Protein shakes alone might not be enough to build the muscles properly, and you need compound exercises to supplement them.
So, can the popular shoulder press be counted as an ally in this? Is shoulder press a compound exercise?
The answer is 100% yes, as multiple muscle groups move during the shoulder press giving you a range of benefits.
Looking at the compound exercise’s efficiency and benefits, it’s a no-brainer for people looking to build muscles. Learn about the useful compound exercise in detail below.
Does the Shoulder Press Qualify as a Compound Exercise?
Since multiple joints are moving in this exercise, it’s a compound exercise. So, when you push the weight upwards, you’re engaging the front and shoulder muscles and making them stronger.
These muscles are called anterior and lateral deltoids. Apart from these muscles, the exercise also produces movement in other muscles in the shoulder and elbow joints, which makes the exercise so useful in building muscles evenly.
Why Compound Exercises Are Important for Muscle Development?
Emphasizing multi-joint movements is vital for promoting muscle growth by involving various muscle groups simultaneously. This triggers a wider range of muscle fibers, leading to lean muscle development and increased overall strength.
Compound exercises also boost calorie burn and hormone responses, aiding muscle advancement. I’ve listed the main reasons here. Whether they’re good enough to give it a try, you have to decide on that.
Multiple Muscle Activation
When we do compound exercises like overhead presses and squats, our body activates numerous muscles such as the glutes, calves, anterior, and deltoids.
These make all of them bigger and stronger together. Compared to these, exercise like leg extensions target only a single group of muscles.
Saves Time
Rather than performing multiple time-consuming exercises, you can do one compound exercise to target the same muscles to equal effect. Time and effort both get saved while you reap the same benefits.
Office workers or people with busy life schedules should benefit from compound exercises as they don’t have enough time to perform multiple exercise moves every day.
No Imbalance
With compound exercises like overhead presses, in addition to the targeted prominent muscles, lots of other smaller muscles benefit from some movement as well.
That prevents muscle imbalance, where one muscle is way stronger than some other muscles.
Would Shoulder Press Help Strengthen My Traps?
Shoulder press and trap engagement go hand in hand. When performing a shoulder press, your traps play a vital role in stabilizing and supporting the movement. This exercise can significantly strengthen your traps along with other shoulder muscles, enhancing upper body strength and posture. Incorporating shoulder press into your routine will undoubtedly benefit your trap development.
Benefits of Shoulder Press as a Compound Exercise
I’ve listed the benefits here after hours of brainstorming and from my personal experience, and I’m sure I’ve missed some still (please let me know in the comments).
Increases the Core Strength
The core is the muscles that surround the spine and the midline. They are important for stabilizing the body during heavy lifting and giving it a good posture.
The lack of knowledge about the core’s importance makes people ignore it often. A few crunches and planks and people think it’s enough to go on. But planks and crunches only strengthen a section of the core and not the entire core.
So, this weakness can get brutally exposed when lifting something heavy off the ground. A weak core can cause shoulder pain when performing shoulder press.
And in some extreme cases, shoulder press can lead to a herniated disc as well.
While doing this compound exercise, your body is forced to stabilize itself and become a bit tense as you do the lift-up. Repeats of this exercise will for sure make the core much stronger.
Helps Build Explosive Power
Sports people like basketball or football players need explosive strength to often go past players or perform an action quickly.
And this compound exercise is good at helping people gradually develop explosive strength and speed that can give them an advantage over their opponents.
Bigger and Better Muscles
When you are doing compound exercises, you’d expect the effect to show on your muscles as well. And you won’t be disappointed as it builds muscles on the shoulders, biceps, upper back, and triceps.
You’ll soon see them grow noticeably bigger as you continue the exercise.
Improves Range of Motion in Shoulder Muscles
As you perform the exercise regularly, you’ll see great improvement in the range of motion in the shoulder muscles. Earlier, where you might have faced resistance, gradually these moves will become smooth.
A good range of motion is important not only to make the exercises easier but also to prevent injuries.
Strengthens the Neck
Overhead presses involve the neck muscles as well. So, the neck muscles will also get stronger over time. Though you might not be targeting the neck muscles specifically, it’s a welcome bonus for sure.
Improves Posture
Look at the cases of exercises gone wrong, and you’ll find that a lot of them didn’t have the right posture. Posture is such an integral part of exercise and yet, so often it’s not done right.
Both unawareness and lack of practice are reasons behind it. But this shoulder compound exercise can solve this problem for you as it has the ability to improve your posture for better.
This exercise, as you know works on neck, shoulder, and spine muscles, and together all these play a great role in defining your posture.
So, if these muscles become strong, it will be easy for you to maintain the correct posture during the shoulder press.
Boosts Shoulder Strength
Soon you’ll feel the increased strength in your shoulders after you start the exercise seriously. Both men and women can benefit from this as its positive effects are beyond any doubt.
You can adjust the weight according to your weight-lifting abilities.
Final Thoughts
Compound exercises like shoulder press is an important tools for bodybuilders as you get to build muscles quickly and effectively.
There are many variations of the shoulder press, so you would need to do some experiments to find which one works for you best. But there’s no doubt that this compound press is excellent as its core function is muscle-building.
