Can You Get A Good Shoulder Workout With Total Gym? | How To Get A Good Shoulder Muscle Workout

The shoulders are relatively small muscles in comparison to many other ones in the body, but they important for a number of reasons.  
 
Strong, healthy shoulder muscles can help prevent a lot of common day-to-day injuries that come from lifting or throwing (think lifting groceries, lifting kids in and out of the car, mowing the lawn or playing ball with kids).  
 
The shoulders (in combination with the neck and upper back muscles) also figure prominently into having healthy posture.  If the shoulders and upper back muscles are weak you could be prone to rounded, slouched posture. This can lead to an achy upper back and sore neck muscles.
 
Beyond these injury prevention and posture enhancing reasons to have strong shoulders, there is another reason to enhance your shoulder muscles- well developed shoulders look good!  Well developed shoulders add to strong looking arms and a chiseled looking figure.  This applies equally to men and women, though the degree of muscle development they seek may be different.  
 
In the video on this page, we show you a number of great shoulder strength building exercises using the Total Gym XLS system.  At PEERtrainer, we have become big fans of this product and method of woring out. It is easy to so, you do it at home for a few minutes a day. It works well for people who are busy with "real life." The reality is that you often only have a few minutes to get a workout in, and if you have this in your home odds are you will use it.

Here are some of the shoulder building exercises you can do with the Total Gym.  By the way, we highly recommend you also watch our video on strengthening your back muscles using the Total Gym as these two muscle groups are intimately connected.  Several of these are featured in our review video:

Shoulder Press (Military Press)- This is probably the most basic and fundamental shoulder building exercise where you simply press weight (dumb bells or a barbell) over your head. The Total Gym XLS

actually offers a unique (and fun believe it or not) way to do the shoulder press.  It’s featured in our video.
 
Front Shoulder Raise/Side Shoulder Raise- Again, very basic but highly effective shoulder building exercises.  Using the Total Gym XLS pulley system, you lift your arms straight forward or to the side, depending on how you want to work you shoulder muscles.
 
Serve-  A basic Pilates exercise that that works other arm muscles as well.
 
Inverted Front Shoulder Raise/Inverted Side Shoulder Raise (aka: Inverted Iron Cross)- Different variations of the above while lying down on the Total Gym XLS glideboard. It’s easy to quickly find the variations that best suit you.   
 
Upright Row- This very effectively works the shoulders and upper back muscles.