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Administrator. Graeme
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Straight arm vs. bent arm lateral raises...
What's up everyone.
I am curious what people's preferences are for doing lateral raises
 
I use bent arm for 2 reasons; you'll be stricter with your form, and you can go a little heavier. Keeping a 90 degree bend in your arm makes it easier to focus on raising your elbows without doing those retarded standing reverse fly/pec stretch things all the bro dudes do. I will mix it up though and swap in some straight arm raises every few weeks with a lesser weight.
 
I keep my arms slightly bent to reduce the stress on the elbow joint, unless I go light with high reps of above maybe 20, then I try to straighten the arm more and slow the morement down a lot more especially the negative...
 
I always used to do them with a slight natural bend in the arm. Similar to what you see when you let your arm hang loose.


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Always keep the arms slightly bent - the exercise should not be performed with totally straight arms.
 
slightly bent for dumbbells, and turning hand forward like "pouring a jug' at the top of the movement. keeping elbow a little higher as well
 
Myself and [MENTION=6618]spartacus[/MENTION] are prolly 'ole school" but I remember good old Joe Weider peaching the benefits of straight arm laterals. Then research showed that it caused elbow damage.

So slightly bent arm is the go ...... right [MENTION=895]Shrek[/MENTION] [MENTION=9251]Darkoz[/MENTION]



Fuck I yearn for those old days, curled up in Bed with Joe Weider's Bodybuilding System reading about Arnold, Lou and [MENTION=3627]Goosey[/MENTION] ....... and Cory Everson :p
 
If I'm right, slightly bent Arm hits the posterior deltoid more if you're forced to keep it retracted.
 
slightly bent for dumbbells, and turning hand forward like "pouring a jug' at the top of the movement. keeping elbow a little higher as well

That's almost perfect right? Anyone?
 
Yeah I bend slightly at the elbow.
One exercise I can't do heavy. Never been over 15kg. Even that's heavy for me.
 
Vulnerable joint and a small muscle, perfect candidate for caution when training imo.

I used to go heavy when I was too young to know better and I probably got more quad activation than delt. These days I'd concentrate on sets of 20 to 25.

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It's just simple leverage, if you think about and place the arm straight then the resistance increases pretty dramatically over the ROM from extension to the contraction of the deltoid, so if there is 10 foot pounds of force at the beginning then as you get closer to horizontal the foot-pounds of force increases 300% pretty damn quick

its a good exercise if you press a lot.
if you start with your arm straight and bend the elbow as you raise the weight you can adjust the load so it remains consistent
 
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That's almost perfect right? Anyone?
Apparently not according to Jeff...


Most will say pinkies up can cause impingement of the shoulder but it can depend a lot on how high you go. A bit like upright rows, if you don't go past your arm being parallel with the ground or 90° to your body, you should be ok but it's also not fully contracting the side delt at that point.

I like to have pretty much straight arms to maximize the torque. All the way up, back down half way then up and down again for 1 rep. Takes all the momentum out of it. No need to go heavy if you're properly isolating the side delt. It's not a large muscle in the scheme of things.

And drop the shoulder right down when/before you start. Think of reaching under a fence. That will minimise the involvement of the traps.
 
I do variations of both, can go a bit heavier with your elbow slightly bent and going for the "pouring the jug" movement at the top but get more time under tension with a straight arm.
 
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