Delta-winged Delts By Ronnie Coleman
My deltoids are well developed but my shoulders are narrow. Am I genetically limited to narrow shoulders?
The most misunderstood term in bodybuilding is “genetics.” Having good genetics doesn’t mean you had good proportions from day one. And having what some perceive as “flawed genetics” doesn’t mean you can’t get to the highest level.
Proof of this is evident in photos of the top five Mr. Olympia finalists, comparing their appearance as intermediates with their later physiques as pros. As intermediates, nearly all of them reveal “flawed genetics,” in that their shapes differ dramatically, from wide to narrow, top-heavy to bottom-heavy, balanced to imbalanced. Later, as Mr. Olympia contenders, their mass, size, height and conditioning differ, but their shapes are by now remarkably uniform. What happened to those “flawed genetics?” They improved them with better training, that’s what, which means they were not limited by their genetics in the first place.
Under-par lat development?
Your case–good deltoids but narrow shoulders–is a pretty common complaint, but don’t despair; it’s also correctable. Often, narrowness is a result of under-par lat development. If you have someone analyze your body from the back, you could well learn that your lats–particularly your upper lats–are not as wide and thick as they should be. The wider your upper lats spread and the more muscle they contain, the higher they lift your deltoids and the more they swing them outward and forward, thus creating the bodybuilder’s classic “permanent lat-spread” posture.
Consider, also, the reverse
When a bodybuilder stops training, his lats shrink, allowing his 
shoulders to drop backward and inward, and he returns to his narrow prebodybuilding size. It should be obvious, then, that upper-lat training is just as important as training for any other bodypart, and more important than for some, since both back and shoulder width depend upon superior upper-lat development.
Accelerate growth of your lats
Prioritize your upper lats in your training, and your problem of narrow shoulders will soon disappear. Include upper-lat exercises on both back day and shoulders day. In your shoulder workout, add (don’t substitute) seated dumbbell presses, bent dumbbell laterals and upright rows. All of these, while primarily deltoid and/or shoulder-girdle exercises, also build the upper lats, thereby helping to splay your deltoids wider. On back day, make sure you include chins, pulldowns, barbell rows and pulley rows, all of which are good upper-lat exercises.
To accelerate the growth of your upper lats and close their development gap with your deltoids, you need to intensify those exercises. Do this by starting the workout with three supersets. For back day, a good superset combination is pulldowns with pulley rows.
In every case, isolate the muscle by pushing or pulling with your upper lats or deltoids, not with your arms, and maintain good form: slow, strict and controlled, with a peak-contraction squeeze. Put everything into each rep, until the last one of the day leaves you with no doubt that those muscles have been shocked into a new spurt of growth. It worked for me. It’ll work for you.
Author Ronnie Coleman
COPYRIGHT 2004 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
