Along with helping you play your favorite sports, having strong shoulders will benefit you in everyday tasks like lifting luggage or groceries. Additionally, by strengthening your shoulders, you will lower your risk of getting hurt. Every injury causes you to miss another week or month of training.
Furthermore, because they enlarge the appearance of the upper body, wide shoulders can help your frame appear more proportionate. They form the upper body into an inverted triangle that is bigger at the top and narrower at the waist. Wide shoulders can feature a bony protrusion and are more square than round.
Therefore, use calisthenics shoulder exercises before progressing to heavier barbell training to acclimate your joints, tendons, and ligaments to bodyweight training. Last but not least, strong shoulders are an indication of fitness, good health, and good looks. The top shoulder strengthening exercises, broken down into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, are revealed in this article.
We have put together what we believe to be the best collection of shoulder exercises because not all of them are created equal. They are divided into the three categories of Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, which go without saying. As always, stretch and warm up before beginning your workout. In the long run, it will save you a great deal of pain and inconvenience even though it may feel like a precious few minutes of your life. safer to be safe than sorry.
Beginner
Push up
Push-ups, which are a staple of almost every calisthenics practice despite not being the best shoulder workout, are a requirement for the two more specialized variations, pike push-ups and handstands. Knee push-ups and wall push-ups are good alternatives if you are unable to perform standard push-ups until you are strong enough.
1. Kneel down and spread your hands out so that they are slightly broader than your shoulders.
2. Straighten your arms and legs.
3. Squat down until you are almost parallel to the ground.
4. After pausing, lift yourself back up.
5. Repeat the entire procedure.
Wall Push up
If you’re unfamiliar with this action, a standing push up against the wall is a fantastic place to start. Your joints will be less stressed if you stand.
- Position yourself approximately an arm’s length away from a wall with your feet shoulder-width apart.
- As you lean forward into a standing plank position, place your palms on the wall. Shoulder-width apart and at shoulder height, your arms should be.
- Breathe in, keeping your feet level on the floor, slowly move your upper body toward the wall while bending your elbows. Stay in this position for a few seconds.
- As you exhale, carefully push your body back to where you were before using your arms.
Kneeling Push-up
- While you develop your strength, another helpful alteration is to balance on your knees rather than your feet. Start on your hands and knees, looking at the ground.
- Place your hands on the surface on either side of your shoulders. The space between your knees should feel comfortable.
- Breathe in as you gradually flex your elbows to lower your chest toward the floor. Make sure to maintain a constricted core.
- While your head is lowered, pause for a brief moment; your chin might barely touch the floor. As you raise yourself off the ground and into your starting position, exhale.
Standard Push-up
- You must first get down on all fours or on your hands and knees.
- Make sure the arms are straight and the hands are spaced shoulder-width apart.
Abs are tight and the upper back should be slightly rounded.
- The knees and toes are on the ground, and the legs are slightly bowed at the hips and knees. Instead of being immediately above the knees, the hips are slightly in front of it.
- When your upper body is about 1 inch above and parallels to the floor, lower your body by bending your elbows past 90 degrees. The low back and abs should be taut, and the knees and toes should always be on the floor. Tensing the triceps and extending the elbows can help you rise.
Shoulder Vertical Pulses Thumbs Up
Your shoulder training regimen can be modified somewhat in one way. The benefit can be maximized and the danger of damage reduced by taking just one action. To do this, all shoulder flexion, abduction, and elevation exercises must be carried out with the thumbs raised. Exercises can be performed while the shoulder joint is more open. By doing this, the shoulder blade’s acromion process is freed from the larger tuberosity of the humerus’s obstruction.
You can make one minor adjustment to your shoulder exercise regimen. This one action can increase the good and minimize the bad. Simply perform the shoulder flexion, abduction, and elevation movements with your thumbs up to achieve this. Exercises are more effective when done while the shoulder joint is more open. In doing so, the larger tuberosity of the humerus is moved out of the way of the shoulder blade’s acromion process.
- Standing erect and holding your arms completely open Place your feet apart from your shoulders.
- Clench your hands together, thumbs facing upward.
- Move your arms now for a few seconds here and there with a little sufficiency.
Assisted Dips
Assisted dip is a bodyweight exercise for the triceps, chest, and shoulder muscles.
You practically dip your body between parallel bars while bending your elbows 90 degrees, the motions are known as dips. You can perform triceps dips using only your body weight.
- Sit on the ground with your hands on the floor in front of you and your arms behind you.
- Leaning back onto your hands and using your feet as support will enable you to raise your bottom off the floor to assume a reverse tabletop position.
- Aim your bottom toward the floor while maintaining a neutral spine and bending your elbows. Bend your elbows before steadily rising back up.
Intermediate
Horizontal Scapular Pull-up
Scapular pull-ups are a wonderful bodyweight exercise to add to your strength-training regimen if you’re trying to develop muscle in your shoulders and back, learn the right technique for scapular pull-ups, and add additional pull-up variations to your routine.
Start by doing 2-3 sets of 5–10 repetitions of scapular pull-ups. Choose which sets and repetitions to do based on how well you can keep your form the whole time.
1. Using a full overhand grip, take hold of the pull-up bar. Your grasp should be somewhat wider than your shoulders, or roughly shoulder width apart. Stand on a secure flat bench or plyometric box if you can’t reach the pull-up bar.
When getting off the box, leave your legs hanging. Your arms and legs must be extended as much as possible as you take hold of the pull-up bar. Then when you pull yourself up, your elbows ought to be somewhat bent. Squeeze the quads and glutes. Activate your center. Your pelvis should be somewhat tucked in and your ribs should be down.
3. To work your lats, rotate your shoulders outward. By the way, the broad V-shaped muscles that attach your arms to your vertebral column are called lats, or latissimus dorsi. They give your shoulders and back strength while protecting and stabilizing your spine. Additionally, your lats promote healthy posture and aid in the shoulder and arm mobility.
4. The shoulder blades should be rotated away from your spine in an upward motion. Throughout the movement, your chin should remain tucked, as if you were carrying an egg. This starting position should be used for all repetitions.
5. Keep your arms extended and bring your shoulder blades down toward your waist, slightly together, to tighten the muscles in your upper back. Only at the shoulder blades should there be any movement. In this position, pause.
6. As you gently return to the starting position, keep your arms long and let your shoulder blades rise and travel away from your waist.
7. Your shoulder blades should be separated from your spine, and your arms should end with a slight bend in the elbows.
8. Repeat as many times as necessary.
The body’s angle near the ground can change the horizontal scapular pull-up. The difficulty increases with verticality. Keep in mind that when the arms are locked out, the only movement you can execute is done through your shoulders.
Box Walks
You will need a small elevation, such as a box or your chair, for this workout.
- Maintain straight arms and put greater emphasis on the front of the shoulders.
- Place your feet on the raised platform and your hands on the ground.
- To get into the plank posture, take a short backward and forward step.
- You can move backward once you are in the plank position.
- Aim for a total of 8 to 12 repetitions. If you find this exercise to be too simple, you can also do it against a wall.
Advance
Assisted scapular pull-up
If this is your first time doing a pull-up workout, you may find it helpful to start with an assisted pull-up. To perform an assisted scapular pull-up, wrap a resistance band around the pull-up bar. Then, before finishing the exercise, place a foot inside the resistance band’s other end. The band will support you as you lift yourself up and gently bring yourself down during the activity. This is how to do the proper form of assisted scapular pull-up.
- Start in the standard pull-up position, with your hands shoulder-width apart and your palms facing away. You want to draw the scapula down and together from a full hang position with just a tiny shrug of the shoulders in order to raise your body just a little bit without bending your arms or pulling as you would in a typical pull-up.
- Once you have held the top position, go back to your starting position. Perform six to twelve repetitions while maintaining nearly straight arms, tight glutes, and erector spinae throughout. With a three-minute break in between, perform two sets. You should only add a third set to your workout if you have mastered the first two. Doing three sets of ten repetitions with the greatest range of motion is a desirable long-term objective.
Burpee scapular pull-ups
The movement patterns of a burpee and a pull-up are combined in a burpee pull-up. By setting your hands on the ground and kicking your feet back into a push-up position.
- Start with your elbows bent in a dead hover position. Jump your feet back up, then raise your body into a squat. Utilize an overhead bar to perform a scapular pull-up.
- Reverse shrug while lifting a small portion of your body upward and clasping your shoulder blades together.
- Before lowering yourself back to your starting position, hold the upper position. Repeat the exercise after lowering yourself to the floor.
Weighted scapular pull-ups
This exercise is a more challenging variant. Wearing weights while doing pull-ups is a strength-training exercise known as weighted pull-ups. The extra weight during the exercise is provided by a weight belt or weighted vest, and this extra weight aids in your muscular development as you perform pull-ups. If you don’t have access to a weight belt or weighted vest, you can use resistance bands, dumbbells, or a dip belt with barbell plates to perform weighted scapular pull-ups.
- With a firm overhand grip, grab a pull-up bar. Start with a grip that is shoulder-width apart.
- To begin hanging from the pull-up bar, contract your abs and flex your knees.
- Keep your core and glutes engaged as you hang from the bar to stay still and avoid swaying.
- After taking a breath, lower your shoulders to begin the scapular pull-up. Arms should remain straight. Your body will be somewhat raised as a result.
- You can use the mental image of bending the pull-up bar with your hands as a cue to help you engage your back more effectively and exert greater force.
- For a few seconds, maintain the retracted position while paying close attention to how your back muscles are engaging.
- Allow your shoulders to rise and forward-roll while you unwind your entire body. Exhale.