Name: Shoulder Workout - Arnold Style
Uploaded: 2026-02-07T04:31:33.000Z
Duration: 5 min 12 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

From Arnold onwards, every bodybuilder aims to create thick, wide shoulders.

Participle clauses

Shoulders give you that classic V taper framing the upper body, making the waist look smaller.

So here's a complete shoulder workout inspired by the legend Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Hitting the muscles from every angle, front, middle and back.

And first, an exercise created by Arnold himself, the Arnold Press.

When he invented this movement, Arnold was looking for a single exercise to hit all three parts of the shoulder, front, middle and back.

By using a press and twisting at the same time, he achieved that goal, making the Arnold press an ideal starter.

Not too heavy on the weight, avoiding over rotation at the top of the movement, so don't let the elbows go past the ears.

Now time to hit the three parts of the shoulder separately, starting with the back of the shoulder with bent over raises, Bringing the pinky fingers out at the top of the movement for maximum squeeze on the muscle.

4 sets, 10 to 12 reps. Why are we starting with rear delts?

Because your front and middle shoulder muscles already get plenty of work on other days, like chest days with pressing movements.

So rear delts often miss out, which is why we put them first on shoulder day.

What Arnold calls the priority principle.

Arnold's shoulder workout is a combination of raises and presses.

So next, standing shoulder press, hitting the front and middle shoulder muscles.

Dumbbells towards the ceiling, not coming together, keeping the muscles in tension the whole time.

If you're inspired by Arnold to complete that old school look, check out our full Arnold style workouts for chest and back by clicking the link.

Next for shoulders, standing lateral raise.

This is hitting that middle delt muscle to add thickness and width to the shoulder.

Come up level with the ears, using a weight you can control on the way up and on the way down.

After back and middle shoulder, time to hit that front delt with a barbell front raise, completing that 3D look.

Don't twist the elbows out as you come up.

Weight up to about chin height, keeping control on the way down.

Finally, no workout for Arnold style shoulders would be complete without hitting the traps with a classic old school exercise.

The traps are the muscles that go from the neck down to the shoulder muscles.

They also extend to the middle back, so you'll also be hitting them on back day.

The part of the traps you can see from the front.

You can take a heavy weight on this exercise, shoulders up to the ears, then down.

Four sets of 8 to 10 reps will do the job.

So that's your complete shoulder workout inspired by Arnold.

We also have Arnold style workouts for chest and back for you to follow.

And for our complete exercise database with hundreds of exercises covering every body part, head over to the Fit Media plus website.