I don’t think too many people would argue with the idea that the perfect X-Frame physique starts with wide shoulders.

To me wide shoulders are impressive and as I have noted before, you really don’t see too many people around today that posses truly wide shoulders.

Before we begin, I feel we need to make a distinction, while it is true that some people are born with a naturally wider shoulder structure than others—EVERYBODY can, with hard work on the side deltoid head, create the illusion of having wide (or at least wider) shoulders.

THE EXERCISES

The two exercises that you will be focusing on to build up your side delt head are the overhead press done with either a barbell or dumbbells and lean away laterals—done one arm at a time with a dumbbell.

I am only going to go through the overhead press for this post, and will, in a future post, write about lean away laterals.

THE OVERHEAD PRESS

Before I begin my description of how to properly do the overhead press, I want to address something that I feel is important.

I know people think the overhead press is dangerous, but this is ridiculous, any exercise that you do with improper form is going to be dangerous.

If you do the overhead press in strict form, the right way, and don’t goof around with it—you will be fine.

O.K

Onto the exercise.

DESCRIPTION OF THE OVERHEAD PRESS

I am going to assume you will be taking the barbell off a rack to do your presses, if you do not have one; it is ok, simply just clean the bar to your shoulders and start from there.

The first thing about overhead presses that I simply cannot stress enough is warming up, trust me, if you hurt your shoulders you will regret it.

Taking the time to do two sets of twenty reps with an empty bar, before you begin adding weight, will go a long way towards keeping your shoulders and elbows healthy.

O.K., rant over, now take the barbell off the rack and set your self, make sure your feet are planted firmly, in fact actually try and grip the floor with your toes, make sure your abs are tight, along with the rest of your body.

Take a breath and press, keep your wrists locked and once the barbell is past your face (it should almost brush your nose) put your head through the space, do not look up, keep looking forward, and lock out at the top, hold for a count, and slowly lower.

A COUPLE OF POINTS

At the top of the rep you want the bar to be over the back of your head and when you lower the weight your can raise your shoulders to kind of create a kind of shelve you can rest the bar on while you re-set your self for the next rep.

And that is an important point, please reset for the next rep (making sure your whole body is tight and your feet are firmly planted), especially when you are first learning the lift. Do not worry about how much weight you are using, simply master the lift first then you can start adding weight.

CLOSING POINTS

On the surface the overhead press seems like a simple lift, but it is not, which is why I recommend that beginners to the lift (or those coming back to it after a long lay off) start with the basic 5×5 (that’s five sets of five reps per set) program.

The overhead press is a wonderful lift that will build your shoulders from front to back, but again please take the time to learn the lift and be aware while this post is a good beginning it is just that, a beginning.

SOME MORE CLOSING POINTS

If using a barbell hurts your shoulders switch to using dumbbells for your presses.

In fact, it would be a good idea to rotate between using a barbell for a week or two and then switching over to dumbbells, as dumbbells will have a totally different feel and activate the muscles differently then the barbell.

Over time this will result in a more complete development of the shoulders and this is a good thing.

CONCLUSION

The overhead press done with either a barbell or dumbbells will work your shoulders from front to back and side-to-side, along with hitting your triceps and middle back.

Along with this it will also help keep your rotator cuffs strong.

The overhead press is a hard lift, but don’t be scared off—a wider set of shoulders—not to mention a perfect beginning to your X Frame—

Awaits the trainer who can push through and really master the lift.

Until Next Time

WORK HARD BUT SMART

The rear delts are a funny body part, for a complete physique you do need to develop them to their fullest—yet what exactly is the best way to go about doing it.

I will be honest, when I started bodybuilding I read all the info and of course people recommended doing bent-over rear laterals for the rear delts, so I did them.

Then as I continued to advance my knowledge of bodybuilding I started to read that well, if you always made sure to do exercises like bent-over rows for example your rear delts got plenty of work.

So what exactly is the correct method of training the rear delts?

For me, it comes down to what you are trying to achieve.

For example, if you are trying to become a world class bodybuilder—then you absolutely should train your rear delts.

Because when you start moving higher and higher up the ranks, everybody is genetically gifted and has an amazing physique, so you can’t afford to slack off even a little.

So even though you are hitting your rear delts with various rowing movements—specializing on them would not be a bad idea.

Of course, if you happen to be one of those people who are genetically gifted with shoulders that grow no matter what you do, then maybe you could get by without doing any direct work for them.

Again though, if you are trying to be the best, why chance it.

However, if you are like most people, and you just train so that you will not embarrass yourself when you take your shirt off at the beach I think that just making sure you do a wide variety of rowing movements for your back would be good enough.

But, if you start feeling pain back there or feel that you are unbalanced then by all means add in some direct rear delt work.

Just be careful with it you don’t need to use a ton of weight, and to be honest, you would be better off focusing more on learning to feel the muscle—and developing a good mind/muscle connection with the rear delts.

After all, anyone can heave up a ton of weight—but what good is it if all you get for it is an injury or joints that ache.

Take your time and learn the proper groove on bent-over laterals and you will be miles ahead in the long run.

CONCLUSION

The rear delts may be a small body part, but if they are well developed they will add that little something extra to your physique—and that is never a bad thing.

Until Next Time

MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

I love bodybuilding as much as anybody—I love the pump—the all-out effort it takes to get that one-last-rep—basically I love bodybuilding.

But.

One thing I do not believe I have ever seen talked about in any magazine or online forum is training for the mind.

I am not talking about mental rehearses of workouts.

What I am talking about is making sure you are well rounded outside of the gym.

Sounds kind of strange, however, it really isn’t.

I know myself; I am always flipping through a muscle magazine or reading a book about bodybuilding.

But what about other topics—I love reading about the Amazon rain forest, for example.

And, I will be totally honest, I check out tons of material, I do not always finish every book that I start—but I like to read and do not mind looking at a vast array of material.

Sure I am partial to books on bodybuilding, training or nutrition—but I realize that there is more to life than a steady diet of bodybuilding magazines.

CONCLUSION

Bodybuilding is more than just a hobby to me—it is a lifestyle—but I realize that I need to keep my brain sharp by reading about a wide variety of topics.

So the next time you are out-and-about, stop in at your local library and take a look around—you may not find something that you like as much as bodybuilding—

But you never know.

Until Next Time

KEEP YOUR MIND SHARP

Before I get into my review of Beverly International Nutrition’s Ultimate Muscle Protein I would just like to give you a little background info on them.

First, Beverly has been around since 1967 which certainly makes them a forerunner in my book in the world of sports nutrition.

Second, to me the name Beverly International Nutrition means quality—pure and simple.

O.k.

On to the review.

Right up front I will say that this review is based on the chocolate flavor of Ultimate Muscle Protein—as I am not a vanilla guy—any and everything chocolate.

SMELL:

The first thing I noticed when I opened up the can was the smell—Ultimate Muscle Protein smells great , to me it smelled like freshly baked brownies—to some I know this might not mean much, but hey first impressions do count.

EASE OF MIXING:

Again, I will be upfront here, I am a cup-and-spoon guy, and to be honest Ultimate Muscle Protein does not excel here.

I got it to mix up O.K. but it took me a little while to do it with only a spoon.

Next I tried my trusty shaker—a little better here but still not great.

So if you are into easy mixing shakes, this one might not be your cup-of-tea.

I love pudding (yes chocolate) so I took out one of my handy plastic food containers and tried mixing Ultimate Muscle Protein into a pudding.

Bingo!

Works great—mixes up into a good pudding consistency.

My ratings would fall like this:

In a cup—5/10 doable—but does take a bit of time

Shaker—7/10 better than in a cup but still not great.

Plastic food container—10/10 works great as a pudding.

TASTE:

Ultimate Muscle Protein tastes great even in the glass and shaker bottle despite not mixing all that well.

It has a pleasant taste, not to heavy or strong and not too weak tasting.

As a pudding it is great.

One point that I would like to make is this, I only used water for mixing and I would assume if you used milk especially for mixing it into a pudding Ultimate Muscle Protein would taste even better.

Of course, what you use would depend on where you were at, meaning if you were trying to lean out either for the beach or a contest, water would be the way to go.

However, if you were bulking—mixing it with milk would probably be the way to go.

NUTRITION BREAKDOWN:

Ultimate Muscle Protein per one scoop of the chocolate flavor has:

120 calories

3.5 grams of fat

20 grams of protein

4 grams of carbs

COST:

Ultimate Muscle Protein is not cheap, I know this turns off a lot of people, but you have to understand that Beverly uses only the highest quality ingredients for all of their products and of course, this costs more.

This is one area where only you can make the decision—to me it is worth putting out the extra cash for high quality products such as Beverly—but again this is just me.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

Beverly International Nutrition has a fine line of products—and Ultimate Muscle Protein is no exception.

In truth, I wish it mixed better in a cup with just a spoon—but this really is not a big thing.

The can I used for this review I picked up from bodybuilding.com—they have good prices and super fast shipping—which is really great.

That’s it for today

TAKE CARE.

Below is my review of Gaspari Nutrition’s MyoFusion Protein Powder.

When I first started seeing ads for MyoFusion I must admit to being excited because like many who have been bodybuilding for a while and remember the days of terrible shakes—and companies that we just did not trust—I trust Gaspari Nutrition and believed that this product would be top quality.

And I was not mistaken, although when I went to my local nutrition store to pick up a can of MyoFusion (the two pound can), I was a little concerned because I had hoped to pick up the milk chocolate flavor—but all they had was the Double Chocolate.

TASTE:

Very drinkable, goes down easy and even though I am only about half way through the can, I can see myself not getting tired of this flavor—which is very good, not too heavy on the chocolate, but enough so that you can taste it.

MIXABLITY:

Takes a little longer to mix in my over sized cup (using only a spoon) than some of the protein powders that I have used, but to me this is not a big deal.

NUTRITION PROFILE:

With twenty-five grams of high quality protein per scoop, only three grams of fat, and five carbs (for the double rich chocolate variety) it works out very nicely.

I was also happy that they did not add-in a full spectrum vitamin and mineral blend, as I already take a high quality multi, however, if this is something that you are looking for in your powder you should take this into account before purchasing a can.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

I consider protein powder to be essential to every serious bodybuilder because of today’s hectic lifestyles—who has time to sit down to prepare a healthy meal.

And as I stated at the beginning of this review, I trust Gaspari Nutrition and would recommend this protein to anyone who is looking to try something new.

However to be totally one hundred percent honest, I am not a fan of all their products, so please do not take this review to mean that I endorse everything that they make—because that is not the case.

STAY FOCUSED ON YOUR GOALS!