How to Get Huge Shoulders: Tips and Tricks!

Shoulders are one of the most aesthetic muscle groups out there, so it’s no surprise that wanting to get bigger, rounder delts is a common goal. In order to achieve this growth, you have to make sure that your programming matches your goals. Obviously, we all have different training protocols that take advantage of what works for us as individuals. With these 3 principles and techniques, your shoulders will transform from a weakness into a strength. Make sure you stay tuned until later in the article where we summarize our findings and provide you with a sample shoulder routine!

1. Do Shoulders First

Starting your split with shoulders or beginning your workouts with the hardest shoulder exercises is a sure fire way to give the delts some extra attention. If you are utilizing a push/pull/legs split, it may be easy to procrastinate off the shoulder portion of the workout in favor of extra chest-focused movements. By saving all of your shoulder work until the end, you are probably going to be burnt out already and less likely to give it your all. By the same token, if your shoulder day falls after a chest day, your shoulders may already be sore. The bottom line is if your shoulders are lacking, you have to take steps to make them a priority.

2. Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is one of the most universally accepted rules to increase hypertrophy and muscle growth. If you are choosing a series of smart movements to compliment your shoulder needs, you’re going to want to be improving on these lifts from week to week. Whether it comes from an increase of volume, weight, or form does not matter, as long as you are not staying stagnant with your progress.

3. Mind-Muscle Connection

When you’re looking to achieve maximum shoulder gains, you have to place a large focus on activating the correct muscle fibers during each movement. Particular cues like “pulling through your elbows” may help you feel your medial head (side delt) more and thereby activate more of the muscle you are looking for.

Learn How to Increase Your Mind-Muscle Connection Here!

4. Sample Workout

Below is a science-based example workout that begins with heavy compound movements and proceeds into more isolation work as it goes on.

· Dumbbell Shoulder Press 12,8,8,8,8

· Standing Side Laterals 4x12

· Upright Row 3x10

· Front Raise 3x15

· Rear Delt Row 4x8

· Reverse Pec Deck 5x12

· Shrugs 4x20

The 4 Basic Principles of Search Engine Optimization

You’ve probably heard of Search Engine Optimization, but do you truly understand what it means or how to utilize it? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses on increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website by using organic search engine results to your advantage. By increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website, you will be able to effectively boost your brand awareness. In short, when your potential customers are searching the Internet, you want to make sure you are using proper tactics to make sure your page appears first on the results list. This article is going to go through some of the basic principles of Search Engine Marketing for your business that will help you get the ball rolling in the right direction.

1. Keywords

While this may sound straight forward or irrelevant, the keywords you are using have a tremendous impact on your SEO. Researching the keywords that will be most relevant to your industry will allow you to pinpoint how your target audience is thinking and what it is they are looking to get out of your page. There are many free to use tools out there that analyze exactly how many people are searching for a particular term and the competition surrounding it.

Check Out These Free and Easy Keyword Planning Tools!

2. Backlinks

A backlink is a hyperlink that is placed strategically within a blog post or otherwise that redirects traffic to another web page (similar to the article linked above). Backlinking is beneficial to SEO efforts because it is a good indicator of a site’s popularity and importance to a particular search. It is important that when you are backlinking to another website, it is relevant to the topic at hand because Google has recently altered their algorithm to prevent deceptive backlinking techniques.

3. On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO refers to the actions you take on your own website to boost traffic. The content on the website, HTML source code, meta data, title tags, and descriptions all factor into your search engine results. Google uses this information to assess what your viewers are looking at when they enter your site and then determine if this content is considered high-quality (so make sure it is!).

4. Off-Page SEO

On-Page SEO refers to the actions you take outside of your own website to boost traffic. This could include your social media pages, social bookmarking, and other various promotions ran elsewhere. Similar to what is mentioned above, Off-Page SEO is an important element of increasing your relevance in the search engine and should not be ignored.

How Important is Music to Your Training?

When you go to a gym, it is likely that the majority of people there will be wearing headphones listening to some kind of music. Before going to train, you want to be in the right mindset to prepare you for what you are about to do. Imagine if before a big boxing match, the two fighters walked up to the ring with no music. Much less exciting, isn’t it? The same way a walk-up song gets a boxer hyped for the fight, your favorite song can get you hyped up when you’re attempting a new PR.

The “power” of music is not all in our heads either. California State University conducted a study where 20 male athletes were split into two groups. One group listened to music while performing squat jumps at the gym and the other group did not. The group of males listening to their favorite music jumped faster and with more force than the group who did not. They concluded that the “power” of music lies in its ability to distract ourselves from fatigue and improve mood. We’ve all had that moment when our PR song comes on and you just know that there is nothing getting in the way of you moving that weight.

Check Out These 10 Pump Up Songs to Help You Lift More!

Whether its EDM, Rap, Rock & Roll, or something else, listen to whatever gets you going in the gym. Music is a very important element of our lives. It can bring back different times of our lives, remind us of certain people or events, and motivate us to do more. Take some extra time and make a playlist with all your favorite pump-up jams, it may just make the different for some of those tough sets!