Training your shoulders, without weightlifting ?

[TzuChan]

yeah I'm kinda against weights atm lol, so is there a good way of training my shoulders, broadening them a bit, with body weight or something ? I try to do handstand against a wall and push up a couple of times, but the blood gets to my head, so I can barely do 10 of them without having the feeling my head's gonne explode :P

Any help is appreciated, and needed =)

[Ford Prefect]

There are a lot of gymnastics movements that would help, but I don't know if you can get to a set of rings, uneven bars, or a horse. I think dive bomber push-ups and reverse push-ups work the shoulders, but unless you are really weak and skinny, you won't see much of a gain visually. You could always try power-ups. They will hit the shoulders to an extent.

In other words, good luck broadening up your shoulders without resistance. ;)

[Kempo Guy]

As Ford suggests, divebombers and hindu push-ups will work your shoulders as well as hand-stand pushups. There are gymnastics tension exercises as well, which may require access to either rings or paralletts.

Otherwise, I'd suggest investing in some dumbells and do some side presses, military presses, clean & jerks, clean & presses etc.

KG

[CD Lee]

Hey, not to convince you to train with weights, but almost everything these guys are saying with bodyweight stuff, is resistancetraining.

My question is this: If you are using resistance training to build muscles, why does it matter if you are picking up a weight safely and pushing it overhead, or standing on your hands, and pushing your body up? They are both still resistance trainig. One way is a lot safer than the other way too.

I do not want to turn this into a flame thread. Just curious.

Shoulders are a tough one without weights I think. Push ups offer some good work to the font deltoid. In our school, the Bagua guys use balls filled with water, and stones to hold postures and walking. This works the shoulders, but you might call that weight training?

[wall]

Handstand pushups are a great shoulder exercise. They are virtually a shoulder press - with way more weight than your average dumbells ;) Furthermore they recruit a fair amount of assistance muscles (triceps) and a few supporting muscles (neck, lower back).

To build up to them start by doing handstands against a wall or such, for stints of 10sec if that's all you can do, building up to 60sec over a few weeks. Don't lock your elbows, so as to support your weight with your musculature mostly. Once you can last 60sec start doing reps, initially half reps (hands on floor lowering until your head touches the ground) and a few weeks into it full reps (by placing your hands on something 2-3 inches off the ground, say bricks or such - be careful they don't move!).

Do a full workout of 6 sets twice a week, and eat lots of protein at least for the 48h following.
Once you'll get to 12+ full reps in a single set (or 15+ if you are really light) your shoulders will be pretty built and very strong. Just don't forget to train the rest of your body too :)

W

PS gymnasts do this stuff daily......

[Ford Prefect]

CD Lee,

Because there is not enough resistance to premote hypertrophy. That's why I said if you are weak and skinny then it will help build strength and size, but if you have any level of strength, then BWE's will be far too easy to premote any serious weight/maximal strength gain.

[Cheese Dog]

TzuChan

As the guys suggested, handstand pushups, divebomber and hindu pushups are good for shoulder development. I found pullups good for shoulders too. (Mostly the rear deltoid.)

A really good exercise for shoulders, and the rest of the body as well, is simply punching the heavy bag full force.

[TzuChan]

Thanks alot guys,

And about the non weight lifting. Whatever I can do a natural way, I do a natural way, and since I'm a poor student, it's better this way since I don't have to buy them heavy weights =) And as weird as it may sound, I prefer to do for example 10 standing pushups above weightlifting, simply cause it's way more fun to do. And since I'm not going for an extreme muscle development yet, I feel like weights aren't needed yet ..

Btw I'm an absolute dummy in food stuff
In what food do I find proteines ? (normal food, again not synthetical sjiet) And what's it good/BAD for ?

Thanks

[Kempo Guy]

Weights don't necessarily make you 'huge' (extreme muscle development). Depends on what you're wanting to focus on...

BTW, another great shoulder exercise is to go 3 minute rounds on a heavy bag with 16oz. boxing gloves.

Some good sources of protein are: eggs (eggwhites), chicken breast, fish (I prefer salmon as it also contains a lot of Omega-3), lean meat (although I personally don't eat much of it), cottage cheese, tuna (canned variation is good enough) etc.

KG

[CD Lee]

Ford -

I am with you on this one. However, in this persons case, he may actually be doing way too much initial resistance due to his bodyweight being too much to start with.

It is like doing pull ups for your lats. Most guys over 200lbs, cannot do pullups on a bar. That is where weights or machines can help. You can do cable pull downs, working until you can lift yourself off the chair by pulling the bar. Then one can go to bar chins. I am talking about wide chin ups not the narrow inverted grip kind.

Natural lifting instead of weights? Hey get a log, curl a chair, place a 50 lb. sack of rice on top the refrigerator 10 times. There are a ton of things you can do naturally that will be a little safer until your shoulders get stronger. Otherwise, stand on your head and take your best shot.

[IronFist]

What's up, TzuChan?

I try to do handstand against a wall and push up a couple of times, but the blood gets to my head, so I can barely do 10 of them without having the feeling my head's gonne explode :P

First of all, being able to do 10 reps of handstand pushups is pretty good. Most people can't usually do more than one or two.

If you don't like the pressure going to your head, here is something you could try: Instead of trying to do sets of 10, and having all the blood rush to your head, why not do more sets of less reps? That way you can keep the volume high but not be upside down for a long time. Try 5 or 6 sets of 5 or 6 reps with 45 seconds-1 minute between each set.

Or, you could do pushups that are almost handstand, but not quite... like put your feet on something really high... I dunno. The higher you get your feet up the more it works your front deltoid. That's why handstand pushups work it more than regular pushups.

But don't forget to develop the other heads of the deltoid as well. Otherwise you might end up lopsided.

Good luck.

IronFist

[TzuChan]

How can I avoid lopside .. and what is it ? :D

Thanks for the help btw

[rubthebuddha]

for lopsided, think those guys down at the beach with huge chests and biceps, but no back whatsoever. that's lopsided. work the front, side and back of the shoulder (anterior, medial and posterior deltoids, respectively) with equal vigor.

[TzuChan]

How do I specifically train those areas of my shoulders ? And how do you guys train your back muscles ? And for example the muscles between your shoulders and slightly beneath your neck (I'm not sure if those are neck muscles, I do know they're pretty big muscles when I feel them, it's the part .. well the part that you would 'massage' if you massaged a woman's neck/shoulders ..)

[Kempo Guy]

For the back, I like to do pull-ups (and chin-ups to a certain degree). I also do a lot of pulls (regular DL's and Cleans) along with suitcase deadlifts. Other than that, my Kettlebell snatches & swings take care of the rest. :D

And I believe the muscles you're talking about are the 'traps'. :)

KG

[rubthebuddha]

to get the traps, shoulder shrugs are just darn stout. take some solid dumbbells, and, keeping your arms down, just shrug your shoulders up to your ears. do 10 with some heavy dumbbells and you'll be happy.

to get the shoulders all around, do these exercises, feel the muscles you engage doing them, and think of what else you can do to engage them well:

anterior: grip two dumbbells of light weight, arms at your side, palms facing forward. keeping your arms straight, lift the dumbbells up and forward until they are parallel to the ground, straight out in front of your shoulders. the muscles you're focusing on your shoulder during this is the anterior deltoid.

medial: take same dumbells, arms at side, palms facing inward toward your body. lift the dumbbells straight out to the side to form a T with your body. stop when your arms are parallel to the ground.

posterior: bend over with slightly bent knees and a back that is straight and parallel to the ground. hold same dumbbells and lift them out and up, keeping the arms straight. a person looking at you from above should see a T from your shoulders down to your tailbone.

make sense?

[IronFist]

Originally posted by TzuChan
How can I avoid lopside .. and what is it ? :D

Thanks for the help btw

Lopsided - adj. "LOP-sided". It means when something is not balanced, or does not look balanced. For example, if your right arm was huge and your left arm was small, you could say your arms were lopsided.

As far as I know, "lopside" isn't a word. It's only "lopsided." I just meant don't get your front deltoids more developed than the side or rear deltoids, because that would be lopsided :)

For your back, pullups are awesome. They also work the rear delts to an extent.

For side delts, lateral dumbell raises are good.

IronFist

[dbulmer]

TzuChan,

Siu Lim Tao (but very slowly) will help you . One thing I do is play Badminton with colleagues at work - it's a great cardio workout and because a lot of the moves involves smashes it's great for at least one shoulder !

With Badminton I rarely ache in the shoulder department - legs are a different matter though!

[TzuChan]

I don't see how Siu Lim Tao helps my shoulders .. I'd have to do it 200 times then ?

[Former castleva]

Invest in bodybuilding related literature and you will save yourself time and save - from additional frustration.
A bar and dumbbels are not a major pain to go for if compared to practicality they offer.

[dbulmer]

When I first started doing WC I always found that my shoulders used to ache when I did anything WC related. Through practice of the SLT I find that I relax more and as a result my shoulders have got used to being in a fixed position. When the 2 fists are held at the side in the opening of the SLT I found that my shoulders used to ache partly because I was too tense and partly because I wasn't used to keeping my shoulders in one spot. Also I found the same problem in Lat sao - again being too tense. The SLT has helped me to relax and although I sometimes still get still sore it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

How fast do you do your SLT? In class mine lasts about 5 mins but outside class I take about 15-20 minutes.

Is there a specific WT reason why you want to increase your shoulder strength? If it's because of WT it may be because you are tensing up and SLT can help you there.

[TzuChan]

No, just wouldn't hurt to have better build shoulders =)

And well it takes me about 2 minutes max =) In class I can't remember, has been a while, but I stopped with WT though, doing TJQ now.

[dbulmer]

Sorry to hear you've left WC - I guess the travelling was too much? If I recall you had a real hard job to get to classes ?

Anyway, that said SLT will still complement your taichi and hopefully the concept of centreline will syay with you.

Good luck with your new training.

[IronFist]

SLT won't build raw power in the shoulders, though. By raw power I mean the ability to overhead press a lot of weight.

IronFist

[SevenStar]

Originally posted by TzuChan
Thanks alot guys,

And about the non weight lifting. Whatever I can do a natural way, I do a natural way, and since I'm a poor student, it's better this way since I don't have to buy them heavy weights =) And as weird as it may sound, I prefer to do for example 10 standing pushups above weightlifting, simply cause it's way more fun to do. And since I'm not going for an extreme muscle development yet, I feel like weights aren't needed yet ..



Weights won't make you hyooge at all, if you are only training for strength and not size. you can get WAY stronger than you can "the natural way" and not gain any mass...

[DuLayLoMo]

If you are so poor, you can invent poor man's strength training tools.

You can used rice bags to throw and catch.

Large barrel carts, filled it with water maybe half way, do do some snatchs and lifts this develops your grip, shoulders, and functional strength. Oh yeah, empty beer kegs are also cool.


Empty gallon milk cartons, filled it with sands, iron dust, or even water for basic movements.

Take empty champagne bottle, filled it with sand or iron dust, rescrew it, and now you have a modified indian club which you can work your shoulders.

Take your chairs and grab it by it single leg and lift it.

Think outside the box, poorer people have to think better than richer folks.

[TzuChan]

It's alot more fun without weights lol, don't you guys get it or what ? :D

[DuLayLoMo]

Tzu,

Body weight exercises has its merits and place. I am in favor of body weight exercises as a foundational phase for martial artists and atheletes in general. However, make no mistake that wing chun masters and the students of shaolin in the past did not use strength equiment or weight to develop their kung fu.

You should try to research what your wing chun masters in the past did to strengthen their kung fu. I am sure you will find that they did some unconventional weight training.

Cheers.

[SevenStar]

It may be more fun without weights, but you can't make the same gains...

try some more MA oriented stuff if nothing else - rope pulley, rock pole, etc.