When you think about a back and shoulder workout, you might think you need a lot of equipment. But you can work both the front and back of your body with just some dumbbells—meaning you can get in a great workout right in your living room.
A good back and shoulder workout focuses on hitting your back muscles—think your lats, rhomboids, and traps—as well as all three parts of your shoulders: your front, side, and rear deltoids, says ACE-certified personal trainer Sivan Fagan, owner of Strong With Sivan in Baltimore, Maryland. Pressing or pushing movements, like overhead presses, work your shoulders, while pulling movements like rows work your back.
Many people tend to skip back work in favor of pressing exercises when they strength train, which tends to make the muscles in the front of the body, like the shoulders, stronger and more developed, she says. As a result, this imbalance between front and back muscles can lead to rounding or hunching with your posture.
That’s why exercises that strengthen your rear delts—the small muscles on the back of your shoulders—are especially important. Those muscles help stabilize your shoulders, which can prevent injury, both when you are strength training and in everyday movement, says Fagan.
This back and shoulder workout will make sure you are working toward balanced strength, and because of its focus on single-arm moves, you’ll get a good dose of core work in there too, says Fagan. Because your body needs to resist rotating when you’re moving weight on one side—like with the single-arm row—your core will fire to stabilize it.
Here’s what you need to strengthen your back and your shoulders right at home.
The Workout
What you need: Two pairs of dumbbells. (You’ll want to go lighter on the reverse fly and the lateral-to-front raises.)
Exercises
Superset 1
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Single-arm row
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Reverse fly
Superset 2
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Alternating overhead press
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Lateral raise to front raise
Directions
- Complete 10–15 reps of each exercise. (For the single-arm moves, you’ll do that number on each side.) Perform 4 rounds of each superset, resting 1–2 minutes between them. In both sets, try not to rest between exercises.
Demoing the moves below are Rachel Denis (GIFs 1 and 3), a powerlifter who competes with USA Powerlifting and holds multiple New York State powerlifting records; and Cookie Janee (GIFs 2 and 4), a background investigator and security forces specialist in the Air Force Reserve.