You can do shoulder exercises to lose arm fat, but these workouts help in toning the muscle group and not in burning fat.
Before understanding which exercises help the most in this regard, it’s important to know the fat loss process.
Can You Do Shoulder Exercises to Lose Fat?
Regardless of which workout or exercise you do, you cannot spot-reduce fat. Whenever you work out, you lose fat from all over the body. That means when your body burns calories, it’s burning the stored calories and not cutting fat from a particular region.
So when you focus on exercises to lose arm fat, you’ll be toning the shoulder muscles as you lose fat.
Best Shoulder Exercises
Here are five shoulder exercises that can help you tone your muscles as your body burns more calories to lose fat.
1) Shoulder Press
One of the best compound exercises to do for shoulders are barbell presses and dumbbell presses.
The shoulder press focuses on the anterior and the lateral deltoid. You need to maintain a strong muscle-mind connection to engage the correct muscles. As it’s a compound movement, the secondary muscle group that engages with this exercise is the triceps.
2) Arnold Press
This is one of the exercises to lose arm fat and tone muscles. It's named after renowned bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This exercise focuses on the anterior and lateral deltoids. It also allows you to work on your forearms, as you rotate them halfway through the exercise. Be careful not to turn the dumbbell using your wrist, as that could lead to injury.
3) Front Raise
Front raises are a common shoulder exercise but are extremely effective. You can do this exercise using dumbbells, barbells, or even cables.
This exercise works on the anterior deltoids and allows you to build a round shoulder for a better physical appearance. If you want to, you can begin with cables using a light weight, and move to dumbbells as you become stronger.
4) Lateral Raise
Like front raises, lateral raises work on the lateral deltoids.
If you want to, you can do this as a unilateral exercise using cables, and fix any strength or muscle imbalance between the two shoulder muscles. During lateral raises, the idea is to lift from the elbows and not engage the forearm.
5) Reverse Dumbbell Flye
An important part of the shoulder muscles are the rear delts. When you’re focusing on shoulder exercises to lose fat and tone muscles, it’s important to hit all three muscle heads.
You can do bent-over reverse dumbbell flyes or incline bench reverse flyes. It’s essential that you engage the rear delts, and squeeze your shoulder blades during this exercise.
Bottom Line
If your goal is to lose weight and cut fat, you can only achieve that if you’re in a calorie deficit. Otherwise, you will not be able to lose weight. Moreover, hydration and sleep are extremely important when you’re in the process of losing weight and allowing the muscles to recover.