By: Chris Gates

If you want to know the best exercises to build your shoulders, you’ve come to the right place.

A strong, muscular set of shoulders is not only great to look at, but it’s really good for your overall strength, mobility, and longevity.

And you’re in luck! Because in this article I’m going to tell you absolutely everything you need to know about how to train your shoulders and build muscle and strength.

Let’s be honest… It can be a bit confusing to figure out the best way to build your shoulders.

• What muscles are involved?
• How many exercises should you do?
• How many times a week should you train shoulders?
• And how little is too little?
• How much is too much?

As with most muscle groups, there are a ton of different exercise variations you can choose from. But I’m here to take all of the guesswork away!

Let’s talk about how your shoulders are formed and function, the principles of muscle growth, and what exercises will be best for you to a build stronger, more defined upper body!

I’ll even map out an example workout plan that you can get started with today. Let’s go!

The Best Exercises to Build Your Shoulders: Need-To-Know Info About Your Shoulders

Before we dive into what exercises to do (and yes, that’s coming for you below!), it’s important for you to know how your shoulders are put together.

Every muscle group is unique. Your shoulders are no different.

The way your shoulder muscles are aligned will tell you exactly how you should move and train them to build muscle and get the most out of your workouts.

To build your shoulders, the focus should be primarily on the deltoid muscles, or “delts.” There are three delts that come together to give you that capped, muscular look atop your arms.

1. Anterior delt (also referred to as the front): This muscle is primarily designed to help you raise your arm up in front of you.
2. Medial delt (side): This muscle primarily helps you lift your arms out to the side.
3. Posterior delt (rear): This muscle primarily helps you move your arms out and away from your body horizontally.

Your shoulder also is comprised of four rotator cuff muscles, but those are muscles you don’t necessarily see in the mirror. We’ll talk about how to train them as well (because they’re really important for shoulder health).

The Best Exercises To Build Your Shoulders: How To Build Muscle?

It’s also important that you understand the fundamental principles on how to build muscle.

Because doing the right exercises is important, but that’s only one piece to the puzzle.

Luckily, I’ve got a bunch of information to help you out!

• For starters, you need to be training legitimately hard to build muscle. That means training within 1-3 reps of failure on each and every set.
• You also need your diet to support your goals. Typically, this means getting in a slight calorie surplus and eating adequate protein.
• Sleep is where a lot of your gains will actually occur. Most people need somewhere between 7-9 hours of sleep on a regular basis to see consistent progress.

Building muscle is a process, and the more you’re able to be consistent with doing those things, the more success you’ll have.

And if you can pair those with the following exercises, you’ll be on your way to building a bigger set of shoulders!

Exercise No. 1: Overhead Press

This is quite simply the best exercise there is for developing shoulder strength.

If you can do it with a barbell, that’s ideal. But if not, dumbbells are just fine, too.

Incorporating a vertical press into your program is a really nice addition and will help you build a larger base of functional strength.

Because honestly, most strength training programs are full of pushing, pulling, and squatting exercises, and there’s not a ton of variation outside of those movement patterns.

The overhead press adds variety, and it primarily activates the front delt. Research shows the side and rear delts are involved as well to stabilize your shoulders throughout each rep, so this is a well-rounded shoulder exercise.

My recommendation would be for you to try and lift heavy with this exercise, and make it your main compound lift on one of your strength training days each week.

Lift in the lower rep range (5-8 reps), and try to progressively add weight to the bar over an extended period of time.

Exercise No. 2: Cable Lateral Raise

Now we can move on to the side delt, and the cable lateral raise is going to be the best exercise to train that outside part of your shoulder.

This exercise is so effective because of how it challenges your side delts.

During a typical dumbbell lateral raise, you have virtually no tension on your muscles at all at the bottom of the exercise (when the dumbbells are down at your sides). But when you raise the dumbbells up, the tension increases.

With a cable lateral raise, you have constant tension on the side delt throughout the entirety of each rep. Since you’re raising the cable to perform each rep, and that cable is attached to the weight you’re lifting, your shoulder is constantly being pulled in the opposite direction.

The more tension you can put on your muscles while lifting with proper form and technique, the more effectively you can stimulate muscle growth.

This is an exercise that’s typically best performed in the higher rep ranges (12-20 reps per set) with lighter weight.

But don’t let that light weight fool you. You should still be making these sets hard and lifting close to failure.

Exercise No. 3: Rear Delt Fly

The third and final exercise to build your shoulders will focus on the rear delt. And there’s some built-in variation here depending on what type of equipment is available to you.

You should do some type of reverse fly. And you can choose from a number of variations. Let me explain…

Research data shows the reverse pec deck fly is most effective for stimulating the rear delts. So if you have access to this machine, that’s going to be your best bet.

If not, you can still perform this movement pattern with a pair of dumbbells. The seated or standing dumbbell rear delt fly is a great option as well.

This is another exercise where you’ll likely be working with lighter weight in the higher rep ranges (12-20 reps per set). Just focus on making each set legitimately hard, and lifting within 1-3 reps of failure.

The Best Exercises to Build Your Shoulders: What About Your Rotator Cuff?

Training your rotator cuff will also help you build your shoulders, just not in a visual sense. You won’t notice your rotator cuff getting bigger or stronger in the mirror.

But don’t get it twisted.

It’s still important.

And you should still do some work on the four muscles that make up your rotator cuff.

These muscles primarily help your shoulder to rotate internally and externally, and they help to stabilize your shoulder joint in the three exercises you just read about.

Luckily, training the rotator cuff is pretty simple, and you don’t have to go overboard or push yourself to really high intensities to do it effectively.

Doing some simple internal and external rotations with a resistance band in your warm up is more than enough.

If you do this regularly in your warm up before training your upper body, you’ll reduce the risk of shoulder injuries. And that will help you train longer, which will help you build even bigger shoulders!

The Best Exercises to Build Your Shoulders: How Much Should You Train Your Shoulders?

Alright, so now you know a lot. You know:

• How your shoulder muscles work.
• The key concepts to building muscle.
• The top three exercises to build your shoulders.
• Proper warm up and rotator cuff exercises.

But how much should you actually do all of this stuff?

I’ll get to a sample workout plan in a second. First, let’s talk about what works best for most people, and how it applies to you.

In general, research has found that most people can build a lot of muscle doing somewhere between 10-20 hard sets per week for each muscle group. “Hard sets” means you’re lifting within 1-3 reps of failure on each and every set.

Admittedly, 10-20 is a wide range. So I’d suggest you align yourself within that range based on your experience level.

1. If you’re a beginner, you should probably start near the bottom end of that range.
2. If you’re an intermediate, you can start in the middle of that range.
3. More advanced lifters can push it towards the top end of that range.

For the amount of weekly sets you do, it’s important to understand that some exercises will train your shoulders without you even thinking about it.

Consider this: Most chest pressing exercises hit your front delt. And if you add an incline to those chest pressing exercises, you’ll recruit even more of the front delt.

The front delt helps you to move your arms out in front of your body, and that’s exactly what you’re doing when you do a bench press or dumbbell press.

The same type of thing happens with a lot of rowing exercises. Many of them — seated row, dumbbell row, barbell row, etc. — recruit your rear delts to perform the movement.

So saying 10-20 hard sets per muscle group doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be doing upwards of 20 sets of each of the three best exercises to build your shoulders, each week.

Figuring this type of stuff out is where hiring a coach can be really beneficial.

Example Workout Plan to Build Your Shoulders

So now you know EVERYTHING.

Literally EVERYTHING you need to build your shoulders.

So let’s map out an example workout plan.

And I’ll be honest, this is always the hardest part of these articles. Because quite frankly, I don’t know anything about you.

It’s quite literally impossible to create a workout template that works for EVERYONE. So here’s what I ask that you do…

View this as more of a concept, as opposed to an exact training plan. This is one way you could structure things.

It’s not THE ONLY way for you to structure things.

Since the majority of my clients train around four days a week, we’ll go with a four-day training program that is specialized for building your shoulders.

Sample Workout Plan
Day 1: Upper Body, Shoulder Focus. This day will be full of upper body exercises, but we’re giving a little extra love to your shoulders. It’s the first workout of the week, so you’re fresh. Let’s put all of that energy into shoulder training. • Overhead Press: 4 sets of 6. • Incline Dumbbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 8-10. • Cable Lateral Raise: 4 sets of 12-15. • Reverse Pec Deck: 4 sets of 12-15. • Additional exercises as needed for the chest and triceps.
Day 2: Lower Body Day. No shoulder training. Allow your shoulders to recover while training your lower body.
Day 3: Upper Body. This is a more comprehensive upper body day, with exercises added in for shoulders. • Start with exercises for the back, biceps, and chest. Add the following shoulder exercises at the end… • Cable lateral raise: 4 sets of 12-15. • Dumbbell rear delt fly: 4 sets of 12-15.
Day 4: Lower Body Day. Once again, we’re primarily letting the upper body recover. If more shoulder volume is needed, you can tack it on to the end of this workout. • Primarily lower body training. • Optional delt work at the end.

I hope this helps!

Thanks so much for stopping by and reading this article! Hopefully it helped you get a better idea of how to effectively train your shoulders and what exercises are going to get you the most bang for your buck.

If you’re interested in coaching to get customized help with exercises for every muscle group, that’s exactly what I do! I work with people all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, and get healthy with fitness and nutrition.

Head over to my coaching page to learn more.

~ Chris