How to Target Your Rear Delts!

How to effectively target your REAR DELTOIDS:

“Isolation exercises for the rear delts kick the shit out of compound movements in terms of EMG activity. Botton et al (4) conducted the most comprehensive study to-date on deltoid muscle activity during compound and isolation movements. Check out the chart. As you can see, shoulder press and bench press are best for front delts, dumbbell and cable lateral raises…

Franke et al,(2) Botton et al, (4) and Shoenfeld et al (5) have all shown that the reverse pec deck elicits around 90% of maximum isometric voluntary contraction (MVIC) EMG activity with around a 10RM load. This means that with relatively LIGHT loads, you’re getting super high REAR DELT activation when using the reverse pec deck. I would imagine that similar results would be seen for all types of isolation rear delt raises (bent over db rear delt raises, prone db rear delt raises, and standing bent over cable rear delt raises, but future research needs to confirm this.)

HAND POSITION: my buddy Brad Schoenfeld found that a NEUTRAL hand position outperformed a pronated hand position for mean rear delt EMG activity (but not for peak rear delt activity), BUT interestingly some subjects saw greater rear delt activity with the PRONATED grip.(5) Therefore, you should probably use both hand positions from time to time 

References:
2. Franke R, Botton CE, Rodrigues R, Pinto RS, Lima CS.
Analysis of anterior, middle and posterior deltoid activation during single and multi joint exercises. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2014 Jun 20
4. Botton CE, Wilhelm EN, Ughini CC, Pinto RS, Lima CS. Electromyographical analysis of the deltoid between different strength training exercises. Med Sport 2013; 17(2):67-7. 
5. Schoenfeld B, Sonmez RG, Kolber MJ, Contreras B, Harris R, Ozen S. Effect of hand position on EMG activity of the posterior shoulder musculature during a horizontal abduction exercise. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Oct;27(10):2644-9