Boulder Shoulder Workout: 5 Best Shoulder Exercises

If you’re doing the same old shoulder workout every week, you can be missing out on unique exercises to unlock more growth. We connected with IFBB Pro Sadik Hadzovic and his coach Kash Guidry to learn how well-developed shoulders can raise the overall look of your physique by improving your shoulder to waist ratio.

“If any of you guys want to improve your physique. I think one of the most important things you can do is work on your lateral delts (side delts). The lateral delts is what gives you that wide illusion on stage and the wider your delts are the smaller your waist is going to look” – Sadik 

Give this shoulder workout a try to hit your muscles from all angles.

Sadik’s Shoulder Workout

• Machine Lateral Raise
• Dumbbell Fly Press
• Bent-Over Dumbbell Raise
• Seated Side Lateral Raise
• Rope Front Raise

Machine Lateral Raise

Far too many people when they train shoulders put so much of an emphasis on heavy shoulder raises. We all know, what do they always say is national chest day? Monday! You’re already hitting the anterior delts. Focus more on that lateral head, because at the end of the day, if you’re a competitor, it’s about width and shoulder to waist ratio.

Dumbbell Fly Press

On this exercise, you come up over the head and then back down. You want to start with your arms a bit tighter to your body. For me, I find it to be safer on the shoulder joint and it isolates your anterior delt. I use every type of press there is, but these are my favorite.

Once you develop more muscles, you can feel where the exercise is hitting them. Muscle is like money; the more money you have the more money you can make. Same with muscle, the more muscle you have the more you can feel working and activate.

A lot of guys, the closer they get to a competition, want to pick up the pace and use the workout to get leaner. That’s what your diet is for, your cardio, your supplements. Take a little extra time between sets to execute the set right rather than running yourself to the ground trying to quickly complete the workout.

Bent-Over Dumbbell Raise

This is not a heavy movement, it’s all about the form. You go bottoms in at the start of the movement and as you come out you turn your wrists and then as you come back in you reverse the movement. This exercise isolates the rear delts.

This exercise is like an Arnold Press of the rear delt fly, because you’re doing so much turning.

Seated Side Lateral Raise

On these, we go heavy, and the last few reps are forced reps. And then we descend on down and use a lighter weight, but it’s the same thing we still do forced reps at the end of the set. We go all the way down to where when you’re lifting your arms without holding anything in your hands you’ve got to work. 

There’s nothing like this that you can do to put blood into your lateral delts

Rope Front Raise

These are a very good variation for hitting the front delts. Cables are good because they give you constant tension up and down, especially when you control it. I like to finish with some form of cable work, even though most of this workout was free weights.

Sadik's Shoulder Day Favorites

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