For many guys – myself very much included – the quest to build bigger, stronger and injury-proof shoulders can be a lifelong pursuit. A formidable set of shoulders, comprised of the anterior, lateral (or middle) and rear deltoids, does much more than make you look good in a T-shirt – they’re essential for safer lifting, pushing, pulling and stabilising the shoulder, and work in conjunction with the rotator cuff.

As someone in their early(ish) thirties, this focus on muscular longevity is now considerably more appealing to me and has directly influenced how I’ve trained over the last few years. After all, why have a pair of boulder shoulders when you can’t even reach around to scratch the top of your back? Despite this change in attitude, I was recently tasked by MH’s Fitness Director, Andrew Tracey, with a fresh challenge that, in no uncertain terms, could sit across both sides of the fence – it would earn me stronger, more resilient shoulders and give me that ‘pop’ that, in theory, could be seen under the baggiest of T-shirts.

My mission from Tracey was thus: a 28-day lateral raise challenge, one designed to build shoulder strength and size through high-frequency, progressive overload training. Here’s how it went.

The protocol I needed to follow was refreshingly simple, without a whiff of complicated sports science, myo-reps, percentage-based lifting, or anything more complicated than grinding through a payload of reps. At the start of each of four sessions, Tracey detailed that I needed to hit three clean sets of 10 lateral raises – so far, so bodybuilding – before going into my main workout.

‘Use a weight that allows you to hit three sets of 10 with good form,’ he advised. ‘If you fall short, stay at the weight for the next session.’ To earn the right to move up in weight, Tracey said, I had to hit every single one of the 30 total reps cleanly. Only then could I progress through the dumbbell rack.

At the other end of the workout was where the magic was set to happen – ‘complete 70 total reps of lateral raises, in rest-pause style,’ Tracey prescribed. ‘Break as needed, but get to 70 reps total, starting with a relatively light weight.’

In the first week, I used two 10kg dumbbells for the opening set of 10-10-10, and a more modest 8kg for what I would go on to label as the ‘spam’ sets (online parlance for high-frequency, high-volume repetition of a specific, often isolated, exercise). These, Tracey said, could be done in a variety of manners, as long as the lateral head was being hit – from standing lateral raises to single-arm raises while leaning away from a cable machine, or lying on a bench.

Throughout the first week, the first two sets of 10 were clean, but I caught myself using a little too much body English to heave them up in the third. Under Tracey’s guidance, I stuck with 10kg for the remainder, with the goal of hitting three clean sets mid-week in week two. At the end of each workout, I could comfortably hit the prescribed 70 reps with 8kg dumbbells in five or six sets – dependent on whether or not the rest of my workout was upper- or lower-body – and earned an excellent pump off the back of it. Onwards.

At this point, things were already looking up – I looked forward to bookending every one of my four workouts with a pump-inducing 100 total reps of lateral raises, though more permanent results were yet to come.

To help nudge things along, there was another part to Tracey’s shoulder-bulking masterplan, and it influenced what I did outside of the gym. Being a keen runner, Tracey advised that I capitalised on these sessions spent away from the weights room, ensuring that I hit the same prescribed reps at home with a light resistance band. ‘Aim to replicate the same structure where possible,’ he said, ‘with a lighter load and higher control.’

Hitting this format up to twice a week (outside of the four gym sessions) and varying the closing set between standing, sitting and cable machines, I was clocking up almost 600 reps a week in the name of bigger shoulders and, in theory, giving the muscle group enough stimulus to grow. The die was cast.

Approaching the halfway point, I was now comfortably hitting 30 reps of 10kg with clean form at the start of each workout, and the final of the four days in week two saw me bumping up Friday’s opening set to 12kg. Though the 10kg to 12kg jump might not seem like much, it’s a significant 20% increase. Using the heavier weight, I had to be more intentional with my form, as I often noticed I was bending my elbows a little too much during the concentric (raising) phase of the lift, and was rushing the eccentric (lowering) phase too – if I wanted more robust shoulders, this was no way to go about it.

A tactical retreat was in order – I would open with a set of 10kg, and then hit two sets of 12kg, working to the theory that the majority of my sets were still at an increased weight from a fortnight previously. Using the fundamentals of progressive overload, this more gradual increase began to see me punch through my plateaus and, by Friday’s session, I was back on decent form. At the end of each session, I made sure I was fuelling correctly – hitting a scoop-and-a-half of protein after the session and again before bed.

Before I knew it, I was approaching the latter stages of the 28-day experiment – the halfway point of which saw me jump up 20% in weight during the opening sets and find a comfortable groove in nailing the closing 70 reps, working to an approximate 15-15-15-15-10 pattern, with the dual-cable lateral raise being my weapon of choice – I could adjust the weight easily and hit the reps with the same intensity in half the time its single-arm variant would take.

Though things were looking up, on day 20, this constant exposure to the same movement pattern across 500 or 600 reps each week began to flare up the right side of my shoulders. Due to the ‘spamming’ nature of the experiment, my right medial deltoid had been hit with an uncomfortable spot of tendonitis: the inflammation or irritation of a tendon, commonly caused by overuse or repetitive strain, putting a spanner in the works of my closing days.

By this point, my working weights for both the opening and closing sets of lateral raises had increased by at least 20%. It was clear that ‘spamming’ the movement had triggered a genuine strength breakthrough, but the most impressive results were the ripple effects across my other lifts. My barbell shoulder press felt significantly more locked in, and I could finally execute upright rows with pure deltoid drive rather than letting my traps take over. Even on the bench press, that newfound lateral strength translated into a noticeable sense of joint stability that made every rep feel more controlled.

From an aesthetic point of view, my shoulders look thicker and more well-rounded – even my anterior deltoids seemed to have got a little meatier – from the estimated 2400 reps of lateral raises I put my shoulders through. As the 28-day experiment wrapped, I was relatively pleased with my progress and, despite a few niggles that I’ll need to roll out, I was aware that expecting to pack on around half an inch of muscle in under a month was a tall order. Using some questionable tape-measuring techniques, I’d estimate my gains at around a quarter of an inch – whether that’s brand-new muscle fibre, or simply increased glycogen storage and fluid retention, we’ll have to wait and see.

Ask me again in 28 days – I’ll be on the cable machine, hopefully up a few more percentage points once again.