7 Ways To Blast Your Delts Like Brandon Curry
7 Ways To Blast Your Delts Like Brandon Curry
Shouldering on to the Upper Echelon
IFBB pro bodybuilder Brandon Curry's upper body in general is one of the best in the sport today, but the two areas that stand out above the rest are his arms and his shoulders. Here is what he does today for those boulder shoulders:
1) “Active Warm-up”
Many bodybuilders will do just a couple of light sets of their first exercise on shoulder day, if that. This impatience to get right to the big weights not only hampers performance, but sets you up for injuries and problems with your joints and connective tissues down the line. Brandon takes the time to go through a fairly involved warm-up process that serves to get the entire shoulder girdle warm and primed for hard training. “I start on a seated lateral raise machine, facing away from it unlike the standard way, with the pads low on my elbows for about three sets of 20 reps,” he says. The second movement is a three-stage rep sequence performed with a low cable pulley and a bar or dual handles for an attachment. “Step one, I pull the bar up to chin level,” he explains. “Step two, I work the rotator cuffs by using them to externally rotate the bar up to about the top of my head, and the third and final step is to press that overhead.”
2) Smith Machine Behind-the-Neck Presses
Before you jump to the conclusion that Brandon is wrecking his rotator cuffs by making this his bread-and-butter pressing movement most of the time, keep in mind that he’s taken cautions to turn this into a much safer exercise than you would think. “By starting off every shoulder workout with that warm-up that always includes rotator cuff work, I make sure they are never a weak link— and that allows me to press behind the neck with far less risk of injury,” he tells us. Another reason Curry isn’t taking any big risks here is because like my old trainer Charles Glass, he never uses an extreme range of motion that puts the shoulder girdle into an unnatural position..”
3) Arnold Presses
About every third or fourth workout, Brandon switches his overhead press up from the Smith and does Arnold presses instead. “One thing I love about the Arnold press is that you don’t have to go anywhere near as heavy as you would with a standard dumbbell press to get the right pump and burn in the delts.”
4) Seated Lateral Raises
For those of you bored to tears with lateral raises, Brandon has a nice variation you need to try at your next shoulder workout. The Prodigy sits on a flat bench sideways. “The reason for this is that I can’t lower the dumbbells all the way down, which forces me to keep constant tension on my side delts,” he says.
5) Unwinding Presses
This next exercise is one Brandon got from the writings of Canadian bodybuilder and strength coach Christian Thibaudeau. Curry calls these “press-outs,” but Thibaudeau calls them “unwinding presses.” If you thought your side delts got toasted from those seated laterals, this will make you think someone injected them with 10 cc’s of battery acid. It’s a little complicated to explain, so I will let Brandon walk you through a proper rep:
“Start with a dumbbell in each hand with a hammer grip, so your palms are both facing in toward your head. With a controlled tempo, press the dumbbells up but only at a slight angle, say 30-45 degrees, while at the same time pronating your arms so that your palms end up facing the floor at the finish of the rep. You also want the back end of the dumbbells a little higher than the front, like you’re pouring water out of pitchers. Hold that position for one or two seconds and then bring them back to your shoulders by reversing the movement.”
6) Rear Lateral Raises
In the early years of Brandon’s bodybuilding career, his rear delts were a glaring weak point. “Once I saw that, I made them a priority and trained them first on shoulder day for several years, until they were where they needed to be,” he tells us. Today he works them later in the workout. Though he used dumbbells for this photo shoot, over the last couple of years he has mainly used the rear delt machine. “I just get a really good feel with it and I can control the motion better,” he says.
7) Rear Delt Pulldowns to the Face
Brandon’s final shoulder movement is another one he picked up from Christian Thibaudeau, and again it’s not something you see everyone doing. He clips on a double-D ring attachment to the high pulley or a lat pulldown, and takes a grip with both knuckles facing toward each other as shown. As he pulls this down toward his face, both his side and rear delts get a final, searing torch. “I really believe in high volume and the importance of a pump for stimulating growth, and this is the perfect way to cap off those two heads of the shoulders.”
The 5-Week Split
After trying many different body part combinations and frequencies, Brandon has arrived at one that seems to work perfectly for him. For three weeks, he trains every body part twice a week. Then for two weeks, he reels it back to training everything once a week. “The first phase works well, but near the end you start to get overtrained. That’s when you switch to training body parts less frequently and adding more rest, so you can recover. By the end of each phase, I’m really looking forward to the next one, and so far the results have been fantastic.”
5-Week Training split
Weeks 1-3
Monday: Quads, hams and calves
Tuesday: Chest and back
Wednesday: Shoulders and arms*
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Quads, hams and calves
Sunday: Chest and back, etc.
*It isn’t unusual for Brandon to skip this training day every other rotation, as shoulders and arms are very much strong points for him already.
Weeks 4-5
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Legs
Thursday: Shoulders and arms
Friday: Rest
Saturday: a.m. Quads p.m. Hams and calves
Sunday: Rest, repeat
Shoulder Routine
Active Warm-up Rotator cuff exercises, cable upright row/external rotations/press
Smith Behind-the-Neck Presses 4 x 8-10
Cable Upright Rows and Presses 4 x 10-12
Seated Dumbbell Laterals 4 x 10-12 partial, 10-12 full-range
Press-outs 4 x 10
Rear Delt Machine 4 x 12
High Cable Rear Delt Pulls 3 x 12