Ronnie Coleman is known for pushing his limits by making his workouts as intense as possible, and his shoulder workout regimen wasn't an exception.

On March 1, the 8x Mr. Olympia shared a throwback reel on Instagram featuring one of his years-old shoulder training sessions. In the clip, he was seen doing a seated dumbbell shoulder press with a pair of dumbbells that looked so heavy that an average individual couldn't even dream of working out with them.

At the end of the sessions, Coleman dropped the dumbbells out of exhaustion and said, "That was super heavy." The caption detailed his definition of a "hardcore shoulder day." It read, "You know it’s going to be a hardcore shoulder day when you have to pray for the weights…. Yeah buddy!!”.

Well, almost every bodybuilding enthusiast has seen the results of Coleman's hardcore shoulder workouts. In his prime, his shoulders were as legendary as his name in bodybuilding history. However, maintaining such monstrous shoulders was not easy for him.

To achieve that shoulder shape, he followed a strict routine and trained his shoulders twice per week. Coleman's extremely intense shoulder workout included:

• Bareball front raises
• Rear delt pec dec
• Standing DB shrugs
• Seated barbell military press
• Standing DB lateral raise
• Bent-over DB rear delt raise.

Most of the time, he followed 3-5 sets of 8-20 reps.

Despite such an intense workout, when he was asked if he would do anything different, Coleman said, “I would have trained harder!”.

The same dedication can still be seen in Coleman even after multiple health issues.

Ronnie Coleman's love for shoulder workouts at 61

At 61 and after 13 surgeries and a sepsis hospitalization, Coleman is still proving why he is the King.

In 2025, he was admitted to the hospital for sepsis, and just a few weeks after leaving the hospital, he started working out, but this time with light weights.

Even on January 31, Coleman posted a workout video on Instagram while doing seated dumbbell lateral raises. The caption of the video read, “Yeah, Buddy… 20 easy reps to try and get these shoulders just a little bit bigger!"

Besides shoulder exercise, Ronnie Coleman has also been seen doing Leg Press machine reps, Light dumbbell or assisted movements, and Cable/Machine exercises after leaving the hospital.

What would be the word that you would use to address Coleman's dedication to working out?

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Written by

Supradeep Dutta

Edited by

Souvik Roy