shoulder exercises

Strong shoulders look good and contribute towards your overall upper body strength, particularly lifting overhead movements. Performing Shoulder Exercises regularly will also help increase your power on push and pull exercises as well as support improved posture.

Want those benefits? Then these Shoulder Exercises will help get you there. And if you’re looking for something else, check out our entire exercise database broken down by muscle group here.

The purpose of the exercises on this page is not to be an exhaustive list of all Shoulder Exercises, it is simply here to offer you some suggestions that you may not have considered in your workout plans already. Use these exercises as an “add on” to your existing plan, or combine them with some exercises from our other muscle group categories to make yourself a full plan.

Shoulder Exercises Benefits

Beyond the benefits mentioned above, adding some quality Shoulder Exercises to your workout plan will help you improve your functional strength, this will help you perform better both in the gym and in your everyday life.

Strong shoulders will also provide extra stability and support to the shoulder joint, which will reduce your risk of injury in that area.

What Muscles Make Up Your Shoulder?

Your shoulders, more specifically; deltoids, consist of three main muscle heads: the anterior deltoid, medial deltoid, and posterior deltoid.

The anterior deltoid is located on the front of the shoulder and is responsible for shoulder flexion and horizontal adduction. The medial deltoid is located on the side of the shoulder and is responsible for shoulder abduction. The posterior deltoid is located on the back of the shoulder and is responsible for shoulder extension and horizontal abduction.

Why Do Shoulder Exercises?

Shoulder Exercises are essential for building strength, muscle mass, and endurance in the shoulder muscles. Building strong shoulders will not only contribute to a more aesthetically pleasing physique but also support better functional movement, improve your performance, and reduce the risk of injury by strengthening the support around your shoulder joint.

Whether you're aiming to increase your overhead pressing power, improve your posture, or simply want to feel more confident in a sleeveless shirt or dress, incorporating Shoulder Exercises into your workout routine is well worth the effort.

How Often Should I Do Shoulder Exercises?

That’s up to you, we recommend at least once per week, keeping in mind that the more you train the faster your results. BUT do not overtrain as this will not benefit you and could lead to injury. You should allow at least one day between Shoulder Exercises where you are focused on a different muscle group entirely or resting.

What Equipment Is Best For Shoulder Exercises?

One of the most powerful Shoulder Exercises is the Military Press performed with a barbell. Generally speaking; barbell exercises get the fastest results, because they allow you to move the most weight. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use dumbbells, cables, machines and bodyweight exercises. All types of equipment have their place. Start with the barbell exercises and work your way down through dumbbells, then onto the assisted/less intense exercises using cables, machines and bodyweight.

What Are The Most Effective Shoulder Exercises?

Think of all Shoulder Exercises as part of a bigger picture, because the fact is, there is no one, two or three exercises that act as a magic ingredient. Of course there are many staples that you should include, such as the overhead press, but you should also consider a wider range of different compound and isolation exercises that use both free weights, cables and bodyweight.

How Can I Use These Shoulder Exercises To My Advantage?

An Added Boost to Your Existing Plan

As with all exercises in our database, you are encouraged to use them to enhance your existing workout, by picking out exercises for the muscle groups you want to grow and adding them to your current routine.

Build Complete Workouts

You may also make yourself a full weekly workout rotation with these exercises, but that will require some critical thinking on your part. We can give you the exercises, there is a lot of information on each individual exercise page for you to work with. But it’s up to you to take that information and use it to build the best workout plans for you. With experience this will get easier.

Building a Workout Basics

When you create a workout plan for yourself, you should start with a general plan of which muscle groups you will train on each day. If you are a beginner, keep it simple with an upper/lower body split. Intermediate and advanced lifters will move to rotate muscle groups or other methods such as push, pull, legs.

Once you know how you will train on each day, choose a key compound exercise to start with. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you’re planning a lower body or leg workout plan. The most obvious exercise to start with is a Squat, if you don’t want to squat, you can start with a Deadlift or a Lunge. A good weightlifting workout plan always starts with a compound barbell exercise, you should work your way down through freeweight, cable and machine exercises, finishing up on bodyweight exercises all focused on the target muscle group.

Progress

Always make sure that you push yourself out of your comfort zone, as soon as you feel like you are breezing through your workout with ease, it’s time to switch things up. There are 3 things you can do in this instance:

Lift more
Change your rep/set method
Change your plan

Essentially, you should do all 3, but one thing at a time. The most sustainable results come from incremental changes over time.

Consistency

The results we want from weightlifting don’t happen overnight and they don’t happen with one single exercise, workout or strategy. You need to keep showing up and evolving. When you train consistently you get results. There are no shortcuts.

Looking for a full Shoulder Workout?

We have a Simply Shoulders workout category in our Members Zone portal, it’s part of our single muscle group series. These workouts are designed to be used as an add on to any full workout plan, or combined with other single muscle group workouts to make a complete plan. We also have a selection of Abs & Core finisher plans available in the portal. You can sample some of these plans when you sign up for a Free Members Zone account. All you need to provide is a valid email address so that we can create your secure account. Then just head to “My Zone” and you will find a selection of free plans.

More shoulder exercises coming soon...

Just so you know, this list of shoulder exercises is a work in progress and is by no means extensive. We will continue to grow this entire database for you over time, so be sure to check back for updates. Alternatively, you can join our mailing list below and you'll be the first to know about all new content we produce.