One-Arm Incline Lateral Raise
How to do the one-arm incline lateral raise
- Lie down sideways on an incline bench press with a dumbbell in the hand. Make sure the shoulder is pressing against the incline bench and the arm is lying across your body with the palm around your navel.
- Hold a dumbbell in your uppermost arm while keeping it extended in front of you parallel to the floor. This is your starting position.
- While keeping the dumbbell parallel to the floor at all times, perform a lateral raise. Your arm should travel straight up until it is pointing at the ceiling. Tip: Exhale as you perform this movement. Hold the dumbbell in the position and feel the contraction in the shoulders for a second.
- While inhaling lower the weight across your body back into the starting position.
- Repeat the movement for the prescribed amount of repetitions.
- Switch arms and repeat the movement.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.
Every exercise for:Shoulders
How this movement works
One joint moves, and it moves the load away from the body. With nothing recruited to assist, the target muscle reaches its own limit rather than the limit of the weakest link in a chain — which makes this useful for adding volume after the heavy compound work, not for opening a session.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
Dumbbells let each side work on its own, surfacing a strength difference between limbs that a barbell would quietly cover for, and leaving the wrist free to rotate through the movement.
Every exercise using:Dumbbell
These train the shoulders too, using equipment this one does not:
- One-Arm Kettlebell Clean and Jerkkettlebell
- Push Press - Behind the Neckbarbell
- Return Push from Stancemedicine ball
- Reverse Machine Flyesmachine
- Seated Cable Shoulder Presscable
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 74 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.