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Published: 3/13/2025🏋 Fitness|🤸 Training plans
Which shoulder exercises are the best?
Strong, well-defined, round shoulders are an important asset of a chiselled body. How to target this area during both at-home and gym workouts? Find out which shoulder exercises bring the best results in a relatively short time.
In this article:
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Shoulder training includes a variety of exercises such as overhead presses, shoulder raises and external rotations.
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Regular exercise strengthens shoulder muscles and improves the range of movement.
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You can use dumbbells, resistance bands or your own body weight, which allows you to work out both at home and at the gym.
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What's key? Doing the exercises with correct technique to avoid injury.
Short summary:
How to do a workout targeted at your shoulders? Basic tips
The task of shoulder muscles, also known as deltoids, is to stabilise the shoulder joint. They are also responsible for arm extension, which is why their strength is indispensable not only during training, but primarily in daily life. Strengthening them constitutes an important part of the training plan. However, you need to know how to exercise your shoulders correctly to avoid dangerous injuries and get dream results. What should you pay attention to?
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Before starting your shoulder workout, make sure you do a proper warm-up to prepare your shoulder muscles for an intense training session. This is an important step that will not only increase your performance during exercise, but also reduce the risk of injury. Among other things, you can do arm swings or circles.
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A shoulder workout can be a stand-alone training unit, but you can also combine it with training other muscle groups, such as your back.
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Adjust training load to your strength to avoid dangerous injuries. You can use a weightlifting calculator or ask a trainer for help.
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Take care of regeneration. Remember that each muscle group, including shoulder muscles, needs between 24 and even up to 72 hours to recover. Remember to take this into account when working on your training plan.
You can do shoulder exercises at the gym, while supervised by a personal trainer, or at home. Consider, however, that most of them require essential equipment.
Which shoulder exercises give the best results?
Which shoulder exercises are worth including in your training plan? There are many, so you can add variety to your workout or choose the ones that suit you best. The best shoulder exercises vary in advancement level, but very often come in many variations to choose from.
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Best shoulder exercises: dumbbell raises
The standing dumbbell raise is a basic shoulder exercise that's perfectly doable even for a beginner. So where should you start?
Grab the dumbbells — choose the ones with appropriate weight. Stand up straight and bend your knees ever so slightly. Straighten your back, pull back your shoulder blades and lower your shoulders so that they stay away from your ears. In the starting position, the hands holding the dumbbells should rest along the body. Then do the following:
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Gently bend your hands at the elbows.
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In a controlled motion, raise your arms in front of you during an exhale.
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Hold your arms at shoulder height for a moment.
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Gently bring your shoulders down.
You can do this shoulder exercise in a bunch of options: lifting the arms in front of you or to the sides, with both hands or alternately, standing, sitting or in a bent-over position.
Arnold press — a popular shoulder exercise
Arnold press is one of the most widely recommended shoulder exercises. What are they exactly? This is a sitting or standing dumbbell press that engages the shoulder muscles; mainly those located in the front. How to do them correctly?
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Get in the starting position: stand with your legs bent ever so slightly, or sit on a bench with your back straight.
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Grab the dumbbells — choose the ones with appropriate weight.
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Place your palms facing inwards and lift the dumbbells so that they are at chest level.
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Rotating your hands outwards, push the dumbbells up overhead.
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Return to the starting position, again rotating your wrists towards your chest.
With this exercise, remember to control the movement. It should be smooth, not jerky. Make sure to watch out for elbow hyperextension.
Barbell press — a good shoulder exercise
No decent workout plan targeted at shoulder exercises can do without barbell presses. Overhead barbell press is the most popular; it engages front and lateral shoulder muscles. What does it involve?
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Get in the starting position, standing or sitting.
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Grab the barbell using an overhand grip and open your arms a little wider than shoulder width apart.
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Lift the barbell to chest level.
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During an exhale, push the barbell over your head.
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As you inhale, bring the barbell back to chest level.
In this shoulder exercise, it is important to avoid elbow hyperextension, the movement should be smooth and controlled.
Barbell lateral raises — an effective shoulder exercise
Barbell lateral raises are also a good shoulder exercise which engages the lateral, medial and posterior parts of the shoulder muscles. This exercise is considered to be one of the most effective and also the safest when it comes to this muscle group. How to do it?
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Get in the starting position: stand with your legs bent ever so slightly.
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Grab the barbells firmly.
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As you exhale, lift your arms out to your sides to shoulder level.
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Inhale and calmly lower your arms so that your hands are again at your hips.
You can also perform this exercise as a bent-over lateral raise.
Shoulder training — at the gym or at home?
You can do shoulder training both at the gym and at home. At the gym, however, you have access to the essential training equipment and machines that you can also use to train your shoulder muscles. Butterfly machine is one of them. However, if you have the equipment at home, nothing stands in your way to complete this workout without leaving your place.
Which shoulder exercises can be done at home?
Which shoulder exercises that you can do at home are the most effective? While away from the gym, you can easily do forward or lateral dumbbell raises, arnold presses or overhead dumbbell presses. Just use appropriately adjusted loads. There are no dumbbells around? Just grab 1.5 litre water bottles. Remember to add variety to your training too. Try out different exercise variations and find your way to a shoulder workout that proves not only effective but, above all, rewarding.
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