If your shoulder workouts are starting to feel like maintenance sessions, and your endless reps have few results to show for it, it may be time to change things up. Despite the dizzying list of shoulder exercises to choose from, the muscle’s relatively small size and simple structure means you can maximize its growth with a few carefully chosen exercises.
“It’s really not very complicated,” says physical therapist Alex Corbett. Breakthrough Physical Therapy. “If we’re looking at the anatomy of the shoulder, you’ve got three different heads of the deltoids: you’ve got the anterior part, the middle part, and the posterior part. And if you want to hit each of those, it’s going to require a different exercise per section.”
Luckily, you don’t have to do all of the below shoulder exercises every time you work out, although you should aim to do them regularly, says Luke Carlson, founder and CEO of . discover strength. “You can do one or two in each workout, and over the course of two weeks of training you’ll be repeating them all,” he says.
Also, feel free to hit your shoulders more often than other muscles.
“Unlike other muscle groups, shoulders heal very quickly,” says Dr. Corbett. “You can hit your delts twice a week, three times a week, four times—maybe even five times. If you’re bench pressing five days per week, that’ll benefit you, but there won’t be lateral growth.”
dumbbell overhead press
If you do exercises like bench presses or push-ups, you’re already working your anterior deltoid – the front part of your shoulder muscle. However, Dr. Corbett says, a dedicated exercise to isolate your frontal lobes is key to promoting new growth.
“The biggest bang for your buck will probably be an overhead press,” he says. “You’re also going to get some functional carryover from getting stronger in the overhead pressing position, which I think is important for not only building a good physique but also for being strong and functional in general.”
how to do it:
- Hold a dumbbell in each hand and sit at the edge of a bench.
- Engage your core, and begin to lift the dumbbells up – your elbows out at a 45-degree angle. Stop when the weight reaches eye level. This is your starting position.
- While maintaining a solid core, engage your shoulders to press the weight overhead.
- Just before lock-out, pause for a count at the top of the rep, and then slowly reverse the movement to return the dumbbells to the starting position. He is a representative.
Trainer Tip:
If you’re struggling with elbow pain, Dr. Corbett suggests dumbbell front raises as a pain-free alternative to hitting your anterior deltoids.
“If you’re having some pain and you can’t tolerate something like shoulder pressure, go for a lighter weight front raise, and it will hit your front delts very well,” he says.
cable side lift
Next is the medial deltoid, or what Dr. Corbett calls, “the thing that really makes people’s shoulders pop.” The lateral raise is a well-established method for developing thick middle delts, but people commonly waste the exercise’s potential by using dumbbells.
