Today I started the week off with a shoulder workout. Sometimes during my training splits, I take a period of time doing my shoulder workouts before doing my chest workouts. The reason is because I want to put more emphasis upon my shoulder development for a period of time. By doing shoulders before chest in my training split, this allows me to hit the shoulders while they are completely fresh in order to maximize the amount of weight that I can use without any chance of pre-exhaustion of the shoulders that can be caused by a chest workout. Of course, this means that my chest workout can be somewhat impacted because my shoulders will have been trained intensely, therefore impacting my chest workout, since shoulders are highly involved in chest exercises such as the flat bench press and incline bench press. But I do not do this all the time, ONLY when I want to put a little more emphasis upon my shoulders.

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Here is what my shoulder training workout looked like today…

Standing overhead barbell press 3 sets of 3 reps

Standing behind the neck barbell press 3 sets of 5 reps

Dumbbell side lateral raises 3 sets of 12 reps

Front raises with 45lbs plate 3 sets of 15-20 reps

Rear delt machine 3 sets of 12 reps

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As you can see above, the overhead press and behind the neck press were done with very low repetitions. This is because I am presently working on developing my strength for my shoulders. I only plan to do low repetitions for a period of time, that’s until I no longer am making any progress in gaining strength on those exercises. Once I plateau, I will start doing higher repetitions for those exercises, perhaps 5-7 reps.