3 Ways to Make Your Shoulders Smaller and Less Broad

While you might think broad shoulders can be altered with diet and exercise like other parts of your body (abdomen, arms, legs, etc.), the size of your shoulders is primarily based on genetics.

Unless you're very overweight or have been training those muscles for a long time, shrinking your shoulders is nearly impossible. But even if you lose weight and your body shrinks, the inverted triangle shape of your torso will likely remain, as your body loses weight proportionally.

However, once you're at a healthy weight, you can use some tricks to create the illusion of smaller shoulders. Additionally, if you've been doing lots of strenuous shoulder workouts, scaling back on those may help your deltoids appear less pronounced.

You can't make a body body part smaller — be it your abs, legs or butt — by exercising it or eating certain foods. Fat covering muscles and bones doesn't melt away when you work the area.

A study published in an August 2013 issue of the ‌Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research‌ showed that participants who did up to 1,000 leg presses on one leg three times per week for 12 weeks experienced no change in the fat on that leg compared to the one that wasn't exercised.

Where in your body fat is broken down and metabolized at any given moment varies. It's dependent on the genetically pre-determined way your body stores and loses fat. You can't direct your body to remove fat from your shoulders only.

The shoulders are mainly comprised of bones, which have a genetically determined size, as well as connective tissue and muscle. If your broad shoulders are due to large deltoids (the muscles covering your shoulders), you may want to scale back on certain exercises.

You can build broad shoulders by growing the muscles with exercises like lateral raises, military presses, push-ups, front raises and rear deltoid flyes. If you've built a lot of muscle mass in your shoulders, it will atrophy if you shift your workout program to lift lighter weights and less often.

Don't skip training your upper body for fear of making your shoulders larger, though. Overall body health requires you to strength train all the major muscle groups, including the chest, shoulders and back, at least twice a week with sets of greater than 12 reps, according to the American Council on Exercise.

Physically, you can do little to change the inverted triangle shape of your upper body. But you can focus on building muscle and definition in your lower body so that it balances out your physique.

As part of your comprehensive training plan, perform exercises such as squats, deadlifts and lunges to build the muscles in your legs and backside. When you fill this area out with healthy muscle mass, you create a solid physique so your shoulders don't appear out of balance.

Though your shoulders are mainly bone, muscles and connective tissue, there is some subcutaneous fat that lies right under the skin, and when you lose weight, it may help your shoulders reduce in size along with the rest of your body.

If you need to lose fat to help your shoulders slim down along with the rest of your body, adopt a healthy, reduced-calorie meal plan along with regular cardiovascular exercise and strength training.

Determine your daily calorie burn by using an online calculator or an app like MyPlate that takes into account your size, age, gender and level of activity. Then, create a deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day by eating less and moving more; this daily deficit helps you lose 1 to 2 pounds per week, which is a healthy and realistic goal, according to the Mayo Clinic.

A simple way to trim calories is to reduce your intake of sugary soft drinks and refined grains, such as white bread or pasta. These foods offer little nutritional value and lots of extra calories. Design your meals and snacks so they contain moderate portions of lean proteins, whole grains and vegetables instead. Choose yogurt, fresh fruit and nuts as snacks instead of processed foods.