reckonerDumbbell front raise
The one movement in the library that trains the front of the shoulder with nothing else to hide behind. No triceps, no chest, no leg drive. That is what makes it useful and it is also why the weight is small and why plenty of people do not need it.
Raise to eye level, no swinging.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Front delts
- Kit
- Dumbbell
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 1 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Stand up and let the bells hang
Feet under the hips, a bell in each hand in front of the thighs, palms turned toward you. Ribs down and glutes lightly on before the first rep, because the whole failure mode of this movement is the body helping.
Fix a small bend at the elbow and hold it
Not straight, not curling. Put a slight bend in and keep exactly that bend for the whole set. An elbow that opens and closes turns a raise into something the biceps get to help with.
Raise to eye level
Lift forward until the bells are at about the height of your eyes, one arm at a time or both together. That is the cue Reckoner puts on your wrist, and it is a stopping point rather than a suggestion.
Lower all the way down, slowly
Back to the thighs under control, and pause there rather than bouncing into the next rep. The lowering half of a raise is the half people give away, and it is free.
What goes wrong
Swinging it up
The hips push, the torso leans back, and the bell arrives at eye level having been thrown there. No swinging is half of the cue on your wrist. If it will not go up without the lean, it is too heavy, and this is a movement where too heavy is very easy to reach.
Shrugging at the top
The shoulders come up toward the ears in the last few inches and the traps finish the rep. Keep the shoulders down and stop where the arms can still do the work themselves.
Adding it because you think your presses miss the front of the shoulder
They do not. A flat bench press produces roughly the same activity in the front of the shoulder as it does in the chest, and tilting the bench past forty five degrees raises front deltoid activity significantly further1. If you press at all, the front of your shoulder is already being trained hard.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 8 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 12 at 8 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 13 at 8 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 14 at 8 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 15 at 8 kg | Load up 8 kg → 9 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 1 kg to 9 kg and reps reset to twelve. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 9 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 12 at 9 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Do I need front raises?
Probably less than you think. The front of the shoulder is worked hard by any press: in a bench press its activity is similar to the chest's own, and it climbs as the bench angle steepens1. What has never been tested is whether adding a front raise on top of a program that already presses grows the front of the shoulder more than the pressing alone. So treat this as an accessory you may choose rather than a hole in your week.
Why does it climb in such small steps?
Because a raise with straight arms is a long lever and a small weight at the end of it is a lot of load at the shoulder. The library gives it a smaller step than any overhead press it holds, and the fact block at the top of this page prints exactly what that step is.
What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?
It eases the load and lets you rebuild toward the weight you were stuck at. There is nothing to rotate you to: this is the only front raise in the library, so its swap group has one movement in it and the reset is the whole answer.
Similar movements
Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.
Sources
- Rodríguez-Ridao and colleagues, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020. Effect of Five Bench Inclinations on the Electromyographic Activity of the Pectoralis Major, Anterior Deltoid, and Triceps Brachii during the Bench Press Exercise the horizontal bench press producing similar electromyographic activity in the pectoralis major and the anterior deltoid, and inclinations greater than forty five degrees producing significantly higher anterior deltoid activation