What is going on guys? Welcome to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode 214 and we are doing a lateral delt episode. So we previously did a shoulder episode as part of our training series all the way back in December, 2023. So that is over two years ago at this point. And the lateral delt portion was relegated to the final 10 minutes. We had a request from one of our longest listeners to do a lateral dell episode and here we are. So before we drive in to the nuts and bolts of the episode, Brian, can you kick us off with a few updates, please? Yeah, sure. Two quick ones here. I got my first ski day in of the year this Saturday, so somehow I managed to go the entire winter and not ski a single time until March 28th or whatever it was. 29th. It was amazing, though. It was a great day. I woke up, drove myself up to up to Keystone, which is like an hour and 15 minutes from me. and about a third of the mountain was open, which was totally fine because it was completely uncrowded. And I was able to literally just ski right up to the lift. I didn't even have to wait for like one person. Like I would literally just ski up and immediately onto the lift, back up, back down, back up, back down. I went nonstop for four and a half hours. And at the end of it, was like, the level of crushed that I felt was like totally different than anything. I would compare it to like when I did the bike race or something, which was like a three hour endurance event. Obviously this is different because it has isometric contractions. has like nervous system aspects of shifting and staying ah in a vertical position, not falling the shifting of the load from leg to leg, hip to hip, all of these things, plus the technical side of like working on your ski game. So anyway, at the four and a half hour point, I was like on my last lift going up for my final run. and I almost fell asleep on the ski lift. And I was like, Oh my God, I just need to get my ass down safely. So four and a half hours later, I had done 28,000 feet of vertical descent with 16 runs from top to bottom. So they were averaging like almost 2000 feet per run, huge day of skiing, got some hot tub sauna, steam room, had a beer, got some dinner, all by myself. It was amazing day. Probably one of my favorite ski days ever. And maybe there's some recency bias there, but really enjoyed it. Like 50 degree weather, I was in a hoodie the entire day. It was just perfect. So really amped on that. Glad I got a day in. And then the only other update here is that I think my body is doing really well with the new structure of a full body session every three days. While I was doing the bro split and walking a ton, my HRV was like it was starting to trend positive after kind of the fluctuations that occurred through the initial weeks of the TRT. It was starting to kind of stabilize a little, but it was definitely more volatile when I was just lifting and walking. And ever since I've now instead of lifting, you know, basically every day, lifting every third day and fitting in the cardio on the in between. my body really seems to be liking it. It's tough to say if it's simply that the TRT has stabilized to a point that like everything is working and maybe it wouldn't matter if I was still on the bro split versus the full body. but everything's been really consistent in the last two weeks since I made that switch. So I'm wondering if there's something about my body, my nervous system just responding better to maybe lifting slightly less frequently, or maybe it's the addition of more frequent cardio. It's it's really tough to say but For whatever reason, this structure seems to be vibing with my body. the only thing I'll say is that, those full body sessions are just, they're long, they're daunting, they're hard. The one I did yesterday took me 72 minutes and it was like everything I could do to just get through it as efficiently as possible. And it was just long. Like I'm used to those sub 40 minute sessions with the bro split. So I get to 40 minutes and I'm like, man, this feels like it should be. wrapping up about now and I'm really only like halfway through. So a bit of adaptation there, but I do enjoy the fact that once I get one of those sessions in the book, I know that I have another three days to life to go again. overall still good, but uh sessions do feel a bit long. What is going on in your world, dude? Before I answer that, I do have an addition. Something that you can probably simply do in the future is if you ever go back to a bro split, now we have like a cycle of data and see if your HRV begins to deteriorate or not, which would be pretty interesting to report back on at some point if that was done again. Yeah, I actually think I'm probably going to do this same structure next year unless something changes in my life. Like I really, really enjoyed these like 35 to 40 minute workouts in the colder months with like a ton of walking. It just felt like it vibed with the season so much better than being like trying to put this pressure on myself to be like, I need to keep my cardio fitness up and like, I got to fit it in wherever I can. And, all this stuff, like it just felt better to be like, Hey, it's, it's no longer cardio season. I'm just going to lift and you know, fit these sessions in and the super dialed like 35 to 40 minute period is just so clutch for me. So I think I'll do it again and we will have data next winter. Cool. So not too much with me except for the fact that I have Bolly belly again. So I don't feel very good. I actually feel rather awful. um And for me, I'm just it's just one last little kick in the nuts for me before we move away. We are officially moving in 20 22 days, which is really, really exciting. April, April 22nd. Okay, sweet. guess technically like 23, but it's it's the end of the day for me. It's the beginning of the day for you. Yeah. And I was just I've been thinking about it. It's I think I've averaged three Bollie Bellies a year for my time here. So this is like my 12th iteration with it. um And the worst part is is you get the there's the acceptance of like, oh fuck, this is happening again. And then it really it lingers and you think, okay, my stomach's pretty good. Maybe I can start having, you know, normal meals again. And there's like a three day period where it just doesn't kind of improve at all. And that's the worst part because it just it just sucks. So today I was like, I'm not even fucking around with this one. I'm just going to go get the azithromycin. And knock it out as quickly as I can because the last time I had it it was for like seven eight days And it was just miserable and that's when my body weight plummeted right before my pro show and I dropped I dropped from 224 to 208 in like 14 days or something. It was insane and I felt horrible. So I don't want that to happen again but that's really really it I I will say I was really proud of myself where I woke up feeling terrible but I still said I'm getting up at 5 15 when the alarm goes off. I'm getting through all my check ins efficiently and I'm just white knuckling the day and then just spending them productively even though I feel like shit because I've just found at this point in my life. What else am I gonna do? I can't sit on the couch. I'll feel terrible about myself. So at least, and I'll feel terrible physically, and then I'll feel terrible mentally about how I spent my day. So at least at this rate, I'm gonna feel terrible physically regardless, but now I'm at least like proud or. What's that word content with how I actually spent the day productively clients are all served. did some continuing education got on top of things so I'm at least relegated to that positively. Yeah, I have a couple of questions on that. ah Do you think, it's tough to say, guess, in the moment while you're feeling it, but do you feel like that's too steep of a price to pay for being there? Or is it to assume that because you were there for a number of years, it was just a reasonable price to pay? getting Bolly belly. yeah, it's just it happens. It happens to everyone. The locals still get it. in retrospect, do you feel like, like, man, I, if not for like my life circumstances, like I would just keep living in Bali and like dealing with this three times a year because being in Bali is like that good. yeah I think the pros definitely outweigh Bollie Bellie a few times per year. Especially if you're... Sorry. Go ahead. No, you go. You finish. I would say we have gotten a lot of questions about why we're leaving and the root of the answer is we're just at a different point in our lives now. The things that were amazing here when we first moved, going to the different coffee shops a few times per week and going to the beach and beach walks and these things. Everything in your life runs its course right the same way that we were early 20s Living the PB was a dream Pacific Beach in San Diego. It was an absolute dream It was the coolest thing in the world We had the time of our lives and then eventually for and for a majority of us life just kind of Transitions your interests change the things that used to be a 10 out of 10 enjoyment are no longer a 10 out of 10 enjoyment and you're just ready for different things and I've lived at the beach in perpetual summer since 2010. Right? I'm fucking sick of summer. I'm sick of being sweaty all the time. I cannot wait for winter to come around to just put sweatpants on in a hoodie and sit on the fucking couch and lay on a carpeted floor. These little things that sound silly, but it's literally been 16 fucking years since I've done it. All I want are these simple things with some colder weather. Yeah, well hey, you got it coming. uh Last question on it is how does your prevalence of Bollie Belly compare to those around you? Is three times a year like the average amongst your peer group? The less you eat out, the less likelihood it will happen. I would say two is probably pretty average. Yes. Obviously. specific to Westerners? Are people in the Bali locals, are they getting it or not? They get it, but still not as frequently. So I would say we've had the same housekeeper for the entirety that we've been here for almost four years. And I would say she gets it at least once per year. And she's born and raised here in her 50s or late 40s or something. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty gnarly. That's quite a price to pay. But that's it from me. Cool, that's all I got to you. Let's talk some lateral delts. I do have something quickly actually. Pro Camp starts on Monday, which is pretty cool. We will not have an episode next week because I will have full Pro Camp stuff all week, but I will be able to talk about a recap the following week about things that I learned and being exposed to, which I am very, very excited about. Hopefully my stomach is a whole, I can get multiple days of food in and feel good before training uh starts. That would be very, very nice. Yeah, yeah, totally. And that might actually be our last episode before you move back to the States, depending on if we get one in that final few days before you depart. Yep, that is very true. All right. Okay cool so how I thought made the most sense to split this up to make it a little bit more. I didn't want to say actionable because the thing with the lateral delts is. kind of simple right there's only really two ways you're training them we have an outward arcing motion away from the body some form of an elbow traveling high with a high pull and we have effectively dumbbells we can do that with we have a cable station that we can do that with and you have pretty much dedicated machine there are really Peripheral sorts of ancillary things like bands and stuff, but I don't think that that's going to be overly effective or applicable to the audience So the way that I thought we would split it up is it start with dumbbell then we move in through the cable station and Then any dedicated machines and some caveats within each and then Brian has a note about some same muscle group supersets I think has a lot of applicability here. So before we dive into dumbbells, one thing that I will say with this particular muscle group I think if I had to pick Brian and I'm very curious your opinion on this as well. I think the lateral delts may be one of the let's call it top two maybe in my opinion most challenging muscle groups to generate a really good stimulus in because of the nuance in the performance of the movements. And if I were to extrapolate on that a little bit more. I don't think there's an exercise I've seen poorly performed as frequently as dumbbell lateral raises. Which alludes to that. Yeah, I sort of agree and I sort of disagree and the the argument that I'll make for that is that uh There have been so many people that have ended up with pretty good lateral delts that maybe have never done anything except dumbbell lateral raises, know, strict with momentum, various things, various, you know, bent arms, straight arm, slightly in the scapular plane, more to the side. there, but I, I just, it seems like even though very specifically like to, to, get to the last 1 % of your development of the lateral delt that yes, I do feel like you need to kind of dial in technique and really make a connection with the muscle, so to speak. uh I don't think it's like, it's not quite as complicated as the lats, where like you can literally go an entire career training your back and not actually have great lats if you're like an upper back dominant uh puller. Whereas I feel like with with lateral raises or with the side delts, it's like, hey, if you're just kind of taking some weight and you're like swinging it out to the side a little bit, uh even if you're like mind muscle connection isn't great, like you're still kind of training the function of abduction of the lateral delts do. uh So to me, it feels like less complicated than the lats, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not complicated. I definitely agree with you, which is kind of ironic because you're kind of disagreeing with what I just said, but I don't think that you're wrong. And I guess it alludes to there's really only one muscle that's going to abduct the humerus away from the body, and that's the lateral delt. uh So you pretty much, even though the stimulus, may not feel a stimulus there or a uh general sensation, a pump, the work is being done because nothing else can do the work. Whereas you can, because the back is so complicated in terms of the complexity of the musculature that there, there's a lot of overlap in. muscle groups that can assist you know with a position of where the elbow goes and it's a little it's a lot more nuanced of a movement pattern specificity whereas arm goes out to the side the lateral delt is contracting Yeah, yeah, I just think back to like my first, I fuck my first 20 years of lifting almost like I, I didn't actually leave CrossFit, you know, till 2017. And I started in 97. So we're talking like 20 years. I don't think it was until 2017 or 18 that I ever did a movement for my lateral delts that wasn't either an upright row or a lateral raise with free weights. Like for 20 years, that was like all I did for my lateral delts. And I don't think that my lateral delts were like that bad during that period of time. And like, I don't know that they've even gotten significantly better since that time, since I've been dialing in my technique and exercise selection and all these things. Like I was literally just whipping around like 40 to 50 pound dumbbells, doing lateral raises with some momentum for years and years and years and years. And so uh Obviously, there's the genetic component there too. It's tough to say like somebody who doesn't have a genetic proclivity for lateral delt development might do the same thing I did and be upset with the development that they've achieved. And then somebody else with great with great lateral delt genetics might be able to do what I did and be like, wow, my lateral delts are like growing. is wild. So uh it is there's certainly very individual variability there. But but like you said, I mean, if you're pushing your arm away from the body, there's really only kind of one muscle that's going to be Yeah, that's a really, really good addition. Moving into exercise, is there, what are some of your favorites from the dumbbells or should I run through the list of exercises that we have and then we can kind of speak pros and cons to potentially each of them? Yeah, so when we organized this, we sort of didn't organize them by short and lengthened. We didn't really have much organization here aside from dumbbells. It's like, all these movements use dumbbells. uh So yeah, I think we can run through the list and talk about each movement. I'll just start by saying that up until relatively recently, I call it in the last few years, I think most dumbbell movements were always performed in a manner that was short overloaded, meaning that It was hardest when the arm is at parallel and then there's basically no resistance when the arm is down by the side. And in recent years, we've seen the ability to use dumbbell lateral raises in various forms as a more lengthened, biased movement simply by manipulating the position of the torso or the body in relation to the resistance. And so you'll see what I'm talking about here as we go through some of these movements and I'll discuss or we can discuss whether that version of the movement is more short or lengthened, biased and what. I love that. OK. So maybe let's let's let's do this. Let's try it in real time. We'll start with ones that are more lengthened and then we'll move into ones that are a little bit more mid range and then overload. So uh hopefully the two of us as professionals in this space should be able to do that in real time while speaking. yeah. Well, I think the reality is that probably none of them are like truly lengthened uh for a couple reasons, but one, because like for it to be completely lengthened, your torso would essentially have to be in a position where the bottom of the rep had your arm at the most lengthened position for the muscle. And so even if you're looking at a movement that is a biased version of a dumbbell lateral raise, which would be this kind of, call it like a sideways movement that you'll see Pete, you'll see Steve Hall doing this. You'll see Dirk Emmerich doing this. They're lying on the side of the bench or they're lying on a bench on their side. And so the point where the dumbbell is crossing gravity is essentially also the point where the dumbbell is lowest as in closest to your body. uh That is the thing that we're needing with a dumbbell to make it lengthen bias is it has to be where it it crosses gravity is also the most lengthened position. And so by putting your body into that position, you're getting really close to that. But unless you're lying completely flat, you're not actually going to be at that position. So most of these people are performing this movement at a slight incline lying on their one shoulder and raising the other one. So the actual point of most tension is going to be with the dumbbell. slightly up from the lengthened position. So it would be like a mid lengthened version of the movement. But that's probably as close as you're going to get to like truly lengthened in a dumbbell variant lateral raise. Yes, so that is the incline lateral raise. also have it. lateral raise. I listed it as sideways. um The incline lateral raise is another one that is going to be mid range. Think about if you're sitting straight up or you're standing vertically, your torso is erect. um That is going to be the shortest overload that you're gonna get because it is no tension at the bottom and then it's maximal tension as your arms are at parallel. by inclining your body back, essentially, like you're doing an incline dumbbell curl or something along those lines, you just change that that range just a little bit. So it has the same problem that the dumbbell curl has in that it takes the muscle through a longer position, but it doesn't really change where the movement is hardest. Like you're still going to find the movement hardest at the point where the dumbbell crosses gravity. So simply by inclining your body back, in reclining your body back, uh you're going to lengthen the lateral delt more because those dumbbells are going to come more behind your torso at the bottom. But as you raise them, the hardest point of that exercise is still going to be as the dumbbell crosses gravity, which is going to be a more short bias. Yes, very, very well said. Thank you for that. And then you have this one labeled leaning in lateral raise. Yeah. So you originally wrote leaning lateral raise extra short and you're totally right. Like if you do the way that the most people do it where you hold a pole and you lean away from the pole as you're doing it, then yes, that is going to be a much shorter version of the exercise because it even takes more tension off of the bottom if there was even a way to do that and increases the tension at the short position. The alternative to leaning lateral raise would be a leaning in. lateral raise. So take the same pole that you were holding on to before, but instead of your feet being into the pole and your body leaning away from the pole, it's the opposite. So your feet move away from the pole and your hand leans into the pole. And now we've created a version of almost like that sideways lateral raise that we were talking about earlier where you're on the incline bench. Yes, that is a very, very good distinction. And I think in full transparency for using dumbbells, having the first and the third variant variation are effectively identical ones just supported with a bench one is supported with a pole or a rack or something like that. But they are nearly the same. Having three exercises that bias the that's called mid length and position if we're trying to be really, really uh correct. Pretty good in terms of options and variety for something as simple as a dumbbell there. Yeah, I actually think like, you know, none of these exercises existed that I knew about in the in the old days, like before, it the last like five years, I don't think anyone did any of these like, more mid length and variance of the lateral raise, at least not popularly, like it never appeared in any of the the muscle mags that I would read over the years. I never saw it on like t nation or anything like that. And they always had some like kind of cool, unique exercises on there. so it really is only in the last few years that people are even thinking about it this way. And I think most of that comes from the predominance of research that has shown, you know, lengthen bias training, blah, blah, blah. And people got so obsessed with it in the early 2020s that they started just trying to think of different ways they can manipulate the positioning to make it more lengthened. And so what came out of that was these new exercises that people are using. And, and I think it's great. Like if nothing else, it's more variety and it's possible that being more lengthened might actually be better. So ah all of that sounds good to me and I think the innovation of people and the creativity ah is admirable. I would agree with that. do have a question for you. Personally, I find when performing specifically with dumbbells, some of these mid lengthened variations, I get a lot more shoulder joint discomfort. Do you experience that or do you have any clients that report that? I wouldn't say significantly so. ah So you feel that when you're doing these length invariants with dumbbells, but not when you're doing them with machines or cables. Yeah. I mean, I could see that being the case because, Only if maybe it's putting you into a range of motion that isn't like a natural place for you to be like I'm thinking about the the dumbbell one behind the back where you're on the incline bench reclined like maybe yeah that one maybe a little bit I could feel some discomfort because it's it's tugging my shoulder behind my torso with load ah So maybe in a sense I could feel that ah I don't feel it during the sideways one that one I feel like much more controlled and kind of the stimulus is where it's supposed to be kind of more or less. But I do, and this isn't related to the length and movements where I feel shoulder discomfort is actually on the dumbbell movements that are very short overloaded and where I feel the discomfort is at the very top. So it's like, you know, the, the tension builds, builds, builds as your arm is, is raising to the side and raising up. And something about it being so hard at the top just doesn't feel great. on my musculature. Same thing with leg extensions. If I'm doing leg extensions and I have it severely short overloaded where there's basically no tension at the bottom and tons of tension at the top so it resembles the curve of a standard dumbbell lateral raise, same thing. My knees hate that feeling. But as soon as I make it more mid overload where there's a bit of a drop off in tension at the very, very shortest position, uh my joints tend to feel better doing that. So I don't know if that's just a me thing or if that kind of extrapolates out across other people as well. Yeah, I'm not sure if any of the listeners on YouTube that have any input on that you can drop us a comment about that. Ironically, the dumbbell exercise that feels best for my shoulders is the leaning away. dumbbell lateral raise did his extra short bias. And the reason I call it extra short, which is kind of not technically correct is I think about it as this if I'm leaning away, right? I'm starting here and that's like where I finish. But then if I just lift my torso up. It's that's the finishing position. Whereas when I'm doing a regular dumbbell lateral, I am not going all the way up there because like that is a hard range to access under resistance. But when I'm here, it feels much easier to access that extra and range. But yeah, that that movement pattern is what feels best for my shoulders. And what I think it is is when I get into that lengthened position, it puts me in unnatural or un maybe not unnatural an uncomfortable position for my for my delt and then I it's like I the entire movement is almost out of uh not alignment or something so for me it's being able to start a movement where feels normal which is not super super lengthened I'm able to get a much more better kind of mental to physical connection with an exercise and that lean away one, I'm able to start in a really, really comfortable position and kind of stay in that groove the entire range of motion. Yeah, that's interesting. I would just say on that note that I kind of have veered away from almost all dumbbell work for my lateral delts. ah I just don't feel like any of them feel as good as cables do for me, like any of the variants, the short ones, the lengthened ones, the mid ones, the behind the back, the in front of the back, like in front of the body. Like it doesn't matter what it is. Like cables just feel way better for me. ah So I don't know, you know, individual. variant there. think something to do with the smooth resistance profile. Like there's something about it just getting so much harder at the short position that just doesn't feel good for me. yeah, anyway, should we discuss some of the short movements here with dumbbells? We kind of alluded to some of them as we were talking lengthen, but the first one you put on the list was just a seated dumbbell lateral raise, which I've used a ton in the past as well. So you're just sitting on a bench. The dumbbells kind of come underneath your butt a little bit under the bench. Sometimes I'll do them with like a slight forward lean as I'm doing it. I think that that helps bracing a little bit better, but that version of the movement is going to be super short overloaded, much like just a standing dumbbell lateral raise would. Do you like that one? I prefer seated over standing because it forces me to stay more honest because I can't kind of manipulate my hips to get a little bit more um out of anything. it by saving me from myself, I'm able to get a better stimulus because I can't cheat the movement at all. Yeah. What do you think about um the idea that you can still get a ton in a different way out of dumbbell lateral raises by doing them in a way that's almost like too heavy for you, where you kind of have to use some momentum to get them up, but then because they're so heavy, there's a ton of eccentric load as you're lowering them back down, which means the muscle is like lengthening a ton more and getting a lot of additional tension through the eccentric phase, which you wouldn't get. if you're just doing super strict laterals, like with 20 pounds, you know, you're like, you're like this perfect little specimen, like out to the side, back down, like super controlled reps. And it feels like in some ways that doing them heavier and more explosive and then having to deal with the impact of the eccentric has some kind of additional stimulus there maybe. I wouldn't personally do it myself. I wouldn't program it. The one thing I will sometimes program if we want a little bit of extra overloading is a post exhaust superset where I will put in heavy lengthened DB partials post a cable variation like a Y-rays or something of that sort. But the real reason I don't want to do something like that and I wouldn't program it is pure joint integrity. It seems for I would argue maybe the knee, maybe the most affected joint in a gym. The shoulder has to be number two, right? Mostly due to the complexity of all the positions that the shoulder can can manipulate into. But something like that, I would argue, has a high rate of people injuring themselves. doing it because it's you're doing something purposely that's too heavy and just trying to force your eccentric ability to deal with it seems a little risky potentially. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I mean, it definitely is kind of like a learned skill to be able to do that. And like, that's how I did my lateral raises for well over a decade and didn't really deal with any ramifications from that. But I think I kind of learned how to like brace and put that tension, like kind of where it needed to be instead of into my joint structure. So like many things, it's kind of like a learned skill and practice there. Okay. So then, so we had the seated lateral raise, we have the standing lateral raise, which essentially just emulates the seated lateral raise more or less. like you said, harder to cheat the seated version. I will say one thing you can do in either of them is kind of manipulate your torso position so you could make it even more short overloaded if you kind of bend over and hinge at the hip just maybe like 10 degrees. And then you were to hold that like slightly hinged position and not let any momentum come in at all throughout the rep. I think you're gonna get a slightly more short biased movement there. ah I actually like doing them that way if I'm doing them because I don't do much short delt work. And I also feel like it allows you to stay in the scapular plane just a little bit easier when you're slightly hinged forward at the torso. And so by scapular plane, mean like if you were directly out to the side, that is not scapular plane. If you were directly to the front, that's not scapular plane. It's kind of like 30 degrees toward the front from the side. So arm directly out to the side, move it in about 30 degrees toward your front. That's going to be kind of like your scapular plane region. And that's kind of the optimal way that uh cast demonstrated and I think has been universally accepted as the primary best way to do your lateral raises because it lines up with the joint structure of the shoulder in a manner that allows it to kind of glide and not pinch through the AC joint. Yeah, I would agree with that 100%. Cool. And then the other move, talked about the leaning lateral raises. We talked about the sideways and the inclined ones as slightly more mid lengthened. So then we have the three versions that are not, I guess, considered lateral raises, but they're still movements that train the lateral delts. And so you put a dumbbell high pole or dumbbell incline row or something like that. Important to keep in mind. what I wanted to say, Upright Row, my bad. Upright row, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. I was like, incline row, we gotta make sure that we're doing them more in an upright fashion. uh Yeah, so upright row or high pull. I love both of these movements. uh I still use a version of a high pull every so often in my training. I kinda get the urge to do some Olympic lifting and then I start doing it and I'm like, no, I think I'm just gonna do high pulls. And it gives me the thing that I want from the Olympic lifting, which is the explosive nature of the hips in there a little bit and the kind of triple extension piece. So it accomplishes that without having to go into the turnover of the snatch or the catch of the clean or anything like that. And then obviously you can do them more strict. So I think if it would be more strict, it would be an upright row. And if it's a little more explosive, I call it a high pole. That's kind of the distinction I make. uh And then I really like both of those movements. The upright row is one where people, through my experience, people need to be individual about how much range of motion they use. But I think that it is an extremely productive movement and it gets bastardized as negative because it has hurt people's shoulders because people are using the wrong range of motion for their shoulder structure. So like back in the day, you would see Dr. Mike do these upright rows where he would come like all the way to his face. And there is nothing that feels worse on my shoulders than doing an upright row that high. ah Again, super short overloaded. So maybe that's a piece of it. ah But when I started doing my upright rows where literally I just stopped at about my nipple level, ah that seems like a really small range of motion. But that man, that destroys my shoulders, especially if I do it with a little bit of an abduction component. So instead of thinking about going straight up, I think about kind of pulling out to the side as I'm doing the upright row. ah And man, that movement fries. So if you haven't tried that, definitely recommend I would agree with what you've had found works better for you. Pulling out feels much better than pulling up for me. Like if I'm doing this, I'd be like why? It just feels like I'm jamming my joints together and it feels terrible. But if I just drive my elbows like out, I'm like, this feels great. I can feel that where I want to feel it. But it's like you said, just shoulder mechanics or shoulder joint structures. Differ in finding a way to perform it that feels good for your individual anatomy. for sure. And then the next two we have on here are face pull and Y-rays. And I'll talk about them both together because while they both do train the function of the lateral delt a bit, I tend to think of both of those movements more as kind of like the rear portion of the lateral delt. And so you can think about the lateral delt as having like an anterior portion and a posterior portion and then maybe like a directly lateral or medial portion in the middle. ah And so I... very much feel like the face pull and the Y-rays are training more of that posterior piece of the lateral delt and more of the rear delt overall. And then obviously like some, some upper lower mid traps, like the whole structure there, rhomboids, whatever. So with Y-rays and face pull, you're getting a little bit less direct stimulus to the lateral delt, or at least to the, the anterior and medial part of the lateral delt. And you're getting a bit more of the stimulus to the posterior side. Do you have a preference on grip position or hand position with a face pull? You see some people are using, let's say for example, maybe like a rope or something, thumbs kind of facing them. You have the opposite where the thumbs are kind of facing away. Do you have a preference there? Do feel that any type of grip manipulation may impact where that stimulus goes to any degree? Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably similar to the discussion we just had on the upright row. Like when I do a face pull, I think we're now talking about cables because you added a rope in there, but I think you can talk about the same thing as if you have dumbbells in your hand too. ah When I'm doing a face pull, I tend to think about kind of pulling out as I'm doing it. So I'm starting a little bit narrower, which I think is getting like a little bit of extra length in there maybe as they kind of come to the middle of the torso. And then as I pull up, I'm kind of pulling out as well, almost like, you know, the pulling of the bow and arrow type thing. ah And so I think that is helpful. And that's the nice part about using dumbbells or in what you mentioned, the rope or D handles or something like that is that it allows you to go from narrow to wide. Whereas if you're doing it with a set structure, like a barbell or something like that, you're just going to kind of be locked in the range of motion. Agreed, agreed. Sorry for getting ahead of us with changing the rope out. No, you're good. And then the Y raises is another great one where like you can do it bent over. That's a super short. I guess they're all super short overloaded versions with the dumbbells, but you can do it like slightly bent over at the hip. And you can also do it face down like you would be doing like a chest supported row or something like that. But you would do your Y raise from that position. ah And then I feel like there's another one that I use sometimes as well. But anyway, those are probably like the main two that I would that I consider at that point. Yeah, I think I would agree with that too. Yeah, we can move on to cables. Yeah. with cables, I think Brian and myself would both agree. I think this is going to be the best option. uh Largely accessible at almost any gym. can probably get at least a single cable station open. The one caveat I will say that makes training the lateral dealt hard in a lot of commercial facilities, the life fitness. uh MJ8 MJ4 like think of the most common life fitness cable stack that you see across gyms worldwide the it's really fucking heavy in those smaller plates and Unless you're a bigger stronger person you literally may not be able to use the very first plate so that is a pretty unfortunate caveat and that's something where a functional trainer from free motion or something like that is going to have a much more beginner to intermediate friendly progression because the initial weights are effectively usable as opposed to that light fitness cable stack which is just very very heavy for lateral delt movements. Yeah, I feel like that life fitness stack oftentimes is like meant to be used for other movements. Like it's not like its purpose is not to be used for like one arm lateral raises or something like that. Whereas it feels like the free motion and the kind of dual functional trainer type things are more designed for that purpose. Yeah, I think other companies though, it's just a really heavy stack across the board. Yeah, Well, most gyms have one that I think is usable. You just kind of have to scrounge around and look for it, make sure that you can hold it down. Yeah. But that's okay. So the thing with cable lateral raises that make them so superior, in my opinion, are a few reasons. One is that the ability to manipulate the resistance profile is as easy as raising and lowering the height of the cable in relation to your torso. So if you want it to be more short overloaded, just put that cable stack down at the bottom. If you want it to be more lengthened, put it at about wrist height, wrist height being if your arm is hanging down by your side, it would about be the point where you would uh just naturally let your arm hang. You would set the cable at that height. then the next thing is the manipulation of your torso position. And so... uh You can easily rotate your hips, your torso in various ways to change the angle by which you are raising. um So you can do like a more kind of lengthened kind of training the muscle at a long length, because we're going to assume that the cable stack height is determining where the strength curve is. So the resistance profile that you change by manipulating your torso would simply just change how long the muscle gets, not where it's hardest. ah So you can do that. You can, of course, also have the version in front of your body, the version behind your body, um various things of that. But it's also just a smooth resistance profile, which we alluded to in the earlier section, is that, know, dumbbells, there's a point where it's hardest and there's a point where it's easiest and it's changing throughout the range of motion. Whereas with the cable station, you're literally getting like an even resistance profile through the cable. And obviously you can manipulate that through the things that I mentioned earlier, based on like cable height and stuff like that. But if you set it up uh in a mid to lengthened manner where it's a round wrist height, you'll find that it is a pretty even rep from bottom to at least the point where your arm is parallel to the ground. And then it will have a little bit of drop off if you're setting it up lengthened. It'll have a little bit of drop off as your arm comes up above parallel. um which is in fact the position that the lateral delt does shorten all the way. So if you wanted to use a like full range of motion for the lateral delt, then you would go all the way up until the cable essentially runs along your arm, which would have your arm probably at 20 or 30 degrees above parallel. But you also don't have to do that. Like I've actually started doing most of my lateral raises without even doing that top position now. So I'm stopping the rep at about arm parallel. And that's making that resistance profile even more even across the. Yeah, now one of the things I think... that can be really, really beneficial continuing on is modifying your torso position in relation to the cable orientation to find which path feels best for you. uh I know we're speaking in some real, we're gonna have to really, really choose our words well here so that people can paint a good picture of us describing body positions with cables relative to. uh uh risk positions and such but one of the things that I really like using the free motion for is it allows me to set a cable like pulley height and then I can kind of stand in a position where I wouldn't be able to do that with a traditional you know uh cable pulley stack with like a single pulley that goes up and down on a rail so that one I find has a lot a lot larger range of inter person variation to find how the setup feels best. And I also see that people don't really explore it for what might work really, really well for them. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, totally. I think maybe the most like practical way to describe it would be that, you know, to think of it as one arm, first of all, because using two arms changes the ability to kind of rotate your torso a bit. So assuming you're using one arm, if you just kind of grab the cable and walk straight out with it, what you'll notice is that if it's one of those ones with like an arm on either side, right, and you're choosing one of the arms, if you walk straight out, it's going to be pulling from the side. And it's gonna basically if you were to lateral raise from that position your arm would go directly out to the side So you wouldn't be in the scapular plane So essentially what you would want to do is as you walk out with the cable in your hand and we'll assume it's behind the back or whatever at this point If you simply just rotate the torso a little bit uh toward the cable machine. So walk out, assuming the cable's in my left hand, I would rotate slightly to the right. And then that allows it to line up a little bit more naturally with the scapular plane there. And I think it will glide and kind of feel a little bit smoother for you. I would agree with that. One of the best pieces of advice that I was ever given for cable based lateral raise variations was from Cass at N1. And one of the it's so simple line the cable up with your arm. Right. So if you are doing the raise right if you're watching on YouTube if I'm doing a raise here I pretty much want the cable let's say it's coming behind my back. I want the cable here. If I'm doing a lateral race here and the cable is running like like this you're fighting it because the cable wants to pull your arm forward and you're trying to pull it there. Just line things up and it will make it will one you'll be stronger because you're fighting the resistance directly in opposition of the line of force and not in some ah what would be a I don't even know how to describe it. then in an additional vector of the way it wants to go. And you have things lined up. So same way when you're, let's say in a squat pattern, you want to stack your hip over your knee, over your ankle, like lining everything up, line the cable up with your arm, with your forearm, and it will feel much smoother and not like you're fighting it. Yeah, I think an easy way to describe this as far as like making sure you get it right as a self check is that at the very top of the lateral raise and I'm talking about like at the point where it's going to be above your arm being parallel at that point where your arm is like 20 to 30 degrees above parallel, you should have the cable run essentially through your hand down your forearm off your tricep almost like it's coming out of your the back of your armpit. So the cable is running uh directly along your arm. throughout the entire rep and then obviously into the cable machine. And so if you can see or feel that position where the cable is literally just brushing your arm the entire way down, once it reaches the top, that means that you're lined up properly. Okay, so we started with the Lengthen, which is the dual behind the back, which I think is one of the best. That is another one that you just have to find which scapular plane position feels best for you. I do see people kind of botch that one a bit. based on the distance you are from the cable stack. So you're just gonna wanna walk yourself out to the like the proper distance so that when you get, like I just mentioned, when you get to the top of the rep, both arms are up, you'll feel the cable literally directly just brushing off through the forearm, down the tricep and then out through the armpit. And if you can get it positioned so that that's happening, then you're the right distance from the machine. Yeah, it with cables and lateral delts. It really is a game of angles. If your angles are right, it feels great. Tension is exactly where you want it. Stimulus is great. If your angles are wrong, it feels like you are fighting an exercise that your body doesn't want to do. Okay, so we had the behind the back lengthened, we had the single arm lengthened. Both of those movements can be done shortened simply by just lowering the cable stack down to the bottom. And then we have kind of the same thing for the in front of the body version. And, you know, I think about the front of the body version as being a Y-Rays. I guess there's like probably some subtlety to the way it's performed. Like you could probably, I mean, I don't know. Like if your arm is straight, I guess the difference is if your arm is straight in front of you or not. So like, this would be the distinction, two different versions of this, the cables in front, so you're facing the cable machine. If your arm is completely straight and you're just maintaining straight as you go, then it's a Y-Rais. Whereas if I guess your arms are bent and you're starting inside close to the body, or not even bent, but you're starting with them, say, in front of your waist level. So the proximity of the cable to your body is closer than it would be if your arm was stretching out, then I think it could be a lateral raise, but I don't really use that version of it. Do you? Not really. don't, lateral delts is one of those things, right? If we're, I probably shouldn't say this, but sure, since I already started it, right? We're gonna go off and we're listing probably like 12 to 15 lateral delt variations. I think I use four, honestly. I might use even less. I might use like three, yeah. Yeah, and I think it's one of the like, you know, what feels really good to perform what you feel that you can set up and where you get the most stimulus. And I mean, it's a very small muscle group. So it's not like the back where there's a lot of different angles and stuff. I think four is probably plenty. Yeah. So the Y-rays being another version of that, so the one that comes from behind the body and then comes forward slightly is going to be lateral delt plus some anterior lateral delt. So you're looking at more of the front side of the shoulder. And then when you flip that around and you put your arm in front of the body, the movement is actually going posterior. So as you raise your arm to the side and a Y-rays, it's going posterior, which means that you're getting more of that like. posterior side of the lateral delt along with the rear delts, the traps, all that stuff. So why raise a bit more posterior, the lateral raise from behind the back, even though it's counterintuitive, more anterior. uh And then another movement that we didn't mention that I just want to for the sake of it being my favorite movement at the moment is the lying why raise. So the one where you're lying on a bench on your back, the cables are in front of you. You can do a little princess headrest where you prop up the the seat of the incline bench just one notch that you have a sweet little headrest and and it just it makes the movement so fluid so easy so comfortable and so easy to push to uh to high levels of fatigue without compromising. Sorry, something I did in my headphone just opened up one of our podcast episodes and started playing in my earphones. So I was like panicking trying to fucking turn that off. So I did not hear what you said. I apologize. good. was just talking about how much I love the lying lateral, the lying Y-rays version where you're on the bench. And I was noting that you can kind of prop up the seat like one notch so that it becomes like a little bit of a headrest for you as you're doing them. And it's just so easy and so comfortable to push to like high levels of fatigue. So I love that exercise. I'm glad you brought it up because as we were talking through the cables, I was like, I don't have the prone incline wire raise, which is my absolute favorite that I perform most frequently. The challenge is there's a lot of configuration options. There's a lot of rope to proverbially hang yourself with, and there's a lot of ways to get it wrong. But when you get it right, It is very nice. The stability is incredible because you're not fighting that as you near fatigue and you're getting a little bit shaky, you're not fighting this, the torso moving and the hips moving because you're braced and your back is pressed into a bench and it's literally just here. And then what I really, really like performing them here at Undefeated or anywhere that has a free motion is I bring the arms, not super, super narrow, but pretty narrow so that I can start to position and the lengthen with the overload lengthened. Yeah. I love that exercise. is arguably my favorite lateral delt exercise because of the stability. And when you nail the setup, it's just very, very nice. Yeah, I'm actually only using two lateral, well, actually I have three lateral exercises at the moment because I have three full body days. uh And one of them is that lying one that we just discussed. One is the behind the back one, because I feel like if I'm doing the Y raise, it's more posterior and then I'm doing the behind the back one to be more anterior. So I'm getting the balance there. And then I do a one arm behind the back as well. So I'm getting a little bit more of that because I also feel like with all the back work I do that there's a ton You actually get, if you guys didn't know, you actually get some lateral delt work on the posterior side with back work as well, especially the versions where your elbows come out and not like more lat based. um So you get a decent amount of, of posterior lateral delt and rear delt pretty much with any pulling movement. So I generally bias my lateral delt work tap slightly more on the anterior side and slightly less on the posterior side. But I'm not talking about the anterior delt. I'm not talking about the front delt. I'm talking about the anterior side of the lateral delt. for what it's worth. uh So yeah, I think that covers the cable stuff ah for the most part. Anything else to add there? I don't think so. I'm sure probably when I'm going through the show notes, putting this one together to release it, I'll think of something that we forgot, but I think we cover that very, very comprehensively. Cool. So as we move on to machines, I'll just openly state that I have very little experience with lateral delt machines because the only time I ever get to use them is when I drop into gyms, which is at this point a couple of times a year. ah And then that would assume that I have to be training lateral delts as my part of my workout that day. And then also that I decide to use the machine that's there instead of simply using cables, which I'm super comfortable with. So my exposure to lateral delt machines is very limited. ah I'll say that the one I've used most recently is that on the cruise that I was on in December, they had the standard one where you're like, it's the pads where you're in the little machine and it's a stack that you put the pin in and you kind of raise your elbows out to the side like this, like you're doing little flaps with your arm. ah And uh I haven't liked that movement much in the past, but the last time I performed it, I changed the way I was doing it and I tried to, uh I put my arms out. So instead of like crunching in super tight with my elbows locked in my body, I put my arms out. Like I would be doing like a full lateral raise with straight arms and the pad hit me, you know, around the elbow or whatever. And I just kind of did the lateral raises like that. And I actually think they felt like a little bit better, but I would say I, in my experience, at least my exposure to machines has been. so inferior to cables that I usually opt not to use them. I would agree with Brian's statement. Pretty much overwhelmingly true. Yes. In my experience the machines that will have a handle that you're kind of in the in the L position right. Humorous is at at your know torso. I have tried. I can't get a good connection with it. I have honestly tried numerous numerous times and I think that might be something relative with with a machine like that in order to build machine right there has to be assumptions made in terms of joint angles and proportions and things and we just may not line up well for it. Also similar to what Brian said the times that I have gotten the most out of those style of machines is where I didn't bend my arm and I just kept my arms straight the pad hits me right about maybe just north of the elbow on the humerus and I'm just pushing out to the side. It's still to me much worse of a stimulus than a cable and it I feel much more joint discomfort while while performing them still. So that's that style of the machine. Then there is the more let's call it. And those are your you typically find those with your equipment manufacturers of yesteryear the hammer strength Nautilus made one like that. There's not many brands Cybex. Cybex also made a kneeling one with swivel handles, which I fucking despise by the way I don't some people love it and there they must know something that I I don't that was one of the few times I'm a big Cybex fan I've tried to use it and I'm like, what the fuck is this? It just doesn't make sense to me, but that could just be me More modern day you're going to find the handle steel swivel handle with with a cam and those ones Arsenal makes one there's uh a Polaris made one, you know a number number of years ago a carrion Made one there's some chain driven style ones. Those tend to be better But they also make the assumption of arms straight out to the side. So you are in full God frontal plane, I believe Right straight out to the side which which may not feel best for you like the arsenal strength one. I'd give it a B. I don't love it. The one that we put in undefeated from Jim Leco I do love because the arm the the arm is not at a 90 degree. So it allows you to let me kind of set myself up here. I can lateral raise in the scapular plane. which works really really well. However, because the arms are fixed, you have to be in a certain height range for it to work really well. If you're six foot two, six foot three, you're too tall. If you're five foot two or something, we have to bring over a box and modify where your hand goes, which puts you at a D leveraged position to generate force. But again, with machines, assumptions have to be made. My favorite part about the Jim Leco is the use of the counterbalance. So when you were in the lengthened position, the counterbalance is perfectly in line with gravity, meaning it is giving you zero assistance. And then as you go through, as you A-B duct, yes, the counterbalance moves into the plane of gravity and provides you some assistance. So you get a pretty decent. resistance profile and most often you fail that exercise in the lengthened which is great on that machine. dude, that's crazy. I need to try this machine. That's pretty rad. I have some videos on my YouTube of me performing it in shorts. It's it's pretty decent. The one caveat is it's a very light stack. I can do the entire stack unilaterally or bilaterally for a set of 13 and that I am not that type of straw. So it's a little bit light. But other than that I love it. I think it's a really really one of the best modern day lateral raised machines on the market in my opinion. Sweet. All right, well, I just wanna touch on this last thing real quick uh before I bounce, because it's time to get kids to school. uh just the quick note on same muscle group supersets. And you guys know I talk about same muscle group supersets a lot. I'm a fan of them, even if the science doesn't necessarily support them. I think there's a number of benefits, including time saving. uh But specifically with the delts, I think there's... exponentially more benefit to doing same-mouse group supersets because it seems that the lateral delts respond a little bit better to volume and to higher reps. Like you can beat the shit out of them. You could do 20 to 30 sets a week on them. They recover quickly, which lend them to be slightly more slow twitch fiber dominant muscle group. And so if you simply just train them in the six to eight rep range like you do, or six to 10, six to 12 even, um You may be leaving some of the gains on the table. What I hate the most with any movement is doing a set of like 15 to 20 reps where the first 10 feel like you're just buying in so that you can do the hard stuff. And it just seems like a huge waste of time and energy. But with the same muscle group superset, you're able to get two failure points in a 12 to 16 rep set. So I could do a set of six to eight of one movement. and then move immediately into a set of six to eight of another movement. And now instead of doing one set of 15 to 20 reps that had one failure point, I'm doing a set of a similar number of reps, but I'm getting two failure points there, which means two opportunities or not two opportunities, two stimulative uh doses to the muscle. So I think especially for the delts, those are productive. The way I like to set them up, well, shit, I guess you can set them up anyway. I tend to lean toward going short then lengthened. And I think that this came from my early days where I used to superset dumbbell lateral raises with overhead presses. But there's absolutely no reason that it couldn't be the reverse instead of a pre-exhaust. It's like a post-exhaust where you're going from overhead press and then directly into lateral raise. Like that's also a really good one. ah More recently, I've been a huge fan of going dumbbell lateral raise into cable. lateral raise. like that's short overload into into a more lengthened overload exposure there. Sometimes I'll even go uh like a Y raise, which would be more posterior dominant into lateral raise from behind the back, which would be more anterior dominant. So you're getting the crossover where the medial part of the lateral delt is getting hit by both movements, but one is exposing a little bit more on the posterior side and one a little bit more on the anterior side. So a number of different ways you can organize these. and make them work, but I just think there's a huge benefit to them and they're very productive. One final thing that I'll add before you wrap this one up is I think the lateral delt one because of the reasons Brian said they're a small muscle group They recover really well. They can handle a large amount of volume, but because of Those some of those same principles It's kind of hard to truly Progressively overload a lateral delt movement think of let's take one of the dumbbell variations Because the dumbbells only increment in specific increments So there, it really lends itself to using things like supersets to just generate a lot of stimulus where if we were doing that with, say the quads or the chest or something, it would muddy some of our evaluation of progression. But because the progression is already so limited in the lateral delt, because of the incremental jumps of the weight, it does lend itself to a little bit more of a, let's call it maybe like a bro approach or just hitting it a lot to just generate stimulus because the traditional progression route is limited with this specific muscle group. Yeah, totally. I mean, for someone to keep form identical and then be able to go up five pounds per dumbbell in a lateral raise, you're talking like a year. I mean, depending on where you are in your journey, right? But like, yeah, let's be real. Like when I would go up five pounds, my form would change. And eventually, I know my form would get better, but it wasn't uh a fast process. And so we just need to be cognizant of that. And I think your point around just creating a shit ton of stimulus and not worrying so much fits into some of the other. Uh, discussions we've had in recent episodes about, you know, tracking and, uh, routine and structure and just beating the shit out of the muscle and, and all that stuff. So, you guys can go listen to the prior episodes in the last few weeks where we discussed more around that. Cool. So hopefully this was an informative and helpful episode on all things lateral delts. Any questions, drop them in the comments, please guys. Brian and I will talk to you hopefully in two weeks. And if not once, we are both stateside, which is exciting. Sounds good.