If you’re looking to devote more attention to your shoulder muscles and are ready to build muscle mass and definition in your upper body area, incorporating some resistance training into your workout is a great place to start. This five-move routine will walk you through some of the basics of building shoulder muscles.
If you have used any of the best arm workouts In an upper body session before that, you’ve probably noticed that dumbbells are a very popular piece of equipment for building upper body muscles. These are classified as free weights and are staple equipment in most gyms, but if you’re working out from home, we recommend getting your hands on a couple of the best adjustable dumbbells.
Although this shoulder routine designed by a personal trainer Lisa Lanceford (opens in a new tab) It only includes five exercises, it varies the way it engages the shoulder muscles to work all the shoulder muscles. Therefore, you will need to use dumbbells and a cable machine. However, if you don’t have access to a cable machine, you can simply use a long rope resistance band and loop it around an object like a tree or stair railing. Our guide to best resistance bands provides suitable options if you want to try this exercise at home.
Lanceford shows how each exercise should be performed, so take your time learning the correct form. Not only will this help prevent injury, but the better your form, the better your results.
Watch Lisa Lanceford’s Five-Move Shoulder-Building Workout
The shoulders are an obvious place to work if you want to achieve a more muscular physique, as they stand out along the upper body. But having strong shoulder muscles will also improve daily activities and exercise. Daily tasks that require movement of the arms can be made easier when there is strength coming from the shoulders and other upper body exercises, such as the overhead press or pull-up, too they will be easier.
The most effective way to continue building muscle and avoid reaching a plateau in upper body gains is to apply progressive overload to your training. This is where you gradually increase the load or rep count of your exercises once your muscles get used to the current load or rep volume you’ve been working with. This is easy to do with a dumbbell shoulder workout since you only have to raise a weight. Similarly, with the cable machine, you can adjust the load by moving the pin up on a weight plate.
If you’d like to try Lanceford’s five-move shoulder-building routine, we’ve listed all the moves you’ll need below.
- Alternate Grappling Lateral Raises 3×16
- Side to Front Raise Variation 3×10
- 3×10 single arm cable reverse flyes on each side
- Rows of vertical cables 3×10
- Single Arm Cable Front Raises 3×10
Alternatively, if for some reason you want to mix your shoulder resistance routines with some bodyweight movements, you can experiment with these. bodyweight exercises for shoulders and discover what works best for you.
