Fitness Freedom Athletes

I’ve always had little shoulders. This giant set is what’s finally rounding them out…

I’ve been trying to grow my little shoulders into stronger, rounder, bolder shoulders.

I love hitting the rear shoulder muscle, because when you develop that, it gives really good depth and shape to the whole shoulder.

So I've been doing this giant set of three exercises. Facepulls, followed by Ts, followed by Ys. Just focusing on building that burn.

I'm not going for crazy angles. I keep the angle quite easy so I can get lots of reps out. But I'm really just chasing the burn, not even counting reps to be honest.

I don't want to involve the upper back too much. So I almost go against conventional wisdom and round my shoulders slightly forward. As soon as I start retracting and pulling my shoulder blades back, the back comes in and takes over. I really want to isolate the middle and rear shoulder muscles as much as possible.

So I stay slightly rounded forward and keep this short pumping action. I see it like a zombie, slowly lifting my arms up and down. Small range of motion to keep that pump going. I keep my hands as hooks. It's all shoulders, squeezing super hard.

I'm making the shoulders drive the movement up and down not yanking or pulling. Just a slow, consistent, powerful squeeze to really feel the burn.

And it feels fantastic. After, the shoulders feel pumped up, like they're about to burst through the skin.

So I'm doing these every single workout. This giant set, back to back. One set, pushed to failure.

And man, it feels good.

I've always had chicken legs. These two moves are finally changing that.

I've been seeing some great leg muscle building results with this. Two exercises done back to back as a superset.

Normally I like variety in my leg training. Narrow squats for the outer quad, pistol squats for the whole quad, hamstring curls to really isolate the hamstrings, wide squats for mobility, jump squats for power. All on the suspension trainer.

But I really wanted to lock it in and grow my legs. They've always looked defined, especially when I get lean. The muscle separation is there. But I've always struggled to actually get them looking bigger.

So I thought, you know what, I'm going to stop spreading myself thin and just commit to this.

And I've been absolutely loving the Bulgarian split squat. I'm usually a big believer in one exercise per muscle group, and I still see this as a quad target. But when I get really deep into the bottom and pause in that stretch, I feel it in my hamstrings too. Almost like they're tearing out of my skin. Feels great. Then I drive up through my heels and squeeze the quads hard. Next day I'm sore in both quads and hamstrings.

Then I go straight into the reverse lunge with the quads already pre exhausted, and it feels amazing. The burn, the pump, like the muscle's bursting out of my skin.

I don't have time to train much these days with a baby and a toddler. So I do one set to failure on each exercise. You can see here I'm hitting the last reps, taking it to complete failure with partials, then into slow negatives. Then a quick rest, and repeat, just to really deplete the muscle.

So that's it. Just these two moves, every workout. Two leg exercises, and all I'm focused on is gradually adding reps, then weight, repeat.

And yeah, I've got a weight vest on here. I did not start like that. I began with just bodyweight.

Overall it’s feeling great, let’s see how the chickens respond.