Bodybuilding’s Only Must-Do Exercise
When it comes to building muscle, all roads lead to Rome — the bodybuilding exercises you perform in your workouts are almost entirely up to you. Almost every time someone says you must do this exercise or that, they’re trying to sell you something.
You must do some version of a lateral raise if you’re a bodybuilder; IFBB pro, amateur, or otherwise. Here’s why.
Why the Lateral Raise Is a Mandatory Bodybuilding Exercise
The lateral raise is a must-do bodybuilding exercise because it trains a small muscle with a niche functionality. Your deltoid has three major heads; the anterior or front, lateral or side, and posterior or rear.
- The shoulder is such a mobile joint precisely because many small muscles, like the deltoid heads, all pull in different directions.
You can train your front deltoid incidentally by performing chest or overhead press exercises, and your rear delt gets some love if you work your upper back in general. But the lateral raise is the only exercise that really targets the outer shoulder.
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This is precisely why you’ll almost never see the lateral raise in a sports performance program, while it’s a staple in just about every bodybuilding workout plan.
Physique athletes of all sizes and stripes build up their lateral delts to improve their v-taper — industry-leading bodybuilding coach Joe Bennett often has clients begin workouts with lateral raises, since “you can never be too wide.”
How To Do the Lateral Raise
There’s a surprisingly high number of lateral raise variations out there, but we’ll start with the standard version. You’ll need a pair of dumbbells and nothing else.
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- Stand upright with your feet under your hips while holding a pair of dumbbells at your sides.
- With your arms straight but relaxed, sweep the dumbbells up and out to the side like a bird flapping its wings.
- Lift the weights until your arms are parallel to the ground, hold for a moment, and slowly lower the weights back down.
The lateral raise’s customizability is its saving grace. If you’re stuck performing any exercise, it should be one that you can tweak to suit your body. You can experiment with lateral raise variations like leaning against an adjustable weight bench or using cables instead of free weights.
It doesn’t matter too much how you do your lateral raises, but if you want to build a complete and well-rounded physique, you’ve gotta do ‘em.
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- Stop Doing Deadlifts if You Want To Build Muscle
References
- Campos YAC, Vianna JM, Guimarães MP, Oliveira JLD, Hernández-Mosqueira C, da Silva SF, Marchetti PH. Different Shoulder Exercises Affect the Activation of Deltoid Portions in Resistance-Trained Individuals. J Hum Kinet. 2020 Oct 31;75:5-14. doi: 10.2478/hukin-2020-0033. PMID: 33312291; PMCID: PMC7706677.
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