Best Arm and Shoulder Workout

The exercises below are listed in order along with programming details such as reps, sets, and loading. For newer lifters, we advise sticking to the lower range of sets recommended. For more advanced lifters, you can consider the higher range of recommended sets based on your experience and preferences.

1. Overhead Press

Movement Category: Primary

Programming: 3 to 4 sets of 5 to 8 repetitions.

• Lie down flat on your back on an inclined bench, which should be adjusted to ~ 30 to 45 degrees relative to horizontal.
• Take a double overhand grip with your index finger right at the start of the bar’s knurling, which should be about shoulder-width and ~16” apart. 
• Fix your shoulders by pinning your shoulder blades together and pressing them onto the bench. Take a deep breath. Let your spotter help you with the lift-off so that your upper back remains firm.
• Allow the weight to settle, and make sure your upper back is still tight after lift-off.
• Take a breath and let the bar descend gradually by unlocking your elbows. Bring the bar down in a relatively straight line to the upper part of the sternum and touch the chest.
• Next, push the bar upward again in the same straight line while pressing your body onto the bench, pressing your feet firmly on the ground, and extending your elbows.

3. 1-Arm Cable Lateral Raises

Movement Category: Tertiary

Programming: 2 to 5 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions.

Weight: Use a weight that leaves you 0 to 2 reps short of failure, e.g. RPE 8 to 10.

This lateral raise variation is an isolation movement that’s performed with a single arm. It primarily targets the shoulders and is an excellent exercise for lateral (“middle”) deltoid activation. The 1-arm cable lateral raise can also be done with free weights, such as dumbbells, but we prefer the cable variation if available, as it requires the shoulder to create more tension during the initial part of the range of motion due to the resistance curve of the machine.

Lateral raises can be performed a number of ways, e.g. with completely straight arms vs. slightly bent arms, with internal rotation of the shoulder vs. external rotation, and more. While some evidence exists showing modest differences in electrical activity of the shoulder using different styles, it’s not clear these make a difference in strength or muscle growth.[5]

In this tutorial, we’ll focus on our preferred style, which is performed with slightly bent arms and a small amount of internal rotation.

• Choose a moderate weight that allows you to perform the prescribed reps with one arm. Avoid using too much weight—this is an exercise that doesn’t require heavy weight, as you’re meant to do the lift with full control. Also, don’t lift with a fully straight arm—there should be a slight bend in your elbow when doing the 1-arm cable lateral raises.
• Stand next to the pulley machine adjusted to the lowest setting with a shoulder-width stance.
• Grab the handle attached to the low pulley and stand up straight. Put your free hand on the machine for balance and to prevent extra movement.
• With a 10- to 20-degree bend in your elbow, raise your arm out to the side until it’s at the level of the shoulder, parallel to the floor.
• Don’t rotate your arm while pulling the handle upward.
• Lower the weight back to your side, maintaining the slight bend in the elbow. That’s one repetition.
• Use a two-seconds up and two-seconds down tempo to control the tempo.

4. Overhead Triceps Cable Extension

Movement Category: Tertiary

Programming: 3 to 5 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions.

Weight: Use a weight that leaves you 0 to 2 reps short of failure, e.g. RPE 8 to 10.

The overhead triceps cable extension is an isolation movement that is exceedingly effective at primarily targeting the triceps brachii due to the positioning and long muscle lengths (e.g. stretch) of the muscle group during the movement. We recommend training the triceps with and without shoulder extension. The rope press down near the end of this series is performed without much shoulder extension in an effort to train the muscle through a variety of ranges of motion, at different angles, using different exercises.

The triceps brachii consists of three muscle heads, e.g. the long, lateral, and short heads, which are trained by most exercises involving elbow extension. However, the long head also crosses the shoulder and in order to fully train it, some amount of shoulder extension is needed to train it at a long length. Triceps exercises that are performed overhead accomplish this and should compliment other triceps exercises.

This exercise can be done with a cable, EZ-curl bar, one dumbbell or a pair, but today, we will cover the variation done with a cable machine and EZ-curl bar attachment.

• Attach an EZ-curl bar to a pulley cable machine at the highest setting.
• Stand in front of the cable machine, facing away from it.
• Reach backward over your head and grab the EZ-curl bar with a narrower-than-shoulder-width grip.
• There are two foot positions that you can use when performing this movement. You could take a step forward with both feet, keeping them parallel, at shoulder-distance apart. Alternatively, you could take a shoulder-distance step forward with one foot. See which one feels right for you.
• Hinge forward slightly at the hips and keep a soft bend in your knees. If you stepped out with one foot, keep the front knee slightly bent, and the back knee straightish.
• Keep your back straight with your chest angled slightly forward from vertical.
• At this point, your elbows should be flexed/bent fully. This is your starting position.
• From here, press upwards and slightly forward with your arms to extend your elbows straight. This is the lockout position.
• Hold the position for a brief pause, then slowly lower to the starting position.

5. Preacher Curl

Movement Category: Tertiary

Programming: 3 to 5 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions.

Weight: Use a weight that leaves you 0 to 2 reps short of failure, e.g. RPE 8 to 10.

The preacher curl is an isolation (single joint) movement that primarily targets the biceps brachii. It makes use of a bench to produce flexion in the shoulders, which trains the biceps at a lengthened range of motion. [6] This tends to produce better hypertrophy results compared to movements that train the biceps at shorter lengths, especially in the long head of the biceps. We recommend training the biceps with and without shoulder flexion. The 1-arm concentration curl at the end of this series is performed without much shoulder flexion in an effort to train the muscle through a variety of ranges of motion, at different angles, using different exercises.

The preacher curl can be done both with an EZ-curl barbell, dumbbells, or with a cable machine. While all produce similar results in terms of hypertrophy, the EZ-curl bar may be better tolerated and increase range of motion further for some due to the ergonomic handle.[7] We’ll focus on that one in this article.

• Grab onto the EZ-curl barbell with an underhand grip. Your gym may have a preacher curl machine, which works just as well.
• Sit down on the preacher curl bench with your feet flat on the ground. The backside of your arms (triceps) and elbows should be in contact with the angled top of the pad, whereas your chest should be butted up against the vertical back portion of the pad. If they aren’t, adjust your seat and positioning accordingly.
• The starting position of the movement is with your arms stretched out with a slight bend in your elbows.
• From here, keep elbows resting on the arm pad and lift the weight upwards and back towards your chest until your elbow is completely bent.
• Squeeze your biceps at the top of the movement.
• Slowly lower and straighten out your arm by letting your elbows bend back to the starting position.

6. Triceps Press-Down

Movement Category: Tertiary

Programming: 3 to 5 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions.

Weight: Use a weight that leaves you 0 to 2 reps short of failure, e.g. RPE 8 to 10.

The triceps press-down, also known as the triceps push-down, is an isolation exercise that primarily targets the triceps brachii. This exercise is typically done on a cable machine. Additionally, much like the overhead triceps extension, the triceps press-down can be done with various pulley attachments, such as a bar or a rope. If you’re not sure which one to pick, we suggest going with a rope.

For some trainees, especially those who experience pain in their elbows, this exercise may be challenging to perform. If this is you, try adding a slower tempo such as 3 seconds on the way down and 3 seconds on the way up to reduce the load being used. If this is still problematic, we’d recommend changing the grip width and/or attachment to see if this helps.

We’ll focus on the rope triceps press down in this tutorial. To do a triceps press-down:

• Set the cable pulleys to a high position. The handle attachment of your choice should be at around chest-level before you pull it.
• You should be standing with your body facing the cable machine.
• Grab the rope with both hands and take a step back until the cable is pulled taut. Traditional press-downs are done with your palms facing down, but if that is too hard on your elbows, you could always try the reverse variation.
• Stand with your feet hip-distance apart with a soft bend in your knees. Hinge forward slightly at the hips to stabilize your body against the resistance. Your elbows should be bent and at your sides, with your hands and ends of the rope at or near your sternum. This is your starting position.
• Keeping your elbows tucked into your sides, press down and slightly outwards to fully extend the elbows. 
• Using a slow and controlled motion, return your arms to the starting position. Avoid cutting your range of motion short, and make sure the rope handles reach your upper chest before moving on to the next repetition.

7. 1-Arm Concentration Curl

Movement Category: Tertiary

Programming: 3 to 5 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions.

Weight: Use a weight that leaves you 0 to 2 reps short of failure, e.g. RPE 8 to 10.

The 1-arm concentration curl stands out as an excellent choice among biceps brachii isolation exercises for promoting muscle hypertrophy, primarily because it has a rather large range of motion and has minimal involvement from other muscles, specifically the shoulders.

Achieving optimal results with concentration curls depends on how well a trainee can go through the range of motion and contract their biceps. By concentrating on a controlled contraction of the biceps, individuals can effectively target the entirety of the biceps brachii.

To perform this exercise, you’ll need a bench to sit on and a dumbbell to lift.

• Sit on a bench with a dumbbell placed on the ground between your feet.
• Grab onto the dumbbell with one hand and place your upper arm on your thigh. Lift your hand off the ground slightly and turn the dumbbell over to hold it with an underhand grip. Your free hand should be resting on your other leg or hanging freely. This is your starting position.
• Keep your core tight and stable as you curl the weight upwards. Your upper body and shoulders should remain still throughout the movement.
• Slowly reverse the motion and lower the weight back down to the starting position.
• Your arm should stay mostly vertical throughout the range of motion.

And that’s a wrap! These exercises combined make up our favorite routine for building strength and muscle on a body part split, combining the muscles of the shoulders and arms: the deltoids, triceps brachii, and biceps brachii. However, if you’d like a bit of variation, it’s completely fine to switch out these exercises with similar variations that target the same muscles.

Keep in mind that the layout for this workout will be similar for most lifters, beginner or advanced. Primary movements should be done first, followed by secondary, and then tertiary movements, as it is generally a good idea to train larger muscle groups and more complex movements first.

The biggest differences will be observed in volume, as more seasoned lifters will often need more sets to drive strength and hypertrophy results. In terms of our recommended repetition schemes, the lower end of the range is more appropriate for new lifters, while the higher end would be better for advanced lifters.

Apart from the anatomical proximity and function of these muscle groups, the main reason for choosing this particular pairing is due to the large overlap in loading these muscle groups have during exercises. Exercises that train the shoulders tend to require a significant amount of contribution from the triceps, and exercises that train the triceps or biceps directly tend to recruit the shoulders, too.

If someone prefers a body part training split, e.g. a program that pairs different body parts together and spreads training the entire body out over multiple days, there are many different ways to organize the training. Other considerations here include the preferred number of training days and frequency.

For the purposes of this article, let’s consider a 3-day per week body part split program:

• Day 1: Chest and Back
• Day 2: Legs
• Day 3: Arms and shoulders

Now, keep in mind that there is no best training split. Training splits could be programmed in many different ways, such as a full-body split, in which we’d try to hit most of the muscles in our body as possible in each workout. A 3-day per week full body body program might look like this:

At times, we get caught up in the fallacy of believing that simply following a workout routine will be enough to get us the results we want. This is not the case, unfortunately, as people respond differently to the same exercise program.

Some will get much stronger and gain a lot of muscle (hyper-responders), others won’t gain much muscle or strength (non-responders), and everyone else will be in between. In order to get the best results, the programming must suit the individual based on their current fitness level, preferences, and response. But that’s not all.

How people execute a given training program and how they support their training are vitally important for maximizing results. Keep reading for a few tips on how you can achieve continual results in your training.

The Principle of Progressive Overload suggests that the body must be challenged by gradually greater training stimuli in order to generate fitness adaptations over time. However, this doesn’t mean that the training should become harder in order to force the body to adapt, but rather that the training needs to keep pace with a person’s fitness level, ultimately staying the same level of “hard.”

The term “Progressive Overload” was likely coined by Dr. DeLorme’s wife in his 1946 paper as a replacement for “heavy resistance exercise” to describe the lifting progression he had his patients do for rehab. He describes an increase in training load over time while adequate recovery is ensured. 

Fitness adaptations accrue gradually and vary between specific types, programs, individuals, and over time. It’s an error to assume a predictable rate of adaptation and a constant performance potential. Humans aren’t robots, where defined inputs produce predictable outputs.

In response to strength training, some get much stronger, others don’t gain any strength, and others are in the middle. Both the rate and magnitude of strength increase varies wildly between individuals. These differences are further complicated  by the day-to-day variability. Beliefs that adaptations will occur and reliably improve performance on a predetermined timeline are unrealistic. Instead, the training must match an individual’s fitness level that day—being hard enough to drive an adaptation, but not too hard where it drives too much fatigue.

In other words, an increase in fitness should be met with an increase in training stimulus to maintain the desired training stress, and not that an increase in training stress drives an increase in performance potential. We get “bigger, faster, and stronger” and are THEN able to lift more weight and move faster.

Increasing the training stimulus (e.g., weight lifted) too quickly out-paces the individual’s level of adaptation and generates excessive fatigue. This lowers performance potential, increases injury risk, and may not actually produce greater fitness adaptations in the end.

If the increase in stimulus occurs too slowly, fitness adaptations will not develop at their maximal rates, if at all. Fortunately, the range of productive training stimuli is fairly wide. Over a long lifting career, it’s not important or possible to “optimize” the rate of increase anyway.

In both cases, if the training stimulus is not matched to the person’s current fitness and performance potential, results suffer. As a corollary, for best results, the training stimulus should be matched to the person’s current fitness and performance potential at most sessions.

Getting the right dose of exercise during a workout is easier said than done, but the rate at which this stimulus increases over time should match how quickly adaptations are occurring—not how quickly we want them to. It shouldn’t get harder per se’, you just get fitter.

Another way to ensure continual results is to practice double progression. Double progression refers to increasing both the weights, as we’ve mentioned in progressive loading, and also the repetitions completed.

For example, say you’re programmed to do overhead press for 3 sets of 5 to 8 reps at RPE 6 to 8. If you complete all the sets with maximum repetitions (e.g., 8) in a workout, it’s likely a good indicator that you can increase your training intensity the next week without struggling to complete the minimum number of reps (e.g., 5) at a higher amount of weight and higher amount of repetitions.

Additionally, increasing your repetitions takes advantage of adaptations to strength stamina, which may occur on a slightly different timeline than maximal strength adaptations.

As we’ve previously mentioned, resistance training will likely fail to produce the desired results if you don’t consume the right amount of resources to fuel muscular development. In this case, we’re talking about nutrition.

Nutrition is a broad and complex subject, and recommendations will vary from person to person based on variables such as current body composition, preferred dietary pattern, and fitness goals. But to plan a diet that suits your needs, we’ll provide a few guidelines related to the most important components of any diet plan—proteins and carbohydrates.

Protein is important for both muscle health and performance. Resistance training leads to both the synthesis and breakdown of muscle proteins. These terms may sound confusing if you’re new to all this, so here’s what they mean:

• Muscle protein synthesis is an anabolic (building) process that requires resistance training and dietary protein intake (or, more specifically, essential amino acids) to occur. This process mainly occurs in response to exercise or consuming a protein-rich meal. [8]
• Muscle protein breakdown is a catabolic (breakdown) process normally occurring during exercise and periods of fasting. It can also occur at higher levels during illness, after surgery, and so on. [9]

During exercise, muscle protein breakdown predominates, no matter how much dietary protein you eat or when you’re eating it. Afterwards, however, the body ramps up muscle protein synthesis rates in order to repair, remodel, and adapt to the exercise performed. This “anabolic rescue” only takes place if there’s sufficient dietary protein on board. To achieve that, you need to consume the appropriate amount of protein, which is about 1.4 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of total body weight per day.

So, now that we’ve covered the importance of protein intake to resistance training let’s go over a few recommendations:

• For those without any medical contraindications, most folks should aim to consume around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily, even on days they do not exercise. The average person eats about 1g/kg/day currently, so this is about an extra serving or two of lean protein per day.
• Trainees who are losing weight or experience certain anabolic resistance may benefit from consuming slightly more than the recommended amount.[13]
• Competitive physique athletes, such as bodybuilders, may aim for a daily protein intake of up to 2.3 to 3.1 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.
• We generally recommend eating protein at all meals, spread three-to-five hours apart, though micromanaging protein intake is not necessary.
• If you must follow a protein-restricted diet, aim to consume high-quality protein from mostly animal and/or fortified sources.

While carbohydrate consumption does not directly result in strength adaptations, it does provide the required energy to drive muscle recovery and development, as well as being the preferred fuel for exercise. [14,15]

Our bodies can create carbohydrates, or more correctly, glucose, through a process called gluconeogenesis, where they produce glucose to support the previously mentioned processes in a fasting state. Maintaining the appropriate amounts of blood glucose is crucial because many of our organs, including our brains, eyes, and skeletal muscles, cannot function properly without it. [16] The human body is typically very good at this, and even when following a no- or low-carbohydrate diet, healthy individuals maintain normal blood sugar.

During exercise, however, particularly in high-intensity efforts, the glycogen stores in our bodies can become depleted, e.g., glycogen depletion. Lower glycogen levels tend to reduce physical performance, though there appears to be a threshold of below ~70 mmol/kg for this to happen. While individuals and different tasks may respond differently to this glycogen level (or lower), this is a pretty consistent finding in the research and seems to correlate well with reduced muscular force production. [17,18,19]

In general, lower carbohydrate diets seem to do worse for strength, hypertrophy, and cardiorespiratory performance. While individuals new to training who would prefer to use a low-carbohydrate diet are likely not compromising their training results, it’s not our preferred dietary approach for those interested in maximizing their strength, size, and conditioning results.

While carbohydrates don’t actually build muscle or result in strength adaptations, they are crucial for performance, as well as the production of the required energy to repair and build muscle.

In terms of carbohydrate intake, we recommend the following:

• 3-5 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight should be sufficient unless you are training for more than an hour per session.
• We recommend getting your daily carbs from nutrient-dense sources, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, rather than processed foods that have high amounts of saturated fats.
• Low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diets may hinder muscle hypertrophy, strength, and endurance and should be avoided by those interested in maximal performance and training results.

These recommendations, paired with the right amounts of fluid intake and sleep, should be enough to drive your desired results. Still, you may have noticed that many fitness enthusiasts dabble in nutritional supplements to go the extra mile. However, there’s a lot of false information out there about supplements, and many recommendations are based on fads. So, we’re here to straighten the record and share with you some evidence-backed data on supplements, as well as our own set of recommendations.

Nutritional supplements are products composed of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and herbal extracts, available in various forms such as tablets, capsules, powders, and liquids. They are typically consumed to make up for nutritional deficiencies and/or dietary limitations or to help us achieve particular health or fitness goals.

But here’s the catch: supplements are generally not necessary, nor are they a magical cure for all your health issues, allow you to develop Herculean strength, or get a bodybuilder’s physique in a couple of weeks.

They are optional, and while they can help you enhance some results of your training, they are not particularly useful in improving general health or offsetting the risk of disease. For example, despite many popular claims, research shows that taking supplements such as fish oil or multivitamins doesn’t lower the risk of heart disease or cancer. [20,21,22]

That being said, certain supplements can boost your performance and results. We recommend the following from our shop:

Training safely is important, as long-term results require regular training that’s not interrupted by injuries that keep you out of the gym. While the shoulders are a commonly injured body part during resistance training, the risk of injury during resistance training is relatively low at 2 to 4 injuries per 1000 participation hours. [23]

We have some additional tips that may help further reduce the risk of injury too.

In the workout we’ve outlined today, you’ll see a few exercises that require equipment, such as cable machines. Quite a few gym accidents are caused by faulty equipment or incorrectly placed weights. For example, many injuries in the gym are due to people dropping weights on themselves by accident. Ideally, a person would make sure that their equipment of choice is well-maintained and fully functional, while the weights are stored correctly.

If you’re an avid gym-goer, you’ll probably know faulty equipment when you see it. However, if you’re unsure, ask the gym staff for assistance. And no matter how small the issue might seem, avoid using equipment that seems faulty.

Many will say that doing a lot of overhead work can “be bad for the shoulders” and lead to an injury. However, this is made-up and not supported by scientific evidence.

Yes, the shoulders are one of the more common sites of injury in gym-goers, but it’s not clear that people who go to the gym have a higher rate or greater severity of shoulder pain or injury compared to those who don’t workout.

Another common myth surrounding exercise is to not lockout the joints. This is wholly made up and has no basis in reality. Stopping short of lockout neither decreases risk of injury nor improves results from training. We recommend using a full range of motion for a given exercise, which likely involves full flexion and extension of a number of joints.

Following these tips will allow you to train your shoulder and arm muscles both safely and efficiently. However, don’t let all this talk of injury discourage you, as resistance training is a relatively safe form of exercise, with an average injury rate of 1-4 injuries per 1,000 hours of training for all its modalities. [24,25]

To illustrate this better, let’s compare resistance training to some other forms of exercise that may seem relatively safer. For instance, walking has an average injury rate of around 0.19-1.2 injuries per 1,000 participation hours, while cycling has 0.5-2.0. Whether we like it or not, injuries and pain are part of the human experience regardless of whether we exercise or not. Exercise has a myriad of health and performance benefits however, whereas avoiding exercise does not.

So far, we’ve focused on the hows and whys of training the arms and shoulders. But we saved the best for last: the perks.

While resistance training itself has many perks, training the upper body—or, more specifically, the arms and shoulders—has its own benefits.

It’s a well-known fact that resistance training is great for building strength. And whether it’s for gym or regular-life purposes, it’s good to be strong!

And let’s face it: it’s really cool to be the one person at the party who can take on the challenge of opening a particularly stubborn jar lid.

An additional benefit of building upper-body strength is enhanced athletic performance. A lot of sports and other athletic fields, such as swimming, rugby, volleyball, and tennis, require upper-body strength for peak performance. In fact, many competitive athletes in various fields engage in resistance training to improve their strength and endurance.

Strengthening your shoulders and arms will facilitate not only your lifts but also your strokes in swimming and your swings in baseball. So, if you’re into any of these sports, resistance training is a must-try.

Exercise is often paired with dietary changes to reduce body weight and improve body composition. However, exercise on its own is not very good at driving weight loss. Rather, a better way to look at this is that exercise helps support body weight management through a number of ways.

Exercise also seems to improve feelings of fullness while consuming a meal (satiation) and between meals (satiety). Some make the claim that exercise increases appetite proportional to the amount of calories used during a workout, however, it appears that this is only a partial response and that people become more sensitive to feelings of fullness overall.

To conclude this article, we’ll answer two of the most frequent questions we receive about training the shoulders and arms.

Your training volume should mainly depend on your current skill set and your fitness goals. However, there are a few things that should be considered if you’re training to see results. In general, newer trainees will require less volume and, therefore less exercises to drive fitness adaptations as compared to more advanced trainees. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to tell how much is enough in advance.

In the sample workout provided in this article, you’ll note a range of sets provided for each exercise. We recommend newer trainees stick to the lower end of the range, whereas more veteran trainees can use the higher end of the range, drawing on their own experience to figure out what fits best.

For programming an arm and shoulder workout as part of a body part split, here are some general rules we think may be helpful:

• Try to pick two compound exercises for the shoulders to start. We picked the overhead press and incline close grip bench press here.
• Next, pick 2 exercises for the biceps and triceps. One should place the shoulder in a neutral position and the other one should have the shoulder extended for the triceps and flexed for the biceps. We selected preacher curls (flexed shoulder) and concentration curls (neutral shoulder) for biceps, and overhead triceps extensions (extended shoulder) and rope press downs (neutral shoulder) for trices.
• You may additionally select one isolation exercise for the shoulders. We selected lateral raises here, but there are many different options.

The magnitude and rate of both strength and muscle gains from training varies greatly from person to person, depending mostly on the suitability of the program to the individual’s current fitness level, previous training, and genetics. While it’s widely known that resistance training leads to increases in strength and muscle mass, the extent of and timeframe for these changes are not the same for everyone.

Studies typically test a group’s average strength before and after training, noting overall improvement, yet individual adaptations vary greatly for everyone. Some trainees respond very well to their programs, while others may not see significant gains.

In general, however, noticeable strength improvements typically occur within one to twelve weeks of training, with significant progress often observed within two to four weeks. For hypertrophy, measurable increases in size typically show up around four to six weeks.