How to get wider shoulders? With so many shoulder exercises out there, it’s hard to know which ones actually work. But the truth is, you’re probably doing too many and focusing on the wrong areas. In fact, after cutting out all the fluff from my shoulder workout and focusing on just 2 sciencebacked exercises that target my side delts, my shoulders grew bigger and wider than they’ve ever been. And with the right form, you too will achieve the broad shoulders of your dreams.

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What makes shoulders look wide and gives you that classic Vcomes down to just one main region. The side delts. But most people do way too much pressing exercises. Do this for long enough, and your shoulders will become overdeveloped in the front, lacking the width that truly makes them stand out. Fixing this imbalance is simple. It just requires a shift in focus.

As for what exercises to focus on, the best option is lateral raises. But not all lateral raises are created equal. Take dumbbell lateral raises, for example. They challenge your delts most at the top. Ironically, this is where your delts are weakest. As a result, you’re forced to use lighter weights than they can really handle. But that’s not the only downside: there’s growing evidence that exercises providing a greater stretch, and challenging your muscles in that stretched position, may lead to better growth. Dumbbell lateral raises don’t do either of those. So, how do we fix this? Well, this brings us to exercise 1 of our shoulder exercises.

First, lock your elbow into your side and rotate your arm outward. Where your arm naturally stops is the optimal arm path for lateral raises. This means the “best” lateral raise is one where your arm can move behind your body to maximize the stretch. Cables are the perfect tool for this. By setting the cable at a slightly raised position rather than at the very bottom, you can immediately shift the challenge to the beginning of the movement where your side delts are the most stretched. You can do this singlearm or doublearm, depending on your preference. That said, if you’re a beginner, this exercise might feel a bit tricky to master in your shoulder workout, especially the doublearm version.

Don’t worry. You have other options. One option is to first do a normal set of dumbbell lateral raises. Then, immediately after you can’t do anymore full reps, grab a pair of 5lb heavier dumbbells and perform partial reps just in the bottom range. Another option is to try the “leanin” dumbbell lateral raise.

While the first exercise focused on the main part of your side delt, there’s more to your shoulders than meets the eye. Muscle activation research suggests that your shoulders might have up to 7 different heads, all of which can be independently activated by your nervous system. This means that small adjustments to your lateral raise technique can work areas of your side delts that you’ve probably never hit before.

One area, in particular, that often gets neglected is the rear portion of the side delt. So how do you target it? So, first, for cables, start by setting the cable at wrist height. Grab the cable in front of your arm. Next, take a few steps to the side and rotate your body about 45 degrees toward the cable. From here, raise your arm in a straight line away from the cable.

As for the dumbbell version, first set up a bench just one notch down from vertical. Support your chest against the bench, let your arms hang straight down in front of you, and then raise them out to your sides.

But before you jump into these 2 exercises in your haste to build broad shoulders, there’s one key principle you need to apply. A small increase, like 5 lbs on dumbbells or moving a pin down on cables, can be the equivalent of adding 40 lbs to your bench press. So when you think you’re ready to increase the weights, as soon as you do, your form breaks down. Leaving you stuck doing the same weights forever.

But here’s the good news: research shows you can build muscle either by adding more weight or by doing more reps. This opens up a smarter way to progress. Here’s what I do. I stick to a broad rep range of 1020 reps. Once I can perform at least 15 controlled reps across all my sets, I’ll bump up the weight. But when I’m using cables, where even one pin heavier can be too much, I’ll use a simple hack—grabbing a 5 lb or even a 2.5 lb plate and sticking the pin through it to make much smaller jumps.

Lastly, the final piece of learning how to get wider shoulders is understanding the best way to program these 2 exercises into your workout routine. I’d suggest doing 45 sets of each but splitting them up across different days to give your delts enough recovery time before hitting them again.