Why Use Dumbbell Lat Raises in Your Training?

Most peoples shoulder training tends to bias the anterior deltoids (front of the shoulder), through pushing movements like the bench press or the shoulder press because of the brilliant bang for your buck movements that they are.

The Dumbbell Lateral Raise biases the middle portion of the deltoid, unlike many other shoulder exercises, making it a welcome addition to a training programme.

Step-By-Step Guide to Lateral Raises

• Stand tall, with your shoulders back and down, and a Rubber Dumbbell in each hand

• Create a small kink in your elbow

• Drive your elbows to the sky, until they are in line with your shoulders

• Pause, then slowly lower back down, keeping the same kink and constant angle between your forearm and upper arm throughout

Common Lateral Raise Mistakes

Leading with the Hands

If you lead with your hand and focus on the height of your hand and the dumbbell, you’ll likely cheat and flex around the elbow to make up the height and thus defeat the purpose of the movement; it becomes a lateral raised bicep curl instead of a shoulder abduction focused exercise.

How to Fix

Make sure to pick a weight that’s not too heavy and focus on just how high your can raise your elbows. Pause at the top so you reinforce and remember what the correct position feels like.

Standing with Poor Posture

Our upper back position has a contextual influence on shoulder mobility. If we are slouched over, we ‘close’ our shoulder girdle to movement, making movements like elevation and abduction difficult.

How to Fix

Imagine trying to touch the ceiling with your head, while pulling your shoulder blades back and down towards your bum. This will extend your thoracic spine and ‘open’ your shoulder up to movement, allowing for increased exercise rage of motion and more gains…

Going too Heavy

This is often the overarching mechanism behind the first two common mistakes. It can also cause someone to ‘use the legs’, which isn’t a huge issue if it’s minor but when the legs are doing all the work in an upper body isolated movement, it can become an issue.

How to Fix

Of course, the fix is easy… or at least in theory… Put the ego out the door and pick a lighter Mini Dumbbell weight. No one cares what your dumbbell lateral raise one repetition max is anyway.

As a general rule, only go as heavy as you can control the movement, while adhering to the technical model described above. Lead with the elbows, a controlled pause and a controlled concentric and eccentric, with the upper body doing the work, not the lower body.

Add the Dumbbell Lateral Raise into your next upper body day and get some well-rounded shoulders with a well-rounded shoulder session that you can do from home or in a gym. For a full upper body workout, you could also consider a lat pull down machine

Written by guest author Ewan Hammond.

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Tags: Equipment > Dumbbells ; Exercise Type > Strength ; Target Area > Arms