Sam Sulek's Shoulder Workout

This is Sam Sulek's Isolation Shoulder Workout. He performed this workout when he was dealing with a slight shoulder injury, so he optimized it to continue working out while avoiding or at least preventing placing further strain on his shoulder.

Unlike a lot of bodybuilding "experts", Sam recommends creating a workout plan that will have you work around the injury you're dealing with rather than simply push through it, which will inevitably end up making it worse.

Our body needs time to rest and heal so that we can come back stronger trough pain-free workouts.

Sam's philosophy when it comes to shoulders aesthetics is that, for the most part, everyone has overdeveloped their front-delts because of all the pressing motions done in the gym, and even trough daily activities which mainly focus the front part of the shoulder. He even brings up the biceps curls as a potential exercise that activates the front-delts, so ideally you want to balance the back of your shoulders as much as you can.

In some videos we can see that Sam has an abundance of front delts both in size and in form, which is why he decides not to force any front-delts specific exercises, and instead chooses to focus on the side and rear delts.

The side and the rear delts are the ones responsible for that "3D" looking shoulder we're all chasing. He mentions that he's not a fan of any actual heavy overhead pressing that can lead to additional injury.

He also emphasizes that in the past he'd incorporate dumbbell shoulder press or smith machine behind the neck press as a way to sculpt the shoulders. The smith machine, when used behind the neck as a press, requires extra shoulder mobility, so if anyone feels uncomfortable or any pain whatsoever when performing it, find anlternative and don't risk hurting yourself.

A very crucial component of Sam's workout is that he does a variety of sets and doesn't only stick to a certain reps range (ex. 10 reps). He very often starts an exercise with perfect form, and at the end of the reps, he switches to partial reps, which has scientifically been proven to be very effective and it can lead to further muscle growth. He also includes other variety of sets, such as drop-sets, super-sets, and even pause-sets.

He starts his workout with the rear-delts, gradually transitioning and finishing with side-delts exercises, skipping any shoulder press movements due to his injury at that time.