I have always thought that I could write everything out on this blog but as soon as I started wanting to blog about exercises I realized that video is often better than the written word.
Today I want to write and show you some great shoulder exercises that you can do at home.
Best Shoulder Exercises
Shoulders are the top of something called a V-taper. The v-taper is when you upper body makes a V with the bottom being your waist and the top being your shoulders. Having bigger shoulder muscles will make your upper body look bigger.
Your shoulders are made up of three heads. The front of your shoulders are you anterior deltoid, the middle heat is the central deltoid and the back of your shoulder is the posterior deltoid.
Best Shoulder Exercises at Home
Here is a video with some exercises, from my basement – note the fireplace going in the background
So in covering this, what do you think. Are the exercises good and easy enough to figure out?
Here is an overview of the Shoulder Muscles
Front deltoid– the best exercise for this muscle is the front lateral. This gives a very isolated pressure on the front deltoid and at the same time most pick up exercises use that front deltoid. Military press and pullup both use that front deltoid.
Medial or center deltoid – the best exercise for this at home is the side lateral. This will make your deltoid muscles wider and working the front and back deltoid will also squeeze that muscle out to look even bigger. By the way if you are doing workouts at the gym instead you can use cables to give you a bit of a different feel on this muscle as instead of gravity going up to down this will force the stress to go from your body out to the side
Posterior deltoid – the muscle in the back of the shoulder is easily the weakest of the three. You are not often using this muscle and for me I find it is probably half as strong as the side or the front deltoid muscles. When doing this rear lateral exercise as I have shown on the video you will need to keep you arms really out to the sides as getting your elbows closer to your body will force them to work your stronger lat muscles of your back instead and that is not what we are looking for here.
Home Shoulder Workouts
I hope this overview is giving you a great feel for all of the exercises that are possible from home. You do not need to belong to a gym but of course a gym is going to give you a lot more choice for working your muscles. If you work out at a gym you can do more compound exercises like military press and pullups better than you can from home with milk and juice cartons.
Finally one last thing. As you work your shoulders you will find that many people will stress doing more compound exercises. If you are going to do lots of compound exercises then it is important to do triceps and even chest on the same day as you shoulders (probably at the start you will do your whole body in one workout anyway) as you will find that military press will be working your triceps and bench presses will be working your triceps and shoulders as well as the chest.
Whether you are working out at home or in a gym these are the best shoulder exercises you can do
