Shoulder Muscles Dilemma

Hello everyone!
I need some advice as I am getting pretty frustrated with my shoulder muscles. My overall fitness is at an all-time high, I do about 2 to 3 hours of cardio a day, and have formed some good strong muscles. The only muscles that have not improved one bit are my shoulder muscles... specifically, my Deltoid and Trapezius muscles. It drives me insane because I do shoulder workouts every day and every day it just burns like hell and doesn't improve.
What can I do to solve this dilemma of mine? Are there any shoulder exercises you guys can share?
Please shed some light on my situation. Thank you!

Working out your shoulders every day is not good, they need about 2-3 days to recover from a proper workout with the right nutrition.

Everyone else can tell me how wrong I am, but 2-3 hours of cardio may be part of the problem. Congrats on it! I'm impressed! I wish I had the time and stamina to do it, and I'm sure weight-wise you see great results. I would think, though, that much cardio would keep you from giving enough energy to weights. Your legs probably are fine, since they get used during the cardio, but shoulders don't. I'd say increase protein, do weights first, and shave back the cardio a tad.

Hey girl! I am by no means a weight lifter (yet....although someday I hope to be!)...but I have read up on the subject recently. I checked out your diary and it looks like you are eating 1200-1300 cals per day. And you are doing extensive amounts of cardio, burning most of those cals away by the end of the night! In order for muscle to grow and for you to get stronger, you HAVE to have a calorie surplus. You are not even breaking even at 1200 after you subtract all the calories you exercised away with cardio.

I think you need to do check out some complex movements (see either the Stronglifts program, or New Rules of Liting For Women), take the appropriate amount of rest between workouts, and eat more calories while trying to get in as much protein as you can.

Good luck! I want nice shoulders just as much as you!!!!

So, what are your shoulder exercises and do you include working the all of the isolation exercises for the rotator cuff muscles, something that even people doing heavy compounds should do.

Sounds like you are over-training in a major way. You're probably putting yourself at risk of injury. I would start by cutting way back on the cardio, eating more protein and only training your shoulders every 2-3 days at the most

This.

Compound lifts make the shoulders grow fast. I have been doing the main five (squats, deads, overhead press, barbell row and bench press) since April and even my back is growing. It also depends how heavy you lift too.

p.s. I do not do any isolation exercises at the moment.

that

and the ones that say do less cardio...

I was told the only strength training that can be done on a daily basis is abs. You're supposed to give your muscles at least a day's rest. For example, I have been doing my strength training (all muscle groups) 3x/week, on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Also, eat more protein!

Yeah, why so much cardio? The only reason I would see the need for 2-3 hours a day is to train for an endurance race/sport. Cardiovascular heath can be maintained with less than half that time a few times a week.

How much time are you in the gym each day? Do you take any rest days?

Eat more protein. You seem to be working out a lot and not providing your body the chance or nutrients to recover and rebuild. Shoulders are not a huge muscle group, but can get hit while working other parts like chest and back.

Mostly, yeah, what other people have already said.

Working a body part everyday is a great way to stop or even reverse progression.

Work a body part 1-3 times a week.

2-3 hours of cardio sounds excessive!! well done.

my shoulder exercises:

military dumb bell raise (warm up set of 10 using about 80% of what you're likely to max out at for 6 reps).
then 3 sets of 6-8 reps at max weight you can get to a minimum o 6 reps for.

you might want to try the raise using a smiths machine so you can stack more weight. the idea for musclw growth of course is hypertrophy so only reps should be managing 6 ish.

if you want traps, hold a kettle bell (as heavy as possible) in front of you with both hands (back of hands facing the mirror) and wight down at below groin area and then pull up to chin and repeat this for 4 sets of 12 reps. make sure the weight is heavy as you can.

then get some kettle bells (not as heavy) and do a superset of side raises then front raise.

so do a side raise (up /dwn) then straight into a front raie.

do this 4 sets of 7 supersets so go for 14. 4 sets of 14.

you can then go to a bench and angle it like a 30% angle. you are going to lay on your front for some rear shoulder flyes. basically lift the weight using your shoulders. slightly bend arms etc. try a small weight first and get the form right.

start on one warm up set using say 6kg dumb bells then go for it. try 3 further sets trying to get to 8 reps.

There's plenty more but that should give you front deltiod, side deltoid and rear deltoids.

and go big on the weight if you want to see results. no light weights.

I am mind blown by how much cardio you do!!! im impressed by your motivation but like everyone else has said, dial it back a bit. I had a little looksie at your diary and here is my 2 pennys worth, feel free to ignore :-)

Exercise:
personally I would say you need to bring back the cardio to less than an hour a session and do it 2 or 3 times a week, and add 2 or 3 strength sessions a week but make sure they arent on consecutive days so that your muscles can recover. You can do the strength training in a circuit with compound movements - these work two different body parts at the same time which gets your heart rate up and gives you a little bit of cardio at the same time.
So you could do cardio monday, wednesday, friday, strength tuesday, thursday, saturday and rest on sunday, or if you want to do something each day you could do some gentle yoga or walking on sunday and have an active rest day. But I would keep each session at an hour at the very most, and you could just do 2 cardio, 2 strength if you wanted, it depends how hard you want to work.
The amount you are doing could cause you to burn out and exhaust or injure yourself. So you may find that you could do with a week off completely. This may actually improve your performance as the body will take this time to recover fully before you get back at it.

Food:
Yay vegan diet! Your diet looks great in terms of cutting out most processed stuff and sticking to plant based wholefoods, but like everyone has said you need a lot more protein. So once the low protein cleanse is over try and aim for 1.2g of protein per kg of body weight. If the protein isn't coming from animals then really you can have as much as you can get because you wont have to worry much about saturated fats or other thing that might come with it. Chia seeds and quinoa are both good sources of complete proteins and super tasty so including those in your diet is always good.
Finally (I'll shut up after this i promise), eat more calories!!! Use this calculator to work out your bmr which is the number of calories your body needs just to function if you were to just lie in bed all day: http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/
This calculator tells you your bmr and then it gives you a good idea of how many calories you should eat for varying activity levels in order to lose weight. Take note of your BMR and eat that many calories every day as a mimimum!! this allows your body to function properly and it will burn fat more efficiently, and if you eat more than this it will be able to build muscle too. Eating below your bmr makes your body think theres a food shortage and it will store fat as much as it can so that it can be prepared for the lack of calories coming its way. It also means your body will burn muscle instead of fat to fuel itself. Muscle requires calories to maintain which just isnt efficient from your body's point of view when its not getting enough calories. I'm mind blown by how much exercise you can manage on such low calorie levels, how are you not tired all the time!?

It will feel weird eating more at first but try it for a few weeks and see what happens. You wont gain weight from eating at your bmr especially if you are exercising and after a couple weeks your body will realise its getting a good number of calories and can start to let go of fat stores. You might even want to eat above your bmr by a few 100 calories especially after all the intense exercise youve done. It will take a while to work out the optimum number of calories to eat but keep it at your bmr or above and listen to your body, if youve done a lot of exercise one day and you feel really hungry then eat some high protein foods and dont worry about going over your bmr by a few 100 calories, the exercise will cancel it out.

Ok sorry for the massive reply! thats my opinion, hope it was helpful. Well done for what youve achieved so far and seriously you should teach classes on exercise motivation!!

2-3 hours of cardio sounds excessive!! well done.

my shoulder exercises:

military dumb bell raise (warm up set of 10 using about 80% of what you're likely to max out at for 6 reps).
then 3 sets of 6-8 reps at max weight you can get to a minimum o 6 reps for.

you might want to try the raise using a smiths machine so you can stack more weight. the idea for musclw growth of course is hypertrophy so only reps should be managing 6 ish.

if you want traps, hold a kettle bell (as heavy as possible) in front of you with both hands (back of hands facing the mirror) and wight down at below groin area and then pull up to chin and repeat this for 4 sets of 12 reps. make sure the weight is heavy as you can.

then get some kettle bells (not as heavy) and do a superset of side raises then front raise.

so do a side raise (up /dwn) then straight into a front raie.

do this 4 sets of 7 supersets so go for 14. 4 sets of 14.

you can then go to a bench and angle it like a 30% angle. you are going to lay on your front for some rear shoulder flyes. basically lift the weight using your shoulders. slightly bend arms etc. try a small weight first and get the form right.

start on one warm up set using say 6kg dumb bells then go for it. try 3 further sets trying to get to 8 reps.

There's plenty more but that should give you front deltiod, side deltoid and rear deltoids.

and go big on the weight if you want to see results. no light weights.

Well, if you want to do it wrong then take this guys advice or read this article and I really recommend that the poster of the above advice reads it especially on understandinig rep ranges for hypertrophy rather than power training.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/musclespecific_hypertrophy_chest_triceps_and_shoulders

Everyone else can tell me how wrong I am, but 2-3 hours of cardio may be part of the problem. Congrats on it! I'm impressed! I wish I had the time and stamina to do it, and I'm sure weight-wise you see great results. I would think, though, that much cardio would keep you from giving enough energy to weights. Your legs probably are fine, since they get used during the cardio, but shoulders don't. I'd say increase protein, do weights first, and shave back the cardio a tad.

Agreed!

to gain muscle you need to eat at a surplus and lift heavy (i.e. 5-8 reps to failure). If you're doing 2-3 hrs cardio a day and eating at a deficit, that's why you're not building any muscle.

to get more definition you need to burn fat, which means eating at a deficit but you still need to lift heavy to protect your muscle while you lose weight, so that what you burn off is fat, not muscle. If what you want is definition, rather than building bigger muscles, then do this. There's a thread called "in place of a road map" that tells you how to calculate the right amount of calories for you to burn fat at a healthy rate without losing muscle mass. This leads to good definition (i.e. looking "toned")

If you actually want to build bigger muscles, then you need to eat over your TDEE (see the road map thread for how to calculate that) and do a well designed lifting routine. Too much cardio will make it difficult to make gains in muscle mass.