The side delts are one of the most important "visual" muscles in your body in terms of improving your aesthetics (i.e. wider shoulders).

Quite often, though, normal lateral raises don't do much to build those side delts up.

And here's why...

Tension.

The deltoid muscles eat up tension and thrive on it. Yet a lot of lateral raises you see people done using body action to heave the weights up. The traps end up getting a lot of the workload (though unfortunately, the weight isn't heavy enough to really build them up appreciably either).

Better is when you see people slowing the movement down and using lighter weights to focus on tension on the delts. But there is still the complete drop-off in tension at the bottom 1/3 of the movement to deal with.

This exercise is along that line, focusing on a shortened range of motion to maintain tension on the delts, then a strategic use of body movement to "ratchet" the weight back up, enhancing the contraction and making the exercise HARDER, not easier.

Grab a pair of dumbbells. I'm using 25's in the demo here.

Lean a little forward at the start. I also recommend doing a small reverse wrist curl with the weights at the bottom of the exercise. I find this helps shift tension onto the side delts and off the traps.

Now perform a normal lateral raise, bringing the upper arms up to almost horizontal and no higher.

Because of the bend in the elbow, the dumbbells will go higher than shoulder-height. The upper arm angle is what we're looking at terms of form.

Now lower the weights (under control) down part way. The angle at the shoulder should be about 35-40 degrees or so. It should be a position where you still maintain tension in the delts.

Stop right there.

This is where you're going to use a change in body position to "ratchet" the weight back up to the top, contracted position.

Holding the arms exactly in that "out" position, lean forward a little.

Then bring your torso back up, using the momentum of your torso coming up to bring the dumbbells back up to the top position.

Then repeat, bringing the dumbbells back down, stopping with your arms still out away from your body at an angle, then using a ratchet to come back up.

Continue this action until your delts are burning so bad, you can't hold the dumbbells up anymore. It should be really painful and result in a massive pump in the delts.

This continuous tension is excellent for direct muscle growth.

As well, because the muscles are continuously contracted, it results in somewhat of a "blood flow restriction" situation, which indirectly spurs muscle growth by building up blood and waste products of muscle contraction in the muscle (these waste products are actually a strong signal for muscle growth).

Your rep range will vary based on the weight you select and honestly, I don't care how many reps you do. We're looking for quality of movement and continuous tension here. If you're counting reps, you're not focusing on the movement.

So essentially, pick a weight you could normally get at least 10-12 "normal" reps for and use that and forget counting reps while you're doing this one.

Take a short rest (1 minute or so) and perform 3 sets total.

This one can be used pretty much anywhere in your shoulder routine, just sub it in place of regular lateral raises.

Definitely watch the video for this one. The body ratchet action can be tough to visualize with just still pictures.

The key thing to remember is that you're using that ratchet NOT to make the exercise easier, but as a way to maintain continuous tension on the delts as you perform the exercise.

If you'd like to see the detailed video for the "reverse wrist curl" trick I mentioned for the side delts, click here.

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