How to do a lateral raise
- Stand tall with a light dumbbell in each hand, arms by your sides, palms facing your body.
- Bend your elbows slightly and keep that bend throughout.
- Raise your arms out to the sides, leading with your elbows, until they are about level with your shoulders.
- Keep your hands no higher than your elbows at the top, and your shoulders down, away from your ears.
- Lower the dumbbells slowly, taking about two seconds, until your arms are by your sides again.
Cues that help
- "Push the dumbbells out, not up": think of making your arms long, out to the walls.
- "Elbows lead": your elbows rise first and stay slightly higher than your hands.
- "Shoulders down": if your neck takes over, your traps are doing the work.
- "Pour the jug" only a little: a slight forward tilt of the hands is fine; turning the thumbs far down pinches some shoulders.
Common mistakes
- Going too heavy and swinging. The side delt is a small muscle; momentum and a jerk of the hips move the weight instead of the shoulder.
- Shrugging. Lifting your shoulders towards your ears hands the work to your traps.
- Raising far above shoulder height. Higher mostly adds traps and can irritate the shoulder.
- Dropping the weights on the way down. A slow lowering is half the exercise.
- Locked, straight arms. A small bend in the elbows is kinder to them and easier to control.
Dumbbell or cable?
With a dumbbell, the effort is low at the bottom, where gravity barely resists a hanging arm, and hardest near the top. A cable running across your body from a low pulley keeps tension on the shoulder from the very start of the lift.
Both work. Dumbbells need nothing but a pair of weights and train both arms at once; the cable version is done one arm at a time and feels smoother through the bottom. Many people use both, for example dumbbells first and cables to finish.
Sets, reps and weight
- For muscle: 3 to 4 sets of 10 to 20 reps. Lateral raises respond well to higher reps with light weights.
- Rest 1 to 1.5 minutes between sets.
- Lighter than you think: most people use a fraction of what they press overhead. If you cannot pause briefly at the top, it is too heavy.
- Progress by adding reps first; dumbbell jumps are big for a small muscle, so move up only when you reach the top of your range on every set.
Variations and alternatives
- Cable lateral raise: one arm, from a low pulley, constant tension.
- Seated lateral raise: sitting on a bench makes swinging much harder.
- Leaning lateral raise: hold a post with one hand and lean away, which makes the bottom of the lift harder.
- Machine lateral raise: pads on your forearms and a fixed path.
- Rear delt fly: the same idea bent over, for the back of the shoulder.
Tracking your lateral raises
PushBeyond logs the weight and reps of each set and charts the history of the exercise, which helps with an exercise where progress comes a rep at a time. Its muscle map counts the lateral raise for your shoulders.