Forget push

Strengthen your shoulders with these dumbbell exercises

These seven dumbbell shoulder exercises build strength, muscle and 3D definition. If your goal is to sculpt sizzling shoulders like Jennifer Aniston or Chris Hemsworth (those two have shoulder goals written all over them) — these should be your go-to.

You can use the best adjustable dumbbells to do them or kettlebells if you prefer. But however you approach them, the moves are bang for your buck shoulder exercises, hitting other major muscle groups and activating your core muscles at the same time.

When rippling shoulders are the goal, free weights are the most versatile way to train them; you can isolate a muscle group or hit several using compound exercises like presses and push-ups. But forget push-ups for now. It’s time to get creative with seven of the best dumbbell exercises for strengthening your shoulder muscles.

We love an adjustable dumbbell at Tom’s Guide. Free weights are ideal for scaling up and down quickly if you prefer using a mix of isolation vs compound exercises, and they provide a free range of motion compared with barbells.

But strong shoulders aren’t just aesthetically pleasing. They function to keep the body injury-free too. Building strong, stable and mobile shoulders will help you lift heavier weights and move better day-to-day.

Each of the best dumbbell shoulder exercises below is compound, primarily stimulating the three muscle heads — anterior, lateral and posterior deltoids — activating the core muscles responsible for stabilization and posture, the rotator cuff muscles that help stabilize and move the shoulder joints, back muscles like the upper traps, arms and pectoral muscles in your chest.

Whether you single or double-load dumbbells, free weights challenge balance and stability and help isolate the left and right sides of the body. You’ll also improve core activation, coordination and power. So, let’s hop to it.

The shoulder press requires coordination, balance and power to drive both weights overhead without your stronger side picking up slack as they would using a barbell. It’s a solid shoulder exercise for ironing out muscular imbalances, targeting your triceps, pectoral muscles and anterior deltoids.

Here’s how to overhead press and variations for more detail.

Pike push-ups look similar to downward dog and feature in CrossFit workouts as a modification for handstand push-ups. By touching the top of your head to the ground from a vertical position, the emphasis shifts from the standard push-up to a shoulder press, targeting more of your shoulder muscles and triceps.

Here’s what happened when our writer did 20 pike push-ups every day for a week and how to do it in detail.

We love all things Arnie. We committed to 50 Arnold presses every day for one week in a recent fitness challenge and detail how to do an Arnold press here.

The unique shoulder exercise stimulates all three muscle heads using rotational hand movements, so it’s up there with the best shoulder exercises for efficiency and building well-rounded, popping shoulder muscles.

Undecided on what shoulder move to tackle next? Shrug it out. The up-and-down movement hits the trapezius (upper back muscles), rhomboids and forearms and tests grip strength. Nailing the dumbbell shrug exercise also carries over to exercises like deadlifts and pull-ups, to name a few.

The exercise is a heavy hitter for the traps and lateral delts, activating the biceps and frontal deltoids. It can aggravate shoulder pain, so check your form with a personal trainer first and prevent internally rotating the shoulders by following the steps below using dumbbells.

Here’s how to do an upright row in more detail.

Benefits of the reverse fly include stronger back muscles and activation in the posterior deltoids. The move also targets your upper back, including the traps and rhomboids, and rotator cuff muscles that stabilize your shoulders. These muscle groups also support good posture.

Face pulls target the upper back and shoulders, namely the posterior deltoids, rhomboids, traps and rotator cuff muscles. The shoulder exercise strengthens the muscles responsible for posture.

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Sam Hopes is a level III fitness trainer, level II reiki practitioner, and resident fitness writer at Future PLC, the publisher of Tom's Guide. Having trained to work with mind and body, Sam is a big advocate of using mindfulness techniques in sport and fitness, and their impact on performance. She’s also passionate about the fundamentals of training and building sustainable training methods. When she's writing up her experiences with the latest fitness tech, you’ll find her writing about nutrition, sleep, recovery, and workouts.

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