Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press (How To)

 

I find that this one of my favorite exercises for the shoulders, mostly due because of how simple the movement is and because I enjoy working shoulders — the more dominant area of my body. This movement can be done seated or standing but for the sake of this particular post, I will be talking about the seated version of it. For those of you who want to get more mass and strength in your shoulders and still work on the stabilizer muscles, this is the movement for you. 

 

How to perform the movement?

 
  1. Choose a pair of dumbbells that fit your fitness level, sit on a bench that has back support (because you will want your back against the seat), place the dumbbells upright on top of your thighs to begin with.
  2. Then, raise the dumbbells to shoulder height one at a time, using your thighs to help propel them to the position
  3. Palm of your hands should be facing forward (starting position)
  4. While exhaling, push the dumbbells upward until your arms are fully extended above you
  5. Slowly lower the weights back to the starting position while inhaling 
  6. Repeat for the recommended repetitions

What muscles are being worked?

  • Lateral delts
  • Triceps
  • chest muscles
  • Middle and lower traps
  • shoulders 

With a few other muscles that I have not mentioned. 

 

What is especially important when performing this exercise is, that one does not make ballistic movements, and to not go lower than ear level to reduce your likeliness of injury. 

 

Before starting this exercise, please consider seeing a medical professional if you have any conditions or injuries. 

 

Fitness WonderWoman, 

Shay-lon Moss

ACSM Certified Personal Trainer 

 

Heavy squats & deadlifts

Today’s workout consisted of heavy load today with both squats and sumo deadlifts, I used low bar wide stance squats because I am working on hip mobility along with the sumo deadlift. I have noticed that what I thought was my max effort, I could have probably went up in weight on my heavier lifts — so possibly next week I will check my 1RM’s for my lifts. Normally I would have some Tri-set exercises after the core lifts but decided to end my workout with some HIIT Training.

 

Warm Up:

 
  1. Side lunges: 4 x 25
  2. EZ Bar butt-lifts: 4 x 25, 20 lbs
  3. Bench kettlebell stiff-legged deadlifts: 4 x 25, 4 kg

Workout:

  • Sumo deadlift: 5 x 2-4 (80%-90%) 5 x 180 lbs, 5 x 190 lbs, 5 x 200 lbs

       – sumo deadlift off blocks: 5 x 2-4 (80% 1RM), 180 lbs

       – Sumo deadlift: 2 x 1 (95%+) 215 lbs, 225 lbs 

  • Barbell back squat: 5 x 2-4 (80%-90% 1RM) 5 x 160 lbs, 5 x 170 lbs, 5 x 180 lbs

        – Barbell back squat: 2 x 1 (95%+ 1RM) 190 lbs, 200 lbs

 

HIIT Training: 5 rounds circuit

  1. High knees: 20 seconds
  2. squats: 20 seconds, 12 lbs body bar
  3. burpees: 20 seconds

Check out my workout: Core lifts

BEGREATGUYS, Inc post #3

Reward your hard work. 

 

BUT 

 

Don’t depend use your reward against you.

 

In a world where sometimes we need a little motivation and a great deal of discipline to accomplish our goals, we have to find the time to reward our hard work. Yes, I said “hard work” because no matter how long it took you to accomplish something — you still have to put in some form of effort to finish it. I once had someone tell me “I walked a mile today, it isn’t much but it felt good” & my reply to this person was, “walking a mile is a lot because you could have stopped half way, but you continued until you finished”. So no matter what you think is a lot or a little, if you finished it — then you achieved something great. 

 

Rewarding yourself doesn’t have to be something ‘out of this world expensive’ unless you want it to be and doesn’t have to be daily, you can make it a monthly thing or a yearly big event, or something small each week. Rewarding your hard work doesn’t have to be done alone either, share your good news with friends and family and allow them to be apart of your big day! How you choose to reward yourself can be a broad range of things: new running shoes, something new for the bike, weekend vacation with the family, spa day, new fitness clothes from your favorite store, new gym bag, upgraded gym equipment for the garage, etc. The reward is for you to choose and something that will make you happy for accomplishing what you accomplished and keep you motivated to continue doing well for yourself. 

 

On the other side of things, rewarding yourself can be a positive thing gone negative if you aren’t cautious of how you reward your results. Some people may find their reward system may diminish their results/prevent them from further progress. These types of rewards are only benefiting you at the time, but in the long run they ruin what you worked hard for and set you back a couple of notches if you aren’t careful. The type of rewards I am speaking on are: eating a cookie for every mile you accomplish in the day, going to Mcdonalds for dinner on the weekends for eating healthier options during the week, buying clothes that are a size or two smaller to work towards, buying a motorized scooter instead of taking your bike to work, etc. These things are all good rewards in the beginning but these same rewards will work against you in the long term if you aren’t careful. 

For example maybe you decide since you are making so much progress, you will start to buy clothes a size or two smaller so that you have something to work towards each week or month, and while this type of motivation & reward doesn’t sound like such a bad idea upfront, in the long term it can turn into a bad decision because you become obsessed with wanting to fit the clothes and when you don’t feel as though you are making fast enough progress or it becomes a game of “I have had these same pair of jeans for 5 years hoping I would be able to fit them again”; it can start to weigh down on you mentally. Same with wanting to reward yourself with food, in the beginning it might sound like a good idea because you have chosen to cut them out of your life otherwise, but in the long term it can turn into a habit that becomes the delay of your progress. I believe if you want to eat something, do it but paying mind to the amount of it and how it may or may not effect your results is important because you don’t want to work hard for something and then end up losing it all due to your reward system because that same reward system is what is keeping you going in the first place — what sense would it be to have made an accomplishment then throw it all away at the same time.

 

Along side a good reward system would be to have a purpose/ A “Why” so that when the reward system fails you, you can use your purpose to keep you going again — a good purpose/good why, is one that drives you, keeps you grounded and doesn’t leave you with doubt. Sometimes our why’s can take the place of our rewards because our why is the reward.

 

Thank you for reading, please take the time to leave comments, likes, share or reblog, and follow. 

 

This post was in honor of my sponsor #BEGREATGUYS 

check us out at https://begreatguys.com/ and find my personal page at https://begreatguys.com/shay-lon-moss

 

Be sure to use my promo code “Shay” for discounted prices on apparel 🙂 

 
 

Bench Day

I plan on writing more post that don’t always revolve around my workouts, but I have to get back on a schedule for blogging again, so bare with me until I get myself organized. Today’s workout consisted of the bench press, overall a good workout. 

Warm Up:

  • DB chest press: 4 x 25, 20lbs
  • Assisted wide grip pull ups: 4 x 25, 150lbs
  • Reverse grip cable pushdown: 4 x 25, 40 lbs

Workout:

  • Barbell bench press: 9 x 3-6, 80lbs (60% 1RM)

       —- Barbell bench press (wide): 5 x 3-6, 80lbs 

       —-Barbell bench press (narrow): 5 x 3-6, 80 lbs

 

Tri-set:

  • DB overhead extension: 5 x 10-15, 20lbs
  • Standing cable reverse fly: 5 x 10-15, 40 lbs
  • Assisted chin ups: 5 x 10-15, 130 lbs

Tri-set:

  • Barbell reverse bentover row: 5 x 10-15, 65 lbs
  • Incline DB reverse fly: 5 x 10-15, 20 lbs
  • Triceps cable kickback: 5 x 10-15, 10 lbs
 
 

Workout catch ups

To keep things simple, I will post all the workouts up to this point in this post, and separate them by dates, we stopped off at 4/19, so this will begin at 4/24 (which was the next time I hit up the gym). 

 

4/24

Warm up:

 
  • Hip thrusters: 4 x 25, 20 lbs
  • kettlebell swings: 4 x 25, 12 lbs
  • EZ- bar goodmorning: 4 x 25, 20 lbs

Workout: (dynamic workout with squats/deadlifts)

  • Conventional deadlift: 9 x 3-6, 180 lbs (60% 1RM)
  • knee pulls: 9 x 3-6, 190 lbs
  • Barbell back squat (low bar/ wide stance): 9 x 3-6, 120 lbs (60% 1RM)
  • barbell jump squats: 9 x 3-6, 100 lbs

Tri- set:

  • Barbell hip thrusters: 5 x 10-15, 100 lbs
  • One arm kettlebell swings: 5 x 10-15, 8 kg
  • DB stiff legged deadlift: 5 x 10-15, 40 lbs

Tri-set

 
  • Straight leg raises: 5 x 10-15
  • one legged kettlebell deadlift: 5 x 10-15 ea leg, 12 kg
  • Quadruped hip extension with band: 5 x 10-15 each leg, red band

Tri-set:

  • Bulgarian DB split squat: 5 x 10-15 ea leg, 30 lbs
  • lateral squat: 5 x 10-15
  • clamshell: 5 x 10 ea leg, red band
 

4/25

Warm up:

  • One arm DB row: 4 x 25, 5 lbs
  • Dip assisted machine: 4 x 25, 120 lbs
  • Rear delt machine: 4 x 25, 20 lbs

Workout: (heavy day/ bench press)

  • Barbell bench press: 5 x 2-4, 110 lbs, 115 lbs, 120 lbs (80%-90% 1RM)

Tri-set:

  • Lat pulldown: 5 x 10-15, 60 lbs
  • bench dips: 5 x 10-15
  • cable face pulls: 5 x 10-15, 60 lbs

Tri-set:

  • Seated DB reverse fly: 5 x 10-15, 30 lbs
  • One arm DB row: 5 x 10-15 each arm, 25 lbs
  • Close handed push ups: 5 x 10-15
 

4/27

Warm up:

  • Lateral band walk: 4 x 25, green
  • lateral band leg raises: 4 x 25, green
  • EZ bar wide stance stiff legged deadlifts: 4 x 25, 20 lbs

Workout:(heavy day/squats&Deadlifts)

  • Conventional deadlift: 3 x 2-4, 240 lbs, 255 lbs, 270 lbs (80%-90%)
  • Barbell back squat( low bar, wide stance): 3 x 2-4, 160 lbs, 170 lbs, 180 lbs (80%-90% 1RM)

        – barbell back squat: 2 x 1, 190 lbs, 200 lbs (95%+)