Shoulder Presses Ain't for Delts, Only! Standing, Seated w/ BB or DB, They Also Hammer the Core, Biceps & Triceps

Flex Wheeler doing BB presses in what vcertainly isn't the ideal position for the lower back - imagine him doing that standing *uhoh*

Don't worry, I am not going to repeat my SuppVersity Facebook news post on the activation of the rectus abdominis, the obliques and the lower back muscles many of you 'liked' on Facebook. I am rather going to expand on it by presenting the data from the unofficial follow-up (Saeterbakken. 2013). Before I do that, I will yet give you the usual preview of today's installment of the SuppVersity Science Round Up I am doing every Thursday (1PM EST, live!) with my friend Carl Lanore from Super Human Radio (in case you did not notice, the number of real scientists on the show has risen exponentially within the last weeks, so I highly recommend you download a couple of other podcasts as well).

SuppVersity Science Round Up - Preview

Just like today's blogpost the focus of today's Science Round Up is actually going to be on training and exercise and don't worry, we won't just be whimpering that people get way too less of it.

• Twin study shows: We all age, but exercise determines the consequences on your health
• Hormonally (over-)demanding plyometrics!?
• HIIT, light intensity steady state and the thyroid gland
• NSAIDs: Go or no go for an athlete interested to build muscle?
• Glucose, insulin and their muscle building effects
• Could your own sweat protect you from skin cancer?
• Chinese medicine strikes again: P. Lobata stops liver fibrosis in its tracks
• Non-reactive form of vitamin E could be gold standard for cancer therapy

By now you should know the procedure and will thus be aware that it is unrealistic to assume that Carl and I are going to pack all these, let alone any of the auxiliary items on my list, into one show. My best advise would be to tune in live at 1PM (or downlaod the show ~2h later from the sidebar link, here at the SuppVersity), listen and come back tomorrow, to read about the topics that did not make it into the show in the SuppVersity Science Round Up Seconds.

Back to where we came from: The shoulder press!

After the obligatory heads up on the potential topics of today's SuppVersity Science Round Up, let's now get back to the shoulder press. Even if you did miss the facebook post on how it activates the abs, the obliques and the lower back, the other day, you should remember from the SuppVersity EMG Series that different forms of the shoulder press (including behind the neck presses, which are not part of the study at hand) will yield differential activation patters in the musculature of the shoulder girdle.

Chest	Biceps	Back	Core	Legs	Triceps	Shoulders
Navigate the SuppVersity EMG Series - Click on the desired body part to see the optimal exercises.

In the follow up to their core activation study from last year, Saeterbakken and Fjmland did once again go one step further than Boeckh-Behrens & Buskies. Instead of measuring just the usual suspects, i.e. muscles you actually want to train when you do shoulder presses, the researchers expanded their existing data on the activation patters by measuring the activity of biceps and under both, seated and standing exercise conditions with a barbell or dumbbells as well as the 1-RM strength on the individual exercises.

With the auxiliary muscles, the body position, the loading modality (measured during sets of 5 reps at 80%)  and the maximal weight the participants were able to press in each of the four 1RM max attempts Saeterbakken and Fjmland's data on the shoulder presses, alone, is therefore about as extensive as Boeckh-Berhens' and Buskies' data on four or five totally different exercises. Plus their subjects, 22y old lifters with on average 5 years of training experience may be a better model for at least some of you.

Figure 1: Activity pattern of the deltoid and auxiliary muscles (* indicated p < 0.05; data based on Saeterbakken. 2013)

Let's get to the results, now. As the data if figure 1 goes to show you, there are a couple of statistically significant differences, which are in some cases (the asterisks on the lowest level, directly above the bar) related to the training equipment (i.e. dumbbell vs. barbell), in other cases, such as the activation of the posterior deltoid, for example due to doing the exercise standing vs. seated (asterisks about the lines connecting the respective bars denote p < 0.05).

For those who missed the original Facebook post on the first Saeterbakken study (Saeterbakken. 2011), here is a brief summary: Using electromyographic activity (EMG) of the superficial core muscles (i.e. rectus abdominis, external oblique and erector spinae) and comparing the data of seated, standing, bilateral and unilateral dumbbell shoulder presses the researchers found that their 15 healthy male study participants had the greatest core activitation, when they performed their five repetitions at 80% of one-repetition maximum... 

• rectus abdominis (abs)
  - standing unilaterally
• external oblique
  - standing unilaterally  
• erector spinae (lower back) - standing unilaterally

For some of the muscles the different positioning does not really matter, but in each and every case the standing unilateral dumbbell press had a slight (if insignificant) edge on the rest of the exercises.

Just as in the unofficial prequel to this 2nd study by Saeterbakken and Fimland I discussed on Facebook earlier this week (see box to the right for a summary, if you don't want Facebook and the world to know the color of the boxer shorts you're wearing, today), the overall pattern that emerges from this very recent follow up study is that ...

"[...] the standing dumbbell press exercise, which was the exercise with the greatest stability requirement (standing + dumbbells), demonstrated the highest neuromuscular activity of the deltoid muscles." (Saeterbakken. 2013)

Now what's particularly intriguing to this result is that the superiority of the complex movements became obvious despite the fact that the subjects moved the least weight during this exercise. In the aforementioned study by Boeckh-Behrens & Buskies, for example, the exercises which allowed the greatest leverages, usually produced the highest muscular activity, as well.

How can we explain this difference?

Aside from the training status of the participants, the first thing that comes to mind is the rep range: While the subjects in the study at hand trained at a 5RM rep range (meaning they failed on rep 5), the sports students in the Boeckh-Behrens & Buskies study performed 10-12 reps and would thus necessarily have to use lighter weights. In conseuqence, every lbs more made a greater difference for the students, than for the 15 even-aged healthy men with an average of five years of strength training experience under their belts (they were no competitive powerlifters or o-lifters, though), who participated in the studies by Saeterbakken & Fjimland.

As far as the other parameter, the body position, was concerned the results are not as obvious as they were for the core muscles in the 2011 study by the same authors:

"Further, standing versus seated execution, and to some extent dumbbells versus barbell, both resulted in increased muscle activation of the deltoid muscles. Standing instead of seated presses raises the centre of the mass, and also provides a  smaller base of support as the contact points decreases from three to two, particularly when using a bench with a back-rest [comment: the back was set to 75°]. When using a pair of dumbbells instead of a barbell, the main difference is that the dumbbells must be controlled independently of each other. Hence, performing shoulder presses standing and with dumbbells should lead to greater instability." ( Saeterbakken. 2013)

Regardless of the intricate differences, though, the whole picture that emerges from the synopsis of both the 2011 and 2013 data Saeterbakken and Fjimland have collected is actually quite clear: Complex exercises and corresponding muscle activation patterns can make a very valuable tool in the arsenal of the experienced strength trainee.

A final word of caution and the real world difference you can expect

Are you looking for more shoulder exercises? Look no further read them up in the SuppVersity EMG Series and the respective part on the 'best' exercises for M. Deltoideus, M. Infraspinatus, Supraspinatus and Teres Minor (more...)

The lower back and the shoulders itself are however so liable to injury that even somebody with years of training experiences should start out with very light weights and see for 2 or 3 training sessions how his shoulders and lower back react. Against that background it does also appear questionable, whether it is wise to to include a heavily loaded variety (5-8RM) of the standing dumbbell shoulder press in the routine of any beginner or only slightly advanced trainee. The increased injury risk just is not worth it, because the complexity of the movement and the individual (often very) weak links will force a beginner to use very light weights. So light, in fact, that the original target muscle, which is obviously the shoulder, may not receive enough hammering, so that even in the fortunate case that they don't hurt themselves, beginners will probably see way better results with regular seated vs. standing dumbbell presses.
 
References:

• Boeckh-Behrens WU, Buskies W. Fitness-Krafttraining. Rohwolt. 2010.
• Saeterbakken AH, Fimland MS. Muscle activity of the core during bilateral, unilateral, seated and standing resistance exercise. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2013 May;112(5):1671-8. Epub 2011 Aug 30.
• Saeterbakken AH, Fimland MS. Effects of body position and loading modality on muscle activity and strength in shoulder presses. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Oct 23.

Adelfo Cerame RtWC12: Shoulder Your Weaker Body Parts! Bring Up Those Lagging Delts - Exercises, Splits, Routines

Image 1: After his 2nd place at the Nationals, Adelfo wanted to bring up his rear delts and although the lighting does not really do him justice, he made use of the weeks between the Nationals (right) and the USA (left) and filled up considerably.

It is more than 3 months ago that Adelfo and I have been talking about ways to bring up his somewhat lagging delts (if you could even say that there is something "lagging" about Adelfo's physique), yet still, it seems as if it had been yesterday that I told him that he would not have to wonder that those delts were not growing, when he was working them almost exclusively with compound movements for stronger body parts, which wouldn't allow the side and, more importantly, the rear delts to reach that highly productive, growth triggering point of just too much load to handle, but still not so much load that adaptation could not make up for it. And judged by his latest progress pics, Adelfo did not just take that comment to the heart, but was also able to make the appropriate changes to his routine. Good for you that he is no magician who would never betray any of his illusionist tricks, but gives away practical advice every week ;-)

Boulder shoulder tweaks

After my Florida show, I felt that my shoulders (front, side & rear) were an area in my physique that could use some improvement. It was not a clearcut weakness of mine, but when the initial disappointment subsided and I took another look at the comparison shots, I felt that Adel (aka Dr. Andro) had been right, when he said "If anything, you lost on one maybe two of the backshots, where Neil looked somewhat more massive - his rear-delts in particular." And yeah, he had been right, those rear delts did not really keep up with the rest of my back development, which - as you may probably remember - had been one of my priorities (aside from coming in as shredded as possible) during the prep for my first competition of the year. I knew I would not make the same mistake twice, and decided to level out those imbalances in the weeks to come.

Image 2:  The left hand side is a current image of me 4 weeks out from the USA’s, and the right hand image was me 4 days out from Nationals.

And allegedly, the results, now 14 weeks later, may not be earth-shattering, but the changes are unquestionably visible and that despite the fact that the "mini-bulk" I had originally planned for in-between the shows turned out to be more of an ameliorated diet ;-)

Make changes to see changes

While I guess that it should actually not be necessary for me to point out that continuing along a way that has lead you astray is a pretty stupid undertaking, I still see people do just that day by day - and not just in the gym, but also in their private and professional lives! Often ridden by the fear to make a change for the worse they'd rather continue along a known path that won't produce the desired results than to try something new that would at least hold the chance of improvement.

My old path consisted of training my shoulders once a week, following my basic training principle to use heavy compounds wherever possible and simply rely on the fact that those would provide an intense enough stimulus to both, the primary, as well as the auxiliary muscles that are involved in the respective exercises.

According to the aforementioned primacy not to follow a path which has lead you astray before another time, I increased the training frequency a bit and made a  couple of additional adjustments with respect to the exercise selection (see table on the right) and the grouping of the bodyparts, with auxiliary shoulder work on chest day.

Barbell jammers, bent over reverse cable fly’s and lat pulls behind the neck are 3 exercises that I have added into my training. Out of the three, I really enjoyed were those jammers - I felt they really targeted all areas of my delts, plus they are less stressing on the shoulders joints, because you're pushing in a forward/upward motion rather than right over the head. What was particularly surprising, though was how effective those three rear delt exercises actually were - I have never really paid much attention to it, let alone trained them in in isolation, but the way they felt during and after each workout told me that it may have been a mistake not to do DB rows (which are certainly more difficult for me to do than for an able person), lat pulls behind the neck and bent over reverse cable flys, before.

Training shoulders twice in a bi-weekly hybrid routine cycle

Image 3: Planned changes deliver results

Consequently, all three (DB rows, lat pulls behind the neck and bent over reverse cable fly’s) have turned into staples of my routine - irrespective of whether I am training at a higher or lower training volume on my new bi-weekly alternating hybrid routine

• EDT/5x5 = 2 week phase
• Overkill/5x5 = 2 week phase
• Hypertrophy/5x5 = 2 week phase

While cycling through these basic templates, I incorporated the aforementioned additional shoulder work into my existing split on "chest-" and "back-days" which allowed me to train my shoulders - just as my chest and back - twice a week.

The following example routine (which is not intended to be copied without adaptations) goes to show you how you can reconcile all that in one routine, where you would split your shoulder workout up into front and side delts on "chest-" and rear delts on "back days" (click to enlarge):

Workout routine: No blueprint, just an example - Overkill (left), 5x5 (middle), EDT (right) hybrid

As I said before, both the volume and the intensity of these workouts are pretty insane and I am not suggesting that any beginner should simply copy this workout. The idea, however, to incorporate front and side delts on your "chest-" and the rear delts on your "back-day" is yet something that will have merit regardless of your training status or overall conditioning. So pick your favorite exercises from table one, align them into a routine with a total volume and intensity that suits your need, eat well, train heavy and get enough rest and you will see your shoulders will grow ;-)

Adelfo Cerame - Road to Wheelchair Championships: What Sitting in a Chair Teaches You About Isolation Exercises

Image 1: "Hey Dude! Those arms come from rolling around in the chair, right?

The time is flying by, it's almost June (just a few couple of hours left in May) and for Adelfo his next big day is approaching fast. After last weeks brief panic attack (see "Don't Let Red Flags and Banana Skins Stop You!), he is back on track this week and that despite the fact that he has a hell lot of work to do that is not related to working out or dieting... or writing his weekly blogposts on the SuppVersity, of course. Usually you would think that sitting in a wheelchair does make all that more complicated and troublesome, but as you will see in this week's installment of Adelfo Cerame's Road to the Wheelchair Championships, sitting in a wheelchair can also have certain advantages, even when it comes to building a better physique!

The overlooked advantages of training in a wheelchair

I don’t get approached much, but when I do, the majority speculates that I have attained and maintain my physique from pushing my wheelchair around. I assume many people will think that I would expend more energy than the average able body person, and get my fair share of low intensity cardio on a daily basis, due to being and moving in a chair throughout the day, but I am neither sure that this is actually the case (assuming that the aforementioned person is not the average obese couch-potato), nor do I believe that the actual act of moving around in the chair has much of anything to do with my ability to achieve and maintain the physique I have.

In a wheelchair or not, it takes dedication, consistency and balance to be able to achieve the physique you want. I’m no exception to the rule; I still have to diet and train just like everyone else. There’s no magic pill or in my case magic wheelchair, that will get you your results.

With that being said; it was brought to my attention the other day by one of my training partners, that I must really get a good isolation when I do my exercises, just for the fact that I cannot use my legs as a leverage.  I paused and thought about it... and yeah, being in a wheelchair does have some training advantages. At least, as far as upper body development and strength are concerned. I think some of the more or less involuntary, since obligatory isolation movements, I do for certain body parts did and still do contribute to my size and strength gains; and what's more, I believe able persons, like you probably are, could benefit from some of them, as well!.

Image 2: Let's face it guys, THIS can't be the result from rolling around in a wheelchair all day, right?

Due to being paralyzed from the waist down, the isolation may come more "naturally" (whatever that may mean in this context), but there is nothing that would hinder you from emulating it and grasping similar benefits from

• not planting your feet/ legs on the floor and thusly having less leverage and a less solid base, when doing exercises like bench presses
• not curling or pushing (down) from your legs, when you do biceps curls or triceps push-downs
• not being able to bend over like crazy and compensate with your legs, when you did actually sit down to counter exactly those compensatory movements that will hinder you to isolate a certain muscle group as for example during single-arm DB side laterals

Don't get me wrong I am not even accusing you of "cheating", it is totally normal for your body to try to make it as easy as possible for you - or in this case, the "target muscle" - to lift the weight. When an object is too heavy to lift with your lats alone, that little extra kick with your legs will help you the inertia and allow you to complete the rest of the lift.

The unstable bench is probably not ideal for maximal leverage, but a means to isolate the pecs

Simlarly, on a bench press, people will start arching their backs like crazy (something that obviously will require leg involvement), whenever the load gets to heavy to be lifted properly. In some cases this may be the conscious application of a lifting technique, for 99% of the average gymrats, however, it is simply an instinctive reaction of your body to a load it feels your chest, front delts and triceps (the major muscle groups the flat bench press should activate) won't be able to lift, without a little help from your legs that would put them in a favorable position.

Image 3: This is how I feel every time I get under a flat press bench *lol* As you can see, able people must lift their legs, so they can isolate the chest, and when you isolate a muscle, you stimulate and target the area much more efficiently - at least on a pound per rep base.

Now, it goes without saying that, in my case, this mechanism, or rather its practical realization are no longer operating, since most of the connection between my brain and legs is out of whack. When I do a flat bench exercise – it’s not that my chest, my delts and my tris are unable to make things easier for themselves by signaling my brain to use the legs to position my body differently, I will also have to accommodate for the lack of stability (to the left and right) able people derive from planing their legs firmly on the ground. If you still don't get where this is headed to, check out the image 3.

To isolate or not to isolate? Is that a question, at all?

Image 4: For your isolation movements, you want to pick muscles that are lagging and exercises that work for you. For me a lagging body part are my rear delts and the rear delt cable fly is the exercise, of which I feel that I get the best contraction in this part of my body.

While some people will tell you that "isolation does not even exist" and that all your efforts to train a certain muscle group in isolation were futile, my take on it is slightly different. Allegedly, when you do compound exercises, heavy pulling and pushing, this will always involve a whole host of muscles / muscle groups. Take my EDT training split for example; there’s not a single of those "fancy isolation exercises", as critics like to refer to them, involved - just basic compound movements: Hard, heavy and intense!

Still, there are benefits in some isolation movements, in my opinion and I think Dr. Andro would have to agree on the fact that the addition of a couple of well-chosen isolation exercises (keep in mind, well-chosen implies that you pick those exercises that work for you, not for Adelfo Cerame, Dr. Andro, or Jay Cutler), when executed with proper form and intensity can provide advanced trainees with the additional accentuated training stimuli neither a "compounds only"- nor the average muscle mag "do every biceps isolation exercise known to man in one single session and repeat that ten times"-workout. 

Muscle groups and exercises for isolation

As I have already stated before, your exercise choice will be based mainly on on your personal preferences and goals - with the latter having priority before the former: You would, for example not do tons of hammer DB hammer curls on a preacher bench, if your brachialis was already bigger than your biceps. On the other hand, you would maybe chose standing calf raises on one of those funky machines over doing them freely, if you feel that you are getting a better contraction on the machine.

Video 1 (click to watch): Here’s a clip of me training rear delts. I don’t really do much for my rear delts, since they are constantly getting hit when I do chins, DB rows, and seated back rows (Adelfo Cerame. 2013).

As a rule of thumb, the smaller muscle groups usually benefit most from isolation work. For me, those are the side and rear delts, so so much my front, though; for one, my front delts are already in pretty decent shape and for two, they get hammered with almost every pressing movement you do. It would therefore not make sense for me to do additional isolation work for them. For the side and the rear delts this is, as I said, differently, and with the usual trial & error (no, you cannot avoid that completely ;-), I have found that for me also due to being in my chair, two exercises work particularly well:

1. DB side laterals – Gripping one side of my chair, I lean towards the other, so that I can balance the weight of the dumbbell in my hand, then I grip the wheel and do the raises, probably similar to the way you do them. While you could possibly use other muscles than your delts to help yourself out and cheat the DB up, though, the rest of my body is pretty much occupied with keeping me stable so that I get a very decent contraction in my delts - and only in my delts ;-)
2. Bent over reverse cable fly’s – I've been through basically every rear delt exercise you can possibly do, I believe, and it was by no means easy to find one that works for me. Either I cannot do them at all, or they don't really isolate the muscle, the way I want them to. What I did find works pretty well, though are the bent over reverse cable fly's (see video 1). And again, not being able to rock to the left or to the side from the legs, must not necessarily be a disadvantage here.

Now, as you can see, this are two, I repeat, TWO, isolation movements for muscles you can actually isolate. Many of the intitially mentioned guys who speculate that it must be my wheelchair due to which I build those "great arms", on the other hand, will be "hitting" their chest, their biceps and some also their triceps "from every angle" in hope for "full development" - I am using quotationmarks here, because I've heard that time and again and usually the laughable results speak for themselves... in other words, isolate where it makes sense, but stick to one exercise per muscle and max. two exercises per muscle group; do only a couple of sets and focus on form and contraction - everything else is just a waste of time.

Adelfo Cerame - Staple Moves for Stable Gains: My Favorite Exercises and Your(?) Favorite Mistakes

While this installment of Adelfo's SuppVersity guest posts actually deals with the "optimal" exercises and form - I personally would say that physique-wise Adelfo is likewise on a good way towards achieving a form or rather overall physique even the most critical judges will have a hard time to ignore on the upcoming 2013 Wheelchair Nationals in March (learn more at wheelchair-bodydbuilding.com)!

Ok folks, the good news is, there is the promised update from your's truly Adelfo Cerame - what's even better: Adelfo is giving away some of his secrets discussing his favorite exercises for chest, back and arms, as well as the most common mistakes which forestall training progress.

The bad news is, there is no Science Round Up today and what's even worse is the sad reason for the unplanned break. Carl's mother passed away earlier this week and it goes without saying that the next round of "science news sniffing" will have to wait till next week.

If you can't wait so long, I suggest you go check out the latest SuppVersity facebook news. There are a couple of pretty interesting things there, but my absolute personal favorite is the latest study from Ristow's group at the University of Jena over here in Germany which has the potential to send the stupid "starve yourself to a longer life by reducing the metabolic rate and thus ROS generation"-hypothesis finally back into the dark abyss, from which it spread and infected scientists, the laypress and ultimately even a large parts of the public like the pest (read more). But enough of that, let's check out what Adelfo has to tell us about his favorites and your (?) mistakes.

Stick to the basics, not because you are a beginner, but because you are a pro!

This year under the tutelage of coach Alberto I have learned that especially experienced (or should I say even say seasoned ?) bodybuilder or weightlifter like myself should stick to staple exercises rather than doing each exercise he knows just to end up spreading himself thin in trying to do a new dance every time.

If you want to add to the staples, why don't you incorporate for increased strength & size gains (learn more).

A lot of lifters feel that they need to change their exercises every time when they feel they are no longer sore the next day or no longer feel the stimulation that they used to feel, when they first started (I was very guilty of this as well), in the past months, however I have learned that you’re not plateauing just because you’re “not feeling it” any more. You are actually improving on that exercise as you continue to perfect your craft. The reason you feel challenged most of the time, when you change your routine or perform a new exercise is 'cause you’re just learning a new dance- and this has little to do with "tricking your muscles".

Not that there’s anything wrong with changing routines or doing different exercise from time to time, I just learned that it’s more beneficial to pick a small staple of exercises that you can improve your craft in and have those variety of exercises to keep in your back pocket for those special occasions on which you may need them.

My favorite exercises and everyone's favorite mistakes

As mentioned before, I commit guilty of doing way too much exercise hopping in the past, as well. This year, however, I have really zoned in a couple of carefully selected staple moves, hit the individual body parts more frequently and tried to perfect my craft on each of of the exercises in the following list:

• 

  Video 1 (click to watch): Adelfo doing the wheelchair version of the Gironda Dips. Actually this is an older video, but if everything works out the way we planned it you will be able to watch him do more of the exercises in this list in the next installment of Adelfo's guest-posts.

  Chest (A) - Weighted dips: This is one of my favorite chest exercises. I love weighted dips because it liberates me in a way from getting away from the norm of exercises when being in a chair, the same feeling of liberation I get when I do laps in the swimming pool for my cardio sessions. For me weighted dips (especially the Vince Gironda version, see video 1) really stimulates my chest like a decline movement would because you can control the depth and angle of how low you can go and really dig to get that stretch.

• Chest (B) - Bench Press (flat angle): This is an exercise that I’ve had a love/ hate relationship with since high school. Just like every young man who picks up a weight, the bench usually tends to be the first exercise that we gravitate to. Ever since my spinal cord injury, the bench and I have been on rocky terms…
  
  I guess due to the fact that I really didn’t feel comfortable or confident enough in my mobility to be able to get back on that saddle again so I avoided it like the plague most times and stuck to chest press exercises like the hammer strength and smith machine. Eventually as my confidence in my abilities (via mobility and balance) improved, so did my eagerness to get back under the barbell of a free weight bench and my love for the good old flat bench returned.
  
  

  

  Figure 1: As this figure from the chest article in the SuppVersity EMG Series goes to show you, the barbell flat bench is still the "king" - well, at least as long as you don't compare it to it's brother, the BB bench press on a decline (learn more)

  The flat press bench is one of the few core compound exercises that I can take pride in. Most people have squats, deadlifts and cleans, but obviously I cannot perform any of those exercises, so the only one I have left is the bench. I guess that's part of why I really take proud in each lbs I have been able to add to the bar over past years of training. Funnily it was only this year that I have finally been able to perfect my techniques. Without the leverage from my legs, I obviously have certain disadvantages compared to most of you and it took me years until I discovered that I could mimic engaging my glutes and arching my back so that I can use my whole body to push the weight rather than just arms and chest by tying a weight belt around my hips.
  
  I have also embraced using a closer rather than my preferred wide grip that I have done all my life (that's actually something I read about in the EMG Series, here at the Suppversity, but never really implemented). The close grip has helped me tremendously in finally getting rid of my constant nagging shoulder pains and had me finally realized that I can indeed touch the bar with my chest and thus go over the full range of motion without any pain in my rotator cuff, whatsoever.

• Chest (M) - "M" as in mistakes → Quarter presses!You know those guys, right? Those guys who load up the squat rack with tons of weight and then perform bench presses over what can hardly count as a quarter press (=going over just 25% of the range of motion)...yeah, I see you know them ;-) It's a mere waist of time and in the end you just have to look at the physiques of the "quarter presseres" to see that without going over the full-range of motion, focusing on the positives as well as the negatives and sticking to weight you can un-rack yourself your results will be "quartered", as well.

 * * * * * * * * *

• 

  Adelfo says: "Hammer strength high rows, Hammer strength seated rows and unilateral vertical rows are the 3 main staple exercises I used to build my back this year."

  Back (A) - Weighted Chin-ups: Even though I haven’t been able to do them in a while (due to unknown MRI results that my doctors are trying to figure out), this is by far my favorite back exercise to perform, it really allows me to stretch and isolate the lats and pull maximal weights. It also helps build a strong core. In fact, I personally believe that weighted chin ups are a way superior "abs" or rather core exercise than those stupid crunches everybody is doing for hours.

• Back (B) - Hammer Strength High-Rows: This is what I call a very wheelchair friendly machine (well for me at least…): It’s easy to transfer unto and very versatile. I can go from regular high rows to single arm high rows without out having to make much adjustment. I feel that the frequency of being able to train my back with this machine alone has been able to help me bring up my back this year.

• Back (C) - Hammer Strength Seated Rows: I like this exercise because it’s simple and efficient. It’s basically like a T-bar row for me but seated, and since it is chest supported, I can really go heavy without it catapulting myself of the machine.

• Back (D) - Unilateral (vertical rows): This is actually one on the newest exercises that I learned from Coach Alberto and has really helped bring up my lower lats. It’s basically a unilateral vertical row with a spinal flexion movement/squeeze at the end to really engage the lower lat muscles. I have basically ditched the lat pulls for this exercise. 

• Back (M) - "M" as in mistakes → Chins gone wrong: People oftentimes don’t tense up their lower extremities and stabilize their pelvis and hips. It makes it a lot easier in my opinion to keep the core nice and tight and locking the hips and pelvis, to keep the lower extremities stale. Thus you won't be swinging back and forth, and you can actually focus on engaging your lats when doing a chin-up.

* * * * * * * * *

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  Adelfo says:"DB overhead presses, hammer strength overhead presses and DB lateral raises were the 3 staples exercise I used to build my shoulder and delts." And if you go by the looks there must be something to those moves, don't you think so?

  Shoulders (A) - DB overhead press: I love DB overhead presses because the DB’s allow you to control the direction your shoulders go – I like to stay tight and keep my overhead movements compact and the DB’s allow me to do so. I also feel more connection with DB movements.

• Shoulders (B) - Hammerstrength overhead press: I use this on my strength days. Due to my disability and mobility, I have limits on how heavy I can go on DB’s if I do not have my training partners with me, so the hammer strength overhead exercise allows me to go heavy without having to worry about safety issues or having spotters.

• Shoulders (C) - DB lateral raises: Again, with lateral raises, I love using DB’s because of the range of motion it allows. I wont be able to lift as heavy as I would on a machine but I feel that I stimulate my delts more efficiently using DB’s. 

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  The biceps brachii attaches directly to the shoulder joint and is probably the most overtrained body part of the male body ;-) Don't be a fool and do all the exercises you know. Rather pick those that work best for you - regardless of whether they are #1 or #5 in the EMG ranking - the activity is almost identical, anyway (read the details)

  Arms (Biceps) - DB Biceps Curls: No preacher, forearm reverse, or EZ-bar curls, just DB’s this year. I either go with a regular or hammer grip. Again DB’s allows for better range of motion for movement

• Arms (Triceps) - Triceps Extensions with rope: I’ve been sticking to the rope mostly this year. Either press downs or single-arm extensions. 

• Arms (M) - "M" as in mistakes → The DB, barbell, hammer, reverse, SZ-bar curl: Believe it or not but the most common mistake, when training arms is not doing one of the staples wrong, but rather not having a staple at all. That's particularly true for the biceps exercises where you see (funnily only) guys "hit their arms from every angle". Funnily those are the same people who will then come up to you and ask you which additional exercises you would do to build "those impressive biceps" *rofl*

Well that’s all I have for today but stay tuned next time as I will compare notes from this year to last years contest prep notes, from nutrition to training and how I mentally approached both preps… This was a topic suggestion by Primalkid, by the way ;-)