Top 5 Shoulders Exercises and Tips

One compliment we often receive, is how great are shoulders look. And while I would have to give some credit to our genetics, we also have worked hard on toning and building our deltoids muscles, aka shoulders.

So here are our top 5 shoulder exercises, and some tips, to build the shoulder muscle. Click on the exercise to view proper form.

1. Standing Barbell Military Press
Tips:

• Squeezing the scapular, aka shoulder blades, together. This will allow the delts to do most of the work, as oppose to the more dominate trapezoid muscles.
• Although, there are benefits to partial reps, its best to lower the barbell to the collar bone to get the full range of motion and therefore benefits.
• Keep the trunk of the body as tight as possible to push through the shoulders. This exercise also becomes a core workout as the body is forced to stabilizing it self.

2. Dumbbell Side Laterals
Tips:

• When raising the weight, ensure that your elbows are higher than your wrist, and lead with elbows, as if your pouring water. 
• Lift the weights to the side of the body beginning at 30 degrees from the body to no more than shoulder height to stay in the tension zone.
• Keep you body steady to avoid using momentum to lift the weights. 
• These muscles are not large, there is no need to lift heavy weights. Between 5 to 15 pounds is all that is needed.

3. Arnold Presses
Tips:

• Similar to military press except this exercise hits all three sides of the delts: the front, middle, and the rear head. Start by having the dumbbell in front of your upper chest, and arm curl up like if your doing bicep curl.
• Slow down with this exercise, not only because you can injure yourself, but you want all three heads to be incorporated in the motion. 

4. Cable Rear Delt Flys
Tips:

• To allow the rear delts to take control, lengthen the upper back and tighten the triceps. This allows to rear delts to be at full advantage.
• To stay in the tension zone of this exercise, start in line with your front delt and only move slightly outside of the shoulder.
• Again this exercise needs little weight to feel the resistance. Actually it is quite hard to do this exercise if using more resistance than needed. 

5. Barbell Up Right Rows
Tips:

• Don't let the elbows go past your shoulders, to both avoid injury and to stay in the tension zone.
• Again like most exercise, squeeze the shoulder blades together, and keep the bar close to the body to engage the delts.
• Keep hands slightly closer than shoulder length apart, if the hands are to close it becomes more of a upper back exercise.

I received my NASM personal trainer certification in order to provide knowledgeable information at the best of my ability. However I always encourage feedback and information sharing.

-Dani