Sadik's Shoulder Workout for Mass in the Gym

If you’re struggling to get that coveted “v-taper” look, developing your shoulders may be the key to unlocking the physique you’ve always wanted. Unfortunately, many people fail to fully develop their shoulders by overlooking exercises that target their medial and rear deltoids. IFBB Pro Sadik Hadzovic credits a lot of the success in bodybuilding to his legendary shoulder workouts. Sadik showed us one of his go-to shoulder workouts that targets all three heads of the deltoid (front, medial, and rear) to help you get the fully developed shoulder look that rounds out a physique.

Dumbbell Lateral Raise

• I love starting out my delt workouts with dumbbell side raises.
• I like to hit the medial delts to add more width and complete the overall look of my physique
• Pay attention to what I do with my thumbs on this movement, I point my thumbs slightly downwards as if I’m pouring a pitcher of water.

Seated Dumbbell Press

• We’re going straight into the mass building portion of the workout, the seated dumbbell press.
• Here is where I’m trying to exhaust the majority of my gas tank and really focus on maximizing my gains by challenging myself with heavy weights.
• I don’t have a training partner today, so I’m going to show you how to do the perfect kick off. I keep the dumbbells closer to my knees, not so much on my quads. I put my glutes on the edge of the bench and then I kick my knee up in the air as high as possible to self-assist myself

Standing Upright Barbell Row

• The standing upright barbell row is another great exercise to target your medial delts.
• I like to keep my hands around shoulder width and I try driving my elbows up towards the ceiling
• I believe a lot of my bodybuilding success has come from training shoulders. Everyone talks about the v-taper, but the v-taper starts up top with your delts. If you can get as wide as possible, it’s drastically going to improve your physique.

Reverse Hammer Press

• Now that we’re at the midpoint of the workout, this is when I like to incorporate machines, my body is already fatigued from the free weight movements.
• What I like doing here is actually facing the pad, I feel like I get more emphasis on my front and medial delts this way.
• We lean in and press.
• Don’t worry if you don’t have this particular machine in your gym, you can do this on any shoulder press machine.

Bent Over Reverse Fly & Plate Shrugs (Superset)

• Now we’re on to that final portion of the workout and it’s time to train our rear delts.
• Keep in mind that the weight is going to be light. The muscle is very small so it doesn’t need a tremendous amount of load to activate.
• We’re going to incorporate a superset; a superset is a great way to increase the intensity of your workout and shuttle blood into those delts.
• When doing the reverse fly, you want to do 2 things: 1) get parallel with the floor with your body 2) and then you keep your neck neutral, looking forward
• I like using plates for shrugs because if we use dumbbells, it has a tendency to rub against your quads and take tension off the traps. With plates, they're nice and thin and it adds no resistance to your thighs

There you have it; this is a shoulder workout that I’ve been doing for years to develop my deltoids and physique. - Sadik

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