I was only recently introduced to this exercise by a gym-junkie friend of mine and at first when I saw this behemoth of a man pickup 5kg weights I was thinking to myself that he must be preparing to eat the dumbbells because I can't imagine what else someone that is 100kg of solid muscle would possibly do with such a light weight.
He introduced me to one of the most difficult and rewarding exercises that I have ever done for shoulders. It's called the "prone press" and it is difficult as hell and will surprise you with how difficult it actually is.
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This can be done either on the floor or on a bench, it doesn't really matter but for me the bench seems less "icky" and also allows you to cheat a little bit if you are trying to figure out what sort of weight you should involve in the exercise.
Seeing as how my giant friend was using 5kg dumbbells, I stepped it down to 2.5's, which is the lightest non-plastic-dumbbell in the entire gym.
What you do is lie like the guy in the pic above is and then stretch your arms forward as if you were going for some sort of Superman pose in a full extension.
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This exercise targets a part of your shoulders and well as the traps and these muscle groups are very difficult to target doing almost any other exercise. This is why almost everyone can not use any sort of heavier weight when performing it.
When my friend was doing the exercise and grimacing while through simple sets of ten I thought he was pulling my leg and messing around with me to have a joke at my expense. I was wrong: This exercise is extremely difficult even with a very low weight. I challenge you to give it a try and please, do not try to be a hero with something heavy. The guy that taught this exercise to me benches 150kg as a warm up and he was definitely not messing with me.
The really cool thing about this exercise is that it doesn't take very long, and you'll reach muscle exhaustion after just a few sets. The even cooler part about this exercise is that it doesn't negatively impact the rest of your routine on shoulder day. I'm sitting here right now two days later and am still "feeling the burn" in that targeted area of my shoulders and look forward to doing them again when shoulder day comes next week.
You can do this exercise at any point in your shoulder-day routine since it seems to involved muscle groups that serve as a very secondary part of the motion of virtually every other shoulder exercise in my personal regimen.
My shoulders are a part of my body that I am most impressed with after 2 years of taking body building seriously and almost everyone has access to dumbbells no matter how ill-equipped your gym happens to be. You can also do this with just about anything in your hands, including something like a broom. You'll be surprised that this tiny amount of weight makes an absolutely massive difference in your ability to complete the motion.
From athlete in my 20's, to fat-ass in my 30's, to the strongest I have ever been in my life in my 40's. It was all accomplished with small, gradual changes to my lifestyle and I believe that if I can do it, so can just about anyone else
Now this looks intense. Never heard of this exercise but I will surely try it out. Thanks for the tip. Here is mine :)
@tipu curate
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I'd be interested to see how you end up feeling about it. I went in with arrogance just like I am sure everyone else would. It's a pretty humbling experience.
Yeah I think a lot of people don't realize how much you can isolate muscle groups without needing to use massive weights. The big weights help but if you are not confident with technique, you might be better off with these types of isolation exercises.
for me doing 3 sets of these is much more difficult than bench sets on a heavy bench day. It's just crazy how difficult these are.