reckonerMachine lateral raise
A seated raise where pads on the outside of your arms take the load and the machine holds your torso still. The side of the shoulder is asked to lift the arms out to shoulder height, and nothing is asked to balance. That is a different job from the dumbbell version, and the trials we found say both are enough12.
Lead with the elbows to shoulder height.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Side delts
- Kit
- Machine lateral raise
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 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
Line the shoulders up with the pivot
Set the seat so your shoulder joints sit level with the machine's pivot. Sitting too high or too low turns the raise into a push that follows the wrong arc.
Put the pads on the outside of your arms
The pads sit just above the elbows on the outside of the arm, not in your hands. Take the grips lightly, because the pads carry the load.
Lead with the elbows to shoulder height
Think of driving the elbows out and up until the upper arms are level with the shoulders. If you find yourself pushing with the hands, the pads are in the wrong place.
Lower slowly, and do not rest at the bottom
Let the pads come back under control and stop before the stack touches down, so the side of the shoulder keeps working from rep to rep.
What goes wrong
Swinging the body to start the rep
A small lean at the bottom gets the stack moving, and the rep feels smooth. The first part of the range was done by momentum, so the rep you log is lighter on the shoulder than the stack says.
Going so heavy the pads stop short
If the pads cannot reach shoulder height, the weight is wrong, not the range. A rep that ends at shoulder height is the rep worth logging.
Hunching the shoulders toward the ears
Lifting the shoulders makes the arms look higher without them having travelled further. Keep the shoulders down and let only the arms rise.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, 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 | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 13 | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 14 | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 15 | Load up — → 5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the weight on the machine goes up 5 kg to 5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to twelve. You are now working 12 to 15. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 5 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 5 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and 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
Is a machine lateral raise as good as dumbbells or cables?
The trial we found compared dumbbell and cable raises with the range matched. In 24 resistance trained people over eight weeks, lateral deltoid thickness grew by 3.3 to 4.6 per cent and the two were similarly effective1. This machine was not tested, and the wider evidence is that machine and free weight training do not differ for hypertrophy3.
Does hand and arm position matter?
On a dumbbell, yes. Ten competitive bodybuilders performed lateral raises with the arm turned outward, neutral, turned inward and with a bent elbow. The middle deltoid worked harder with the arm neutral than with it turned outward or the elbow bent, and with the arm turned inward the back of the shoulder, the upper trapezius and the triceps worked harder than in any other variation2. On the machine the pads set the arm position for you, which is one of the things the machine decides on your behalf.
Will Reckoner put this machine in my plan?
Not by itself, and on purpose. The engine never places this machine for you: you reach it by choosing it in a swap or in the movement picker, and a lane you have put it on keeps it. Once it is on your plan, the engine reads the sets you log on it the way it reads any other lift.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Larsen and colleagues, Frontiers in Physiology, 2025. Dumbbell versus cable lateral raises for lateral deltoid hypertrophy: an experimental study 24 resistance trained men and women training one arm with dumbbell and one with cable lateral raises for eight weeks, with lateral deltoid thickness up 3.3 to 4.6 per cent and similar effects for the two
- Coratella and colleagues, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020. An electromyographic analysis of lateral raise variations and frontal raise in competitive bodybuilders ten competitive bodybuilders performing lateral raise variations, with the middle deltoid most active with the arm neutral and the posterior deltoid, upper trapezius and triceps most active with the arm turned inward
- Haugen and colleagues, BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2023. Effect of free-weight vs. machine-based strength training on maximal strength, hypertrophy and jump performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis thirteen studies and 1016 participants comparing free weight with machine training for at least six weeks, with no difference between the two in muscle hypertrophy and strength gains specific to the kind of test used