Over the years, I have helped myself and many of the physique/figure/bikini athletes I've worked with build some incredible shoulders. You see, when a stage competitor comes to me, the shoulders are usually one of the areas that needs to be brought up.
Some have a good starting point, which, for the every day purpose, look amazing in a tank or a strapless dress. But for stage... we needed more.
I've found over the years a few key things that have helped build those up. Let me first mention that this was all done with hypertrophy as the focus, meaning none of these people were trying to bench 200 pounds during this phase. Or run a marathon. The goal was simple... MUSCLE.
1. VOLUME - For all the women I've worked with, they all needed a shoulder focused day. Not a full upper routine where you do 1 chest, 1 shoulder, 1 back, 1 bicep and 1 tricep movement. No no. We needed multiple shoulder exercises - usually 5-7 exercises for that day - with 3-5 sets PER exercise. You're looking at 15-25 sets of shoulders, a far cry from 3x10.
2. FREQUENCY - Every female I have coached in this capacity needed more than 1 shoulder day. You see volume - the total work done for that day - is different than frequency. Frequency is how many times over the course of a week or month that you are training that part. Usually 2 days/week of shoulders were prescribed with the occasional block of 3 days/week. (During that block, we would utilize the 3rd day for pump work like battling ropes, sleds, and joint-friendly exercises).
3. ORDER OF OPERATIONS - How the day is set up makes a big difference too. In most strength training programs, we move from compound, multi-joint movements to isolation, smaller muscle groups. But in this case, we can mix things up a bit to induce a bit of growth and fatigue.
Here are a couple examples I've used over the years when organizing a shoulder training day:
Main/heavy day
- Heavy overhead press
- Isolation
- Isolation
- Lighter overhead (DB or machine)
- Isolation
- Isolation
Second day
1. Isolation/pump/pre-fatigue
2. Overhead press
3a. Isolation
3b. Isolation
4. Machine press
5a. Isolation
5b. Isolation
There are a few other ways to work that as nothing is set in stone, but it's a good guideline. Typically doing an overhead press exercise further down the list might go against the "rules" of exercise order. However, after having performed several exercises and accumulated a decent amount of fatigue, you'll be forced to use less weight, thus decreasing the amount of stress/load on the joint and still creating the pump effect we are looking for.
4. WORK YOUR TAIL OFF - As with any program, put in the work. Going through the motions on any program won't yield solid results. Train hard and really work on getting good contractions. Shoulders respond well to that. If we just start flinging weights around, it's easy to compensate with other muscle groups. Be intentional in focusing on the delts.