If you want to build shoulder muscle choosing the right exercise is very important as the shoulder joint in general is overworked in the majority of training programs as the deltoid helps move the shoulder joint in all directions.
To develop your shoulders like any other muscles you need to allow enough time for the muscle to rebuild stronger before you should be training it again.
Many people who use a variety of training spits actually train their shoulders two or three consecutive days every week this is not helping to build shoulder muscle as they don't have time to build.
Pushing exercises like the bench press work the front of the delts and pulling like the dead row work the back of the delts fairly effectively so in our program we only really need to do minimal training of the mid deltoid fibres to shape the shoulder properly.
Most people simply do too much for their delts not allowing time for the muscles to develop.
So when selecting exercises to for our shoulder program it is important to look for quality in your exercises.
The following are my top two exercises to build shoulder muscle keeping in mind that you should use different variations regularly but these are exercises to keep coming back to.
Overhead press You cant beat pushing weight above your head to build shoulder muscle the overhead press done with dumbbells is a very effective exercise but can also be done with a bar or machine but using dumbbells provides a more natural movement.
Lateral raise The lateral raise is good exercise to work the mid delts in an isolation exercise.
Using dumbbells to your side in either a bent or straight arm position provides a good workout for the medial fibres of your deltoids.
When training to build shoulder muscle quality is much more important than quantity make sure you choose exercises.