By: MuscleSports.net

Building big deltoids doesn't take allot of fancy machines or new gadgets, all it takes is a plan layered in movements that actually work to do just that build big full deltoids & traps!

There are a few body-parts you can't hide from judges no matter how hard you try and under developed shoulder is one of those body-parts. Your shoulders are viewable from the front, back and both sides. Having weak delts for a physique athlete can mean sudden regulation to any other placement except first. Building big round full delts from all angles is a process of hitting all 3 sides using a multitude of reps weight and sets. Heavy weights for size, medium weights and high reps for muscle fullness, and higher reps and compounded sets deep cuts and muscle hardness. That folks is a 3 pronged attack to build big round full shoulders, and yeah we gonna throw in traps to finish out the workouts.

Lets look at the Deltoids:

Your deltoid muscles are your shoulders, which is the ball-and-socket joint that connects your arm to the trunk of your body. Deltoid muscles help you move your arms in different directions. They also protect and stabilize your shoulder joint. The deltoid muscle has been classically divided into three anatomical portions: the anterior; the middle; and the posterior portions.

Anterior Deltoid (Front): Located on the front side of the shoulder - Involved in allot of pressing movement for the chest muscles And overhead.

Intermediate or Medial Deltoid (Side): located on the side of the deltoid is worked by raising the upper arm outward away from the body. The more that movement is toward the sides of the body the more direct involvement of the muscle.

Posterior Deltoid (Rear): Pulls the upper arm towards the rear of the body and at the same time contracts the trapezius and scapula of the upper back. most direct movement of the muscle is with the upper arm 55-65 degrees from the side of the body being pulled backwards.

Trapezius: The function of the trapezius is to stabilize and move the scapula. This allows you to throw a ball or swing a bat with force. Your traps also allow you to tilt your head up and down and turn your head all around. It traps also helps you stand up straight, twist your torso and shrug your shoulders up and down or pull them back. Strong trap help give you great posture and strong stabilized shoulders.

Best exercises for each section of the deltoid muscle complex:

Front Deltoid: (You will see allot of Chest exercises.)

Bench Press (Major frontal delt activation)
Dumbbell Front Raise
Barbell Front Raise
Standing Overhead Military Press
One-Arm Kneeling Landmine Press
Barbell Overhead Press (Seated or Standing - to the front or back of the head)
Seated Machine Shoulder Press
Smith Machine Front Shoulder Press
Arnold Press (Dumbbells rotate as you press to hit a little of the side deltoids)
Incline Bench Press

Side Deltoid: (Some exercises may surprise you.)

Dumbbell Side lateral Raises
Cable Machine Lateral Raises
Machine Lateral Raises
Wide Grip barbell Upright Rows
Arnold Press (Dumbbells rotate as you press to hit a little of the side deltoids)
Standing Overhead Military Press

Rear Deltoid: (You may see a few back exercises.)

Seated Bent Laterals
Standing Dumbbell Bent Lateral
Incline Dumbbell Bent Laterals
Machine Rear Laterals
Wide Grip Barbell Row
Wide Grip Lat pulldown
1 Arm Dumbbell Rows
Bent over dumbbell flyes

Trapezius Exercise:

Shoulder Width High Pulls
Front Barbell Shrugs
Rear Barbell Shrugs
Side Dumbbell Shrugs

As you can see there are quite a few exercises that hit your deltoids and traps. Just from working on other muscle groups you end up using your shoulders in some form or fashion to help stabilize the exercise so the target can be fully exercised. We are not gonna concern ourselves with those exercises only the one that directly target the muscle groups we are trying to work. After all this is bodybuilding, and we want to build each individual muscle group to it fullest. Note: we did not include Face Pulls in our exercises because although a popular exercise with allot of people this exercise is quite useless when trying to build muscle mass.

For our front deltoids we are gonna concentrate our effort on 3 exercises that will help you build the most muscle over the entire front deltoid. Those exercises are:

Smith Machine Front Shoulder Press
Seated Machine Shoulder Press
Barbell Front Raise

These 3 exercises target the frontal deltoids to the fullest and build the most muscle over the entire muscle.

For the side deltoids we are only gonna choose 3 exercises to get the job done,

Side lateral Raises (Dumbbell or Cable)
Wide Grip barbell Upright Rows

The side lateral we think everybody uses, but wide grip upright rows build insane cappy-ness into the side deltoids like no other exercise.

Finally for read delt we are also gonna go with 3, these are very basic bread and butters that get the job done.

Seated Bent Laterals
Incline Dumbbell Bent Laterals
Machine Rear Laterals

Both of these put your upper body at the best angle to activate the entire rear deltoid from stretch to contraction.

For Traps we are only gonna chose 3 exercise front barbell shrugs and side dumbbell shrugs and shoulder width high pulls. These exercise are more common and allot of people when doing rear shrugs do them very wrong.

Now that we have our exercise, we need to construct our workouts, because things don't just happen by accident.

The Beginner/Intermediate Routine:

Standing Overhead Military Press 4 Sets 6-10 Reps
Dumbbell Side lateral Raises 3 Sets 8-10 Reps
Seated Bent Laterals 3 Sets 8-10 Reps
Barbell Shrugs 4 Sets 10-12 Reps

The Advanced Routine:

Machine Rear Laterals 3 Sets 12-15 Reps
Incline Dumbbell Bent Laterals 4 Sets 8-12 Reps
Cable Side lateral Raises 4 Sets 10-12 Reps
Smith Machine Front Shoulder Press 4-5 sets 6-10 Reps
Shoulder Width High Pulls 3 Sets of 8-10 Reps
Dumbbell Shrugs 3 Sets 12 reps

Alternate in different exercises but always keep the rotation the same. For those who have less then 3 years of steady hard training use the beginner/intermediate routine it's not as easy as you might think. For those who have more time under the iron give the advanced routine a shot as it works the delts from back to front and is pretty damn wicked!

Some other famous routines:

Roy Callender (circa 1979) - (Roy Callender doesn't train by sets and reps he trains by how the muscle feels. So his workouts didn't have a set number of sets or reps - most workout lasted hours! Listed below is a workout that usually lasted 1 hour)