Seated Lateral Raises
Coached by JustinAlso called: Side Lateral Raises · Seated Side Laterals
- Primary
- shoulders
- Equipment
- dumbbell
- Mechanic
- isolation
- Force
- push
- Category
- strength
Bodybuilding (shoulders).
Execution
Pick a weight where 15 reps is positive failure on the first set. Five sets of 12–15, minimal rest, hold a minimum of 12 every set, same weight throughout. The side delt is overwhelmingly a sarcoplasmic muscle — it answers to blood volume, not load. The goal is soreness in the side delt. What I'm trying to do is actually not raise my shoulders up. I'm trying to keep my shoulders down, pressed down towards my hip, and that actually takes the traps out of it and really isolates the shoulders. When a lot of people do it they'll shrug up and the traps will actually go up. Press your shoulder joint down towards your hip as you're raising it up and that'll give you a much stronger contraction on the side delt. Look at the side of your arm — the exact side, between your bicep and triceps, pointing straight up and down. That's really where the side of the delt is. When people think side delt visually, what's out to the most wide part of your body is closer to the rear delt; your side delt is the part that ties into the side of your arm. In a lot of the movements you're almost doing more of a front raise to target that.
The cue that matters
Lead with the elbow, pour it out at the top — soreness, not weight.
Common mistake
Going heavy and swinging; see the ~70 lb rule — past what you can *control*, you've turned a delt exercise into a trap movement. There's no one correct form for a lateral raise. If you're trying to create tension on that muscle, the correct form is whatever puts tension on that muscle — that's what you need to be focused on. That's different from training for a movement, where the best form is whatever keeps you inside the rules of the movement.
Power Bodybuilding Bro Split — Day 3 (Shoulders).