5 BEST Shoulder Exercises

Check out my client David-G’s transformation where he gained a whole bunch of muscle.

Shoulders, not only will have stronger shoulders help you lift heavier weights for almost all your upper body exercises,

but having muscular broader shoulders gives you more of that v taper look and enhances your overall appearance.

And I’m sure most of you already know about very effective exercises like barbell military presses, Seated dumbbell presses, and lateral raises.

But if you want to efficiently build muscle and avoid plateaus due to adaption it’s very important to switch up your exercises.

So rather than going over the common shoulder exercises that you already know about and are probably doing

I’d like to go over 5 of the best shoulder exercises that you’re not doing because you’ve either forgotten about them or maybe you never even knew they existed.

So you’re going to want to stay with me through this video because these exercises are extremely effective

and if you haven’t been doing them you can bet that by incorporating these into your shoulder workouts you’ll start seeing some really nice changes to your shoulder size, shape, and strength in no time.

Let’s start with one of the best exercises for your lateral head the leaning lateral dumbbell raise. Regular lateral raises are one of the best exercises to build the middle part of your shoulder.

But this exercise presents a lot of advantages that regular lateral raises can’t provide. When you’re standing upright raising dumbbells to your sides you’re going to lose the tension on your shoulders

if you go any higher then parallel with the floor we’re about 90 degrees from your body.

When you lean you create an angle that keeps the tension on your shoulder for the whole exercise while allowing you to raise the dumbbell higher up increasing the range of motion for your contraction.

To perform this exercise start by finding something sturdy that you can hold onto. Grab it with your hand and walk your feet in nice and close to whatever you’re holding on to.

Lean away from it until your elbow is almost completely locked out. and then with a dumbbell in your other hand raise to your side until your arm and the dumbbell is parallel with the floor.

Whenever raising a dumbbell with your arm straight you want to make sure you keep a slight bend in your elbow rather than having it completely locked out.

Because not only will that help prevent an elbow injury but it also keeps the tension on your muscles rather than your joints.

After raising to parallel with the floor lower back down to your side and repeat. Because of leverage, this exercise is more challenging then

regular lateral raises so you will probably have to use a lighter weight then what you normally use 4 your regular lateral raises.

But you should still be shooting for 8 to 10 reps with a heavy weight that’s challenging for you and almost leads to failure by the last rep.

If you don’t have something sturdy to comfortably hold on to you can also get similar benefits with a behind-the-back cable lateral raise because the angle that the cable polls on your arm are similar to the angle that gravity will pull on your arm when you’re leaning.

Next, I want to show you an amazing exercise for your front head the inclined frontal dumbbell raise and with this one, I want to show you two very effective variations.

For the first one, you’ll want to set an incline on a bench at an angle higher than a regular incline bench press and lower than sitting straight up.

You want to be leaning back a little higher than a 45-degree angle. Hold both dumbbells at your sides allowing them to hang straight down and make sure you’re leaning all the way back against the bench.

Bring your legs nice and close together so that your knees are touching so they’re not in the way of the dumbbells.

Raise the dumbbells straight up until your arms and the dumbbells are once again parallel to the floor. Since your arms are straight remembered to keep your elbows slightly bent.

Then lower back down to your sides until the dumbbells are behind you under your butt perpendicular to the floor.

Then raise back up and repeat. The variation of this one involves using a barbell instead of dumbbells and you’ll be leaning face forward in a prone position against the incline bench.

Start with the barbell hanging straight down and then raise it up until parallel with the floor and then repeat.

Leverage wise Both of these or harder than regular front raises so you will have to use a lighter weight again but the same advantages apply here with a greater range of motion on the contraction.

So now we’ve isolated the lateral head and the front head now let’s get the posterior or the back of the shoulder. I call this one the long angle dumbbell row.

This exercise is honestly one of the most effective exercise I’ve ever done for the back of my shoulder and the crazy part is I never see anyone doing it.

To perform this exercise start by leaning against something lower than waist level. You want to bend down by about 60 degrees although you can also do this exercise on a bench just like you’d do a one arm dumbbell row on the bench.

In either case, let the dumbbell hang straight down a lot of people Flex the front of the shoulder when doing rows

but this is wrong you want the dumbbell to drop straight down towards the ground and you want the front of your shoulder relaxed.

You also want to remember to stick your chest out and your butt out to maintain the neutral curve in your spine.

Now with a regular dumbbell row, you would be pulling the weight to your belly button and that would Target your upper back a little bit of the back of the shoulder and your bicep.

But instead, we’re going to open up the angle of the elbow and aim to bring the dumbbell further back towards your hips.

So when your rowing back you almost want to imagine that you’re trying to put something into your pocket.

Once you pull the dumbbell up to your hips lower back down and repeat for reps. This tiny change takes your bicep almost completely out of the movement and puts all the tension on the back of your shoulder.

Now like I said most of you have not tried this one so I highly urge you to try it because you’re going to be amazed at how different this feels from a normal row and just how much it targets the back of your shoulder

I honestly like this one way more than something like reverse flyes which everyone does for the back of the shoulder.

Next, let’s go back to the front of the shoulder for barbell frontal raises. There’s really nothing flashy about this exercise I chose it because I constantly see people doing alternating dumbbell frontal raises at the gym but very rarely ever see anyone loading up a barbell and doing front raises with it.

Using a barbell instead of dumbbells will definitely stimulate your muscles in a different way and will also allow you to lift a much heavier load because you have two hands on the bar.

If your goal is to grow your shoulder muscles to a larger size then using have your loads with barbells can definitely help you do just that.

Load up barbell lift it off the rack and let it hang in front of you against your hips. Raise it straight up until it’s directly in front of your eyes and parallel with the floor.

Again remember to keep your elbow slightly bent when raising and then lower back down to your hips trying to avoid swinging your back as much as possible.

It’s a good idea to select a heavyweight load that you may have to cheat and use a little momentum with on the last one or two reps but for the most part, there should be minimal swinging during your set.

Let’s move on to our last one which will Target all three heads of your shoulder at the same time.

One of the most common exercises for shoulders and one of the best is a seated overhead shoulder press.

Even though I see overhead presses down all the time I rarely see people doing Arnold presses and if you already know about Arnold presses don’t worry I’m going to give an additional variation for those of you that already knew about this exercise.

Because I want everyone to learn something new. Arnold presses are going to Target a lot more of the front head of the shoulder and they’ll still also effectively work the middle head and a little of the posterior deltoid for stabilization.

Start seated with both dumbbells on your knees. Raise the dumbbells up under your chin into a position that looks like you just completed a bicep curl.

So your hands are in what’s called a supinated position with your palms facing your body. Press the dumbbells over your head and as you lift them up you want to turn the dumbbells all the way around until your palms are facing away from your body.

As you press up you want to try to not flare your elbows out the way that you would a regular overhead press instead you want to keep your elbows a little tighter together.

after locking your elbows out over your head you want to lower back down and turn the dumbbells inward back to that starting position and repeat for reps.

Now like I said there’s a variation to this that works a lot more of the front of your shoulder that I wanted to show those of you that have already had some experience with Arnold presses.

it’s essentially the same as exercise except without the rotation so you start in that supinated position and you raise all the way up with your palms facing you.

this is actually one of the more effective exercises you can do to Target the front head of your shoulder.

for both the Arnold press and this variation that I call reverse shoulder presses you’re going to have to use a lighter weight than you would normally use for a regular overhead dumbbell press.

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