Dumbbell Shoulder Workout for 3D Delts: 6 Exercises for Every Angle
In my book Lean Into Muscle, I tell the story of how Tom Hardy turned into Bane for The Dark Knight Rises, the final movie in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Hardy is 5 foot 9, which is fine in the real world. But that’s a problem for a guy playing a supervillain and whose whole job is to make Batman look breakable.
So his trainer went after the muscle between his neck and his shoulders, his traps, and kept building it until Hardy’s neck almost disappeared into them. He obviously didn’t get any taller, but after completing the program, he looked like nobody in Gotham could move him.
But you don’t need to be a movie star in a big-budget film to build shoulders that get noticed. Actually, I’d recommend you skip the Bane look altogether. What you want are shoulders that make the rest of your physique look finished, and pun intended, they’re literally the cap you flip closed on the whole thing. Round, capped delts widen your frame, make your waist look smaller, and fill out a t-shirt in a way nothing else does.
So how do you actually get shoulders that complement the rest of you? You start by selecting the right equipment and that would be dumbbells. Why dumbbells over barbells or machines? Dumbbells win for shoulders for 2 reasons. First, each arm works on its own, so your stronger side can’t take over and hide a weak spot. And second, your hands aren’t locked to a bar, so each arm can travel out to the side and back, which is where the side and the rear of your shoulder do their best work.
It’s also important to remember that your deltoid has 3 heads: the front, the side, and the rear. Most guys end up training the front a lot and the side and rear very little, and that’s what leaves shoulders looking flat from the side and rounded forward. To build shoulders that look good from every angle, the real meaning of “3D,” you have to hit all 3. This workout does that, then finishes with shrugs, which build your traps and frame the whole look.
Before the exercises, one thing about the front of your shoulder
You may have already trained the front of your shoulders this week, even if you never did a single shoulder exercise.
Every time you press something on chest day, whether it’s a flat bench, an incline bench, a barbell, or a pair of dumbbells, your front delts do part of the work, because pushing your arm forward is their main job. If you’ve read the dumbbell chest guide, you already have a sense of what I’m talking about.
The incline press in that post stops at 30 degrees, because once you set the bench any steeper, your front delts start taking reps away from your chest. And the front delts are the one part of your shoulder that doesn’t need the extra help.
The side and rear delts are a different story. A team of researchers led by Yuri Campos put sensors on the shoulders of experienced lifters and had them do a bench press, an overhead press, and a lateral raise, so they could see how hard each part of the shoulder was working during each exercise.
On the bench press, the side delt worked about a sixth as hard as it did on the lateral raise, and the rear delt barely showed up at all. In other words, your chest day is doing almost nothing for your side and rear delts.
Now let’s jump into the top 6 dumbbell exercises that build that 3D delt look that can feel so elusive to many. You won’t do all 6 in the same workout. They’re split across 2 shoulder workouts a week, which I’ll call Day 1 and Day 2, and I’ll lay out exactly what goes on each day after we’ve gone through all 6 exercises.
1. Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press
Apart from the shrug, every exercise in this workout uses lighter weight than this one. The seated press is where you go heavy.
It’s also the exercise in this workout where adding weight month after month is the most realistic plan, which makes it the lift you should measure your shoulder progress by. It works your front delts harder than anything else here, and it brings your side delts along with it. Sitting with your back against the pad takes your legs and lower back out of the movement, so when you add weight, that weight lands on your shoulders instead of getting spread around your body.
Now let’s walk through how to actually do it, step by step.
- Set the bench upright. If sitting straight up feels like sitting in a church pew, drop it back one notch.
- Sit down with a dumbbell resting on each thigh, then use your knees to kick them up to your shoulders one at a time. It’s the same trick from the dumbbell chest guide, and it means your shoulders aren’t worn out before you’ve done your first rep.
- Hold the dumbbells at about ear height with your palms facing forward. Keep your elbows a little in front of your body instead of flaring straight out to the sides, because that’s the position most shoulders can press from without complaining.
- Press the dumbbells up until your arms are almost straight. There’s no need to clank them together at the top like you’re finishing a set for the camera.
- Lower the dumbbells back down to ear height, and that’s one rep.
If you watch people doing this exercise in any gym, you’ll see the most common mistake on the last couple of reps of a lot of sets. A guy’s lower back peels off the pad, his hips slide forward, his chest tips up toward the ceiling, and suddenly he’s doing the incline press from the chest guide, from a worse position and with less weight than he’d use for an actual incline press. Keep your back against the pad the whole time. If you can’t keep it there, the dumbbells are too heavy.
End every set of the seated press while you still have 1 or 2 clean reps left in you, and do the same on every other exercise in this workout. Taking every set to failure, the point where you can’t finish another rep, can pile up more fatigue than your body can recover from, and when that happens, your progress stalls. Stopping 1 or 2 reps short still builds about the same muscle, and you come into your next workout recovered enough to beat what you did last time.
Sets and reps: Do 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps on Day 1, and rest 2 to 3 minutes between sets.
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2. Arnold Press
The Arnold press has a famous name, and it also has one claim attached to it that doesn’t hold up.
You’ll read that the Arnold press works all 3 heads of your shoulder. It does work the front and the side like any overhead press, and the turn in the movement may even make them work a little harder. The rear delt is a different story. Pressing in general doesn’t ask much of the rear delt, and turning your hands on the way up doesn’t change that. The exercise is named after Arnold Schwarzenegger, and honestly, the name has done a lot of the selling.
What the Arnold press actually gives you is a second press that isn’t a copy of the first one. The dumbbells start in front of your chin and turn outward as they go up, so the bottom of the rep feels different, and you’ll use lighter dumbbells than you do on the seated press. That’s why it’s the press for your second shoulder day. Your front delts still get trained twice a week, and you aren’t repeating the exact same workout twice.
The setup is close to the seated press, with one big difference in where your hands start. Here’s how to do it.
- Sit with your back against the pad, the same way you did on the seated press.
- Instead of holding the dumbbells at ear height with your palms facing forward, hold them in front of your shoulders at about chin height with your palms facing you, like you just finished a curl.
- Press the dumbbells up, and as they rise, turn your hands so your palms are facing forward by the time your arms are almost straight.
- On the way back down, turn your hands back the other way, so you finish each rep in the same curl position you started from.
You’ll see a lot of guys do this exercise in 2 separate pieces. First they spin the dumbbells outward, and then they press, which turns it into a regular shoulder press with a little dance in front of it. The turn and the press should happen together as one movement. And if the turn pinches your shoulder at the bottom, drop the Arnold press and do the seated press on both days. No exercise in this workout is worth a sore shoulder.
The same rule applies here as on the seated press, so end each set while you still have 1 or 2 clean reps left.
Sets and reps: Do 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps on Day 2, and rest about 2 minutes between sets.
3. Dumbbell Front Raise
You can skip this exercise, and I’d rather tell you that now than pretend otherwise.
If you bench press or incline press even once a week, your front delts are already getting a real share of the work, and the Arnold press that starts the same workout gives them even more. Adding a front raise on top of all that is a third helping. The front raise is on this list for the guys it actually helps. If pressing bothers your shoulders and you’ve cut back on it, or if you don’t train chest very hard and you want to build the front of your shoulders on purpose instead of by accident, the front raise is worth doing.
If you do decide to keep the front raise, here’s how to do it right.
- Stand tall and hold a dumbbell in front of each thigh, with your palms facing your legs and a soft bend in your elbows.
- Raise one dumbbell straight out in front of you until it’s level with your shoulder. Stop there, because shoulder height is all the range you need to train the front delt.
- Lower the dumbbell slowly back to your thigh.
- Do the same thing with the other arm.
You’ll notice you’re working one arm at a time. That’s on purpose, because it means your stronger side can’t quietly do more of the work, which is the same reason you’re using dumbbells in the first place.
The easiest way to tell that the dumbbell is too heavy is that your body starts moving. If your hips push forward and your shoulders rock back to get the dumbbell up, your lower back is doing the lifting and your shoulder is just along for the ride. Lower the weight until your torso stays still for the whole set.
Sets and reps: If you decide to do it, do 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps on Day 2, and rest 60 to 90 seconds between sets.
4. Dumbbell Lateral Raise
If you only had time for 1 exercise in this workout, the lateral raise would be the one.
Spend a few minutes near the dumbbell rack in any gym and you’ll see the lateral raise done 2 different ways. One guy grabs a heavy pair and swings them up with his whole body while his shoulders climb up toward his ears. Another guy grabs a pair that looks almost too light and raises them slowly and evenly. The second guy is the one who’s actually training his side delts.
The side delt sits on top of your shoulder like a cap, and it’s the part of your shoulder that makes you look wider. It’s also the part the bench press barely touches.
On this exercise, how heavy the dumbbell feels changes depending on how high your arm is. When your arms are hanging at your sides, the weight pulls straight down along your arm, and your shoulder is barely working at all. The load on your shoulder gets heavier the higher your arm goes, and it peaks at the top, when your arm is level with the floor. That means the top of the rep is where the exercise really happens, and it’s also exactly where most people start cheating.
So with that in mind, here’s how to do a lateral raise the right way.
- Stand with a dumbbell at each side and a slight bend in your elbows.
- Sweep your arms out to the sides like you’re pushing 2 walls apart, with your palms facing the floor. Let your arms travel slightly forward instead of straight out to the sides, at roughly the same angle your shoulder blades sit at, because that’s the path most shoulders are comfortable with.
- As you lift, lead with your elbows and keep them a little higher than your hands the whole way up. Your side delt attaches to your upper arm, not your hand, so your elbow is what it’s really lifting.
- Stop once your elbows reach shoulder height, since that’s where the load peaks, and then lower the dumbbells slowly.
If you feel the work creeping up into your neck, you’re probably shrugging your shoulders up or letting your hands get higher than your elbows. Lower the weight and keep your shoulders away from your ears.
The mistake to unlearn is tipping your pinkies up at the top of the rep, like you’re pouring water out of a pitcher. Plenty of people will tell you to do it, and I’m telling you not to. When you raise your arm and turn your thumb down toward the floor, you put your shoulder in almost the exact position physical therapists use to test for a rotator cuff problem, because turning your arm in like that narrows the space the tendon runs through. That position is a good way to test a shoulder that might already be hurt, and it’s a bad position to load 15 times a set, twice a week. Keep your palms facing the floor.
Sets and reps: Do 4 sets of 12 to 15 reps on both shoulder days, and rest about 60 seconds between sets.
5. Bent-Over Rear Delt Fly
Your rear delts decide whether your shoulders look round from the side or only look wide from the front.
The rear delt is the back third of your shoulder cap. You can’t see it in the mirror, which is exactly why it’s behind on most guys, but everybody standing next to you or behind you can see it, and it’s what fills out the back of a shirt across your shoulders. It also balances out the rest of your week. Every press you do pushes your arms forward, and the rear delt fly is one of the few exercises that pulls them back. That’s why it pairs with the rows you’re already doing to keep your shoulders from looking like they’ve drifted forward.
Bending forward is what makes this exercise work for the rear delt. When you’re standing up, raising your arms out to the sides works the top of your shoulder. When you bend forward, gravity works against your arm as it moves backward instead, and moving your arm backward is the rear delt’s main job.
Here’s how to do it, starting with getting into that bent-over position.
- Hold a dumbbell in each hand, soften your knees, and hinge at your hips with a flat back until your chest is close to parallel with the floor.
- Let the dumbbells hang under your chest with your palms facing each other.
- Keeping a slight bend in your elbows, sweep the dumbbells out and up until your arms are level with your shoulders, like you’re reaching for the walls on either side of you.
- Lower the dumbbells back down slowly.
If bending over like that bothers your lower back, there’s an easy alternative. Lie face down on a bench set to a low incline and do the same movement from there. That version takes your lower back out of the exercise completely, so if you have the bench, it’s actually the better choice.
The most common mistake is squeezing your shoulder blades together at the top. That’s what you do on a row, and it hands the work over to the muscles in the middle of your back. On the rear delt fly, your shoulder blades stay where they are and your arms do the moving. You’ll also see this exercise done with dumbbells so heavy that the elbows bend a little more on every rep until it turns into a row. If that’s happening to you, lower the weight until your elbow angle stays the same from the bottom of the rep to the top.
Sets and reps: Do 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps on both shoulder days, and rest about 60 seconds between sets.
6. Dumbbell Shrug
Shrugs train your traps, the muscle Bane was built on, but in a dose that won’t turn you into him.
Shrugs are on this list because they build your upper traps, the slope that runs from your neck down to your shoulders. That slope shows over a collar, under a jacket, and in every shirt you own, and it’s what makes the line across the top of your body look solid instead of narrow. Since shrugs come last in the workout, they’re also the first exercise to drop when you’re short on time. The lateral raise and the rear delt fly train the side and rear delts this whole workout is built around, so protect those first and do the shrugs when you have the time.
Dumbbells work better than a barbell here for a simple reason. Dumbbells hang at your sides, so the weight pulls straight down through your traps. A barbell usually sits in front of your thighs, where it rubs against your legs and tends to pull your shoulders forward.
The shrug is the simplest exercise in this workout, but there’s still a right way to do it.
- Stand tall with a dumbbell in each hand at your sides and your palms facing in.
- Lift your shoulders straight up toward your ears, like you’re trying to touch them.
- Hold them at the top for a second. That pause matters, because the top is where your traps are working hardest, and it’s also exactly where most people let the weight drop right back down.
- Lower your shoulders all the way down, so your traps get a full stretch before you start the next rep.
You’ll see guys roll their shoulders in a big circle at the top of the rep, like a boxer loosening up before a fight. Your traps lift your shoulders up and down, so the roll doesn’t add anything except another way to cheat the weight. Go straight up, pause, and come straight down. The pause also keeps you from bouncing, which is how heavy shrugs turn into a set of tiny twitches.
Sets and reps: Do 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps on Day 1, pause for 1 second at the top of every rep, and rest 60 to 90 seconds between sets.
How to put these together
Here’s how the 6 exercises split across your 2 shoulder days.
Day 1 is the heavy day, and it has 4 exercises:
- Seated dumbbell shoulder press: 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps
- Lateral raise: 4 sets of 12 to 15 reps
- Rear delt fly: 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps
- Shrug: 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps
Day 2 swaps the seated press for the Arnold press, and it has 3 or 4 exercises, depending on whether you decided to keep the front raise:
- Arnold press: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps
- Lateral raise: 4 sets of 12 to 15 reps
- Rear delt fly: 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps
- Front raise, if you’re doing it: 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps
Day 1 and Day 2 don’t have to be separate trips to the gym. You can add them to the end of 2 upper-body or push days you already train, or do them as their own short workouts. Either way, leave 2 or 3 days between them so your shoulders have time to recover.
The lateral raise and the rear delt fly are on both days on purpose. They train your side and rear delts, which chest day barely touches, so they get twice the attention. Your front delts get 1 press in each shoulder workout plus everything chest day gives them, which is plenty.
The same rule runs across every exercise in this workout: end each set while you still have 1 or 2 clean reps left in you. Clean is the important word. On a lateral raise, a rep stops being clean the moment you need a swing to get your elbows to shoulder height, so count the reps you have left from that point, not from the point where you can’t move the dumbbells at all.
Before your first working set, do 1 or 2 light sets of whichever press you’re doing that day and 1 light set of lateral raises. That’s enough for most guys, and if your shoulders still feel tight, add 1 more light set.
This setup works, but it isn’t the only way to build your shoulders. You can go heavier with fewer reps or lighter with more reps and still make real gains, as long as your sets are hard and you keep improving from week to week. So if the schedule doesn’t fit your week, an exercise doesn’t agree with your shoulders, or you want to swap something in to stay motivated, adjust it. Just make sure all 3 heads of your shoulder still get trained.
How to add size over time
None of these 6 exercises will build your shoulders on their own. What builds shoulders is doing a little more than you did last time, over and over, for months. That’s called progressive overload, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Every week, try to beat what you did the week before, either by adding a rep, moving up to the next pair of dumbbells, or cleaning up your form on a lift that was getting sloppy.
On light exercises like the lateral raise, the next pair of dumbbells up is a big jump, so add reps first. Move up once your first set hits the top of the rep range with 1 or 2 clean reps still left in you, and expect your reps to drop for a week or 2 while you build back up.
To make any of that work, write down the weight and the reps for every exercise, every workout. If you don’t know what you did last week, you can’t beat it. There’s a longer explanation of all this in the progressive overload guide.
Common questions
How often should I train shoulders? Train them twice a week, using the 2 workouts above. Your front delts also get work on chest day, so they’re getting more training than it looks like on paper. Your side and rear delts get much less from the rest of your week, so these 2 workouts are where they get most of their training.
Can I do this workout at home? Yes, you can. A set of dumbbells and an adjustable bench are enough for all 6 exercises. If you don’t have a bench, do the presses standing up. Norwegian researchers Atle Saeterbakken and Marius Fimland compared seated and standing presses, and standing had the side and rear delts working harder, while the lifters handled a little less weight. So expect to use lighter dumbbells when you stand, and brace your stomach like somebody’s about to poke it.
Why does my shoulder pinch on lateral raises? Often it’s 1 of 2 things in your form. Either your pinkies are tipping up at the top of the rep, or your arms are going straight out to the sides instead of a little in front of you. Fix both of those before you decide something is wrong with your shoulder. If the pinch is still there after that, it’s worth showing to a physical therapist.
How heavy should my lateral raise dumbbells be? They should be lighter than your ego is going to like. Pick a weight where your elbows stay higher than your hands on every rep and you finish your 12 to 15 reps with only 1 or 2 clean reps left in you. If you have to swing your body or shrug your shoulders to get the dumbbells up, go lighter.
How long before I notice a difference? Give the program at least 3 months before you judge it. Muscle takes time to build, and you can’t tell whether a program is working if you switch to a new one before then.
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