I'm working out to my plan but my shoulder muscles seem to be the weakest in my whole body. I'm finding I cant lift much more than 4lbs in each hand when I do things like lateral raise and front lats.

Is it normal to find one muscle group is a lot less strong than the others?

I call mine "weenie little woman arms". I can hardly do most of the arm exercises and reps that most plans call for. But I perservere. I have found that they get easier. There's no shame in starting with 4 lbs. I started with 2!
Look around at women. Between osteoporosis, feeding babies, hanging over sinks of dirty dishes and/or computer keyboards ... our shoulders are doomed.
I don't want to be a hunch back little old lady so I try ...

I agree shoulders are hard to strengthen! It takes a while but like Susan said just keep at it... One thing you could maybe do is to work the top, side, and back of the shoulders to get them evenly strong and proportionned... For the top do military presses with dumbells or a barbell, for the side do side lateral raises, for the back do bent over or sitting side raises...

Oh I just found this neat site with a bunch of exercises for shoulders... http://www.shapefit.com/shoulder-exe...al-raises.html
Here is another good site with great workouts http://www.exrx.net/

Hope this helps TTFN

Thanks for the reassurances both of you, and thats another great site Ilene - bookmarked it!

Artemis_

I had a great shoulder workout yesterday, and am pleasantly sore today. Here's what I did:

Seated Dumbbell Press

One-Arm Front Dumbbell Raises

Two-Arm Dumbbell Upright Rows

Rear Deltoid Row

Dumbbell Shrug (Works trapezius)


Ilene -- I decided to go ahead and start on your 4-day split. Started yesterday instead of waiting a couple of weeks.

Luanne

Artemis - relax and give yourself a break. 4 lbs for your shoulder exercises does not mean you are weak - the deltoids are smaller and shorter muscles than say quads - and will require smaller weights. The important point is to strengthen and move up in weight when 12-15 reps become easy. Hey, for some delt exercises I use 4 lb weights, for others I use larger. Work it slow and relish in your progress (I'm sure Mel or Meg will be along with the 'words of wisdom" on why this is true). Also, notice the model on the Shapefit link Ilene provided: big guy, little weights. I don't think that is just for photographic effect.

I have a bad shoulder from a poorly-healed rotator cuff injury. My physical therapist said to start off just by shrugging my shoulders as high as I could(10 reps x 3). I did this every day for a few weeks and then found that I could begin working with weights. 8 months later and my shoulders are in great shape and I have no more pain in my rotator cuff! Maybe that would work for you?

Good luck!

I do several exercises for shoulders: lateral raises, front raises, and shrugs. For the raises I've been using 8# dumbells for awhile, just did one set with 10# on Sat. I can use 20# for shrugs now - guess something is going right. I'm going to look at the site Ilene mentioned, as it's time for a shakeup in my whole WL routine.

I agree with the others. Do NOT feel bad about one muscle group being way weaker than the rest. My problem muscle group is biceps. Trying to strengthen them has been a thorn in my butt for years, but I slowly keep plugging along, knowing that lite weights on them until they get stronger is better than just giving up on them altogether. Incidentally, today was also my shoulder day. Sigh, tomorrow is the dreaded bis and back.

Tiki

As Ellen said, the delts are lots of tiny little muscles. Because they burn out quickly, I never do more than 10 reps. For Shoulders, I'm interested in size, since the larger my shoulders look, they smaller my non-existent waist will appear.

It takes a looooong time to develope shoulder strength. In 5 years, I've managed to move from 5 lb dumbbells to 20 lb. for lateral raises. I just changed my form to try to change the shape of my mid delts, and had to move back to 17.5 for my heavy set. It really takes a long time to be able to move up in weight.

One of the seemingly small influences I had at my gym was convincing the owner to buy weights in one pound increments from 5 to 12 pounds. He didn't believe me at first that one pound made any difference until I started working with two clients who were coming back from rotator cuff surgery. But now ALL the women are thanking me!

If you don't have smaller increment weights, use drop sets to help yourself progress faster. If you can only do 6 reps at 10 pounds, FINE! do the 6 reps, and have 8 pounders lined up and grab them to finish out the set. You'll get stronger faster than waiting until you can complete full sets before you move on.

Mel

I'm pretty sure that I started w/ 4 or 5 pounders for lateral raises - that's a classic one that people can't do with much weight at first. Shrugs, a little bit higher, but that's a smaller movement and you're using your back too. Just keep at it and track your progress and you'll strengthen the muscles.

Tiki, I loved reading your message - for some reason my trouble spot is my hamstrings, and where I can do extensions with 70 pounds and leg presses w/ 150 or so with no problem, my form on 20 lb leg curls still sucks!

Mel, I'm sure those weights in one pound increments get used waaay more than the absurdly high end ones! I've never seen anyone do anything serious with those at the top end in my gym!

I must be the weakest one in the bunch, I started out with no weights because 2 lbs were just to heavy, but persistence has me up to 10 lbs. I'm still in shock that I've come such a long way with my shoulders, I never would have thought it possible.

I use the 150's several times a day.....I sit on them!

The heavy stuff gets used a lot at my gym, unfortunately by guys who think that I should clean up after them

Mel