THE OG: Shoulder Training

Gironda's approach to training the shoulders was straightforward, with one or two interesting twists

Look at how much better Steve Reeves (far left) looks than his competitors because of his shoulders, the combined product of genetic gifts and hard work in the gym

Welcome back to THE OG, my long-running series on all things Vince Gironda. We’re still well deep in the training side of the series, looking at Vince’s approach to training specific body parts. Today, we have a simple instalment on the shoulders. Vince didn’t have anything too controversial to say about training the shoulders, unlike other body parts (wait till we get to abdominals and legs!), but there are a couple of interesting twists here, mainly in the form of some exercises you’re unlikely to have seen before.

Once again, all quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from Vince’s book The Wild Physique (1984).

Oh, and while you’re here, I’m offering an exclusive 15% off a full year’s subscription if you click this button before the end of the month (March 2024):

---

Was there ever a hero who didn't have broad shoulders? Now even the women want them, and I'm all for it. Naturally, a woman doesn't want ''bam-door" shoulders, but a strong-looking female body should possess muscular shoulders. The only aspect that can make wide, healthy shoulders on men or women look wrong is a short neck. Then it creates an unattractive, hunchy appearance. Any activity that adds excessive shoulder muscle, however shapely, will not help your physical appearance in the case of a short neck. (WP, p.95)

Broad, shapely shoulders are an essential aspect of a properly built and balanced male physique. A woman, by contrast, should have defined shoulders, but they shouldn’t be wide like a man’s, unless her aim is to look like a man…

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll also notice from the quotation above that Vince’s emphasis, once again, is on the relationship between body parts and working around one’s natural proportions. In this case, the length of the neck in relation to the width of the shoulders. Vince is very clear that you have to work with what you’ve got, because if you don’t, you’re liable to end up with an ugly-looking physique.

Again, remember the Gironda Principles:

For Vince bodybuilding was about “creating an illusion”. That didn’t mean that the bodybuilder aimed simply to “look big”, but that visual size was a function of the relationship between parts of the body. A massive pair of shoulders will look smaller if the bodybuilder has a thick waist. A smaller pair of shoulders may even look bigger than a set of larger shoulders if the bodybuilder’s waist is tighter. This should be simple to understand — size is relative as well as absolute — but many failed and still fail to grasp this very basic point.

When it comes to shoulder width, much depends on your natural endowment of width: the length of your collarbone. Some have wide collarbones, and others have narrow collarbones. That’s just the way it is. Blame God or your parents or their parents.

The question of how much shoulder width you can obtain is dependent on the width of your clavicle (the collarbone continues to grow naturally until you are in your late twenties). Of course, building deltoids (shoulder muscles) on top of the bone ends will help greatly, but the limiting factor is governed by your natural (hiacromial) bone width. (WP. p.95)

Even if you’ve drawn the short straw in life and been given a narrow clavicle, you can still build wide, impressive shoulders. One man who had naturally narrow shoulders, according to Vince, was Larry Scott, “but he made them totally outstanding by working them hard using my methods.” Larry Scott would go on to win the Mr Olympia twice, back to back.