The 8 Best Exercises for Dumbbell Shoulder Workouts

In the gym, some things just go together.

Cable machines and back exercises. Then on leg day, the barbell just feels right. But what about your shoulders?

Dumbbells. It’s always been, and always will be, dumbbells. The right dumbbell shoulder exercises — done in the right workout — can take your gains up a notch, remedy muscular imbalances, and build real-world, functional strength. 

Here are 8 of the best dumbbell shoulder exercises you can do, along with why they work. After that, a workout that puts them all together (we’ll tell you how to tweak and tailor it for your specific goals, too). 

Let’s get started.

The 8 Best Dumbbell Shoulder Exercises

To state the obvious, the exercises we chose on this list are performed with either one or two dumbbells, but you’ll need some other equipment as well — things you can find in most commercial gyms, or a well-furnished garage gym. 

Shoulder Press

Why It Works: All shoulder workouts need an overhead press variation of some kind. Since your arms are built to move independently, dumbbells work well here, allowing you to press in the most ergonomic position for you.

What You’ll Need: Dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench or low seat with back support. 

How To Do Shoulder Press

• Set the pad of the bench to a high angle if needed. 
• Grab two dumbbells and sit on the bench with the weights on your knees, pressing your upper back against the backrest, leaving a bit of space between the bench and your lower back.
• “Kick” one dumbbell up to shoulder height at a time. 
• Hold the weights at shoulder level, with your forearms perpendicular to the floor.
• Press the dumbbells up, over your head, and slightly together at the top — your hands should be directly above your shoulders when you’re done. 

Single-Arm Z Press

Why It Works: Unilateral training helps remedy imbalances in strength and stability. By performing a seated, single-arm press, you double down on these advantages, while also learning to stabilize your midline. 

What You’ll Need: One dumbbell and a yoga mat if you prefer. 

Pro Tip: If your hamstrings are tight, and this setup on the floor is uncomfortable, try this movement from a tall kneel or half-kneel position.

How To Single-Arm Z Press

• Sit on the floor with your legs extended in front of you and your torso upright.
• Hoist one dumbbell up to shoulder height like you would for a seated press.
• While holding your other arm out to the side for balance, press the weight up and over your head.

Lateral Raise

Why It Works: This movement helps to hit the most lateral aspect of the deltoid — which aids in raising, or adducting, your arm out to the side.  

What You’ll Need: Two light dumbbells, or an adjustable weight bench if you want to do the chest-supported variation.

How To Lateral Raise

• Stand upright while holding two dumbbells down at your sides with your arms relaxed.
• While keeping your shoulders down and away from your ears (don’t shrug), raise the weights up and out to the sides with mostly straight arms until your arms are parallel to the floor. 
• Pause for a moment at the top to add a bit of challenge, then slowly lower the dumbbells back down.

Front Raise

Why It Works: Your anterior deltoids (that’s the front part) ride shotgun on all pressing movements you do, whether you’re targeting your chest or shoulders. Still, isolating this muscle through the action it performs, is key to bringing it up to par. 

What You’ll Need: Two light dumbbells, or an adjustable weight bench if you want to do the chest-supported variation. 

How To Front Raise

• Stand upright holding two dumbbells at your sides with a pronated grip, palms facing your body.
• Brace your core and raise your arms out and forward, without bending your elbow, until your arms are parallel to the floor.
• Lower your arms down slowly.

Rear Delt Fly

Why It Works: Your posterior deltoid on the back of your shoulder is small, but carries the essential duty of maintaining shoulder health and proper functionality. It’s hard to hit — unless you’ve got a pair of dumbbells and a bench handy.

What You’ll Need: Two very light dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench, but you can do this one standing with a hip hinge as well.

How To Rear Delt Fly

• Set an adjustable weight bench to roughly a 30-degree angle and lay on your stomach with your arms hanging down, palms facing each other — as if you were preparing to do an incline row.
• Keep your shoulders depressed, pushed down toward the floor, while slowly raising the weights out to the sides until your arms are parallel and the backs of your hands face the ceiling.

Y Raise

Why It Works: Many of the smaller muscles in your upper back also affect the motion of your shoulder blade; think your lower traps, supraspinatus, and rhomboids. The Y raise isolates these small tissues, ensuring proper shoulder mobility and function. It’s a go-to prehab exercise for strength athletes of all stripes for a reason. 

What You’ll Need: Two very light dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench, but you can do this one standing with a hip hinge as well.

How To Y Raise

• Set the bench to about 30 degrees and lay on your stomach with your arms down, palms facing eachother.
• Without lifting your chest off the bench, keep your arms locked and raise them up at a 45-degree angle until they’re parallel to the angle of the bench.
• If taking a bird’s eye view, your body and arms should form a distinct “Y” shape.

Shrug

Why It Works: Your trapezius muscles aren’t technically part of your shoulder, but they help move the joint all the same. To train scapular elevation, there’s no better exercise than the standard dumbbell shrug.

What You’ll Need: A pair of moderate to heavy dumbbells, and ideally a pair of lifting straps to support your grip—you aren’t training your forearms here. 

How To Shrug

• If you have the equipment and space, place the dumbbells on a flat weight bench so you don’t need to deadlift them off the floor.
• Utilize lifting straps if you have them, then stand upright with your feet under your hips and the weights down at your sides.
• Keep your arms straight and relaxed, and your torso still, then pull your shoulders back and up. Be sure not to roll your shoulders forward.

Single-Arm Overhead Carry

Why It Works: Carrying is one of the most slept-on forms of strength training, but it’s essential for proper conditioning. Overhead carries train stability in both your hips and shoulders simultaneously. 

What You’ll Need: One medium-weight dumbbell and plenty of stable, open space to walk. 

How To Single-Arm Overhead Carry

• Start by flipping the weight to shoulder height, then pressing it overhead.
• Hold your non-working arm out to the side for balance.
• Once stable and motionless, brace your core and take slow, controlled steps forward. 

A Dumbbell Shoulder Workout That Works

You’ve got the moves. Now you need to compile them into a fitness routine that actually delivers results. If you don’t feel like starting from scratch, we’ve put together a dumbbell shoulder workout that covers all your bases.

The Workout

Why It Works: A good dumbbell shoulder workout hits different aspects of the shoulder girdle and shoulder joint, incorporates both compound (multi-joint) and isolation (single joint) exercises, and isn’t bloated with redundant movements. Check, check, and check.

What You’ll Need: Dumbbells ranging from light to heavy weights (or the REP® x PÉPIN™ FAST Series™ adjustable dumbbell if you're working with limited space), and an adjustable weight bench. After a proper warmup, you're ready to dive in.

• Single-Arm Overhead Carry: 2 rounds of 10 paces per arm
• Shoulder Press: 3 x 6-8
• Lateral Raise: 3 x 10-12
• Rear Delt Fly: 2 x 12-15
• Y Raise: 2 x 20

How To Modify It for Your Goals

You’ll notice the workout above does not contain all eight of our favorite dumbbell shoulder exercises — you can mix and match to suit your needs. Don’t want to grow your side delts? Swap the lateral raise for front raises instead.

Here are a few other ways to modify this workout:

• Beginners: Cut one set out of the shoulder press and lateral raise to reduce total volume and focus on mastering form.
• For Muscle Growth: Add an extra set to each exercise to increase the volume of your workout, plus slow down your reps to increase time under tension.
• For Strength: Move the single-arm overhead carry to the end of the workout so you can start off fresh with the shoulder press. Additionally, lower your rep count (and increase the weight) on the shoulder presses to 5-6 reps.
• Short on Time: Superset the lateral raises with the overhead shoulder presses.

Benefits of Dumbbells for Shoulder Workouts

When it comes to making the most of your shoulder workouts (or any muscle group, for that matter), smart equipment selection matters. 

You can use just about anything in the weight room to train your body’s major muscle groups, sure. But to take things from passable to exceptional, you need to use the right tool for the job.

For your shoulders, dumbbells are often the right tool to tackle the work. Here’s why: 

Improved Posture

Healthy and strong shoulders are crucial for good posture, especially if you spend a lot of time sitting on your backside or staring at a screen. This is doubly true for your rear delts, which help draw your shoulders back and keep your torso upright. 

Reduce Shoulder Pain

Make no mistake — if you’re in chronic pain, you should see a doctor or physical therapist. But what about preventative care or managing mild pain?

Studies tell us that you may be able to mitigate some symptoms of shoulder pain by strengthening the corresponding muscles, including the rear deltoid and rotator cuff. (1)(2)

Dumbbells Add Strength

While barbell exercises like the squat, bench, or deadlift are considered the benchmarks for strength in the weight room, you shouldn’t neglect dumbbells. In fact, using different equipment can develop robust and versatile muscular power.

We also know from research that dumbbell-centric training, provided you hit it hard enough, works comparably well to the barbell for gaining maximal strength. (3)

Practical and Accessible

Let’s give dumbbells their flowers; they’re easy to use and you can find them in every single weight room out there (and hopefully in your home gym — you might consider adjustable dumbbells to save space).

Cable machines are contested territory in busy gyms, and If you train in the early evening after work, good luck getting a squat rack for barbell presses. But dumbbells are right there. Grab-and-go.

How To Choose the Right Dumbbell Type, Size, and Weight

When it comes to selecting the appropriate dumbbells for your shoulder workouts, precision is everything. Going too heavy, or too light, can affect your results. Here’s how to pick the best dumbbell for your workout.

Type & Size

Dumbbells typically come in three distinct styles; cylindrical, hexagonal, or adjustable.

• Cylindrical dumbbells — like our urethane dumbbells — are designed to roll smoothly across the floor, so you don’t have to lug them from the rack to your exercise station (just make sure not to pinch anyone else’s toes!). These are ideal for heavy pressing.
• Hexagonal dumbbells have flat sides, so they stay put on the ground. However, the shape may be awkward to use. They’re also easy to press against one another for specific exercises, but you usually won’t need to do this during a shoulder workout. 
• Adjustable dumbbells — like the QuickDraw™ adjustable dumbbell — let you select how heavy the handle is by applying or removing thin weight plates to either end. Most adjustable sets don’t go quite as high in weight as a full assortment of fixed dumbbells, but that’s okay — you probably don’t need a pair of 120s for a shoulder workout. For more info, check out our article on what makes the best adjustable dumbbell.

Weight

Here’s the thing. No guide out there can tell you what weights are appropriate for a shoulder workout, since strength is so individual. You’ll have to do some trial and error.

Your dumbbell shoulder training should be challenging, but manageable with good form. Shoulder training isn’t in any way dangerous, but the joint is quite mobile thus susceptible to tweaks or injury if you go too heavy or lift your arm in an awkward manner.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to use…

• Very light weights: for your posterior deltoid and upper back exercises, such as the rear fly or Y raise.
• Light to moderate weights: on moves that isolate your side or front delts, like lateral and front raises.
• Moderate to heavy weights: for compound pressing; think Z press or two-armed shoulder press.

Key Takeaways

Your shoulders are robust, mobile joints with many different muscles that affect their strength and stability. To train them effectively, it's important to hit the shopulder joint and shoulder girdle using the right tools, such as dumbbells.

A well-rounded shoulder workout with dumbbells contains at least one pressing exercise, plus isolation moves for each aspect of the deltoid. Studies tell us that dumbbells work just as well for developing strength as the barbell, with the added advantage of helping correct muscular imbalances. Just remember to err on the side of caution with your weight selection, especially on isolation exercises like flyes and front, side, or rear raises.

Jake Dickson graduated with a B.S. degree in Exercise Science and holds a NASM-CPT accreditation as well. As a health & wellness writer, Jake focuses on making fitness practical and accessible for any audience. Off the clock, you can find Jake at the gym or unwinding by the beach.

Reviewed by Noah Tenenbaum, M.S. Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, CSCS, FMS-L1, FMS-YBT, and FMS-FCS, for accuracy.