This is a workout from Caroline Girvan‘s CGX app. For more info on Caroline’s App, see the CGX App page. Though the title implies this workout is rear delt focused it actually works your entire shoulder area and very nicely. I feel like Caroline hits all of the individual shoulder muscle groups in a balanced way. This is a great workout to tack onto the end of another upper body strength workout. I did her CGXmas Day 18: Upper Body Supersets first then finished with this. This has a longer than normal stretch, which is what makes it really nice to end a workout with. Even Caroline’s longer upper body workouts generally have very short stretches but she spends 3:30 minutes stretching out your upper body at the end of this workout. That is a bonus for me.
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 right 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.
Rear Delt Directed Shoulders is 25:28 minutes (this time does not include the optional 5:52 minute warm up or the 2:25 minute intro, also optional) with a 3:30 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and a fitness mat. Caroline is using 10kg/22 pound and 4kg/8.8 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.
- Rear delt fly (palms facing in) (bent over w/ back flat, palms face each other) (8# DBs)
- Shoulder press (arms in goal post) (22.5# DBs)
- Repeat #1 & 2
- Rear delt fly (palms facing behind) (same as #1 but palms face behind you) (8# DBs)
- Arnold press (20# DBs)
- Repeat #4 & 5
- x1 arm rear delt fly (palm facing in) (one 10# DBs)
- Repeat #7 on other arm
- Lateral raise (9# DBs)
- Repeat #7-9
- x1 arm rear fly (palm facing behind) (one 10# DB)
- Repeat #11 on other arm
- Arc raise (straight arm front raise, palms face each other, at top of raise, arc ends of DBs towards each other so DBs almost tap) (8# DBs)
- Repeat #11-13
Finisher: (2 minutes; each exercise is done for 30 seconds w/ no rest/recoveries)
- Lateral raise (done at a brisk pace) (8# DBs)
- Rear delt fly (bent over w/ back flat, palms face each other) (8# DBs)
- Partial laterals (same as #1 but only lift arms/DBs halfway) (8# DBs)
- Partial rear flys (same as #2 but only raise arms/DBs halfway) (8# DBs)
