Dumbbell Raises For Shoulders
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Many people are familiar with just dumbbell presses as compound shoulder exercise and flank them with loads and loads of isolations. That is not very effective. Here is another shoulder compound, one you don’t see very often.
Shoulder Compounds And Isolations
When you do a 3-day-split, you normally combine legs and shoulders, which means there are two, maybe three exercises you do for your shoulders. Doing those as isolations doesn’t make a lot of sense; the shoulder muscle has three parts, front, side, and back (anterior, lateral, posterior) and all three need attention.
When I started working out, I only did one shoulder compound, the one most people are familiar with, the shoulder press. I combined it with lateral raises, effectively leaving out the posterior shoulder muscle. That came to haunt me: When I later integrated pullovers into my program, the back portion of the shoulder couldn’t stabilize very well and pullovers caused me pain. I had to spent precious time on isolating the posterior muscle to let it catch up – time that could have been used more effectively.
Dumbbell Shoulder Raises
It would have been much better had I integrated another shoulder compound into my workout: the dumbbell raise. Together these two give you a complete shoulder workout, engaging all three parts of the muscle. The dumbbell raise will also train your traps, forearms, involve a bit of biceps and a host of other muscle. The exercise is very simply to do: stand up, grab two dumbbells, and raise them to your arm pits while also raising your shoulders.
Video
Here is a video demonstrating the exercise:
8 Comments
thanks so much, i’ve seen a lot of shoulder exercises but this looks great and i will have to implement. military press doesn’t hit the smaller chain of delts as well so this will work. i’m not sure how it hits rear delts though.
I think it should compliment the military press rather well. The posterior delts are one of the raise’s synergists. I’d say try them and check how engaged the rear delts are for you.
Excellent article/video and I learnt something new. Your video is the first time that I have actually seen an exercise, like this dumbbell raise being done. After I saw your video, I immediately got my pair of dumbbells and tried this exercise, lol. I have never felt such a good burn in the posterior delts and upper traps in a long time. I am always looking for compound exercises to help strengthen my posterior delts. Would this exercise by a good replacement for upright rows?
Love the video and exercise Evil, wonderful job! I have a compound question. Since pull-ups help the upper back what compound exercise is great for the lower back? Thanks and have a great day.
If you want to hit the erector spinae (the muscle running along your spine and ends in your bottom),
http://www.exrx.net/Muscles/ErectorSpinae.html
there is no way around the deadlift, as Fraser said. Just be really careful with the pressure you put on your your back.
I’m definitely going to experiment with this exercise in my routine :). Yuccaknight, I’m not sure if you do already but, deadlifts are a great exercise for your lower-back/posterior chain. The bent over barbell rows target the back in general as well (like your lower traps). There’s also back extension or glute-hamstring raises :).
Yep, exactly!
Adam, yep. I don’t know why you hardly ever see it.