20 Minute Arms and Shoulders Workout with Dumbbells

20 Minute Arms and Shoulders Workout with Dumbbells is short but intense upper body workout. I love the staple exercise–shoulder press with a slow lowering/eccentric phase. I have recently (since completing the 7 Week Rotation I created) increased the weight I use for shoulder press so it was a challenge for me to stick with those 18 pound dumbbells every time we return to to it in the course of the workout (5 times). But I did! Though I won’t lie, the last two times I was struggling but I performed the exercise for the entire 40 seconds and with good form. This is a short workout so today I paired it with Caroline’s Tempo Back and Bicep Workout for an excellent and thorough upper body workout.

All of the exercises in this workout are done interval style: 40 seconds of work followed by 20 seconds of rest. There is a timer in the upper left hand side of the screen counting down your intervals and recoveries. During the recovery Caroline previews the next exercise. There is also a little bar at the bottom of the screen that counts down the entire workout time as a percentage

20 Minute Arms and Shoulders Workout with Dumbbells is 23:56 minutes; one minute intro, no warm up and 2:10 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and fitness mat. Caroline is using 9kg/19.8 pounds and 6kg/13.2 pounds dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.

1. Shoulder press (arms are in goalpost) (18# DBs)
2. Lateral raise (straight arm side raise) (9# DBs)
3. Partial lateral raise (only raise DBs half way) (9# DBs)
4. Repeat #2
5. Repeat #1
6. Bent over rear delt fly (8# DBs)
7. Partial bent over rear delt fly (only raise the DBs halfway) (8# DBs)
8. Repeat #6
9. Repeat #1
10. Skull crushers (11# DBs)
11. Shoulder crushers (similar to a tricep press but rather than keeping DBs level, when you lower the DBs, angle them so one end of DBs tap shoulders) (11# DBs)
12. Repeat #10
13. Repeat #1
14. Hammer curls (16.5# DBs)
15. Palms up partial curls (with elbows kept close to sides and palms facing the ceiling, raise DBs halfway into bicep curl, partially lower DBs then return to halfway raise) (13# DBs)
16. Repeat #14
17. Repeat #1

Finisher: (3 minutes–each exercise below is done for 60 seconds)

1. Cobra push up
2. Tricep push ups
3. Repeat #1

For more info on Caroline Girvan’s workouts and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.