Toned shoulders challenge

Women are often more interested in abs and legs workouts, but training our upper bodies is important too. Apart from the fact that having upper body strength is useful in everyday life and often helps prevent back injury, toned shoulders, arms and chest look good.  Our shoulder muscles work in two ways.  They perform lots of lifting, pushing and pulling actions and also stabilise our shoulder blades while other muscles are performing actions.  The 3 exercises in this challenge work the shoulder muscles in different ways, for best results in improving strength and tone.

Before you start the toned shoulders challenge

You’ll need some hand weights for the exercises to be effective.  2lb or 4lb (1kg or 2kg) should be challenging enough for anyone who doesn’t do regular strength training.

You should warm your shoulders up before using the weights with arm circles (see below).

Please make sure you’ve also read the safety information here.

The chart gives you the number of reps you should do of the exercises each day.  You can download a printable copy of the chart by using the form at the end.

Progressing on from the challenge

Once you’ve finished the challenge, you could try some of the other challenges suggested below, or the 4 week arm and chest workout. Alternatively, once you get to the 20 reps of everything at the end of the challenge, you could continue to do these reps 3 times a week and try to increase your weights every few weeks.

Warm up

Before you start, warm up your shoulders with few arm circles. Stand with your feet about hip distance and then rotate your arms all the way round in front of your body. Do 3-5 in both inward and outward directions.

The exercises

#1 How to do the shoulder press

1. Stand with your feet slightly wider than hip distance.
2. Start with your elbows bent and hands either side of your shoulders, palms facing forwards.
3. Extend your elbows, lifting the weights above your head.
4. When your arms are straight, reverse the movement and bring your hands to the starting position.

#2 How to do the forward raise

1. Stand with your feet slightly wider than hip distance.
2. Start with your arms straight by your side, palms facing inwards.
3. Keeping your arms straight, lift the weights in front of your body up to shoulder height.
4. When your arms are horizontal, stop and lower back down to the starting position.

#3 How to do the dumbbell side raise

1. Stand with your feet slightly wider than hip distance.
2. Start with your arms straight by your side, palms facing inwards.
3. Keeping your arms straight, lift the weights out to the side.
4. When your arms are horizontal, stop and lower back down to the starting position.

Daily exercise reps

Get the toned shoulders challenge PDF

Sign up for My Fitness Planner updates and get a link to a free printable PDF of this workout e-mailed to you:

After you sign up, you’ll get 2 e-mails, one will have a link to your printable download and the other will be a welcome e-mail.

If the e-mails haven’t turned up within a few minutes, please check your junk folder, as some service providers have very strict filters.

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