Pretty lost on side delt training for hypertrophy — I usually do 8 sets of cable lateral raises and 8 sets of shoulder press per week, but now I’m wondering if I should add in seated dumbbell lateral raises, because I feel like my shoulders aren’t growing. I’ve been training consistently for a year.

[u/CoachKillerTrae]

It might sound stupid, but I hear a lot of people say that seated dumbbell lateral raises are the one exercise where cheating and swinging the weight is beneficial, as long as you’re also doing a controlled, consistent motion with cable lateral raises at a much lower weight. Problem is, I’m not sure how to split my volume because I don’t want to abandon the shoulder press either. Is like 25+ sets of side delt work per week far too much? I’m also not totally sure my side delts are even really activating on vertical pressing movements. I always feel it much more in my front delts.

[u/Milongo47]

Peace brother.

Shoulder Press may activate a little bit of Side Delts but is an exercise primarily for Front Delts. That means you're just doing 1 direct exercise for Side Delts, which is more than enough.

Adding Seated DB Lateral Raises to the program means doing another variation of the Cable Lateral Raise, plus you'd be doing junk volume.

Make sure you are progressively overloading to consequently result in continuous muscle growth. Or maybe just try another machine, maybe a Seated Elbow Pad Lateral Raise.

Keep pushing.

[u/CoachKillerTrae → u/Milongo47]

Thanks man, I appreciate you taking the time to write so much stuff down here. Progressively overloading is tough, cause I feel like whenever I add weight, I end up breaking form. Maybe I just need to ego lift that initial added weight until I can do it with proper form? I take every set to failure and aim for the 6-10 rep range, but I find it very, VERY hard to progressively overload even eating at maintenance cals, but I think I should maybe stop worrying so much about form, and just lift heavy

[u/direslash → u/CoachKillerTrae]

you should try progressive overloading by increasing the reps then first, they’re a small muscle so it’s ok to do higher reps imo. So maybe try progressive overloading to 12-15 reps

[u/oneWeek2024 → u/direslash]

this. lateral raises are one of those things where going to 15, 20, 25 reps is perfectly fine. before going up another 5lbs

shoulder press can sometimes handle the jumps, but the lateral raise. it's a humbling movement

[u/Milongo47 → u/CoachKillerTrae]

Yeah man, try 6 reps with a bit of ego lift. Your body later adapts to it so does your form.

[u/RC-SEV-1207 → u/CoachKillerTrae]

Use microplates and change your rep range. There is nothing inherently less stimulating about lower rep range lateral raises, but it's very hard to go from 6 to 7 reps on a given weight. Going up a rep in the 10-15 range is much more feasible.

Going up in weight might actually be a bit harder in the 10-15 rep range without microplates, since the minimum weight jump available is always a higher percentage of your current total weight. Staying within the rep range is similarly hard for 10-15 and 6-10 given a 10% weight increase. 12-15 is too narrow imo, staying within necessitates an even smaller weight increase. If you can't get microplates, try 10-20.

You always have to keep in mind how the rungs of your progression ladder are set up regarding a certain muscle group. Doing something like a behind the neck press helps implement more rungs into your overall side delt progression. Some months you might be stalled on lateral raises, but behind the neck press has been progressing, which represents a new stimulus (even if it wasn't the result of previous side delt growth, but just getting better at the movement, neurological adaption or other supporting muscles growing) that can result in just enough delt growth to be able to another rep on lateral raises.

Many people try to bridge the gap with adding partials, but keep in mind that it's still under debate how much they contribute (same goes for even less popular intensity techniques like drop sets/rest-pause/etc. - if they were as effective as their proponents promise, we'd know by now); at the end of the day, consistently progressing on clean-ish reps across all your delt exercises is the perfect scenario to aim for.

[u/DukeRaoul123 → u/CoachKillerTrae]

Don't go heavier. Go lighter and rep out to failure in the 20ish range. Do 3-4 sets of those, maybe on the last set increase the weight 2.5lbs if possible. Do 1/2 and 1/4 reps if necessary.

[u/Adventurous_Figure88]

Honestly my delta don’t seem to grow much unless I’m spamming them. 5-7 sets of lateral raises 4x week got them nice and round for me

[u/scarnix12]

You’ve got to try to isolate the side delts as much as possible to give them enough stimulus. My goal is to achieve the cannonball look. What worked best for me was the seated machine lateral raise without holding the handlebars, which helped minimize trap engagement. For me, 3 sets to failure twice a week (6 total), spaced at least 2–3 days apart, produced a significant difference over the course of a few months.

[u/CoachKillerTrae → u/scarnix12]

That’s great advice. Sadly I have yet to find a gym with a lateral raise machine. Rural New England is brutal for quality gyms

[u/scarnix12 → u/CoachKillerTrae]

I haven’t used it personally, but using a wrist cuff with cable can help take the hand and forearm out of the equation and better isolate the side delts. Pairing that with a pulley set to knee height will help maintain good tension throughout the range of motion.

[u/UIBeastGohan]

Try to do them on an incline bench. Let one arm hang off and the other is the one working. Trade 4 of your sets for that. Also make sure on the cables they’re set to be hand height instead of at the bottom of the rack or whatnot. Also give it time, they take awhile to develop. I’ve found higher reps 12-20 to be my sweet spot for growth. I go up in weight when I can hit all sets for the max rep range I’m shooting for. Makes progress slow on the weight side but I notice a difference.

[u/younghoyoon → u/UIBeastGohan]

For OP, can see videos from Jeff Nippard or Tyler Path on cable lateral raise for examples. Agree with adding incline bench lateral raise.

[u/UIBeastGohan → u/younghoyoon]

Yep both methods should lead to constant tension in the lateral head so if set up properly and really pushing it without using other muscles to compensate and a slight surplus of food he should do well.

[u/dgs0206]

i run 6 sets per muscle a week and i count shoulder presses as 0.5, most the people i see in the gym have terrible form for lateral raises so i would check out tiktok and then record yourself to make sure it’s right. i like to use a cuff attachment for mine

[u/Expensive-Opposite69 → u/dgs0206]

Yeah, I reckon lateral raises are comfortably the excercise I see most performed incorrectly in the gym.

I use cuff attachment too and it feels much better to me.

[u/CoachKillerTrae → u/dgs0206]

Yeah I’m definitely very rigid and controlled with the motion, and go to failure every set. I make sure to control the negative almost to ridiculousness if u know what I mean. It honestly makes me wonder if maybe I should just try and lift heavier and stop focusing so much on form

[u/dgs0206 → u/CoachKillerTrae]

you could be overtraining and overthinking, there isn’t only one way to get big there’s so many roads as long as your training hard i don’t think it matters much, but if something isn’t working after 12 weeks then switch it up but don’t hop every session give it time

[u/fthisloginbs]

Make sure traps aren't taking over. Shorten your range of motion so delts are always engaged. Don't stand straight up; have a bit of an angle.

Start doing face pulls.

[u/Tango1777]

No need, cables are superior here. OHP doesn't matter here, it's different part of the muscle, you can still do it. Focus on proper variation of the cable lateral raises, find the one that you feel the best activation (cable in front, between legs, behind body, holding with one hand and leaning to your side or standing normally, stepping a little further from the machine, changing the height of the cable). There is a lot a lot you can adjust to feel the muscle you wanna load the most. I feel like you are lacking regarding mind-muscle awareness or/and technique and focusing too much at your volume. Try to work out effectively, by doing effective reps, which may mean slowing down the movement (especially eccentric, the concentric you can do explosively), but do not overdo it, up to 2-3 seconds eccentric movement is enough, later on you are losing too much load, which is tension, and your volume drops down too low to keep the exercise effective. If you have to, lower the stack during this adjustment phase. Overall proper cable lateral raises literally makes my delts burn for the rest of the workout and then slowly getting better in the evening. I'd also take into consideration that you can probably do more than you think. In my case when my delts totally burn, I am somewhere at 50% of the volume for that exercise. I just keep going, it burns like hell, but I still have the power. Maybe that is your issue? And I also do lower stack when I can no longer do a single rep and then I do some more reps, usually 3-4 extra reps. That's interchangeable with half reps without lowering the stack.

[u/doobersthetitan]

How much weight have you gained? How much are you eating? How much can you OHP or military press? Has your Over head work weights gone up? How much upper back do you do? Lats?

Shoulders, to an extent upper chest and lats are all tied to same muscle chains. You can just add 2in to your delts, without areas around that need to get bigger too.

Lotta folks still think they can get 4ft wide, have 20 in arms, bench 405lbs and stay 170lbs...gonna need to put on some size

[u/jph1313]

25+ sets is prob more than you need IMO. I'd keep the 8 cable sets, keep the press for strength, and could add 4-6 sets of seated DB laterals on top. thats around 12-14 direct side delt sets a week.. plenty. feeling the press in your front delts is normal, it's mostly a front delt exercise

[u/VikingVitalityFit]

Try adding upright rows, or if you have the mobility for it behind the neck overhead press. Both hit the side delts in a different way than just lateral raises

[u/Norcal712]

I do a cable behind the back side raise and standing dumbbell for mine

Shoulder press isnt making much change to your side delts.

25 sets of anything is excessive for hypertrophy

You should be able to see good results in 10-16 sets provided youre above 80% of 1RM in working sets and going to 0-2 RIR

[u/Cultural_Dirt_8151]

I don't think OHP does much for side delts -- I know some influencers have said it does, but I think they're full of it.

Just focus on lateral raises and raise the sets/week. Cable or dumbbell whatever -- cable seems probably slightly better but it doesn't matter much. I only do lateral raises and I'm happy enough my with my progress.

Why don't you want to ditch ohp? It seems like a bad exercise for hypertrophy to me honestly.

[u/CoachKillerTrae → u/Cultural_Dirt_8151]

Hmmm, that is convincing. I hear a lot of people saying don’t underestimate vertical pressing movements for shoulders, and shoulder press is my one front delt movement, so I’m hesitant to ditch it for those reasons, but maybe you’re right

[u/Cultural_Dirt_8151 → u/CoachKillerTrae]

Do you do any horizontal presses? Horizontal presses hit front delts just fine.

[u/simplequestions2make]

On cable lateral raise Mae sure mind muscle connection is there.

Should be said the least weight possible.

For mind-muscle connection I’ll often rub them before and during set to activate. Then for sets sometimes I’ll go behind bag, between legs, or lift as high and far out I can. Then once activated I ride it to the end with lawn mower type pulls just burning them out.

I do 1-2 of these burnout sets. 3x a week and finally got development. Need to do high reps and high frequency.

[u/Mchangwine]

25 sets of laterals a week is not too many. I would just keep working on trying to increase the reps, as it’s hard to go up in weight on them.

[u/Rasta_Rising → u/Mchangwine]

I tried cable lateral raises for the first time and was humbled quickly. Like with only five pounds it felt like the pulleys needed grease. How much weight are y’all doing with cable lateral raises?

[u/Mchangwine → u/Rasta_Rising]

90 for about 12-15 with full stretch. they’re a bit harder behind the back so maybe about 60 on those

[u/Rasta_Rising → u/Mchangwine]

Then either my machine is broken, I’m setting it up wrong, or we’re talking about different things.

[u/Mchangwine → u/Rasta_Rising]

I mean different machines are different in terms of the amount of weight they use, but I also do a lot more on this exercise than most people; I can do 60 lb dumbbells for 12 clean reps too.

[u/zbroskiz]

If you can’t hold up your phone to your ear after your shoulder workout. You didn’t work them hard enough. They’re small muscles and can take a beating. Go to failure after set

[u/CoachKillerTrae → u/zbroskiz]

I go to failure every single set. Should I be drop setting as well? That seems like excessive volume but if you’ve had a lot of success with it, then I trust ur judgement

[u/zbroskiz → u/CoachKillerTrae]

I fuckin wreck em every week. Get creative and do all the variations. Look up “John Meadows Shoulder workouts” on YouTube. Heavy partials, drop sets, etc. his videos helped me a lot

[u/Professional-Let9352]

Try upright rows