The Coolest Shoulder Exercise Ever

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Did you know that there is one exercise that targets your front delt, your middle delt, and your rear delt all at the same time? If you didn't, I'm going to give you a couple seconds to think about what it might look like or what it could be.

[00:00:16][music] [music] Okay, so maybe you thought about it, but this is what it looks like. And by the way, let me just describe the purpose of this video. The purpose of this video is not for me to be like, "Hey bro," or "Hey brah, go do this exercise, although you absolutely can. And to be honest, it's pretty fun to do." Um, it's actually more to teach a kind of fundamental lesson about biomechanics because I think a lot of people are confused about really how muscle recruitment works. And this one exercise I sort of just was playing around with and came up with for this video to demonstrate a principle of biomechanics which is really just the principle of torque. Now for those of you who don't know what torque is, torque is basically just uh the rotational equivalent of force. So a force is basically like a linear push or a pull, right? When you see a cable going down in a straight line [snorts] um when someone's doing an exercise, that's like what a force direction looks like. A torque is basically what that force does to the moving joints. So in the case of say a cable curl, the cable is providing a force at the hand which pulls the hand downward like it which pulls the elbow open which creates a torque around the elbow which the biceps have to resist.

[00:01:36]So our muscles are torque resistors or thought differently torque producers.

[00:01:42]And so when we're thinking about the physics of any exercise and what an exercise trains and what the resistance profile of an exercise is, all of that is ultimately going to come back to this concept of torque. And this is going to be a really cool way to sort of demonstrate it. Okay, so let me tell you why. So here's the exercise. I'll just let it play for um for a second. And you can see that it's basically like uh we'll call it a windshield wiper or something like that. A dumbbell windshield wiper. We'll we'll we'll coin it here for a sec. I don't know if I've seen anyone uh do this, although I'm sure someone has. Um, and basically the the the cool thing about this exercise is that when you are moving the dumbbell overhead uh versus down by your side, you are working completely different muscles in different phases of the motion. And this is because why the torque of the exercise is changing every single rep and every single iteration that you choose to go backward and forward here. So, so let's sort of break this down piece by piece and go over what's actually happening. All right.

[00:02:42]So, when my hand and my arm go downward in this direction, and they're kind of in this what I'll call half of the motion, right before my arm gets perpendicular to the ground, we're in the left half of the windshield wiper.

[00:02:54]We're going to just refer to it as my middle delt and my front delt are going to have a really high capacity to move the dumbbell upward, right? Those are pretty much the only muscles that are going to be able to raise the arm in that path. Why? Well, because much like the biceps curl we talked about earlier, when the dumbbell is over here, the dumbbell is creating a force that is downward toward the ground. Right? If we look at it sort of higher up in the phase right here, the dumbbell right here is providing a force downward toward the ground. And what both of these things are doing right here is they are creating a torque around the shoulder that's trying to rotate the shoulder into the body this way. Okay?

[00:03:34]So that is what the torque is in this case. This on a more technical level is known as an adduction torque against which we create shoulder abduction.

[00:03:44]Okay. And shoulder abduction in this case depending on how the upper arm is rotated can be done by the middle delt and also by the front delt. Okay. So this first half of the motion there is a torque that is trying to pull the arm this way against which we have to contract muscles that pull this way. So this bottom half, this left half of the windshield wiper is a torque situation is a torque scenario that requires the middle and the front delt to be able to raise. It's kind of like a behind the back raise, right? Middle and front delt hybrid. But what happens the minute that we pass this sort of middle point, right, where my arm is perpendicular to to the floor down here, what happens is this top half of the motion, right? This right um half, this right half of the windshield wiper, now the torque flips.

[00:04:32]The same force now creates a totally different outcome, a totally different torque. Even though the dumbbell didn't change, the dumbbell is still the dumbbell. The dumbbell is still applying a force to my hand. But now what happens when my arm goes to this side of the body is that the dumbbell now influences my shoulder joint completely differently.

[00:04:54]Okay. So again, here's that halfway point. Now the dumbbell is pulling downward and this way. It's pulling my arm downward and this way. So again, the force the same same dumbbell, not different. Same grip in my hand, right?

[00:05:07]All that's happening now though is the influence on my shoulder joint has flipped. So, the influence of my shoulder joint now is creating what I will call in this case a flexion moment.

[00:05:16]You could also say it's a flexion adduction moment because I'm kind of turned and that's a fancy way to say it's pulling my biceps kind of toward like my neck area. It's like backward um but also kind of inward toward my body.

[00:05:28]And when this dumbbell is pulling this way and it's pulling it's rotating my arm that way with the torque in that direction, I have to reverse action that much like I did with my middle delta and my front delt in the first half with muscles. now on the opposite side of the joint because I'm no longer creating a torque against that load this way. I'm actually doing it in the opposite direction this way. So now what I need to do is I need to recruit muscles that are over here that can pull the arm the upper arm this way which could include a variety of different muscles if my arm were say externally rotated like elbow facing kind of away from me. I could do this with my rear delt. So this is why I said in the beginning of the video you can raise upward front delt and and middle delt. And then if I were to actually do this super intentionally, I could rotate my arm so that my elbow is then pointing down and I could use my rear delt to get me out of the bottom.

[00:06:18]So you could literally work two opposite sides of a joint with a single exercise.

[00:06:22]Um, you know, literally antagonistic muscles, the front delts and the rear delts simply because the torque has changed. Now if my upper arm isn't sort of externally rotated in that position, what could happen is I could use say my Terry's major. I could use uh my lats. I could use even my lower chest. If you think about where the lower chest is pulling, it's kind of pulling in that direction. So, there are all these muscles that can be utilized in this opposite direction. Again, depending on where your upper arm is rotated. Um, but it's such a cool awesome thing to me that again, this right half and this left half are completely different joint actions that are loaded. And again, it's not because the dumbbell did anything different really other than just flipping which side uh it was pulling the bone. So ultimately if you want to understand muscle recruitment you need to not just look at forces you need to look at what torques those forces are creating what what rotational elements um to the involved joints the the force is creating and so a really helpful heristic a really helpful question that I will um teach students who I who I work with is something like okay if you just think about in what direction is this force pulling this bone what what muscles would need to resist that right so when the when the dumbbell is pulling the arm this way, the question is, well, what direction is it pulling the bones?

[00:07:41]Well, it's pulling all these bones this way. So, what muscles would need to pull the arm in this direction, right?

[00:07:47]Whereas, when the the dumbbell is on the other side and I'm now doing a raise, the question is, well, what direction is this pulling the bones? It's pulling the bones this way. So, which muscles have to pull the arm in the opposite direction? So, that's a helpful heristic question. Now I want to show another sort of iteration of this which is now okay. So here's a cable machine and here is that cable pulling this way. So this is what I was talking about is just a line of force. Now now this line of force much like in the first half of the windshield wiper we were just talking about is still now that even though my arm is overhead is pulling my arm in this direction. Okay. But here's the cool thing about this too.

[00:08:26]If for instance this cable is really really really light. Let's say it's lighter than uh just the weight of my arm. Well, even though the cable is pulling in this force direction, right?

[00:08:39]If the weight of my arm which is pulling in this direction is heavier than the the the torque that the cable is creating this way. Well, then what we would call the net torque is still in this direction. So, what does that mean in simple terms? In simple terms, there's a force uh from the cable that is pulling this way. That cable is trying to rotate my arm downward like this. Right? And I'll just cuz I haven't played it. Right? Here's I'm literally just doing a raise.

[00:09:09]Sorry, I didn't play that earlier, but uh here we are. So, I'm just doing a raise and I'm lying sideways. Right? So, the cable is pulling my arm downward in this direction, right? But the weight of my whole arm is pulling itself down in this direction. Right? You all know if you lay down and you just flop your arm overhead, your arm falls in that direction. So if the torque of the cable applied at this distance is less than the torque of the weight of my arm pulling in this direction, well then the net torque strangely is still actually pulling my arm this way. Again, if if if torque of arm exceeds torque of cable on shoulder, well, what that means is that I'm having to essentially do the the equivalent of the windshield wiper on this half where the actual load I'm resisting is this way. Um, so I have to create, you know, shoulder extension, adduction, whatever we're calling that.

[00:10:06]So, that can be a complicated one, right? Because depending on the load of this cable, I might be using completely different muscles. Now, in this case and in most cases when you're doing this kind of raise, um even a relatively light load is enough to to make this just like a traditional lateral raise, right? Where even though the the top is actually um sort of de loed relative to um the bottom, right? Because again, my upper arm is assisting me here with this torque and then in the bottom position, it is resisting me here because now my arm is over here and now my arm is falling in this direction. Right? Even though that dynamic is is is changing like we talked about earlier, the net torque here just even with a light cable load was still always always pulling me more proportionately in this direction.

[00:10:51]And so even though my arm is overhead and even though the weight of my arm is adding to that torque in that direction and it's essentially resisting the cable along with me, um this was still like a middle delt type of thing, a front delt type of thing for me. Now, if we go in the opposite direction, right, and imagine I'm just doing this pullover exercise, right? The same thing could apply, right? Like if I were using a What am I doing here?

[00:11:16]Okay, Ben, that was weird. Um, okay. If I'm doing like a [laughter] if I'm doing like a pullover motion, okay, and Ben will eventually get set up. Okay, now we can think about this in opposite terms.

[00:11:28]Okay, so now the cable is pulling me this way the whole time. We know that unlike the dumbbell, it's not flipping flopping based on the position of my arm. It's always going to be pulling me in this direction, which is kind of a cool feature of cables in general, right? Which is basically like they're always going to be pulling in the same direction, unlike dumbbells. Dumbbells are really subject to um you know, forces of acceleration. They get tossed much more easily than cable stacks, which just kind of wiggle in the stack.

[00:11:52]And so that, you know, dumbbells go in the direction that you're moving.

[00:11:55]Dumbbells also can can totally change their influence on on uh your joints throughout a range of motion like we just talked about. Whereas cables are always pulling in the same direction. So the cable here is always pulling me this way. Again, that question, where are my bones being rotated? Well, my bones are being rotated this way. So I have to resist with the stuff that we talked about earlier. Terry's major lower packs, maybe some lats, maybe some rear delts depending on how the upper arm is oriented. Cool. But if we get to a position over here toward the bottom, right, imagine the torque of this cable now is doing this. So it's still trying to to some degree rotate us in this direction. Well, now again, the the resistance of the cable and the resistance of my arm falling downward due to gravity are resisting each other.

[00:12:38]So the weight of my arm is contributing to it's it's helping me in this position which again if this cable is light enough might mean that the net torque the battle between this cable and my arm falling is actually now in favor of my upper arm when my upper arm is falling this way and now I have to almost raise it up like I'm doing a lateral raise.

[00:12:55]Now again in this case and in many instances that's that's rarely going to happen. But this kind of dynamic here where the arm is falling in either direction and it can be assisting you is actually a really cool tool. Again, if you understand these torque concepts to utilize in your training, because if you're doing a lateral raise like this, right, and you understand some stuff about torque, the first thing you'll understand is that the hardest part of this motion from the perspective of the cable is going to be around 90°. So, if I can pause it right here, the influence of this cable creating torque around my shoulder is highest right here, right?

[00:13:30]And the cable's resistance will actually drop off over here, right? Because it it actually gets close much closer to the joint. And in addition to it getting closer to the joint, my arm is also falling in this direction, it's also assisting me. And so the top position, I can change the resistance in that top position by angling my body differently and also by angling the cable differently. because both those things again all back to the central concept um influence the torque around the shoulder joint. So I wanted to use this example because it's just a cool example and it can explain so many things. Please if you have questions join my free community uh because in my free community I answer questions related to these topics all day every day. Uh and you can as I said or as I implied join for free below. So I hope you enjoyed this video everyone. I hope you enjoyed these concepts. I hope this gets you thinking a little bit and uh I will see you all in the next