Building Massive Delts | Dennis Wolf Shows How
Building Massive Delts - Dennis Wolf Shows How
Hammering His Strong Points
When Dennis started training over 17 years ago, his shoulders immediately responded far better than anything else, even though he didn’t work them any harder than anything else in his upper body. I say that because he didn’t do anything for his legs in the beginning. It wasn’t until three months before entering his first contest that Wolf began working his wheels, and they too turned out to be another genetic bonanza. But it was his delts that swelled up and soon resembled cannonballs perched atop his clavicles. All well and good, except that they made his chest, back and arms seem to lag behind in comparison.
On the advice of more experienced bodybuilders, eventually he learned to train his shoulders heavy and intensely enough to maintain their impressive mass. This would allow the rest of his torso to catch up, a process that would take the better part of a decade before true balance was reached. Then, Dennis began to hear a critique that struck him as ironic. “People were mentioning that my shoulders used to be bigger and fuller before, and they were wondering if maybe I had some injury or I wasn’t working them hard anymore,” he reports. “I looked at pictures, and I saw what they meant. But my shoulders were the same size as always. They only seemed a bit smaller because I had been able to make my chest, back and arms grow so much over the years and my shoulders were the same.”
We always hear how critical it is for bodybuilders to focus on their weak points, and Dennis had been doing that for many years. But now he saw it was time to release the Kraken and take his shoulders to another level of freaky, round, fullness. God had given him a gift that he had set aside for a spell, and now the time had come to turn his attention toward making the most of that gift. Here’s what he did and the five movements that he uses.
1) Seated Press
For most of his pro career, Dennis relied mainly on the barbell military press and later the same movement using a Smith machine as his main pressing movement for shoulders. Many bodybuilders, among them Dexter Jackson, feel that barbells are superior tools for building mass because they allow for the maximum amount of resistance. For instance, it’s not uncommon to see very strong men who can handle 315 in the military press. It’s quite rare to see anybody who can press 155-pound dumbbells overhead. But four years ago, Dennis found himself experiencing terrible pain in his shoulder joints in the day or two following every shoulder workout. He also noticed that the pain seemed the worst during the actual workout when he was doing his presses. On a hunch, he tried pressing with dumbbells instead, which he hadn’t done regularly for years. Right away, there was a bit less pain. In a month of using only dumbbells for his overhead presses, there was no pain at all.
“When you think about it, dumbbells make a lot of sense for this exercise anyway,” Wolf explains. “You have total freedom of movement and can adjust the motion track to exactly what is best for your structure, something that’s harder with a bar and not even possible with the Smith machine. And because the dumbbells are moving independently, you never have a stronger side compensating for a weaker side.”
Many of you do well with barbell military presses or machines, but Dennis suggests that all MD readers give dumbbells a chance. “Sure you can’t do as heavy and they take more effort to get up into position to begin and then balance, but you might find you get much better results with them too.”
2) Seated Lateral Raises
In these photos, Dennis is performing his laterals while standing, which is how he does them when he wants to go just a bit heavier. At least half the time, he prefers doing them sitting down for stricter form and better isolation of the medial deltoids. “I don’t necessarily think one way is better than the other,” he points out. “You get the best results when you do them both at different workouts, in my opinion.”
Dennis does feel that anyone who can’t seem to properly isolate the side heads of the delts would profit from giving the seated version a try. “Other muscle groups aren’t able to start doing too much of the work, so you should go lighter and really try to feel the contractions at the top.”
Note that Dennis leads with his elbows rather than his hands, which also helps direct the stress to the proper target area. If you are feeling lateral raises more in your traps than you are in your side delts, chances are you are leading with your hands.
Dennis has another tip you can try if you really want to burn up your sides. “Try doing the seated laterals to failure, then stand up and keep going for maybe six to eight more reps,” he offers. “It’s going to give you a pump and burn like you never felt before in that area.”
3) Dumbbell Rear Lateral Raises
Rear delts are like the redheaded stepchildren of the shoulder complex— often neglected and left to fend for themselves, getting only residual work from pulling movements on back day. The rear delts make up a full third of the shoulders, so ignoring them will lead to a glaring weakness that is most apparent in the side relaxed stance as well as the side triceps and side chest poses.
“If you’re a bodybuilder, you need to make sure you put the same effort and attention into them that you do for the rest of your shoulders,” Dennis asserts. “If they are weak and look flat from the side, you should probably do them first on shoulder day until they catch up. Maybe even do a few sets for them at the start of another workout too, like on chest day.”
Wolf’s go-to mass builder for rear delts is the rear lateral raise, performed seated and leaning forward. “You must be sure your shoulder blades don’t touch together at the top of your reps, or else this becomes a movement for the traps and rhomboids,” he cautions.
4) Reverse Cable Flyes
What’s this, another rear delt exercise? Considering the crucial role rear delts play in every side pose as well as the back shots, they are more than worthy of two exercises on shoulder day. Just as the pec flye machine can be used to hit rear delts if you turn around and face into the seat back, it’s a simple step to use the same cable setup normally reserved for cable crossovers on chest day and turn it into a killer movement for the posterior deltoids.
Dennis notes that total isolation of the rear delts here isn’t realistic, and that’s fine. “You’re going to get a great pump not only in the rear delts, but in most of your upper back too,” he says. “You’re working a lot of the areas that make or break the rear double biceps pose, which is supposed to be the pose that Phil Heath beats everybody on.”
5) Dumbbell Front Raises
Should the front delts be trained directly? Many feel that they get more than sufficient auxiliary work from any press for the shoulders and chest, and as such don’t warrant any specific exercises. Wolf begs to differ. “I do think the front deltoids need some direct work, but only a little bit. I do three sets of front raises after my presses, more just for a pump than anything else.” He’s shown here using dumbbells and alternating arms, but most of the time in his actual training he prefers using a barbell. “This is for no other reason than it takes less time, and by this point I am usually pretty tired!”
How Heavy Should Shoulder Training Be?
There are conflicting opinions surrounding how “heavy” shoulder training can be. Keeping in mind that “heavy” is itself always a relative term, I posed the question to the man known for his astoundingly huge shoulders.
“The weight you use should always depend on a couple of things,” he begins. “First, you need to ask yourself if you are feeling the right area working, and if you are getting a pump in that area. If you aren’t, you need to look at your form and you probably need to go lighter until you get the right feeling and pump.”
But Dennis isn’t suggesting anybody looking to build melon delts pussyfoot around with baby weights, either. “The best rep range for making the shoulders grow is 10-12,” he explains. “If you are able to do more than 12, use a little more weight. It’s a little bit of work to find that good balance for the right weight, but this is how you get the best results.”
Dennis Wolf Shoulder Workout
Seated Dumbbell Press 4 x 10-12
Dumbbell Lateral Raises 5 x 10-15
Dumbbell Rear Lateral Raises 4 x 10-12
Cable Rear Laterals 4 x 10-12
Barbell or Dumbbell Front Raises 3 x 10-12
Wolf’s Training Splits
Off-Season Training Split*
Monday: Chest and biceps
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: OFF
Thursday: Shoulders and triceps
Friday: OFF
Saturday: Back and traps
Sunday: OFF
*Calves are trained every other day
Pre-Contest Training Split*
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Quads
Wednesday: Arms
Thursday: Delts
Friday: Hamstrings
Saturday: Back
Sunday: OFF
*Calves are trained every other day, and abs are trained every day.
DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE ON THE MD FORUM