Why Your Delts Aren't Growing (ONE FIX!)

When it comes to shoulder workouts and shoulder exercises, the lateral raise has been shown time and time again to generally be the most effective side delts exercise to develop this area and give you wide delts. And in fact, most of you watching likely already do some form of a lateral raise in your routines. But the reason why you ‘can’t grow shoulders’ has to do with your execution of this seemingly simple movement. Aside from using too much momentum and swinging front back and side to side during the movement, one of the lesser known culprits that we don’t even realize is taking over is the upper traps. So, in this video, I’m going to show you how to get big shoulders by minimizing upper traps involvement when executing exercises for middle delts.

How does the upper traps take over though? Well, it can be traced back to the fact that many of us already have overactive upper traps from being in this hunched over position most of the day. Also, the upper traps function to elevate the shoulder. Whereas the side delts function to raise the arm out to the side. So what a lot of us will do during the lateral raise, especially during that initial and very last part of the rep, is we’ll shrug our traps up to assist the weaker side delts with raising that weight up. And the problem is that many of us now just do this subconsciously and overtime have developed this pattern of automatically firing the upper traps whenever we raise our arms out to the side. So, how can we minimize the involvement of the upper traps during the exercise?

The first step toward wide delts is to use a mindful exercise that’ll help teach your body to get out of the habit of recruiting the upper traps whenever you raise your arms to the side. To perform it, take a seat and hold a 5lb dumbbell in one hand or even just use no weight at all to start out. Place your other hand on your upper trap. All I want you to do now is very slowly raise the weight up at about a 45-degree angle in front of you. But as you do so, feel your upper traps to make sure they remain soft and relaxed and don’t tense up. As soon as they start to tense up, get back to the starting position and try again. So as you raise, think about actively pushing your shoulder down and depressing your traps as you raise the weight up. The main goal of this exercise is to be able to do a full rep up to parallel successfully without tensing up the upper traps.

Now, in addition to this, there are other lateral raise variations that you can experiment with that manipulate your body position to help minimize the involvement of the traps. In turn, eliminating the issue that you can’t grow shoulders. The first one is something I’ve showed in past videos and is an inclined lateral raise, where you lay on an incline bench and raise your arms up at about a 45 degree angle. The bench helps provide you with a little more stability and the resulting body position you’re in puts the upper traps in a less favorable position, which both result in more side delts involvement and less upper traps. The second exercise you can try out is the lying cable lateral raise. By performing this lateral raise lying down with cables, we’re able to favour the side delts a little more while providing a constant resistance through the whole range of motion of the side delts.

To sum this all up into an action plan for you, what I’d suggest is start with the first mindful exercise that we did and replace your lateral raises in your routine with that drill for the time being. Master that while increasing the load very gradually overtime, and then once you’re ready you can transition to the standard lateral raise given that you’re able to successfully perform your reps with minimal compensation of the upper traps. Then from here, you can experiment with some of the other exercises for middle delts I mentioned and take a look at some of my other delts videos to implement some more variation and volume for your delts once you’re ready to do so.

And that’s it–you know how to get big shoulders. But all in all, you need to realize that if you’re struggling to grow certain muscle groups, then odds are it’s a result of the various compensations that you’re unknowingly making whenever you attempt to train that muscle. And for a step-by-step program that addresses this by using science to not only show you what to workout week after week, but then shows you exactly how to perform each and every exercise for maximal activation and growth while pairing this with a nutrition plan to support your recovery, then simply take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below:

Filmed by: Bruno Martin Del Campo

MUSIC:

[JeremyEthier]

Hope you enjoyed this one! What other exercises or muscle groups are you struggling with? Comment below and I’ll start catering some of my content towards that. Cheers!

[StandUpForCanada]

How can anyone NOT like this guy? His language is precise and always "to the point".

Jeremy if you're reading this keep up the great content!

[TimothyLeeMSOTCPT]

I think Jeremy mentioned this briefly, but thinking about raising the dumbbells OUTWARD instead of only upward has really helped me focus on my side delts better while minimizing trapz use. Try it while doing Step 1 in this video! I'm interested to see if it helped others or not.

[Limlaunch]

Wow. I just discovered this channel and I'm blown away. I've never understood something about fitness so clearly.

Beautiful graphics and editing on top of a super knowledgeable teacher. This is the gold standard of fitness content on YouTube.

Thanks so much, Jeremy. Excited to dig into your channel.

[tranmikey]

I love how amidst the “fake weights” and exposed coaches/personal trainer/fitness youtubers trends, my man Jeremy is keeping up with them informative videos as well as bravely admitting his mistakes in the past and fixing it with additional researches.

Massive respect for this man. One of the few fitness trainers on YT I actually follow and subscribed for tips on gaining muscles while losing them stubborn belly fats.

[DrSwole]

1:00 Jeremy calling out your posture when you least expect it 😂

[Alessandro_]

That is INSANE, Jeremy. I just tried to do a single rep WITHOUT any weight, forcing to keep my traps down, and it's been so painful, I just discovered my delts are so weaker than I thought.. incredible difference, thank you for that

[robert]

I've been lifting weights for 25 years, but have never been able to achieve much side delt soreness or growth.

Thanks to this video, I went down to 10 pound dumbbells from 25 or 30 I used before, tried to keep my traps loose and shoulders down.

For the first time in at least 5 years, I actually am sore in the muscle belly of my side delt. My side delta are pumped, and I have no shoulder pain either. Thank You very much. It's unbelievable that these little changes in technique make such a difference.

[jays]

literally right as I was thinking about cutting my rest day into a delt day, it's like a sign from above

[JunandKeshia]

Wow, I googled why my lat delts weren’t growing as well as other muscle groups and found this vid. Made me realize I’ve been doing them so wrong my whole life utilizing alot of traps. Thanks for this info

[Old_Gaming_Dad]

Imagine waking up getting ready to work out, and working delts and seeing this video confirming your doing it wrong lmao🤦🏽‍♂️🤭

[jackscott]

This guy should get an Emmy or something. Seriously best fitness content on YouTube or TV.

[shloyogoldstein]

This is legit freakin genius, I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, but now that I naturally did lateral raises, this is def what I was doing wrong. THANKS JEREMY!!!

[DiamonBash]

I love flattery, it’s such a true thing. Cheering people for being something is only a well meant gesture. It’s a happy booster and energy for doing more or even better.

[DarongQi]

Why is this guy pumping out precise and quality content... this ain't youtube this is youtube premium

[KiLLaBushWooKiE]

Damn this is something i kind of knew. A dude at gym once told me lower the weight ur shoulders ain't as strong as u think and push ur shoulders down when doin any fly/raise/pull type exercises. 💯 👍

[vonderingvakeelvlogsrito]

Now I realise I was involving my upper traps more than the lateral delts. Thanks for this pro tip. 🙏🇮🇳

[Sawrattan]

Your videos just 'flow' better than most. I never feel I have to skip through anything, thank you!

[robertbruce]

Jeremy, thank you for this. What is most helpful to me since I am so visual, is that you show diagrammatic progression with animation so I can picture exactly what you’re talking about. And you run it at a slow speed so I can see the traps contracting. This is my biggest problem. I’ve tried other method, but none are as clear or produce results as well as yours. I can already see the difference. I was also pleased to see you recommending a 45° angle forearm position (as opposed straight-out position from your side) for the lift. This gives you much more control and is more natural for the human anatomy. Also better for your shoulder joints! Thank you so much

[ly]

That was about the clearest exercise video I have seen on YT. Well done!