Training your shoulders, without weightlifting ?

[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 ?

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 ?

[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.