Lateral raises: dumbbell, cable or machine, and how far to raise

A lateral raise lifts your arms out to the sides, from your hips to shoulder height. It's the exercise for the side head of the shoulder, the one that pressing and chest work barely reach, and it's done with light weights: if the rest of your body has to help, the weight is too heavy.

This page covers the form, how the dumbbell, cable and machine versions differ, the lean and the arm path, what the evidence says about partial reps, the faults, and how many sets. Where the raise sits in a session is on the shoulder workout.

Why the side of the shoulder needs its own exercise

In a ten-week trial, 13 healthy men bench pressed three times a week while 11 others didn't train. The chest, the front of the shoulder and the triceps grew more than in the group that didn't train; the side of the shoulder lagged every other muscle measured.¹ In 13 men experienced in strength training, the side head was roughly six to nine times as active in the lateral raise and the shoulder press as in the bench press or the fly.² A week of presses covers the front of the shoulder; the side needs raises.

Dumbbell lateral raise form

1. Stand tall with a light dumbbell in each hand at your sides, feet about hip-width apart, knees soft.
2. Raise your arms out to the sides, elbows nearly straight, leading with the elbows rather than the hands.
3. Stop at shoulder height, with your arms about level with the floor and your palms facing down.
4. Lower in about two seconds, all the way back to your sides, and start the next rep without a bounce.

Elbows long. In 10 male competitive bodybuilders, the side head was more active in a lateral raise with straight elbows than with bent ones.³ A soft bend is fine; folding the elbow to 90 degrees as the set gets hard makes the exercise easier and gives the side head less to do.

The arm path and the lean

• How the arm is turned. In the same 10 bodybuilders, the side head was more active with the arm in a neutral turn, palms down at the top, than with the arm turned out so the thumbs pointed up. Turning the arm in, thumbs pointing down, raised activity in the back of the shoulder, the upper trapezius and the triceps instead.³ A 2024 review of 33 studies ranked a raise with the arm turned in highest for the side head,⁴ so the two sources don't fully agree. Palms down is the plain default; turn the hand only as far as feels comfortable.
• Straight out or a little forward. Raising the arms slightly in front of the body, rather than exactly out to the sides, is a common variation, and some people find it smoother. The trial behind the dumbbell and cable comparison below raised the arms straight out to the sides.⁵ Either path works; keep the one you choose.
• The lean. No study found compared lean angles on a lateral raise. Standing upright is the default. A slight forward lean from the hips is a comfort choice; a lean that grows rep by rep is the start of a swing.

Cable and machine lateral raises

Cable. Set the pulley low, stand side-on, and raise the far arm with the cable crossing in front of you. The difference from a dumbbell is where the rep is hardest. A dumbbell raise has less torque at the bottom, where the side head is longest; a cable raise can be set up to load that same position more.⁵ The trial that tested whether that matters found it didn't, for growth: 24 trained lifters, 16 men and 8 women, trained one arm with a dumbbell raise and the other with a cable version, five sets each to failure in a 12-to-16-rep range, twice a week for eight weeks. Side-shoulder thickness rose by 3.3% to 4.6%, with no meaningful difference between the arms.⁵

Machine. Sit so your shoulders line up with the machine's pivot, pads against the outsides of your upper arms just above the elbows, and raise to shoulder height. No study comparing a lateral raise machine with dumbbells was found. More broadly, a 2023 meta-analysis of 13 studies found no difference in muscle growth between free-weight and machine training in the five that measured it.⁶

Partial reps and the lengthened position

A popular idea is that partial reps near the bottom of a raise, where the side head is stretched, build more muscle than full reps. Here's what's been tested:

• On the lateral raise itself, nothing yet. No trial of partial lateral raises for growth was found. The cable trial above was built on the same idea, loading the stretched position more, and found no difference from the dumbbell.⁵
• On other muscles, a draw. In 30 resistance-trained people who trained one arm with partial reps in the stretched part of the range and the other with full reps for eight weeks, the arm muscles grew similarly.⁷ In a pre-registered trial of 297 people at 15 sites, arm and thigh muscle growth with stretched-position partials and with full reps was practically the same.⁸ The leg extension has a trial where the bent-knee half came out ahead.
• The overall verdict. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand found too little data to say whether range of motion changes muscle growth.⁹

So do full reps, hips to shoulder height. When the full reps run out at the end of a set, a few partials in the bottom half are a reasonable way to keep going; they aren't an upgrade on full reps.

The common faults, and a fix for each

• Swinging. A small push from the legs on the last rep or two isn't the problem. A computer simulation of the lateral raise found that a moderate swing raised the peak load on the target muscles, while a big one lowered it.¹⁰ If the dumbbells only go up with a heave, they're too heavy.
• Shrugging. Shoulders rising toward your ears hands the work to the upper trapezius. Think of reaching the dumbbells out to the walls rather than up.
• Bending the elbows as the set gets hard. Keep them long, per the bodybuilder study above.
• Raising far above shoulder height. The cable trial ended each set when the arm could no longer reach 90 degrees, level with the shoulder.⁵ That's a fair target for every rep.
• Dropping the weight. Lower slowly; the way down is half the rep.
• Raising through pain. Sharp pain is not soreness. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

Sets and reps

• Three or four sets of about 12 to 16, as on the shoulder workout, after any presses. The cable trial used the same range.
• Close to failure. Raises are one of the exercises reps in reserve names as a good place to go to zero or one rep left.
• Twice a week is fine. On a split with two upper or shoulder days, raise on both.
• Progress by reps first. Dumbbell jumps are big for a small muscle; add reps inside the range, then the next weight.

Pair them with face pulls for the back of the shoulder, and the two light exercises cover what a week of pressing leaves out.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Lateral raises are easy to learn; fitting them around your pressing so the side of the shoulder gets enough sets without crowding everything else is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: pick a weight you can raise 15 times without swinging, and do three sets.