Description
Most people think the shoulder press targets the front delts. It doesn’t do anything for the side or rear heads.
But I wanted to test this out for myself, by measuring muscle activation with these EMG electrodes on a max effort set of shoulder press on me and my friend Will Tennyson.
I expected to see a ton of front delt activation, with a little bit of side and virtually no rear. That’s because when you press vertically, your anterior delt fibers are lined up with the path of resistance better than the side and rear fibers.
So Will was up first and even though EMG may not predict long-term muscle growth, what we found was super interesting…
His front delt activation looked like this: really high, as you’d expect. His rear delt activation looked like this: really low, as you’d expect. But surprisingly, his side delt activation was not only also very high, it peaked higher than even his front delts.
I was so surprised I had to test it myself. And for me… I found… the exact same pattern: super high front and side delt.