Top 5 Shoulder Strengthening Exercises You Can Do At Home

We could all use a little more strength and stability around our shoulders. The trouble is that we all can't get to the gym every day — so how do we go about strengthening our shoulders when we're not in the weight room? To answer that question, we've created this post on the 5 best shoulder strengthening exercises you can do at home. This means you can get stronger, even if you're on your couch, in your PJs, watching your favourite show on Netflix.

The biggest concern we often hear is not having the right equipment at home — well, worry no more. Most of these exercises need nothing more than a resistance band or a soup can.

#1 The Rule of 5

Our first exercise is all about getting your shoulders back into the right position. Trying to correct that posture your mother has been telling you about for years. A rounded shoulder blade position places the shoulder joint in a vulnerable position and can set things up for disaster. This is why it's so important that before we aim to strengthen our shoulders, we ensure we are able to maintain an optimal resting position first.

We've created a full write up post on The Rule of 5 Shoulder Strengthening Exercises if you need a full review.

If you're having shoulder pain, check out our Ultimate Guide to Shoulder Impingement where we teach all you need to know about what's going on with your shoulder and how to fix it.

#2 Side Lying Shoulder External Rotation

This has to be one of the best and most often overlooked exercises. In fact, this shoulder strengthening exercise has been found in the research over and over again to be one of the most effective exercises to strengthen and retrain the rotator cuff. The great thing about this exercise is that most of us have weak rotator cuff muscles. At home, using something as simple as a soup can, or even a half-filled water bottle will do the trick as resistance. This can also be a super helpful exercise for correcting and improving your shoulder posture.

We've created a full write up post on this shoulder strengthening exercise if you need a full review.

#3 The Serratus Push-Up Plus

Now many of you have likely thought "shoulder strength, great — time to work on my bench press!" Well, I am here to tell you that the Serratus push-up exercise is an amazing and crucial exercise for training the control and strength of our shoulder blades. Without it, all of your hard work on the bench will be wasted. You can even improve the amount of weight you can lift with the bench press by training your shoulder blade strength first.

Proper functioning shoulder blades make for happy shoulders. That means we have to make sure these muscles are firing optimally before we can go and bench heavy or pick our children up overhead.

We've created a full write up post on this shoulder strengthening exercise if you need a full review.

#4 Slide Roll Lift (SRL)

Now we are getting into some more challenging exercises for strengthening shoulders. This is one of the better exercises to strengthen the lower fibre traps that stabilize and control the shoulder blade overhead. This means when you are going to do things like wash your hair, raise your hands in class, or wave your hands in the air — you'll have the strength and control to do so!

We've created a full write up post on this shoulder strengthening exercise if you need a full review.

#5 The Wall Slide

The shoulders are amazing because they have such a wide range of motion. They move up, down and all around. It's remarkable how complex the muscles in the shoulder actually are as they control the arm into overhead range. This exercise does an amazing job of retraining that up and down movement as we protect our shoulders against injury. This one can be done with no equipment at all, and the wall itself isn't even truly necessary (although helpful). We can also increase the challenge by simply adding a resistance band around our wrists to really get the rotator cuff going.

We've created a full write up post on this shoulder strengthening exercise if you need a full review.

Now what if you are struggling with pain?

If you are having issues or trouble with your shoulder, check out the Ultimate Guide to Shoulder Impingement where we teach all you need to know about what the heck is going on with your shoulder and how to fix it. Or if you're looking to stretch those shoulders of yours first, check out our Top 5 Shoulder Stretches You Can Do At Home.