Side Laterals That Actually Work Your Shoulders
By Jason
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While the best exercise for building shoulder mass is the overhead press, you might want to incorporate side laterals into your workout to add thickness to your outer shoulders. There are, however, a couple ways to lose some of the benefit from this exercise.
Your shoulder muscles are actually composed of three separate heads that are in the front (anterior deltoids), middle (medial deltoids), and rear (posterior deltoids). Developing full looking deltoids is a good idea because your shoulders are visible from every angle, whether you’re being viewed from the front, side, or rear.
Working on your medial deltoid adds width to your shoulders which helps make your waistline look smaller in comparison. This is great for women also as it helps to shape an “hourglass figure”.
A common mistake when doing deltoid side laterals, however, is to use too much momentum to raise the weights up to shoulder level instead of letting your muscles do the work. There are a few ways this can happen. We’ll take a look at each of these problems and how to fix them.
The problem:
When you do dumbbell side laterals, you’ll probably notice that the movement starts getting hard to perform about half way up. The greatest amount of stress is placed on the shoulders when the weights are all the way up at shoulder level and are furthest away from your body.
Dumbbell side laterals are much easier to do if you can get the dumbbells moving fast at the bottom of the movement where the weight is easier to move.
Only problem with this is that it takes the stress off of your muscles at the exact place where they should be working the hardest: the top. Speed is not necessarily the enemy, but overdoing it can cause you to lose the benefit of the exercise.
The mistakes:
There are two common ways to generate this momentum during the side-laterals movement.
1) The first way is to bend your knees just as you are about to begin the movement. The knees are then quickly straightened to raise your body upward. As your body rises, the weights in your hand are also moved upward.
Using this little jump at the bottom helps to get the weight moving upward at a higher speed that continues throughout the rest of the movement. I probably don’t have to tell you that your legs are much stronger than your shoulders, but I will anyways: Your legs are much stronger than your shoulders! Don’t use them in place of your shoulders.
This same momentum can also be built by leaning forward and jerking your shoulders upward with each movement. Leaning forward a little is ok, just keep good form.
2) The second way to build momentum is to swing your arms quickly at the bottom by bringing the weights together in front of you. You might really enjoy doing this during your laterals because it makes you look really tough when you flex at the bottom in this position.
Hear me out though. If you start in this position (and this is ok), keep your elbows slightly bent and raise them up in a smooth motion. Don’t swing at the bottom.
If the weights build outward speed at the bottom of the movement, your arms don’t have to do much more than just act like ropes tied to the weights at the top of the movement. Much less pulling is done by the shoulders this way, and this takes away most of the stress in the top half of the movement.
But doesn’t this give me a wider range of motion?
Bringing the weights together in front of you does not give you a greater range of motion.
Here’s why: Your shoulders do not have to do any work to move the weights from the center of your body to shoulder width. They would if you were using cables, but the topic here is the free-weight side laterals, and in this case, it requires no effort from your shoulders.
Again, imagine that your arms were just ropes tied to your shoulders. If this were the case, the weight at that end of the ropes would naturally be pulled directly beneath your shoulders by gravity.
Here’s a picture of a weight hanging by a rope. It represents the bottom of the lateral movement and shows why starting with the weights in front of your body can add momentum. Think about it- and try not to laugh at my drawing even if it’s hard not to…
So if you’re using this starting position to swing the weights, try starting the with the weights just to the sides of your thighs and below your shoulders. This makes the movement more strict, similar to doing the laterals while sitting down.
The solution:
Starting your laterals with each weight resting just at the edge of your thighs can help to reduce this extra momentum. Raise the weight with a smooth motion and without any jerking or pushing at the knees. You don’t have to go super slow, but keep the motion even.
Slow your arms down at the top of the movement until they come to a stop (technically, there is no other way to stop them at the top). Squeeze for just a moment at the top of the movement before you lower the weight back down.
This will give help you to strengthen your medial deltoids throughout the entire range of movement. I should probably warn you that if you’ve been using your legs or a big swing at the bottom, you’ll probably have to start using a lighter weight to get this done.
Try not to let your ego get in the way and tell you that you have to lift a certain amount of weight. If you really want to work your shoulders, my best advice is to let your shoulders do the work.
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Topics: Training Tips |
December 9th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Fantastic post, again!
As for using a low weight and not being ashamed - I can often be seen doing side laterals with a 12kg weight to make sure the technique is correct. I overhead press around 85kg for 6 sets usually so 12kg is quite low. However, side laterals really can muck your shoulders if not done right.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the position of the hands in the SLR in order to maximize shoulder emphasis.
Awesome work.
RT
December 9th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
RT- You have a pretty strong overhead press, and I’ll do even less weight than you on the side laterals after some heavy presses, so you’re right, no need to be ashamed. Alot of people will get a good burn with even 12 pounds, half of your 12 kg depending on where they’re at.
Very observant that I didn’t talk about the hand position for side lateral raises. That’s a whole post in itself… I have some thoughts on that
Take it easy RT.