Summer Body Sculpting Series - Tone & Tighten Your Shoulders

Summer Shoulders
'Summer Sculpting' Part 1 of a 4 part series

To finish a nice shapely body you need to look at overall symmetry. Summer makes this even more obvious with everyone in shorts and tank tops showing off their form. Keeping a balance in shape will mean you have a balance in strength, this helps with injury prevention. Many pains and sores are caused by muscle strength imbalances from lack of proper training programs. By attending to a well planned workout the results are positive twofold yet many women find themselves bottom heavy with powerful legs and very week upper body. Not only is this going to make you look even more bottom heavy but chances are that your postural muscles are very weak.

The fear of becoming too muscular keeps many ladies away from any type of upper body weight training but this will only cause you to appear more pear shaped and put you in a position for possible upper body issues such as neck pains, headaches and overall upper back weakness.

Most women are naturally stronger in the legs vs the upper body so they train the legs and in turn the thighs shape nicely but the small amount of added size will make you appear to taper upward, yet by working out the upper body and shoulders you will balance the look and enhance a nice hourglass appearance.

Shoulder exercises help with posture which is even more beneficial for those who are bustier. Shoulders can easily pull forward from tight chest muscles. This is common in women of any bust size since many will hunch naturally due to frontal development consciousness. Women who start dance or gymnastics at an early age will have training for posture and conditioning toward their sport but for the most part, gals do not always sit up straight as they are growing through adolescence.

As part of your weekly training you should target the shoulders at least once per week.
I like to train shoulders alone or on arm day, on upper body day or with leg day depending on the type of training I choose to do that month.

A nice zone to train in is 2-3 sets of 15 with a moderate weight which will allow you to finish 15 reps and not another rep.

Unless you have shoulder issues, the biggest exercise is the Overhead Shoulder press done either with the machine, dumbbells, barbell or bands. Many trainers like to get their clients to combine this with a Ball Squat. Dumbbells can be held palm in or forward. Using Dumbbells you can combine various angles and movements to this exercise with circular overhead press movements.

Side Delt Raises or Lateral Shoulder Raises can be done with Dumbbells or cables and is great to target the side of the shoulder. Bringing this muscle out with some size will help lessen the effect of large hips and helps to give the appearance of waist even on those 'A' shaped.

Rear Fly is also done with Dumbbells and will help finish the shoulder but also enhance posture by strengthening an area usually weak. These can be done reverse on the pec deck, using cables or bands.

Incorporate these with some additional rotator cuff exercises and you will surely enjoy how you look this summer in your hot new tank top!

By Linda Cusmano