Written by Garett Reid | NSCA, CSCS, CISSN, M.S.E.S.S
Fact checked by Sam Coleman, Co-Founder
FACT CHECKED
Are you finding it hard to build your shoulders? Then there’s one muscle you need to hit, the medial delts.
Your shoulder has three muscle heads: anterior (front), posterior (rear), and medial delts (middle). While all three work together for overhead pressing, they all have different jobs when working solo.
The thing is, your front delts get a ton of work from every pressing exercise (bench press, pushup, etc.), and your rear delts get hit every pulling exercise (rows, pull-ups).
This means the odd man out is the medial delt and you need to give it some special love to produce massive shoulders and create that capped look.
To do this, one exercise stands out: the lateral raise. And, there’s many ways to do them.
Here are some hacks to optimize your lateral raise and some variations.
Dumbbell Lateral Raise
We’ve all done lateral raises but form is crucial to optimize the activation of the medial delts.
- Use smaller dumbbells to control the weight.
- Stand tall with your hips extended. Many people lean over slightly, which diverts stress to the rear delts.
- Perform the movement with a neutral grip.
- Hold the dumbbell with your thumb and index finger on the head of the dumbbell and your pinky towards the middle. This will force your medial delts to produce internal rotation to maintain a neutral grip and heighten activation.
- Retract your scapula and make a sweeping motion straight out to your side at a slight, 10-15 degree angle in front of you. Only use slight elbow bend and really focus on sweeping out far.
- Focus on lifting your elbows and use mind-muscle connection to help isolate the medial delts.
- You can also slightly raise your pink to further isolate the medial head.
- Perform slow and controlled movements. Form and control is crucial for this exercise as you can easily involve other muscles with too many jerky movements.
- Do not use heavy weights and jerk the weights up with no form. You will not hit the delts the way you want.
Cable Lateral Raise
The cable lateral raise is performed similar to the dumbbell lateral raise but you’ll be using cables. Obviously.
Using cables will provide consistent resistance throughout the movement and allow greater ROM. This should allow you to use a slightly heavier weight and maintain good form.
Here are some other tips:
- When you set-up, set the cable at the lowest setting. Stand so that when you grab the handle, the cable runs straight across the body and will move out laterally from the body.
- Grab the handle and allow it to draw your arm across the body to further the range of motion.
- Again, use that large sweeping motion.
Egyptian Lateral Raise
The Egyptian lateral raise is the same as a regular lateral raise, however, when you set up to perform the exercise, you lean toward the working side.
From here, you perform the lateral raise in the exact same manner.
The purpose of the lean is to further isolate the medial delt. A 1995 study found that during this movement, the supraspinatus (a small muscle in the upper back) is more active at the beginning while the medial delts take over from the middle.
Use A Bit Of Variety
While these three variations of the lateral raise are your best bet, occasionally use a little variation. The muscle fibers in your shoulder spread out in all directions, so hitting it from slightly different angles could help.
For example:
- Perform seated
- Perform seated on an incline
- Perform reverse seated on an incline
- Sweep your arms out slightly more in front
Lateral Raise Exercise Guide & Variations
Train 3 Times A Week
If you really want to focus on exercises for wider shoulders, consider training three times a week. Your shoulders can recover quickly, so hitting them a bit more often isn’t bad. Actually, it could be what you need for your boulder shoulders!
Garett Reid
Author