Growing and sculpting three-dimensional shoulders is a challenge even for Pro bodybuilders. In a recent YouTube video, shared on June 23, 2025, Jared Feather joined Dr. Mike Israetel to break down his top five favorite exercises for building huge delts.
Feather, alongside Dr. Israetel, has helped grow the Renaissance Periodization YouTube channel to incredible heights. It caters to over 3.7 million subscribers, where the duo unpack popular workout methods and training techniques to help anyone accelerate their gains inside the gym.
Feather is more than just an IFBB Pro. He’s had a hand in helping top-tier talents build more complete physiques, including Men’s Open star Nick Walker, who recently secured gold at the 2025 New York Pro competition. Below, Feather detailed how to best capitalize on these five exercises for bigger shoulders.
Pro Bodybuilder Jared Feather Breaks Down His Top 5 Exercises for Well-Rounded Delts
Find the exercises featured in his YouTube video below:
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- Free Motion Front Raise
- Cable Upright Row
- Freemotion Y-Raise
- Dumbbell Lateral Raise
- Cable Face Pull
Free Motion Front Raise
His go-to exercise to tax the front delts is the free motion front raise. He favors this movement because lifters start with the cables behind them, thus allowing for a deeper stretch and enhanced range of motion.
“It’s an amazing front delt exercise,” he shared. “If somebody has weak front delts, the only way I really tend to program their front delt training is with more isolated variations of the front delt.”
“The free motion station is the one front delt exercise I’ll put on this list simply for the fact that when you start with the cables behind you, you get way more of a stretch.”
Cable Upright Row
Feather credits the cable upright row as another staple exercise that offers great delt and trap involvement. This can be an alternative for people who suffer from elbow pain during other variations like machine lateral raises and dumbbell lateral raises.
“A lot of people say they don’t like them, but they’re an amazing lateral delt exercise. Great trap involvement as well. Oftentimes, people run into a situation where they do start to train with lots of frequency for the lateral delts.
If you’re doing a lot of lateral delt variations, machine lateral raises, dumbbell lateral raises, especially, some people tend to get issues with their elbows because you’re always holding the dumbbell and the machine is out here, especially if you don’t have cuffs.”
Free Motion Y-Raise
An ‘all-time favorite,’ Feather explained that the free motion Y-raise lets the lifter include various intensifiers like lengthened partials. He emphasized that this movement creates a huge stretch across the body.
“This is probably one of my all-time favorites,” said Feather. “This is a variation you can include a lot of intensity techniques with, like lengthened partials.
It takes a little stress of the elbows because you can, in fact, use the cuffs again. The Y-raise is a really bad ass exercise and there are all kinds of different ones you can do. The biggest thing in a Y-raise generally is getting that huge stretch across the body.”
Dumbbell Lateral Raise
A classic for delt-building, he shared why dumbbell lateral raises deserved a spot on his top-five list:
“I have kept lateral raises with the dumbbell in for a very long time unless I’m having some sort of elbow issues. There are tons of variations you can do that include just doing a regular dumbbell lateral raise, full range of motion, all the way up, super ROM laterals, pauses, you can even do a variation where you keep tension on them and don’t go all the way down.”
Cable Facepull
When performing the facepull, he said to keep the cables at eye level, and shared that he often includes these with myo-reps or supersets.
“You’ll notice I’m at eye level here. This variation is cool because most people don’t have weak rear delts. You get a lot of rear delt training with your back and similar to the first variation with front delts, you can modify this such that you’re getting the rear delt hit really well, especially on the stretch.”
“I like this variation for myo-reps and supersets. So, doing the face pull this way and then going into a superset where you’re doing a regular face pull can really fry the rear delts a ton.”
Whether it’s specific exercises to induce growth or a deep dive into the most effective training splits around, Feather and Dr. Israetel aim to provide fans with actionable and useful advice. Best of all, they always practice what they preach.
Jared Feather stands by these five exercises for building well-rounded delts. He stressed that these selections allow users to add intensifiers if needed to match the specific demands of their training routine.
RELATED: IFBB Pro Jared Feather and Dr. Mike Israetel Give Top 3 Open Picks for 2025 Mr. Olympia, Discuss Training Nick Walker
