maratoolPower Partials
How to do the power partials
- Stand up with your torso upright and a dumbbell on each hand being held at arms length. The elbows should be close to the torso.
- The palms of the hands should be facing your torso. Your feet should be about shoulder width apart. This will be your starting position.
- Keeping your arms straight and the torso stationary, lift the weights out to your sides until they are about shoulder level height while exhaling.
- Feel the contraction for a second and begin to lower the weights back down to the starting position while inhaling. Tip: Keep the palms facing down with the little finger slightly higher while lifting and lowering the weights as it will concentrate the stress on your shoulders mainly.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.
Every exercise for:Shoulders
How this movement works
One joint moves, and it moves the load away from the body. With nothing recruited to assist, the target muscle reaches its own limit rather than the limit of the weakest link in a chain — which makes this useful for adding volume after the heavy compound work, not for opening a session.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
Dumbbells let each side work on its own, surfacing a strength difference between limbs that a barbell would quietly cover for, and leaving the wrist free to rotate through the movement.
Every exercise using:Dumbbell
These train the shoulders too, using equipment this one does not:
- Push Press - Behind the Neckbarbell
- Return Push from Stancemedicine ball
- Reverse Machine Flyesmachine
- Seated Cable Shoulder Presscable
- Seated Front Deltoidbody only
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 74 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.