When it comes to building muscle, having the right shoulder exercises in your arsenal can make all the difference. Puffed-up, three-dimensional delts can elevate your entire physique, after all.
- Among men, broad shoulders and a v-taper torso are traits commonly associated with attractiveness and confidence. (1)
Here’s the rub: there are, like, a lot of shoulder exercises out there. Your delts have three different heads, and you need to train them all if you want killer shoulders. That’s why a tier list is so effective — it can help you determine which movements are worth your time and what to leave by the wayside.
Shoulder Exercises Tier List
On Sep. 10, 2024, coach and content creator Jeff Nippard ranked 20 of the most popular shoulder exercises on a tier list from “S” (that’s ‘super’) to “F” (or ‘fail’).
We’re not going to run through all 20 of his selections, but we are going to look at a few picks in each category and then build them into an optimized bodybuilding shoulder workout for you.
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Nippard’s criteria for evaluating shoulder exercises is simple. S-tier shoulder exercises need to “feel good” or be comfortable to perform, provide stretch and tension to the deltoid tissue, and must have a viable, straightforward pathway to apply progressive overload.
S-Tier Shoulder Exercises
- Single-Arm Cable Lateral Raise
- Reverse Pec Deck
A-Tier Shoulder Exercises
- Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press
- Machine Shoulder Press
- Side-Lying Lateral Raise
- Face Pull
B-Tier Shoulder Exercises
C-Tier Shoulder Exercises
- Resistance Band Lateral Raise
D-Tier Shoulder Exercises
F-Tier Shoulder Exercises
- Nippard did not rank any movement as an F-tier shoulder exercise.
The best shoulder exercise, or what Nippard calls an S-plus exercise, is the single-arm cable lateral raise. He endorses this movement because the resistance profile matches the target muscle and really stretches out the side delts, which most lateral raise variations simply do not.
The worst shoulder exercise, in Nippard’s mind, is the dumbbell front raise. He cites the movement as redundant for most gymgoers (you train your front delts plenty during any horizontal or vertical pressing exercise) and for having a poor resistance curve.
An Optimized Shoulder Workout for Bodybuilding
Let’s pull some of Nippard’s picks together and craft a boulder-shoulder-building workout. Your shoulders are strong, but the individual heads of the deltoid are small muscles.
One or two exercises per head, twice per week, should do the trick for adding mass — try this workout on for size:
- Reverse Pec Deck: 3 x 20
- Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 4 x 8
- Single-Arm Cable Lateral Raise: 4 x 15
- Face Pull: 2 x 20
Starting with the reverse pec deck (or you can use two cables) will warm up your rotator cuff and activate your rear delts before you hit up a heavy pressing exercise. The single-arm laterals are self explanatory.
We endorse the face pull as a shoulder finisher for both joint health and some extra rear delt work, which most people tend to need.
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References
- Fan J, Dai W, Liu F, Wu J. Visual perception of male body attractiveness. Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Feb 7;272(1560):219-26. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2922. PMID: 15705545; PMCID: PMC1634963.
Featured Image: @jeffnippard / YouTube
