most effective bodyweight exercises that you can do to build both shoulder strength, and size. They have the BEST carry over to the harder, handstand push ups, and can easily be scaled for both beginner, and elite trainees.
To make this exercise harder, gradually increase the elevation of your legs. This will further the emphasis put onto your shoulders, and lessen the assistance coming from your legs.
Remember that at the bottom of the movement, your hands and head should form a triangle, just like in the video above. The elbows bend to form a 90° angle, and the forearms are perpendicular to the ground.
This exercise will mainly target the anterior and lateral deltoids.
pseudo planche push ups
Pseudo planche push ups are basically normal push ups with an increased lean. These can be hard so make sure to have mastered the standard full push up before attempting this exercise.
Always as far forward as you can and perform an elbow lockout at the top of the movement. Avoid an excessive compensatory arch in the lower back area and do your best to maintain a hollow body position.
This exercise will mainly target the anterior deltoids.
Tuck planche push ups
The tuck planche push ups are a slightly more advanced exercise that will bulk up your shoulders and grant you access to a whole new level of strength gains. This exercise has a strong carryover to the planche, and will also improve your tricep and core strength.
Watch the video above to see how the exercise should be performed, and look at those deltoids lighting up as he moves through the tuck planche push up’s entire range of movement.
This exercise will mainly target the anterior and lateral deltoids.
Handstand push ups
The beastly and mythical looking, freestanding handstand push ups. Now let’s be honest here; this is an advanced movement that will take probably several months of practice to nail the required strength and balance required to perform this exercise, but it is very obtainable, if you really want it.
A good way of working up to this move is by doing handstand push ups against a wall and practicing your handstand. Doing these against a wall will also prove to be a fantastic workout in itself for your shoulders, meaning that you really don’t have to worry about achieving the free standing handstand for shoulder strength and hypertrophy.
If you can’t yet do handstand push ups against a wall, keep doing the pike push up exercise listed further up above, and you will in time be strong enough to do them against a wall.
This exercise will mainly target the anterior and lateral deltoids.
Wall pushes/holds
As you can see from the exercises above and general training philosophy, the rear delts are generally trained to a much lesser extent that the very dominant, anterior delts.
This is why it’s important to balance your pulling and pushing training. Even so, directly targeting the rear delts with an exercise as such will definitely be beneficial in terms of getting that extra work in, as they are less likely to be worked as much as the anterior delts will, without even being isolated.
Apart from the exercise demonstrated in the video, another efficient movement for the rear delts are gymnastic ring flyes, or face pulls.
Having developed rear delts will help to improve your posture greatly, and are important to balance out the otherwise excessive forward roll that could be caused by an imbalanced anterior to rear delt ratio.
Best home workout for shoulders – The routine
Now that we have gone over the different exercises you can perform to develop your shoulders with limited material, how would these look when integrated into one complete workout routine ?
Exercise 1:
Handstand push ups or pike push ups – 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps
Exercise 2:
Tuck planche push ups – 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps
Exercise 3:
Pseudo planche push ups – 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps
Exercise 4:
Wall pushes/holds or rear delt flyes– 3 sets of 15 reps
Now of course, you do not have to follow this exact exercise routine; feel free to take exercises out, or add some in, and use it to complete your own current routine. Prepare yourself for some soreness though, because these exercises, especially used together in this routine, will blast your shoulders and provide you in time, with some impressive size and strength improvements.
Remember to always warm up thoroughly before performing these exercises. I like to pair this routine with two to three rotator cuff strengthening routines per week, to strengthen both deep, and superficial muscles.
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