Db skiers vs. db hip huggers for rear delts/shoulders - Which of those would you include in a rear delt/shoulder workout routine?

[freddie]

I am simply asking for which one of those exercises would be better to do for rear delts/shoulder, so I can include that in my 'shoulder day'.

I've tried both, and while they both seem to be very effective, I really don't want to do both. I cannot determine which one seems to be working the best, and I don't want to have another overlapping exercise on my shoulder day either, so yeah...

With hip huggers, I can go much heavier weights, but with skiers, I cannot do that, but I can go for way more reps + I like that exercise as I cannot "cheat" with it because of the bench and somehow, it feels as if it's hitting my rear delts more than the hip huggers does.

Hip Huggers (Athlean-X):

Skiers (Geoffrey Varity Schofield):

Any thoughts on this?

PS: Yes, I am sure there are better exercises to do with (cable) machines, but I've only got dumbbells available, unfortunately...

 

[harko]

@freddie I'd probably just do a reverse fly. The hip huggers are pretty similar to an upright row and are hitting more muscles. If you're looking for an isolation exercise the skiers are probably the better option. I'm a fan of Geoffrey Schofield so I'll have to give skiers a try. Reverse fly is tried and true though. If you're a beginner though you probably don't need any of the above. If you're not going hard on your bench, row, overhead press, pull-up, squat and deadlift as a beginner you're probably limiting your own progress. If you're doing all of the above with quality reps and sets, and not missing any workouts then adding some isolations will probably give you some additional hypertrophy. It all really depends on your starting point and what you can do consistently though.

 

[freddie]

@harko Then the latter will work for me then, because yeah, I have all those (+ more) exercises that I do throughout the week. Since I am no hardcore builder/mass/posing person, I just do things casually, while doing things properly and with the right form for the exercises, even though I am still a beginner (been training on and off for years until jan 2023, which is when I started with 3~5 workouts a week).

Yep, then I shall continue with Skiers, since that is an exercise I like and seems to be working really well so far.

Thank you for the pointers and commenting!