Shoulders
26 pieces
- Exercise31 October 2026Band pull-apartOne long band, held out in front of you and pulled apart to your chest. It trains the back of your shoulders and the muscles between your blades, and it needs no anchor and no gym. It is a small lift, and it asks for a lot of careful reps.
- Exercise19 October 2026Push pressAn overhead press where your legs start the bar. A short dip and a hard drive get it moving, and your arms finish what your hips began[1]. It trains getting force from the floor into the bar fast, which is a different job from the strict press.
- Exercise19 October 2026Dumbbell upright rowA pull straight up the front of your body, elbows leading, until your hands reach chest height. It trains the side delts and upper traps together. With dumbbells your hands can travel a little wider than on a bar, and in one study a wider grip drew more delt and trap activity[1].
- Exercise19 October 2026Cable Y raiseA lateral raise that keeps going past shoulder height into a Y. Two low cables cross in front of you and you raise your arms up and out, with steady cable tension through the whole arc.
- Exercise19 October 2026Band shoulder external rotationA light, slow strength exercise for the muscles that turn your upper arm outward. You anchor a band at elbow height, keep your elbow at your side, and rotate your hand away from your body. It is small, quiet work for the shoulder, done one arm at a time.
- Exercise13 October 2026Seated reverse dumbbell flySit on the end of a bench, fold forward until your chest is near your thighs and lift the dumbbells out to the sides. Sitting removes the need to hold a bent over position on your feet, so the set is about the back of the shoulder and the upper back, which are the muscles a reverse fly is aimed at[1].
- Exercise13 October 2026Machine rear delt flyThe pec deck turned around. You face the pad with your chest against it and sweep the handles back and out, which asks the back of the shoulder and the upper back to do work a press almost never gives them[3]. The chest pad also holds you in place, so the set is about the arms moving wide and nothing else.
- Exercise13 October 2026Machine lateral raiseA seated raise where pads on the outside of your arms take the load and the machine holds your torso still. The side of the shoulder is asked to lift the arms out to shoulder height, and nothing is asked to balance. That is a different job from the dumbbell version, and the trials so far say both are enough[1][2].
- Exercise9 September 2026Reverse cable crossoverTwo cables crossed in front of you, a handle in each hand, swept apart until your arms are wide. It trains the back of the shoulder, which is the opposite job to the cable crossover it is named after. The cable is the reason to bother: the resistance is still there at the wide end of the range, where the rear delt is shortest and a dumbbell has nothing left to offer.
- Exercise2 September 2026Prone Y raiseLie face down, arms out overhead in a Y, thumbs up, and lift them off the floor. It looks like almost nothing and it reaches a muscle most training programs never load: an overhead arm raise in this position produced the greatest lower trapezius activity of ten exercises measured together[1].
- Exercise2 September 2026Overhead carryA weight pressed overhead and held there while you walk. It is the least forgiving carry in the library: the shoulder has to stay in a good position, the ribs have to stay down, and the back arches the moment either one gives.
- Exercise2 September 2026Incline reverse flyChest down on an incline bench, two light dumbbells hanging, and you sweep them out and back. Isolating the back of the shoulder is the whole point, and single-joint work is where the posterior deltoid has been measured working hardest[1].
- Exercise2 September 2026Face pullA rope at head height, pulled apart toward your face with the elbows high. It trains the back of the shoulders and the muscles between the blades, and it is the movement with the largest gap between what it is sold as and what anybody has shown.
- Exercise2 September 2026Dumbbell lateral raiseTwo light dumbbells, arms out to the side, stop at shoulder height. It is the most direct way to train the side of the shoulder and the exercise most reliably ruined by using too much weight, because there is no way to cheat it that does not stop it working.
- Exercise2 September 2026Cable lateral raiseOne arm, one low pulley, and a raise out to the side. The cable is what makes it worth doing: a dumbbell has almost no load on it at the bottom of the range and a cable has plenty, so the muscle is under tension for the whole of the rep instead of the top half of it.
- Exercise2 September 2026Barbell upright rowA bar pulled straight up the front of the body, elbows leading, stopping around chest height. It trains the side of the shoulder and the traps together, and it carries a reputation for shoulder trouble that deserves a more careful answer than it usually gets.
- Exercise31 August 2026Seated neutral-grip dumbbell pressThe seated dumbbell press with the palms facing each other instead of forward. One wrist turned, nothing else changed. It is worth knowing up front that the common claim for it, that turning the palms in is kinder to the shoulder, has never been tested in an overhead press.
- Exercise31 August 2026Seated dumbbell shoulder pressThe overhead press with a back behind you and one weight per hand. The bench takes the balancing job away from your trunk, which is what lets you press more. Each shoulder still works on its own, which is what stops it being a barbell press.
- Exercise31 August 2026Pike push-upA push-up folded in half at the hips so you press mostly upward instead of mostly forward. Get the hips high enough and the shoulders are underneath the load rather than in front of it, which is the difference between training your chest and training your shoulders with the same two hands on the same floor.
- Exercise31 August 2026Machine shoulder pressThe overhead press with the path already chosen. A machine takes away the balancing and gives you back attention, which is worth having on the day you are tired and worth knowing about on the day you are not.
Show moreShowing 20 of 26
Can’t find it? Suggest a topic