If your shoulder workouts have begun to feel more like maintenance sessions, with few results to show for your endless reps, it might 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 max out its growth with just a small handful of carefully chosen exercises.
“It’s really not super complicated,” says Alex Corbett, physical therapist at BreakThrough Physical Therapy. “If we’re looking at the shoulder’s anatomy, you’re going to have three different heads of the deltoids: You’ve got the anterior portion, the medial portion, and the posterior portion. And if you want to hit each of those, it’s going to require a different exercise per section.”
Fortunately, you don’t have to do all of the shoulder exercises below every time you work out, although you should aim to rotate through them regularly, says Luke Carlson, founder and CEO of Discover Strength. “You could do one or two in each workout, and over the course of two weeks of training you’re rotating through all of them,” he says.
Also, feel free to hit your shoulders more often than you would other muscles.
“Unlike other muscle groups, the shoulders recover pretty quickly,” says Dr. Corbett. “You can hit your delts twice a week, three times a week, four times—maybe even five. If you’re doing five days of bench press per week, that is going to bang you up, but lateral raises aren’t.”
Dumbbell Overhead Press
If you do exercises like the bench press or push-up, you’re already working your anterior deltoid—the front part of your shoulder muscle. However, a dedicated exercise to isolate your front delts is the key to spurring new growth, says Dr. Corbett.
“The most bang for your buck is probably going to be an overhead press,” he says. “You’re also going to get some of that functional carryover of being strong in an overhead pressing position, which I think is important not only for building a good physique but also being strong and functional in general.”
How to Do It:
- Grab a dumbbell in each hand and sit on the edge of a bench.
- Brace your core, and begin to raise the dumbbells overhead—your elbows out at a 45-degree angle. Pause when the weights reach eye level. This is your starting position.
- Maintaining a solid core, engage your shoulders to press the weights all the way overhead.
- Pause for a count at the top of the rep, right before lock-out, and then slowly reverse the movement to return the dumbbells to the starting position. That’s one rep.
Trainer Tip:
If you deal with elbow pain, Dr. Corbett suggests the dumbbell front raise as a pain-free alternative for hitting your anterior deltoids.
