The Rear Delt Lateral Raise (a.k.a. the Bent-Over Lateral Raise) is one of the key exercises for development of the rear delts.

The rear delt (i.e. the posterior head of the three-headed deltoid muscle) is the most often underdeveloped head of the entire shoulder complex. It's tough to properly work and doesn't get much action in most pressing movements.

As well, to really work it properly, you should NOT use heavy weight, which means leaving the ego at the door.

To give you an example, for this exercise demo (and for my working sets), I'm using 12 pound dumbbells. The key reason is that when you go too heavy, the larger, stronger muscles of the upper back (the teres major and the middle traps) will take over the exercise.

Instead of the action happening just at the shoulder joint with the rear delts pulling the arms up and back like we want, those bigger muscles will act on your shoulder blades to just pull the whole mess up and back, leaving the rear delts out in the cold.

 

Trick #1 - Reverse Wrist Curl

The first trick is a very simple one. Before you start the lift, you'll do a reverse wrist curl with the dumbbells.

It's a very subtle change in position but makes a BIG difference in terms of mechanics. Here's a close-up.

What this effectively does is change the pivot point of the exercise from the shoulder blades to the shoulder joint itself, which is what we're looking for.

Once you've got this position, KEEP your wrists extended back like this and perform the raise.

As you come up, try to imagine as though you're wiping the inside of a giant bowl with the dumbbells. In other words, you want a wide, sweeping arc to the movement.

With the wrists extended like this, the tension is forced onto the rear delts and OFF the teres major and middle traps. Those muscles still activate to stabilize the shoulder area but they aren't actively pulling the weight up.

Come up as high as you can using STRICT form. This will be a bit short of horizontal with your arms.

As a muscle gets closer to it's peak contraction, the actin/mysosin cross-bridges get more bunched up (these are the little hooks and grapples inside your muscle fibers that create contraction and movement - I won't get into the whole physiology of muscle contraction here, though).

The practical result of this bunching up is that as you get closer to that peak contraction, the muscle can't exert as much force.

Unfortunately for rear delt laterals, that bunching up comes at exactly the time when the resistance is greatest and when you should be getting the most benefit from the exercise (that peak contraction is the good part that we're looking to maximize).

This is what causes many people to start cheating at the wrong time...they use upper body momentum right out of the bottom to help power the weight through that sticking point near the top.

This is a problem. It eliminates much of the tension of the exercise, though, and is NOT the way you should cheat.

 

Trick #2 - How to Properly and Strategically Cheat

In this case, cheating is going to make the exercise HARDER and more effective, not easier.

When you get the dumbbells as high as you can using strict form, stop them there for a small pause. THEN you're going to pop your upper body up to get a little momentum.

As the dumbbells come up with your body, quickly drop your chest towards the floor while keeping the dumbbells up as high as you can.

This gets your arms to horizontal (or even a little higher) for maximum contraction in the rear delts.

If you want to give this technique a try, I HIGHLY recommend watching the video for it (the actual exercise demo starts at 2:39 if you want to skip directly to it).

It'll show you the bob technique much better than still pictures can.

Lower the dumbbells then repeat.

Here's a side view of the exercise in action, so you can see how much elevation you should get on the pop up.

Do the reverse wrist curl.

Then come up, scraping the inside of the bowl.

Pop the upper body up, bringing the dumbbells with you.

Now quickly dip your chest towards the floor, while keeping the dumbbells up.

This trick gets you more complete range of motion for a more complete contraction...resulting in more complete development of the rear delts!

Perform 6-12 reps of this exercise, focusing not banging out reps but on FEELING the rear delts working.

This is very much an exercise where we don't really care how many reps you do. If the rear delts aren't getting the workload, none of those reps matter anyway...it just becomes an ineffective upper back exercise.

I would recommend at least 2-4 sets of this one. The rear delts are small and recover fast, so you don't need much rest in between sets (30-60 seconds is plenty).

These two tricks will help you get a LOT more out of your Rear Delt Lateral Raises.

You can watch the full video demo of this exercise in action here.

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Want More Shoulder Training Like This?

Then you need "The Best Shoulder Exercises You've Never Heard Of"... 76 more exercises, tips and tricks just like this to help you get your shoulders bigger and stronger.

Enjoy!