Written by Ron Harris Photography by Per Bernal
06 July 2016

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Fast Track to Massive Shoulders

Jose Raymond Pummels Delts with Help from His Brother Tito

 

 

A Tale of Two Brothers

Many of MD’s younger readers might not be aware that Jose Raymond has a brother who was at one time far more famous than him. Jose is 41 and his brother Tito is the same age as me, 46. In fact, we even competed together back at the ANBC Natural Massachusetts contest in July of 1990 (Tito was second in our class, I was more like second to last). Tito didn’t pursue the sport to the pro level, but he had a very distinguished career as an amateur: winning the Middleweight class three times at the NPC Team Universe, being runner-up at the USA, and placing third and fourth at the IFBB World Amateur Championships— the same contest guys like Ronnie Coleman and Dennis Wolf earned their pro cards. Tito was actually better known as a popular fitness model throughout the ‘90s and had more than his share of covers— he was even the cover man for the July 1998 issue of Muscular Development! Coincidentally, Tito is now married and has two sons with Amy Fadhli, former IFBB Fitness Pro and perhaps the woman who graced more magazine covers than any other female in the 1990s.

 Both brothers are part of a family that Jose calls The Puerto Rican version of the movie “Angela’s Ashes.” As Jose explained, “Our mom had issues and really couldn’t take care of her kids, but she just kept having them anyway.” All in all, their mother was pregnant 17 times, though not all survived and still others died very young (only eight of her children are alive today). Jose and Tito were taken away from her by the state and spent their early years in foster homes, eventually both being adopted by the Raymond family in Wakefield, MA and legally changed their last names from Sotomayor to Raymond. When Jose was in high school, they were both contacted by their younger sister Lily, who had grown up less than 20 miles south. She got the same fantastic genes, of course— competing briefly but successfully in Figure a few years back.

 Beasts in the Basement

Though Tito started competing five years earlier than Jose, they essentially started working out almost at the same time. “I was in fourth grade when I started following Tito down to the basement to lift weights,” he told me. “I was that pain in the ass little brother who had to do everything his big brother did, and after about a year he finally figured he’d better show me how to do it the right way so I wouldn’t get hurt.” With just a rickety old bench, cement and sand weights, plus a pulley they rigged up using a clothesline and a hockey stick for lat pulldowns and triceps pushdowns, the Raymond brothers began what would eventually be a lifetime pursuit for both. The weights were primarily to make them better football players, but it didn’t take long for both Raymonds to develop physiques that looked more at home on a bodybuilding contest stage than on the gridiron.

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 Shouldering on Alone, no Longer “Tito’s little brother”

I remember the first time I heard that Tito had a little brother who had also just started competing, I thought to myself, “Oh, how cute!” At the time I had no inkling that Jose would be the Raymond to pursue bodybuilding as a career, eventually turning pro, win the Arnold Classic 212 class, and being runner up in that division at the 2015 Olympia, while Tito would settle down with a family and become a top personal trainer in Los Angeles. Both competed several times in the Team Universe together, but in different weight classes. By the 2001 USA Championships, Jose had moved up from Lightweights to join his brother in the Middles, but he took eighth while big bro Tito was the runner-up. A year later, Jose placed fourth and Tito was fifth in what was definitely one of the best Middleweight classes at the USA: Stan McQuay won, David Henry was second, and Garrett Allin was third. Tito is the only one of that Top 5 who isn’t an IFBB pro today, which is only because the idea of being a pro never appealed all that much to him anyway. “I wanted to be the best natural bodybuilder in the world, which was why I did the Team Universe and represented the USA at the IFBB World Amateurs and the World Games,” says Tito. “But I never had the goal of being a pro— that was Jose. And after I got married in 2003 and became a dad a couple years later, I was happy to support Jose’s dreams.”

 Now, a whole new generation only knows Jose Raymond as an IFBB pro, often unaware of his outstanding amateur career (an astounding eight class wins at the USA, Nationals, and Team Universe, in three different weight classes), and even less cognizant that his older brother Tito was the first bodybuilding champion in the family. Jose’s days of being known as “Tito’s little brother” are now in the past.

 Shoulder Training: a Relatively New Thing for Jose

Jose has been training since before he hit puberty, but oddly enough, he’s only been really training shoulders since he turned pro. “Until I turned pro at the end of the 2007 season at the Nationals, I hardly did any direct delt work,” he admits. “Since I did so many basic exercises all those years like power cleans, bench presses, inclines, deadlifts, and barbell rows, I usually didn’t have a lot of gas left in the tank to do specific shoulder work. Besides which, they seemed to me like they were getting enough stimulation from everything else.” He changed his thinking once he finally applied for his pro card and knew he would soon be up against the best bodybuilders in the world who were 202 pounds and under at that time. “Since I’ve been training them hard on their own day, they’ve developed pretty nicely. But they are still a long way from being great, and being that I’m not the tallest guy, I can always stand to be wider.” I’ve trained delts with Jose a few times now, so I can tell you he puts every last ounce of effort into building boulder shoulders. Here’s a typical delt blast with Jose Raymond, the Boston Mass.

 Warming-Up

Having the standard wear-and-tear on the joints you would expect from a guy who’s been lifting very heavy for over 25 of his 36 years on earth as well as a shoulder injury since his high school football days, Jose does not jump right into hoisting maximum weights on shoulder day. “I like to make sure everything’s nice and toasty warm first,” he says with his typical dry New England sense of humor. Jose begins at a seated lateral machine and will do as many sets of 15-25 reps as it takes before he feels the blood flowing and a pump starting to swell beneath the skin. He goes entirely by instinct— it could be 4 sets, or it could take as many as 8. Often the first 10-12 reps will be done with a full range of motion, and the rest will focus on the contracted portion of the rep at the top. Regardless, Raymond will not get up and head over to the free-weight area until he’s good and ready. Here’s the six mainstays of his delt workouts.

 1) Military Presses

If Jose still feels he wants more of both a warm-up and a pre-exhaust effect, he’ll do dumbbell laterals next. Otherwise, he moves on to his bread-and-butter mass movement for the shoulders, the seated barbell military press. His hand spacing is narrower than what you usually see, but as with everything Jose does in the gym, there’s always a method to his madness. “The closer grip lets me target the front delts better, and keeping my arms in closer feels much safer too,” he notes. I’ve seen him do 275 for sets of 12 several times, but Jose can and will go up to 315. “I actually get stronger when I’m training for a show,” he says. “Part of that is the added motivation, but it’s also because I’m eating perfectly on schedule, and all the very best quality clean food.”

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2) Dumbbell Lateral Raises

If you watch Jose do his lateral raises, you’ll see he doesn’t bring the dumbbells up to ear level like some people. “I want to feel these in the medial delts and not the traps, so I stop the motion at the point where I can feel the traps starting to take over,” he explains. Over the years, he’s tinkered around with all the exercises he does to make them personally more effective. Rather than bring the dumbbells straight out to his sides, the path is more like a diagonal; slightly angled in front of him. When Jose reaches failure, he may continue doing partial reps from the bottom about one-third of the way up, or he might grab a lighter pair of ‘bells and crank out a drop set. “My goal with laterals is to get as fully engorged pump as possible— I don’t want to be able to scratch my head if it itches when those laterals are done.”

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3) Hammer Strength Behind-the-Neck Presses

One press is all many guys do for shoulders, but since Jose has been training his directly for many years less than most of his fellow pros, he’s making up for lost time. His second pressing movement is the Hammer Strength behind-the-neck press machine, which lets him continue the assault of heavy iron without the limitation of having to keep the weights balanced. “I let my elbows come forward a bit when I use this machine, because that’s where I get the right angle to press up at,” he notes. Jose also doesn’t lock out the reps, preferring to keep the tension on his delts and away from his already massive triceps. I’ve seen him use four plates for sets of 12 without a spotter anywhere near him, and with big brother Tito standing watch at this photo shoot, he went for a full five wheels.

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4) Front Raises

Jose doesn’t always include direct work for his front delts, but when he does it could be front raises with a barbell, dumbbells, or even a 45-pound plate. “They get a lot of work from any type of overhead press, and even on chest day on all your pressing movements,” he clarifies. “I tend to do them more as I’m getting close to a show, mainly just to help with the muscle detail and separation. At that point, you need to work everything hard.”

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5) Rear Laterals

Rear delts are never neglected by Jose. He alternates from workout to workout using either a reverse pec deck machine for rear laterals, the cable station, or dumbbells. When he uses dumbbells, the motion looks like a hybrid between a standard rear lateral raise and a two-arm bent dumbbell row. “That was just something else I picked up by messing around and trying to get a better feel and contraction,” Jose says. “Nobody should just accept that there’s one way to do any exercise that’s perfectly suited to everyone’s particular structure and leverages— you have to try shifting things around like the angle, your hand position, where you have your elbows pointing, all that.”

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6) Shrugs

It sure looks impressive to see Jose shrugging with almost 600 pounds here, but I can’t lie to y’all— Jose hardly ever trains his traps directly. That’s partly because he deadlifts 500 pounds for reps every week, and that will beat the hell out of anyone’s traps. It’s also because building his traps any bigger than they currently are wouldn’t be a wise decision for a man who’s trying to be the best 212 pro in the world. “I’m not really the widest guy around, and thicker traps would detract from my shoulder width, big-time.”

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Jose’s Training Split

 Monday:           Quads

 Tuesday:          Arms

 Wednesday:     Back

 Thursday:         Chest

 Friday:              Hamstrings

 Saturday:          Delts

 Sunday:            OFF                            

 

Jose’s Shoulder Workout: February 9, 2011

 Icarian Seated Lateral Raise Machine                  30 x 15, 50 x 20, 80 x 20, 100 x 20

 Seated Barbell Presses to Front                           45 x 15, 135 x 11, 135 x 8 (warm-ups)

                                                                              225 x 8, 275 x 8, 225 x 12

 Dumbbell Lateral Raises                                       30 x 12, 40 x 11, 45 x 12, 50 x 12

 Hammer Strength Behind-the-Neck Press            135 x 12, 225 x 12, 315 x 12, 405 x 12

 Life Fitness Rear Delt Machine                             185 x 12, 200 x 15, 255 x 12, 255 x 12

 

JOSE ON TITO

“Tito wasn’t just a brother to me growing up. He was my best friend, my protector, and I would even go so far as to say a father figure in some ways. People from our old neighborhood say they used to see him when he was only 5 or 6 years old carrying me around when I was just a baby, everywhere he went.”

“If Tito had taken bodybuilding as far as he could have, he probably would have been about 225 or so but would look much bigger. He always had the better overall shape and structure out of the two of us. I see Ronny Rockel now and I think that’s pretty close to how he would look if he had wanted to.”

 

TITO ON JOSE

“Jose was always stockier than me— at 5 years old they called him ‘Bear.’ I knew he would be more of the massive type of bodybuilder once he started training. The kid was always crazy strong. His high school principal had him tested for steroids just because he knew he was clean, to shut up all the teachers and students talking crap.”       

“The 2002 USA was really where I felt I passed on the torch to Jose to take bodybuilding as far as he could, because my heart wasn’t really in it anymore. He was younger, he was hungrier, and Jose had that hardcore, diehard attitude to be the best.”

“I’m incredibly proud of what Jose has accomplished so far in bodybuilding, both as an amateur and now as one of the world’s best 212 pros. I feel like he’s representing both of us, and what we started back in the basement 30 years ago with those plastic weights. I will say it’s been hard watching him trying to make it in this business, because pro bodybuilding is not an easy way to make a living and the kid works so hard.”

 

 

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