Shoulder stuff (like lateral raises, I think) seems to be so much harder than everything else though. Is that normal?
Yup! The individual shoulder muscles are pretty small, and especially when you're doing something with a straight arm (like front raises, lateral raises), the lever effect magnifies the effect of the weight.
So it's completely normal to use much lighter weights for those exercises than for others.
Also, anyone have ideas for things I can do for shoulder strength next month when I'll be traveling and probably won't have dumbbells handy?
Got a resistance band? They're easy to fit in luggage and let you do a lot of fun things.
Or you could spend some time on rotator cuff exercises.. They're great "pre-hab" to prevent injury, and you'll want to use even lighter weights with them -- a plastic bottle of water will probably be plenty. Some examples:
no subject
Yup! The individual shoulder muscles are pretty small, and especially when you're doing something with a straight arm (like front raises, lateral raises), the lever effect magnifies the effect of the weight.
So it's completely normal to use much lighter weights for those exercises than for others.
Also, anyone have ideas for things I can do for shoulder strength next month when I'll be traveling and probably won't have dumbbells handy?
Got a resistance band? They're easy to fit in luggage and let you do a lot of fun things.
Or you could spend some time on rotator cuff exercises.. They're great "pre-hab" to prevent injury, and you'll want to use even lighter weights with them -- a plastic bottle of water will probably be plenty. Some examples:
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/ExList/BackWt.html#anchor511734