Calisthenics Shoulder Workout: 3 Workout Routines To Build Rock Muscles

If you are looking for a calisthenics shoulder workout, you are in the right place.

With calisthenics, it is pretty difficult to target the shoulders without engaging the chest and back muscles. However, in this workout, I will try to help you target the shoulder muscles as much as possible and, as a bonus, pave the way towards the handstand push-up.

Keep reading to find:

In this article, I will assume that you have a base calisthenics strength.

If you are a total beginner, then splitting your workouts into muscle groups is less than ideal for you. Therefore, I recommend you to check the calisthenics beginner workout article.

Now for the calisthenics shoulder workout:

Level 1 - Beginner

Level 2 - Intermediate

Level 3 - Advanced

For the back to wall handstand push-up you will be accumulating 30 reps in total, across as many sets as needed, with at most 2 minutes of rest between sets.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t do the exercises with perfect form, you will not get the full muscle building benefits of this calisthenics shoulder workout.

If you want to know how to do a particular exercise, just press on its name below:

Pike push-up

The pike push-up is one of the best calisthenics shoulder exercises. It is a precursor to the handstand push-up, and a great muscle building exercise.

The difficulty of the pike push-up can be changed by elevating your legs on a surface, or elevating both your legs and arms to increase the range of motion of the exercise.

To correctly do a pike push-up:

Decline push-up

The decline push-up is one of the easiest calisthenics shoulder exercises. Being so easy, it allows you to accumulate a lot of volume in your workout.

The intensity of the exercise depends on the degree of elevation.

The higher your legs are, the more difficult the exercise.

However, there is a point of diminishing returns. The higher you lift your legs, the more difficult it will be to keep proper form of the exercise.

To correctly do a decline push-up:

Dip

The bodyweight dip is a compound exercise which will mainly work your shoulders, chest, and triceps.

What makes the bodyweight dip such a good choice is the ability to heavily overload the shoulders. Once you get used to dips, you will be able to dip half your bodyweight in extra weight without much effort.

To correctly do a dip:

Side delt plank raise

With this exercise you will be able to target the lateral deltoid using only your bodyweight.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many calisthenics shoulder exercises for the lateral deltoid. However, this one is so effective that you won’t need other exercises.

To correctly do the side let plank raise:

Bw. rear delt fly

The bodyweight rear delt fly is one of the best options to target your posterior deltoids with no equipment whatsoever.

If you find the floor variation too difficult, you can do the exercise on the wall and the intensity will decrease considerably.

To correctly do the bodyweight rear delt fly:

Elevated pike push-up

The elevated pike push-up is the progression following the pike push-up.

With this progression, your hips will be stacked above your shoulders, elbows, and wrists. The more elevated your legs are, the more difficult the exercise will be.

To correctly do the elevated pike push-up:

Pseudo planche push-up

The pseudo planche push-up will strengthen the front of your shoulders, and pave the way for the planche and the planche push-up.

What I love about the pseudo planche push-up in a calisthenics shoulder workout is that you can easily increase or decrease its intensity by leaning forward more or less.

To correctly do the pseudo planche push-up:

Elevated pike shrug

The elevated pike shrug will not necessarily build muscle in your shoulders, as much as it will build strength, stability, and endurance.

If you find this variation too difficult, simply hold the shrug instead of doing it for reps.

To correctly do the elevated pike shrug:

Ring rear delt fly

The ring rear delt fly is the best way to target your shoulder muscles with calisthenics.

As the name suggests, this exercise will target the posterior part of your shoulder. Its intensity can be changed by changing your angle in relation to the ground. The closer you are to the ground - i.e. the further back you lean - the more difficult the exercise will be.

To correctly do the ring rear delt fly:

BTW handstand push-up

In this workout I chose to give you the back to wall variation of the handstand push-up, instead of the face to wall one, so that you can accumulate more volume in your shoulders.

If you don’t like this variation, you can play around with the face to wall variation instead.

To correctly do the back to wall handstand push-up:

Tuck planche push-up

The tuck planche push-up is a difficult push-up variation, where your arms are holding the weight of your entire body, and your knees are close to your chest.

Even though difficult, the tuck planche is still an easy variation.

This exercise will open up the possibility for more difficult variations, like the advanced tuck planche push-up, straddle planche push-up, and full planche push-up.

To correctly do the tuck planche push-up:

Handstand shoulder tap

The handstand shoulder tap is a good addition to your calisthenics shoulder workout to build balance, shoulder strength, and control of your body overall.

If you find this exercise too difficult, do it in an elevated pike position.

To correctly do the handstand shoulder tap:

Ring dip

If you don’t want to do weighted calisthenics and add weight to your dip, then the ring dip is the next best choice.

Just like the bodyweight dip, the ring variation will target the chest, shoulders, and triceps. However, there is an element of instability that will make this variation considerably more challenging than the regular variation.

To correctly do a ring dip:

Now that you have the calisthenics shoulder workout and also know how to do the exercises, let’s have a look at the shoulder muscles and their functions.

The shoulder is comprised of three heads:

These heads have different functions and are targeted by different movement patterns.

Anterior deltoid

The anterior fibers of the deltoid assist the chest muscles in performing shoulder flexion, or lifting your arm from a resting position to straight above your head. Another function of the anterior deltoid, in conjunction with multiple other muscle groups, is external rotation of the arm.

In the context of calisthenics, having developed anterior deltoid muscles is important for the following exercises:

And the best way to target this muscle is with overhead exercises, or exercises where you shift your weight forward:

Lateral deltoid

The lateral fibers of the deltoid have the function of performing shoulder abduction, which means moving the arm away from the body, to the side.

Unfortunately, the calisthenics shoulder exercises that can target these fibers are pretty limited, since there are not many exercises in calisthenics where you move your arm away from the body.

This is why I recommend using weight for this head of the shoulder.

Posterior deltoid

The posterior fibers of the shoulder assist the latissimus dorsi muscle to extend the shoulder, which is the movement of moving the arms and sticking them behind you.

In the context of calisthenics, the posterior (or rear) deltoid is important for the following exercises:

And the best way to target it is through:

At the end of a previous article regarding calisthenics vs weights, I emphasized the importance of not sticking to one particular style of training, but actually mixing the two.

As far as the shoulders are concerned, I feel the same.

This is how adding weights to your calisthenics shoulder workout can benefit your progress:

You will find that progress is faster, more stable, and more enjoyable with calisthenics if you don’t get stuck in dogma surrounding bodyweight exercises.

Adding weights can provide much needed assistance.

In this article, I have given you a calisthenics shoulder workout split in three levels of difficulty.

Furthermore, you have access to guides on how to do each of the exercises in the routine, to ensure that you train with perfect form for optimal results.

Lastly, I have shared with you my two cents in regards to adding weights to your shoulder workout, and given you a few examples of how that will help you achieve your goals faster.

All that is left for you to do is get started.

Over to you.