Ready to build a stronger, thicker set of shoulders? Canadian bodybuilder and YouTuber Jeff Nippard recently published a video in which he took his subscribers through an exact seven-step plan to build a 3D pair of delts.
The video, which examines seven ‘evidence-based tips’ for building shoulder muscle, runs the gamut from the most common training strategies to the most overlooked (the final technique is one which Nippard claims less than 1% of people have tried). The plan aims to hit each of the three ‘heads’ of the deltoid muscle: the anterior, lateral and posterior heads. Each is responsible for lifting your arms, creating shoulder stability and providing a rounded contour.
Take Your Traps Out of the Lift
Nippard’s first tip, inspired by something he sees a lot of guys doing during lateral raises, is to make sure that you’re working the right muscle group during the lift and not accidentally recruiting others.
‘If your traps are taking over on your shoulder movements, your delts could be getting robbed of precious tension,’ he says. ‘For some trainees, their delts go nearly silent when their traps take over.’ Nippard offers a coaching cue of holding a spade vertically and ‘sweeping the weight out to the side’.
Train Your Delts More Often
While a certain ‘less is more’ philosophy has permeated lifting circles over the last few years – Nippard himself has experimented with low-volume training himself by cutting his sessions in half for 100 days – is there something to say about ‘spamming’ shoulder work, rather than only hitting it once or twice a week?
‘I think that’s a mistake if you’re trying to maximise their growth,’ he says, pointing to multiple studies that confirm the efficacy of the workout diminishing after approximately six sets on one muscle group. ‘The best way to get in more effective shoulder work isn’t to throw more sets on top of the workouts you already do, it’s to hit them more often.’
Rather than cramming the volume onto one or two days, he says ‘spread it out to three or four days.’ This works particularly well with isolation exercises, including lateral raises and rear delt flys, Nippard explains.
Get a Strong Shoulder Press
Focusing on ‘any vertical press that you can overload,’ says Nippard, including ‘machines, dumbbells, or barbells’, is the secret sauce to noticeably greater shoulder mass. ‘Load it up with a weight that you can do for five or six reps and add a little weight each week,’ he says. ‘Stick with that for a year…as you progressively lift more weight on the shoulder press, you’re increasing the mechanical tension your delts experience’. Mechanical tension, Nippard says, ‘is the main driver of hypertrophy‘.
Bring Your Waist Down
At the midpoint of the video, Nippard leans on a neat bodybuilding tactic that can make your shoulders appear larger. Comparing his physique between 20.6% and 9% body fat, he explains that his shoulders are ‘broader and rounder because my waist is smaller, and there’s less body fat around my deltoid muscles,’ he says. ‘The cuts are deeper, there’s more separation between the heads, and this gives the illusion of a more 3D look.’
Train at All Muscle Lengths
Discussing how each muscle, not just those in the shoulders, is shortened during the concentric phase of the lift and lengthened during the eccentric phase, Nippard offers an easy way to create some variety and make sure the whole range of motion is working in your favour.
While dumbbell lateral raises ‘provide more tension when the delt is short,’ he says, and ‘cable laterals provide more tension when the delt is long’, it’s really about allowing for the full range of movement during each exercise. ‘On your shoulder presses, go deeper and don’t stop when shoulders hit parallel, but sink your arms as low as they can comfortably go’. For cable lateral raises, he says, stretch the cable ‘across your body, rather than stopping at your side.’
Pick the Right Progression
‘We all know that progressive overload is the key to keeping a muscle growing,’ says Nippard, and ‘you need to add a little more stress to the muscle each week over time’. If you ‘keep using the same weight, for the same reps week in and week out, the muscle has no reason to keep growing’.
The catch, however, is that isolation exercises like dumbbell lateral raises are hard to progress – there are only so many increments you can lift safely, after all – so Nippard advises a technique called ‘double progression,’ in which you aim for a ‘rep range, not a rep target’. For example, hit 10 reps at week one, 11 reps at week two and 12 reps at week three, all using the same weight. Once you’ve maxed out, you can then up the weight. Adding ‘one rep to one set is enough to keep progression moving,’ says Nippard.
Target All Heads of the Delts
Though the anterior, lateral and posterior heads get all the headlines, Nippard points to a study that identified how there are ‘seven intramuscular segments to the deltoid, each with its own separate tendon,’ he says. ‘Each of these seven tendons has a separate function.’
To make the most of your shoulder training, Nippard explains that instead of rear, lateral and front raises, also incorporate movements for the planes in between, such as incline dumbbell Y-raises and 45-degree cable rear delt pulls.
