How to build shoulder muscle with these 2 shoulder exercises

Every bodybuilder seeks to develop their shoulders. Heck, even a lot of people who hardly consider themselves to be into weight training would like to have bigger, stronger shoulders to fill out their clothes better or just look better at the beach this summer.

Also, shoulders are another muscle that people will see and will know you workout because of. Your shoulders look wider, so your waist looks smaller, you get that “V-shape” look, etc

Well, to help you out with this, I’ve provided a few shoulder exercises to try out which will soon have you on your way to bigger, stronger, more defined shoulders…

Now, there are basically two kinds of shoulder exercises: raises and shoulder presses. In this article, we’ll be covering presses, with raises being covered in a future article (keep checking back!).

Presses are great exercise for the shoulders which work the triceps primarily, but do involve other muscles as well.

Standing Military Press:

This exercise should be done while standing, especially for beginners because then you’ll be working the maximal amount of muscles at one time, developing your stabilizer muscles and more. Here’s how to do it:

• Whether sitting or standing, grasp a barbell with an overhand grip and hold it at shoulder level
• your hands should be slightly farther apart than shoulder width.
• Flex your abs, your butt (like you’re pinching a quarter between your cheeks) and squeeze the bar as hard as you can
• Slowly press the barbell upwards until your arms are “locked out” (that is to say, as far up as they can go without straining).
• Lower the barbell back to shoulder level slowly and repeat.

If you’ve done the exercise correctly, it should look like the image below (image credit: ExRx.net):

Dumbbell Press-Seated:

This is similar to the Military Press except you will be using dumbbells. This mainly targets the front and side deltoids so consider mixing it in with other press exercises.

Your sense of balance gets a workout here, and this one requires using less weight than you normally do because it’s more of an isolation exercise. Here’s how to do it:

• While sitting on a bench, take a dumbbell in either hand.
• Hold the dumbbells at shoulder height, palms facing outward.
• Press both dumbbells up slowly until your arms are locked out.
• Slowly return the dumbbells to shoulder height and repeat.

You’ll know you’re doing it right when it looks like the picture below:

These are just a few of the presses that can build those stronger, bigger, and more defined shoulders. Keep coming back as I will be adding more press exercises in the future.

Tagged as: build muscle fast, muscle building, shoulder exercises