4 Easy Shoulder Exercises to Get Chiseled

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 PressIf 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.“If you’re having some pain and you’re not tolerating something like a shoulder press, go for a lighter-weight front raise, and that will hit your front delts pretty well,” he says.Cable Lateral RaiseNext up is the medial deltoid, or what Dr. Corbett calls, “the thing that really makes people’s shoulders pop.” The lateral raise is the well-established meta for developing thick middle delts, but people commonly squander the exercise’s potential by using dumbbells.“If you think about doing dumbbell lateral raises, when you have the weights right at your side, essentially there’s no resistance,” says Dr. Corbett. “You can lift a massive amount of weight for the first 20 degrees of range of motion, but as your arm starts to travel up higher, the weight just becomes too heavy,” says Carlson. “So you have to use a relatively light weight from the bottom position just so that you can handle the top position.” Enter the cable lateral raise, which keeps even tension on the muscle throughout the full range of motion.How to Do ItFind a cable station with a handle attachment and set the pulley to the level closest to the ground.Grab the handle in the hand that’s furthest from the pulley and stand up, hands at your sides.Brace your core, engage your shoulder, and raise your arm out to your side. Pause for a count once your arm is parallel with the ground, then slowly reverse the movement with control. That’s one rep.You can also do both arms at the same time. Just set up both pulleys of a cable station and let the cables cross over in front of you.Trainer Tip:If grip strength is holding you back, bigger gains could be just one attachment away.“Some people actually take an ankle strap and put it over their wrist so they’re not physically gripping the weight.” says Dr. Corbett. “That way they can just focus on that mind-muscle connection, and that works for a lot of people.”Reverse Fly MachineThe posterior deltoid is the rear swath of your shoulder muscle, and it also contributes to a broader back. To bulk up your shoulder’s back end, Carlson recommends the reverse fly.“There’s no more effective way to isolate that muscle,” he says. “You’re just not hitting the posterior deltoids with a lateral raise or overhead press. You have to do a posterior deltoid isolation.”How to Do It:Sit on the bench of a reverse fly machine, facing toward the machine.Rest your torso against the chest pad and grab the handles out in front of you.In a slow and controlled motion, draw the handles all the way apart until you feel the contraction in the back of your shoulders.Carefully return the weight to the starting position. That’s one rep.Trainer Tip:You can do this one using a cable station or even just a pair of dumbbells, but Carlson still prefers machines.“The best variation of it is a machine where your arms are bent and you’re driving your elbows back into a pad. That way your hands are taken out of the equation,” he says.Face PullEach of the exercises above targets one of the main visible portions of the shoulder muscle. Your rotator cuff isn’t going to get you any likes on Instagram, but maintaining this crucial stabilizing muscle is key for shoulder longevity and avoiding injuries.“It’s important to add a rotational exercise, just so people are strong through a full range of rotation,” says Dr. Corbett, who recommends the face pull. “All the other exercises are either working on flexion and the sagittal plane or abduction—the shoulder joint isn’t actually rotating, it’s only going forward or out to the side. This is going to add that 3D motion of rotation.”How to Do It:Set the pulley of a cable station to just above eye level.Grab an end of the rope attachment in each hand, using an overhand grip.Extend your arms out in front of you and step back until there is tension on the cable.Brace your core and slowly pull the cable towards your face, drawing your elbows back past your shoulders and keeping your upper arms parallel with the ground throughout.Pause for a count at the top of the rep, and then slowly reverse the movement and extend your arms. That’s one rep.Trainer Tip:“A lot of times people use the default rope attachment, but usually that’s too short,” says Dr. Corbett. “Ideally you either have a long cable attachment, or you can use two separate handle attachments to allow you to get to full external rotation.”