Click Here to Watch Build Capped Delts in 2025! (Just 5 Minutes a Week!)

Building Capped Delts

So before I started training, my shoulders were so narrow, they’d call me one stripe. They call me one stripe because, but they said I was so skinny that my pajamas only had one stripe. Yeah, they went there.

In fact, my shoulders were so narrow I couldn’t wear a tank top because they kept on falling off all the time. I was able to go from being 125 pounds to being a successful natural bodybuilder and build my shoulders to look like this, training my shoulders only five minutes a week.

That’s right, only five minutes a week. You see, I train with something called Naturally Intense High Intensity Training, a system of high intensity workout whereby I train 10, 15 max 20 minutes three times a week.

And now you might think that 5 to 6 minutes isn’t enough to get fantastic looking deltoids, and that maybe Kevin is some sort of a genetic freak. But here’s the deal over the past 30 years, I’ve trained hundreds of men and women, some of them successful natural bodybuilding champions, and helped them get better results in less time.

And what I’m seeing here sounds unconventional and it sounds unconventional because here’s the problem.

How Steroids Skewers Shoulder Training for Natural Athletes

Most people who talk about what it takes to get really great and capped shoulders tend to be those very same people who were born with really greatly capped shoulders or in many cases, they’re using steroids.

I know that sounds a little bit on the incredible side, but bear in mind, you’re getting information from someone who started off with really narrow shoulders, who built them into what you see today.

And today I’m going to share with you some of those principles to cap out those delts. So stay tuned. Let’s talk a little more about this.

So shoulder workouts within the context of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training we always train our shoulders on the same day we train our back.

So when I started training my shoulders they were extremely narrow. And before I go any further, I’d like to point out the fact that it took a very long time from me to go from looking like this to looking like this. And the most important part is that at 50 years old, I still look like this.

But not only do I still look like this but I can still train exceptionally heavy because one of the most important aspects of Naturally Intense High Training is creating a program that’s going to be sustainable.

Now, that being said, if you put into place some of these principles, our clients tend to see results, especially in the shoulder region within even as short as two weeks.

The Importance of Training Variety To Build Great Shoulders

And then in addition to the high intensity principles that we use, every single workout is different.

There is no conventional progressive resistance. But here’s why it works.

Muscles get bigger and stronger in response to unaccustomed stimulus, and with Naturally Intense High Intensity workouts, every single time you train it’s going to be different exercises, and we do the exercises differently as well.

And so you never get to a comfortable place where you’re in a groove. And to make things even more intense, we have no breaths whatsoever between sets or exercises. You go nonstop.

If I’m going by myself, I will literally get through an entire shoulder workout in about five minutes. If I’m training with my training partner, what I’ll do, I’ll do my sets, then she’ll do her sets, as we’re always try to minimize rest time because what that does is it exponentially increases the training intensity.

Now bear in mind that the eagle lifter is out there. That’s going to create a significant drop in how much you can actually use. And I remember myself, how frustrated I was when I saw my power ranges go down when I first saw training this way.

But over time, the numbers do go back up, and you can see for yourself that I don’t train light at all.

How Variety Helps Prevent Shoulder Injuries

In order for you to be able to keep on training, you need to be training with a sustainable training program that’s not going to cause wear and tear on your joints.

The number one cause of injury training in the gym isn’t someone doing the exercise wrong, it’s overuse.

It’s doing the same thing over and over, and many of you out there can attest to the fact that your joints hurt when you do certain exercises.

And there’s so many people out there who would have had fantastic shoulders and amazing physiques, but because of the fact that they have a nagging injury that gets worse and worse and worse because of doing the same exercises over and over, they aren’t able to do it.

That, plus the fact that I average an hour training per week, which is what most people do in a day. And they do that sometimes four, five sometimes even six times a week, and so the amount of wear and tear on your joints is significantly higher.

This form of training works because it makes sure you have no plateaus because your muscles are always in a place where they have to consistently try to adapt something that’s new to them, and the fact that it allows you keep on training without getting injured.

High Intensity Is Essential For Building Delts Naturally

So the first and most important aspect behind Naturally Intense High Training when it comes to training your shoulders or any body part whatsoever, is the intensity. The intensity has to be blistering.

And we use every single high intensity principle possible and technique to make our workouts as hard as they possibly can be.

In a way that’s counter-intuitive to most progressive overload systems, whereby the idea is to be more efficient to lift more weights, whereas with Naturally Intense High Intensity training, the focus is on intensity, figuring out how to take that exercise you’re doing and make it harder.

That being said, it is a challenge and done correctly, it should be the hardest workouts of your entire life.

The fact you get your shoulders done in 5 to 6 minutes doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It means it’s going to be 5 to 6 minutes of absolute hell.

I’m going to lay out the basis of the exercise selection for you and it’s fairly simple.

High Intensity Training For Front Delts

Now, for simplicity’s sake, the shoulder muscles are broken down into the front deltoids, the side deltoids, and the rear deltoids and the trapezius muscles, and we make sure you do an exercise for each one of those sections over the course of a cycle. And so you start with front delts for pressing exercise.

We always start with a pressing movement and people think, well, a pressing movement, there are only 1 or 2 press moves so you can actually do. And that’s not true at all.

We focus on explosive exercises like plyometric type and clean and presses.

But we’ll also have our clients do things like seated barbell military presses, standing barbell military presses, military presses against the rack, high incline military presses, dumbbell presses, palm out dumbbell presses, palm in dumbbell presses, Arnold presses, neutral grip dumbbell presses, neutral grip barbell presses, machine presses, calf machine shoulder presses, viking presses.

So much so it can be months before you do the same exercise twice and again. Because every single workout is different, the way you do the exercise is going to be significantly different.

Best Practices for Side Lateral Raises and Building Side Delts

And so after pressing movement, I’ll usually do some sort of lateral raise movement. Now usually we’ll choose one exercise for your side deltoids. And then the next week include an exercise for your rear deltoids. And the reason why we do that is when we’re training at this type of intensity, most people are not able to do an exercise for their medial deltoids and their rear deltoids in the same workout.

You’re just too toasted, and so we break it up over the course of weeks, which also makes it easier to consistently be varying your workouts.

Now, I’ve been doing this now for over 30 years, and I will do an exercise for my medial deltoids and my rear deltoids in the same workout. But unless I’m training a really advanced athlete or natural bodybuilder, most people will only be doing one of those exercises a week.

A Note About Side Lateral Raises

Now, an important note about side lateral raises. A lot of people have shoulder pain doing them because they do it every single time they train their shoulders. So over the course several months, several years it becomes painful.

But bear in mind that side lateral raises aren’t the only exercise to build your delts. There are so many exercises that you can do.

And as in the context of Naturally Intense High Training, we always mix it up and do something different.

So just like the presses, every single time you do a lateral raise movement, it’s going to be significantly different from the one you were doing before. And the way you do it again, it’s going to be a different form of execution, ensuring that your muscles are always exposed to an unaccustomed stimulus, an overload which is going to guarantee you the adaptive response, and making muscles bigger and stronger over time.

Now, when it comes to side lateral raises I tend to go extremely heavy. With my clients as well, I have them go really, really heavy because if you really want to activate your medial or side deltoid and get those capped shoulders, you have to go heavy.

One of the things I learned growing up in Trinidad from one of my coaches was the fact that if you keep on using really tiny weights that are nice and easy and again, first rep, nice and easy, last rep nice and easy, you’re not going to make those muscles grow if you are a natural athlete.

Historically, we’ve always gotten so much information from people who were using drugs who literally get a muscle significantly larger without actually even having to lift any weights.

That’s how powerful steroids are.

And one of the most important facts about using steroids is that it tends to significantly increase shoulder size. And so a lot of information we get out there, from people talking about every single rep should be perfect, and your form should be absolutely flawless, are people who literally didn’t have to train that hard and probably didn’t have to train at all to get the shoulder development that they had that’s impressive.

If you’re a natural athlete and you’re like me and you were not genetically blessed with really great shoulders, you are going to have to train really hard and also really push in terms of the weight.

Capped Delts Require Well Developed Rear Deltoids

The other aspect is that our shoulders are three dimensional, not two dimensional. Everyone keeps on training their medial deltoids really, really hard, but they don’t even think about training their rear delts.

Your rear delts are going to really make a significant difference with that overall roundness. Because if you don’t have significantly developed rear delts, you’re not going to have that three dimensional look to your deltoid, because the bigger your rear delts are, the more impressive your medial delts are going to look.

So it’s important to do rear delt movement as heavy as, if not heavier than side lateral movement. Really push it in terms of weight and also, of course in terms of intensity.

High Intensity Training for Traps

And so after doing presses and laterals, we do trap movements.

And we always do a direct trapezius exercise every single time we train. Now there are a lot of people out there, especially women who do not like training their traps, thinking sometimes they can get really, really big and really, really masculine looking.

And trust me, as someone who has trained hundreds of women over the years, that’s simply just not going to happen.

But it’s really important for the overall balance, both esthetically and in terms of injury prevention, to make sure you train all the muscle groups on your shoulders. You can’t pick and choose.

So you always train traps, it’s one exercise. It can be an upright row movement or shrug movement. And there are lots of different ways that we can do shrugs.

And so all these 3 to 4 exercises are all that I do for my delts. And again, this is not what I’m doing now that I’m in 50 years old to somehow maintain, this is exactly how I have trained now for decades and have put mass on my shoulders in the first place.

And so I was truly blessed going up with a lot of really important people who took the time to help me get to where I am today, and my mom always raised me with the idea to whom much is given, much is expected.

And so I do my best and share as much as I’ve learned over the years to help you along your path.

Now, really important because you’re seeing this video make sure you see this video of what back training because you train shoulders and back on the same day.

And make sure as well you see this video to understand more about our training splits.

So thank you so much for tuning in. Know that I truly believe in you. And as always, Excelsior!