Shoulders & Back Workout for Women (Bikini Body Training)

I've trained hundreds of first-place winners in fitness competitions, Olympic athletes, Commonwealth Games gold medalists, and even world leaders. On top of that, my studio Enterprise Fitness has literally trained tens of thousands of people to head-turning results. My name is Mark Ottobre, and I am the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. I'm going to be training Kristen, whose goal is to compete in a bikini competition. We are going to be training shoulders and back. Stay tuned to the end for all the tips. So we're going to be doing military press followed by chin-ups, arnie press, T-bar rows, omni raises. Then for the Bs, the Bs are going to get a hybrid hook cable raises, which you're going to see— dumbbell raises rather. And then we've got seated row to finish. I might change a few things on the fly. But we're gonna go have some fun. So this is now 20 kilos. We'll start at 20 kilos. This is a 15-kilo bar. It's a female bar. I don't know, people on the internet will be like, why is it a female bar? Because there is a difference in gender and sex when training males and females. See these big chunky wrists, right? And my big fucking cartoonish hands. Females have smaller hands. Yeah. Now, yes, there are of course exceptions. If you look at Brock Lesnar's daughter, she's a monster. But on average, females have smaller wrists, have smaller hands. This is why the female bar can be a lot better when working with females, a lot more nicer for their joints and for their wrists. So there are differences like that that you want to consider and do 8 reps. This is 5 kilos heavier, uh, 20 kilos in total. When you're ready. Good. 1, 2, 3. Push your heels into the floor. Give me one more. Push your heels into the floor. Good, good. Push yourself. Yep. And pull it in. All right, so when you're here, as you get to there, what I want you to do is just pull yourself forward a little bit more. You'll find that it comes up a lot more. Yep. Easier. Yeah, all right, still got a little bit. 8 reps here.

Is that the right way?

Yep, always logo to you. All right, so anchor yourself in, drive your heels into the floor, squeeze my fist in the middle of your back. Go. Beautiful. 1, push this up higher, push this up higher. 2, good. 6, stretch forward, stretch forward, stretch forward. Now go. 7. Pull the lats down. 8. Beautiful. Good. Excellent. Over to the arnie press. So all these exercises are going to be fatiguing and stacking on top of each other. One of the things is we're training antagonist and protagonist, so we're really training all of that— your shoulders, your upper back, your mid-back. All of it is going to get work, so As we go through the sets, things are going to get harder fast because of the tension and the fatigue that's going to accumulate. So we get 10 out on this one, right? I really want you to reach to the sky every rep. 1, here, here. 2, there you go, reach for the sky. 3, reach for the sky. 4, pull, pull, pull. 9. Chin up as you do it. Chin up. 10. Good, good. How's the heart rate? How you breathing? How's it feeling? Heels into the floor. Push into the floor. There you go. Yes, there. Do it in 2 parts. So retract first. 2. More of a retract. I want you to pause. Retract. There you go, there you go. 3. Good. Retract. Hold, hold. Pull. And now just pull up. I want you to pull your body into it. Retract. Now pull your body into it. Yes, that's 5. Retract. Now pull your body into it. Good, that's 6. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Pull your body into it. 7. Give me 2 more, give me 2 more. You're good. Pull your body into it, pull your body into it. Do one more. Pull your body into it. Retract. Oh, that was too trappy. You felt that?

Yep.

Yeah, every rep up until then you were spot on, and then that last rep you just went like that, right? Two parts. I want you to fail, right? We've got to remember the goal is to fail. If you only do 6 reps and you fail, I'll adjust the weight, right? It's not about the reps, it's about execution, especially because you want to compete bikini. As well. We don't want any traps.

Traps, yeah.

You've got to remember that when the lats are on, the trap is off. When the trap is on, the lat is off.

Yeah.

So this is why for you, because it's unfamiliar movement pattern for you to go— you're used to going here. I want you here. So that's why I'm giving it to you in two parts.

Yeah.

Now these are light enough where you can really just focus on the shoulder, right? So really just focus on the shoulder. Take one step forward. So, yep, there you go. Good. One, two. Now on these, I want you to reach the dumbbell to me. Reach your hand to me. Reach your hand to me. Good, good. That's better. Reach to me when you do this. Reach to me. Beautiful. Good. Reach more. I'm over here. Reach, reach, reach. There you go. That's where I want you to stay. 9. Good, good, good, good. You got 12, you got 12. Good, good. Come on, come on. Good. Partial range is fine. Work it, work it, work it, work it. Good. Last one, last one. You got 3 minutes rest. All right, put them back on the rack. I'm going to get you go a little bit lighter. How'd that round feel?

Hard.

Good. How's your back feeling?

Yeah.

Good pump. All right, 6 to 8 here. 1, good. Heels into the floor, heels into the floor, give you strength. 2, 5. Oh, let's get it. And that will be the last one. Bring it down and walk it in. Fatigue's already creeping up on you. 6 is, is a good place, or 6 to 8. Crush. 1. Yes. Crush. 2. Good. Crush. Beautiful. One more, one more, one more, one more. Great. Spot on. Technique execution was perfect. You turned too much too early then. So straight up, straight up, straight up. There you go. 2. Be more demanding with it. There you go. Good, good. Back to me, back to me, back to me, back to me. Good. Squeeze. Yep. One more, one more so we can get it out. Go. Good. Fantastic. Spot on. What made you want to do the comp?

Um, I've wanted to— I used to do competitive cheerleading.

Oh yeah.

Um, and then I stopped cheerleading, so started getting more into like lifting and gym and stuff. So yeah, just wanted to do that competitively, I guess. So a few years of like traveling and stuff, so it's something I've wanted to do for ages, but with traveling, can't really do both.

So get in position, spread the knees, spread the knees, spread the knees, retract hard, retract hard. Good. It's two parts every rep. Retract Good. More retraction. Retract hard. Retract. There you go. I want you to lean into it more. Now push your body into it as you do it. Push your body in. There you go. Yeah, pull this down more. Pull this down more. More. That's 5. Pull the lats down. Pull yourself in. 6. I want more than that. More than that. Pull yourself in. Pull yourself in. Come on, one more, one more, one more. Don't use the traps. Pull yourself in, pull yourself in. Good, that was your best one. You gotta fight against the resistance. You don't accept it, right? Accepting it is you're here and then you're there again. You're here, lock your body into position. Pull, pull, pull. Drive the heels into the floor. Pull, pull, pull. I don't care if you stay there. If you don't get it, it's not important. Yeah, yeah. I want you to hold your body in position. It was a good cue when I said reach to me because your arms— yeah, you did exactly what I wanted you to do. There you go, beautiful one. Keeps that lever arm, keeps the tension. Bend your knees a tiny bit more on the way. There you go, stick the hips up high. There you go, reach to me, reach to me, reach to me, reach to me, reach to me, reach to me. Good, we're lighter but we've got more tension. Reach, reach. Keep that tight here. Good. 6. Up, up, up, up. Hold, hold your body, hold your body. 7, 10. Give me 2 more, give me 2 more, give me 2 more, 2 more, 2 more, 2 more. Good. We're failing, which is fantastic. 1 more, 1 more, 1 more. Good. Excellent. Beautiful. Cool. Just put them on the floor. So I will take something like that beyond failure. Obviously the military press, we're not taking to failure. Too, too risky, too high skill. This will take to failure.

Great.

Yeah, you've got one more round. We're going to take every— well, we're not going to take that to failure. We will not take the T-bar to failure. We'll push, really squeeze it on the lat pulldown as much as we can. We won't take this, but we'll take this beyond. Yeah, and that will be— that's the only thing we're going to take. That we're going to push harder on that, on the lat pulldown, and we're going to take you in favor. It's called Mark's Gym Museum, and in Mark's Gym Museum, people just come in, they pay money, say, I don't know, what do you reckon, $10, $20, and they just look at the equipment. That's it. They don't train, they don't sweat on my equipment, they don't ask questions. They're just like, oh, this is a Life Fitness leg curl, it's very nice. Oh, you've got the— yes. And every now and then you'll pay a little bit extra and I'll be training, but the rest of the time you're gonna, you're gonna just look at the equipment. I think it's a great business model, right? No upkeep, no one ruins my shit, my, you know, gym stays clean all the time, I make a bit of money. It's such a brilliant idea, it's fantastic. 6, 6 here, 6, 6, that's all you got, then we're gonna move on. Heels, heels. Don't bend your knees. Put your heels into the floor. 2. Good, that's better. Heels into the floor. 3, 5. Good. You're almost— one more, one more. Abs on, abs on. Yep, yep, yep, yep. 6. Lock it out. Slowly down. Yep, walk it in, walk it in. Great, that was good. That was right on the cusp of where we wanted B. All right, off you go. All right, let's push these pretty hard. Be, be aggressive with these ones. Pull down. Good. 1. Crush my fist. Crush my fist. 2. Wrap it around. Wrap it around. 3. Stretch forward. Wrap it around. Good. Wrap, wrap, wrap. It's 5. Keep going. You gotta fail. Move, move, move, move. Hey, body knows what to do. Keep it moving. Pull, pull, pull. Stick yourself up to it. Stick yourself up to it like a chin-up. And pull and pull. Good. You're still going. Let it go and go again. You got at least 2 more and I'll help you if needed. Pull. Little swing, little swing is fine. Little swing is fine. Great. Swing forward. Swing forward. Swing forward. And pull. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull more. Good. That's what we want. You're fine. It's fine.

Okay.

It's fine. Let's get at least eight of these. You know what to do. Same as last time. Same as last time. Punch them. 1, punch the roof straight up, punch the roof. 2, 6 more behind me. To me, to me, to me, to me, to me, and to me, to me, to me, to me. Go again, go again, you got another one. Go again, go again. One more, one more, one more. To me, bring the dumbbells to me behind you. There you go, well done, well done. You put them back on the rack. That was a great set, it's probably your best set. Spot on.

These ones— sorry, these ones suck.

Yeah, yeah, they do. All right, 2 parts, off we go. Nice way of buying time. You're like, oh, the dumbbells are wrong. All right, retract. Remember, 2 parts, and I don't care how many you get, you just want 2 parts. We want to make sure we use those lats. Pull yourself into it more. Don't roll it up. Pull yourself— there you go, exactly like that. 3. Pull yourself into it. Pull yourself into it. Good, that's exactly what I want. Pull yourself into it. You're getting a little trappy now. Do it in 2 parts. Again, the reps aren't important. Failure is where we want to be. Pull. So down into here, down into the armpits. There. Now retract. Good, you got one more like that. Release and then pull it down. Hold. Good, you're really fighting that. Stay there. That's it, that's it. Really fighting that position. So I never know, like, people, you know, I'm like, I better train people hard, then I don't want you to walk out. And then I'm like, did I train them hard enough? Actually, when people walk out, I'm like, did I train them hard enough? Like right now, I'm like, oh, she, you know, probably push a bit harder. Good, good, good. Yes, this is exactly where we want to be. Exactly. Good. That's 2, 4. Hips up, hips up, hips up, hips up, hips up. 5. Hips up. 6. Beautiful. 7. Reach out to me. Reach out to me. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Beautiful. Rocking. Come on, Keep rocking. Keep rocking. Hips up, hips up. Good. Give me two more, and then we're gonna go to failure. Good. And one more. Good. And drop the dumbbells and arms out like this. Hold this position. And let's pull you here. Back. Hold that, hold that, hold that. Now push against me. But you know, that a break position, right? We just going to use here. Bring it. Hold that. Hold that. Right. I just want this to work, right? Hold, hold. I'll adjust the force. Hold, hold. Don't break. Don't break. Just keep it into the lat. Keep it. Keep it into the delt. Rather, keep it into the delt. Keep it into the delt. Lean forward for me a little bit. There you go. Stay into the delta and come back up. Come back up, come back up, come back up, come back up, come back up, come back up. Stay into the delt. Stay into the delt. There you go. Keep the abs on. Stay into the delt. Okay, we're going all the way down. Stay into the delt. Stay into the delt. Stay into the delt. Pull, pull, pull. Good, good. Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. And relax. Well done. Who would have known lifting your arms would be so hard?

When you like let go, I was like trying to lift them up. I'm like, I literally can't.

It's because I positioned them in exact position where you're only using that lat, that the lateral delt. I keep saying lat, but lateral delt is what I mean. Yeah, so that's where I wanted you to be. I want you to stay in that lateral delt position because most people when they do it, they're moving all over the place and shrugging and all this kind of stuff, and then they're not straight into where the delt—

yeah, I felt that.

Yeah, yeah, I'm locking your body into position, and that's— you've got to stay in that position after you've done everything else. Your body starts going, shit.

Yeah, hello.

Yep. Um, so the viewers, I think, will enjoy this next part because on what we're about to do— so make sure you stay tuned for this— we're going to be using the hybrid hooks, which is Something I really enjoy using the hybrid hooks, but the thing I love about this, what you're going to see, is there's no hiding. So it's coming up. These are hybrid hooks, right? So normally when you're doing a lat raise, if you're using dumbbells, the— if you look at the strength curve or the resistance profile, if you're using just dumbbells, most of the resistance is at the top, right? If you're using a dumbbell, if you're using a cable, most of the resistance is at the bottom. So you have this kind of trade-off that if you want the resistance to be continuous throughout, we're going to add the hybrid hook because we're going to get the best of both worlds. You're going to get the resistance at the top from the dumbbell, but you're also going to get the resistance to start from the cable. So this is what I was saying before, that you can't hide, uh, these— we get no— there's no kickback or anything like this. Hybrid hooks, I think it's just hybridhooks.com, they're on Instagram, they do a good job. It's a nice nifty little tool. So look, I'm going to say 8 to 12, but we'll see. 1, 2, stop here. 3, 4, 5, 7. That's all right, switch arms, switch arms. 1, heels into the floor. 2, 5, 6, 7. One more, one more. Cheat it up if you need. Yep, let's go. 1 kilo dumbbell. They're hard, eh? Really hard because there's no hiding. There's no hiding. It's that tension throughout. You're like, oh, the whole time you've got—

it feels like okay, and then all of a sudden I just can't do it anymore.

And that's that resistance profile that we're manipulating. Let's pair this with seated row wide. We're gonna do a wide grip seated row, and I'm gonna really emphasize your lats here. So we're gonna go super, super wide. Let's have a look at how you do it and I'll correct if needed. Oh my God, yeah, it's super wide, so we're really going to be working lats here. Good, push those heels in, stick your bum back more. There, get nice elongated. That's it, good. Now I want you to treat this like a row by bending your knees a tiny bit and crush my hand. Good. 2, crush me out. 3, pull down. Good. 5, good. 7, good. Roll a little bit lower right here. 8, good. 9, let's do one more. It's a little wide for you. It's a little wide.

Sorry, feels really awkward could.

Yeah, it's a little wide. Yeah, we're going to need to use mid because there's no in between. I want to use this grip. It help with your hands. All right. Push heel into the floor, heel into the floor. Good. 1, it's better weight. 2, 3. I'm over here, reach for me here. Reach, don't bounce your knees. Reach for me over here. Good. 8, 9. Down to here. Up, up, up. 10. Good, switch. Try and keep that trap down. Keep yourself down. 1, 2, 7. Don't start using this. Keep it down. 8, even if it means partial. 8, 9, and with me, up there. Good, good. How's your back body feeling?

Yeah, it's good. My shoulders killing me.

Good, in a good way. Yeah, hop off for a sec. Let me just show you exactly what I want here. So stick your hips back. Yeah, so you elongate your spine. So if I bring my hips forward, what I'm doing is— so you can see the lever point changes. Yeah, yeah. And I'm using my lower back now. Yeah, I want the line— if you imagine this as a line I want the line to have as much tension through my upper back as possible.

Yeah.

So when I sit my hips back, I do two things. I keep this line of pull direct from the machine to my upper back. The other thing it does is it keeps my hips stable and also my spine in a nice stable position instead of in that flex position where I'm moving my hips. So I want you forward, and this will stretch your hamstrings a tiny bit. You've got the mobility for it, so it's That's fine. You're going to stretch forward and then pull.

Okay.

Stretch forward and then pull. Stretch forward and pull. Almost like, you know, you see rowers, like there's a little movement to it, but I'm not— see, I'm not flexing through there.

Yeah.

I'm creating a little bit of dynamicness through the lats, and that's what I want you to focus on. You can see my lats there. And also just play instead of moving to here where it's upper back, play with pulling. So I pull my elbows down, you can see my lats, yeah, switch on a lot more. And there's nothing, yeah, up here. My trap is soft the whole time, which is really important for you because we don't want any trap. And again, if it's too heavy, one, I'll know, but two, do not alter your form. So that's really nice. 3. That's perfect. Crush. Give me 2 false reps. 2 false reps. Good. One more. One more. With me, with me, with me. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. Go tiny bit lighter. Tiny bit lighter. I didn't get all the reps that I would have liked.

Yeah, at the start I could definitely feel that here, and then the last couple I think I was like, yeah, you're starting up a bit.

Yeah. Definitely fatigue. Yeah, go a little lighter so you can get a little bit more range.

Yep.

1, 2, 3. That's better. Don't move. 8. Drive your heels into the floor. 9, 10. Give me 2 more. I'm gonna help you. And up. 1. Last one. Up. 2. Good, there we go. Beautiful. All right, here we go, here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4. Good. 7, that's better. 8, 9. Don't use your legs. Up, up. Give me 2 more. Give me 2 more, give me 2 more. Pull. 1. Don't use anything else. Up. There you go, well done. Excellent. Going, going. So trying to exaggerate as much as as you can. Yeah, okay. Now squeeze. Good. Now go again. Stretch, pull, exaggerate as much as you can. Good. Trying to overdo it, right? Hips nice and far back. Good. Not so much like a rope There you go. Be aggressive with it. Good. You can push into my hand hard. Go. There you go. Pushing out, pushing out. Good. More squeeze. Wrap. Good. Keep the hips back, hips back, hips back. Good. Push your heels against the floor. Push them, push them, push them out, push them out, push them out. Come on, be aggressive. Hips, hips. Go. Keep your hips back, hips back, hips back. Squeeze. Good. I'm gonna force you out a couple more. To me, to me, to me, to me, to me, to me, to me. Squeeze. Good. Don't use your traps. Don't use your traps. Keep tight, keep tight, keep tight, keep tight. I'll help you, I'll help you. One more. Don't use your traps. Pull, pull, pull, pull. There. Good. Well done. Excellent work. Fist pump. You look devastated.

That was hard.

Destroyed. Oh, I'm still thinking, fuck, did I train you hard enough?

Nice. Are you joking?

Oh good, I'm glad.

Good stuff.

Take that intensity into your own training now. Feedback, thoughts, questions?

Yeah, massive. Like, I think just like engaging my lats more than my traps, because I do it in like everything and I feel it. Like, there's so many— like, when I'm training on my own, there's so many things that I do that I'm like, I can feel it in my traps. So it was good to kind of like break it down and activate my lats more and really focus on that like retraction. Yeah, because I felt like a massive difference in a lot of those movements.

Yeah, look, overall feedback is you train, you train well, and you move well. I think little discrepancies, which like the more just over time can be stomped out, like you have little discrepancies where you move things, like you're doing the lat raise, then you—

yeah, and then I'm like, you want to move and stomp.

Yeah, lock your body in, put your feet onto the floor, ground yourself, don't move anything. If you need to do anything, if you've got your hand on the pole, squeeze the pole. If you need the energy to go anywhere, ground yourself. Don't do this because you want to, you want to be as stable as possible. The other thing I'd say from a mechanical perspective for you is just on those overheads, it's that mid-trap weakness. So I would add for you every upper body workout the big 3: Yeah, so you're just working on that mid-back. And then really, I think for you, you're going to get probably 80% of your improvement through doing the movement patterns with more specificity. So when you do a lat pulldown, when you do a seated row, when you do the tube, a T-bar like we were doing today, you'll do it in two parts: retract, pull Just for now, probably say it might be a 4 to 6 week phase where you need to re-pattern, the neural re-patterning, so that way when you move to doing it, just say automatically, it becomes your default.

Yeah.

Because right now it's not your default.

No, definitely not.

It's outside of you, so that's where we'd be driving.

Yeah, also in like my like side raises, all the time I'm like constantly just like little like bends in my knees and toe tapping.

So for bonus points, points. So I'll just stay to the end. What you can do to alleviate that is I'll just get you to sit down on the floor. We'll do a mermaid lat raise, right? So you're going to do the lat raise in this position. So then see how this eliminates any bouncing whatsoever? You, you can't bounce in this position. The other thing for you is I'm just going to push you forward, right? So you need to be in this position. Do you feel that harder again?

Yeah.

So if you're in this position compared to this position, right, this is a little bit easier. If we're here, it's all doubt, right? You feel that big difference? Huge. So that's another thing for you that you can play with. Yeah, to get a bit more out of your shoulders. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, yeah, I felt really like on the cables, like really pushing through my heels, like helped in keeping my lower body really strong, so it eliminated that bounce. Like as soon as I As soon as you said like heels in the floor, I was really like, I felt really stable in my lower body.

Grounded.

Yeah, grounded, that's the word.

Perfect.

Yeah, cool, cool.

All right, so where can the folks follow you and your comp prep journey?

My Instagram is @kristenoddy_ and my name is Mark Ottobre.

I'm the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. Make sure you subscribe for more great videos and workouts.