IRON Series 30 Min Shoulder Workout – Compound & Isolation | 15

30 Min Shoulder Workout – Compound & Isolation is Day 15 in Caroline Girvan‘s Iron Series. This was a shoulder burner! I tried to lift heavier for everything in this workout but I ended up dropping to lighter weights several times, and by the end of the workout I was using my 8 pound dumbbells exclusively while wondering if I would need to grab my 6 pound dumbbells (I didn’t). My shoulders definitely feel very well worked! I still did well though; I lifted heavier for several of the exercises, even if on some of them I dropped to a lighter dumbbell for the second set. Caroline was definitely burning out, too. On the partial lateral raises she looked like she went to her happy place a few times to get through the set! I used one of Heather Robertson‘s Daily 10 workouts as a finisher, her Day 23 Kickboxing Tabata Workout. That was a great finisher after doing shoulder work. Not only did it give me a nice burst of cardio but it also continued giving my shoulders some additional work with all of the weighted punches.

All of the exercises in this workout are done interval style: 60 seconds of work followed by 30 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.

30 Min Shoulder Workout – Compound & Isolation is 35:15 minutes; 2:10 minute intro, no warm up and 2:20 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells, a chair and a fitness mat. Caroline is using 12.5kg/27.6 pound and 4kg/8.8 pound dumbbells The weights listed below are what I used.

1. Seated shoulder press (arms in goal post) (22.5# DBs)
2. Repeat #1 two more times (20# DBs)
3. Frontal raise (hold one DB in both hands) (one 20# DB)
4. Repeat #3 two more times
5. Single arm bent over rear delt fly (one 10# DB)
6. Repeat #5 on other arm
7. Repeat #5 & 6
8. Double arm lateral raise (10# DBs)
9. Repeat #8
10. Hammer frontal raise (double arm front raise, palms face each other) (9# DBs)
11. Repeat #10
12. Rear delt partial raises (bent over rear delt flys, only raise arms halfway) (8# DBs)
13. Repeat #12
14. Lateral partial raise (double arm side raises, only raise arms halfway) (8# DBs)
15. Repeat #14
16. Arc raise (straight arm front raise to the front with palms facing each other, at top of lift when DBs are at shoulder level, arc top ends of DBs toward each other so that ends of DBs almost touch) (8# DBs)
17. Repeat #16

Finisher: One double arm side raise + one double arm front raise + one double arm overhead press (repeat this combo for 60 seconds) (8# DBs)

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