Summer Shoulders

Summer is just around the corner.  Or for those of us in Arizona, it has already made a couple of brief appearances in between the wind, snow, and rain.  Summer means short sleeves and swim suits, and for Metabolic Warriors it is an opportunity to show off those arms and shoulders you have been working on all winter. 

Your trainers know all too well after focusing on overhead presses during the month of March that they are not your favorite exercise.  But we have found some new research that supports that the type of training you have been doing is the BEST for developing shoulders.  We actually didn't need to be convinced.  All we need to do is take a look at our participants and we are seeing deltoids that we have never seen before!  But just in case you need motivation to keep pushing those dumbbells overhead, the research supports your efforts.

A 2012 study led by Atle Hole Saeterbakken from Sogn og Fjordane University College, Norway found that standing dumbbell shoulder presses are more effective for recruiting the shoulder muscles than seated dumbbell, or either seated or standing barbell presses.  The muscle activity of all three deltoid muscles (anterior, medial, and posterior) was greater with the standing dumbbell press.  The researchers concluded that this was most likely due to the decreased inherent stability of the standing dumbbell lift, which requires the shoulders to work harder to maintain the weights in the right movement pattern.

So give yourself bonus points for all those standing dumbbell presses you completed in March!  And the next time we have an overhead press in our training just think of those summer shoulders!