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I Tested 17 Shoulder Exercises, Here's Best VS Worst

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Rating: 4.5; Vote: 2

Betty and I are back. She s a 12, 000 science machine that ll help us determine which of these 17 shoulder exercises are the best and which are the worst for building big shoulders. I tested these best shoulder exercises on 3 subjects, averaged the data, and found some very interesting insights that align with other research out there. With the results from this experiment, you ll be able to save literally years of wasted time doing the wrong movements for your body and finally get those bigger, wider shoulders you ve been dreaming of. So, without further ado, let s dive right in and find out what the best shoulder exercises (really) are and then talk about how to use them in your shoulder workouts. Let s explain what and then who we ll be measuring to find out what the best shoulder exercises are. We re putting sensors on the front, side, and rear delts. But we re also putting one sensor on the upper traps, you ll find out why later. As for who we ll be testing, it ll be me, Alex, and Raza (yes, again) What about the wager? Well, we ordered the world s hottest bowl of noodles. We also got the world s hottest chip made with the Carolina reaper. And a gummy bear, which comes in at 9, 000, 000 Scoville. Each of us is going to write down on a piece of paper what we think the top 2 shoulder exercises will end up being for the front, side, and rear parts of the shoulder. The person who gets the most exercises correct still suffers, just not as much. They get to choose who has to eat what. Before testing what ll give us big shoulders, we had to prep 3 things. First, our estimated 1 rep max for each exercise. Next, we needed a clean shave to make sure the electrodes stick. Finally, before we could start the first exercise, we had to take our maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) measurements. During the experiment, we did 1 set of 5 reps and then taking at least a 5 minute rest before moving to the next exercise. We also rotated between front delt, side delt, and rear delt exercises to avoid overly fatiguing one region. So, what are the exercises that ll give us bigger, wider shoulders? Let s start with the front delts. Both winners were overhead shoulder presses, just different variations of them. We tested the seated dumbbell press, standing dumbbell press, seated barbell press, and the standing barbell press. But for the seated variations, we were actually able to use slightly heavier weight than the standing variations because of the extra stability provided by the bench. The seated versions performed the best. One more thing for the front delts. Although the overhead presses we just talked about will provide significantly more activation on the front delts (71% for me, it s likely that you re already working this muscle quite a bit whenever you perform chest exercises. So my recommendation would be to do overhead presses once, maybe twice a week depending on your goals. Now the side delts (i. e, what ll give us wider shoulders. This took me by complete surprise. The winners ended up being the two standing shoulder presses we tested. But this is all simply because the side delts are helping stabilize the weight up at the chest, which isn t a powerful stimulus for growth. It s a case where more activation doesn t necessarily lead to more growth, one of the limitations of Betty. Taking this into consideration, I d remove shoulder presses from the top which would now bring the lateral raises to the top of this list. In this experiment, the standard dumbbell lateral raise and the lying incline lateral raise came out on top, with cable lateral raises following closely behind. All of those are great options. Last but not least, the rear delts. The top exercise was the double arm reverse cable fly. With this exercise, by setting the cables high and pulling the arms down and back at a 45 degree angle from the body, it lines up the constant tension from the cable almost perfectly with the rear delts. As for the other rear delt winner, it s the reverse cable fly, but with one arm and the body positioned sideways to the cable. Now although these two exercises look very similar, they actually both challenge the rear delts in a different way. The double arm challenges your rear delts most in the middle of the movement. Whereas the single arm challenges your rear delts most in the beginning of the movement which recent research has shown to be arguably the most important part of the movement for growth.
Date: 2022-11-27

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Comments and reviews: 14

Wan
If face pulls didn't perform as well because the elbows are placed too high, then why not lower them a bit? In Athlean x's face pull tutorial videos, his elbows aren't that high like you have here: 12: 45. As for the stability aspect, why not use a staggered stance? This can help somewhat with stability. I'm sure if these 2 things were taken care of, then the face pulls would have performed better for rear delt activation.
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Bailey
Totally understand adding aspects like the wager/punishment can help with watch-time but I did find a bit childish and felt it diminish the professional and trustworthy, science-based tone a bit. Of course, if things like that are genuine to you and your friends, don't change it! Just want you to know there are those of us that will watch the whole lot as it's usually valuable: )
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Tech
I don't mean to trash the other creator doing this series but your presentation, number of subjects, and explanation of limitations/why something happened is truly amazing and makes the content more believable scientifically.
Also the 100% contraction before hand is a great control than just comparing 2 alternatives for which one is higher!
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V3n0m917
I'm not gonna lie. I'm waiting for legs. I'm hoping Bulgarian Split Squat is the king! Lol
Thanks for this video though. Good thing I have already been doing the following ones in my routine. With the dumbbell shoulder press, I do the type where I keep the bench flat for core strength. Is that equivalent to the standing one?
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Rajko
Im no expert, but from my point of view the machine tells you which exercise gives you the best peak contraction. but recent papers show, that the stretched position is way more important, when it comes to hypertrophy
(would have loved to see lateral raise with cable adjusted at hip height)
Correct me, if I'm wrong
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Avery
If you don't have access to cables to do that side rear delt cable fly then do pallow raises. I've been those lately and really like them. You can do them very slow and controlled or use a little momentum for a good stretch kn the way down. I think they also work the side delt a fair bit to, or it feels like it to me.
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Brett
I really need to go through your videos and make a routine to follow. When I started working out at the gym I go to my goal was to get more endurance and am following without question what they're doing.
But after seeing the videos here, I realize that I need to set better goals, and ways to achieve those goals.
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Dorian
Feels awesome knowing that I ve built my shoulder section of the workout consisting of the exercises that yield the most muscle activation, I guess mind-muscle connection hasn t failed me on this front. I do chest supported lateral raises, single arm reverse fly, and seated dumbbell presses
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Alex
Loving this series so far, Raza character path is my favourite part of the series. Beautiful job making muscle science cool! You're actually making science a cool thing! Congrats the whole Jeremy Either teamwork YOU ARE TAKING FORWARD THE WHOLE FITNESS TRAINING!
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Rounak
Wow this is a very excellent and brilliant video bro telling about this 17 shoulders exercises which is best vs worst and you are doing a wonderful work for all of us who love to stay fit and stay healthy and be positive and happy always
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Ladomifi
I've experienced the most growth in side delts with cable raises and upright rows, which makes sense seeing the first one places most tension in the stretched position and the latter equally spreads it across the ROM
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Carlo
Dont' know why people are glancing over this. Best exercises based on EMG, but EMG doesn't mean much in the way of growth for lateral delts from overhead press even though it has the highest emg activation. What?
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sudipto
If you don't have much time -
Front delt - 8: 55 - Overhead Shoulder press
Lateral Delt - 11: 33 - Dumbbell Lateral raise
Posterior Delt - 11: 59 - Cable Delt rear fly ( Double, Single )
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Andrew
I love how you added the disclaimer that more EMG activation doesn't equate to more growth. A lot of people take these studies out of context and it's good that you're shining a light on that
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