Happily, shoulder strength can be developed as simply as strength in any other area of the body. You only need a set of dumbbells to perform upright rows, for example. Start by holding the dumbbells at hip level, palms inward and close together and keeping your feet hip-width apart. Keeping your wrists straight, lift the weights by bending your arms at the elbow until they are at the same level as your chest, or higher, if possible, and don’t shrug while lifting the weights. Up to 3 sets of 15 repetitions should be performed, with 30-second intervals between each set.

The front raise is another move to strengthen your shoulders. This should be carried out with a lighter set of weights as the movement involves keeping your arms only slightly bent at the elbows. Starting in the same position as that for an upright row, the weights are lifted to shoulder level, palms facing inwards, and then lowered. Avoid swinging the weights up.

You can also work on your shoulders with lateral raises. These can be carried out with arms slightly bent at the elbows, or with the elbows bent at 90 degrees. Starting with your arms at your sides and with palms facing inwards, lift your arms out to the side to shoulder level before lowering them. As with front raises, aim to keep your wrists straight and avoid swinging the weights up. The number of sets, repetitions, and intervals for front raises and lateral raises is the same as that for upright rows.

When we workout with another that person is there to push us, and we have a sense of peer pressure not to whine or try to avoid a certain exercise.  We also don’t have the tendency to lift lighter weights or not do the total reps.

By ourselves, there is a different story.  If we don’t feel like doing all ten reps, we do only eight.  “I really hate that exercise, I will do this one instead.”  Some of us even lift lighter weights because we don’t have a spotter there and hate asking others to stop their workout to come to us.  We allow our minds to take over.

There is a solution.  It involves pushing ourselves.  Now, I honestly believe that no matter how self-driven you are, you will never get the best results on your own.  However, we need to focus our minds on smaller pieces of the pie.

When it is our goal to run 3.2 miles, we often decide to take it easy or stop and walk when we are alone because our minds tell us our body is tired.  A trick I use is to focus on landmarks like the quarter-mile mark.  I race to that point, and once I get close I move the line to the next point.  When my mind says, “THIS SUCKS,” I reason that I am almost there.  Doing reps while lifting is the same thing.  I want 10 and am “done” at 6.  “OK, just get to eight” and so on till I hit my mark.

It takes a lot of patience and discipline to re-train our minds.  I do this in everything.  My goal is to drink at least 100 ounces of water a day.  I have a 32 ounce water bottle.  Even though I would rather have something else, I force myself to drink every drop.

What are some suggestions?

This scenario describes a low-intensity, high-volume workout. “Wait a minute, I do not workout with low-intensity!” Sorry, but it is true. When you lift this way, most people break it up into major muscle groups. One day you do push muscles, like chest, triceps, quadriceps and calves. Other days pull muscles, like back, biceps and hamstrings. Most people break those up even further into routines (ex. back and biceps, chest and triceps, legs and abs, etc.)

Once in the gym we plan on doing numerous exercises to target those muscles. Then we do numerous sets of each exercise. We DO NOT put all of our effort into each set. For example, we are doing a set of eight to ten repetitions. We stop at ten even though we could have done twelve. This is because we are reserving some energy for the later sets and exercises.

Why is that bad? You know that “burn” that you feel as you are lifting? That is caused by a build-up of lactic acid. The more you workout the more you produce. After 45 minutes this acid begins to attack the muscle. Roughly translated, workouts lasting longer than 45 minutes really are pointless, damaging to your muscles and counter-productive.

The solution is high-intensity, low-volume lifting routines. You still work the exact same muscle groups and can even do the same exercises. The difference is the quantity. Let’s do the same exercise as before with eight to ten repetitions. This time choose a weight that you can barely get eight to ten times, exerting all of your energy on that set. When I finish a set I am winded like I just ran a sprint. It will take some time to get used to it, but I promise you will see better results.