How to do Perfect Shoulder Side Raises

Muscle imbalances and weaknesses in the shoulder is one of the primary causes of dysfunction and pain. Thus, to have both great-looking as well as injury-free shoulders, we need to target all three specific areas.

The shoulder also has the greatest freedom of movement of all the joints, so you need to take extra care to ensure you are performing these exercises correctly. While these exercises may seem simple, common mistakes are often made that can result in injury.

When it comes to performing a lateral or "side" raise, here are a few tips to keep those shoulders looking and feeling great:

The key things you want to remember when doing a side raise are:

1. Choose a weight that allows you to control the movement, but feels challenging on the last few reps.
2. Only raise the weights up to shoulder level.
3. If you are using heavier weights, reduce the tension on your shoulders by raising your arms at a little more to the front of your body as opposed to straight out from the sides. If the weights are very heavy, you may even want to hold the weights in front of you with your elbow bent at 90 degrees and keep your elbows bent while raising your arms up to the side.

Fun Shoulder Fact: The shoulder muscle is also referred to as the deltoid due to the resemblance to the triangular Greek letter delta (Δ). It is made up of three general regions: the anterior, lateral and posterior, or, in simple terms, the front, side and rear.