Military and Dumbbell Press Tips
Weight Training Advice
Roman statues and give the illusion of a smaller midsection. To create this illusion you need to do shoulder weight training workouts with your main exercises being military presses and dumbbell presses.
Military presses are done by simply lifting a weight from in front of you neck straight overhead. You can do them while standing or seated. You are more likely to do military presses with better form if you do them seated. If you do them standing you can get an extra rep or 2 by using some leg drive to get the weight started upward. If you do cheat a bit while doing standing military presses you need to be careful not to hurt your lower back by bending backward to involve the upper pectoral muscles. One great military press tip is to do them while seated, preferably with back support, to target the shoulders.
You may see weight trainers do military presses where they lower the weight to behind their necks, then lift it overhead. These behind the neck presses should be avoided due to the odd position they put your shoulder joints in at the bottom of the lift. Nothing will stall your weight training progress faster then a shoulder injury.
When you do seated military presses you should be able to lift more weight if you are able to lean your head back a bit so you can lower the weight closer to your neck.
While military presses are great for building shoulder size and strength, they will build the front heads of the shoulder muscles more than the side and rear heads. If you use them as your primary shoulder exercise for a while you'll likely either overdevelop or overtrain the front shoulder heads. At this point you may want to switch your main shoulder exercise to dumbbell presses.
Dumbbell presses will allow you to lower the weight to the sides of your head so while you'll still be using the front shoulder heads to lift, you'll also hit the side heads more than you do with military presses. Dumbbell presses are also best done while seated to avoid cheating too much. Dumbbell presses will also allow you some variety in how you position your hands while lifting the weights to hit the muscles a bit differently.
One great way to target the side heads of the shoulders is to do a couple of supersets of side lateral raises followed immediately with dumbbell presses. Your side shoulder heads will be pre-exhausted from the lateral raises and side shoulder heads will give out before the front heads when you do the dumbbell presses. If you want to add width to the outsides of your shoulders you should finish your shoulder workouts with some of these supersets.
It's very important not to overtrain your shoulders with military and dumbbell presses. The front shoulder heads will get a lot of work from bench and incline presses for the chest and can be overtrained if you do too many sets of military and dumbbell presses. Nothing will adversely affect upper body weight training exercises than sore shoulders. If you notice that your shoulders are feeling weak or sore while you do exercises for other muscles you drop the amount of sets you do of military and dumbbell presses. Start your shoulder workouts with only a few sets of presses, military or dumbbell, before you focus on exercises for the side and rear heads of the shoulders.
When you start weight training you'll likely want to make your upper body wider, especially in the shoulders. Bigger, wider shoulders will help give you the kind of proportions you see in ancient Greek and
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