Lateral Raises at the end of every workout

[patdude832]

What do you guys think about ending each workout with some Lateral raise work? Even a few quick drop sets and/or rest-pause.

Basically I love bodybuilding bro/pro splits, but I am obsessed with trying to have huge (side) delts. So I came up with this idea.

My logic is 3-fold:

1. It's probably the most important muscle for a bodybuilder, despite being so small.

(At the very least, I'd argue that on a per-gram basis, it'll be the most 'valuable' thing to add, if that makes sense. Imagine adding 100g muscle to side delts, vs to your e.g. hamstrings, what that would do for your physique.)

1. It's a small muscle, and doing it once per week on shoulder day seems... sub-optimal. It recovers really fast it seems.
2. It's a great pump to have at the end of any workout (even legs lol). And it can be achieved in just 3-5 mins: just do a quick group of drop sets running down the rack, or do rest-pause a few sets with a lighter weight.

So then on shoulder day (once a week) I'd be pushing the weight amount and progressive overload in a more standard fashion for this exercise, and otherwise I'm just ending each workout with quick 3-5 set pump work - taken to failure ofc because it's such a small muscle and it feels good to do so.

Otherwise my split is something like Legs -> Shoulders -> Back -> Chest -> Arms, pretty standard.

Thoughts?

 

[shiner222]

@patdude832 Not sure why we have user flair if so many commenters are going to talk down to OP like he's a beginner.

 

[patdude832]

@shiner222 It's pretty unconventional I guess but I swear it's made a great deal of difference for that particular muscle.

For reference, I've tried training other body parts many times a week, and none of them (for me) actually recover and benefit from it, only the side delts. Or they take away from other things significantly, e.g. frequent triceps training hurt my pushing.

But frequent side delts doesn't seem to harm anything and seems to work really well for me. Was curious if anyone else came to this conclusion.

 

[shiner222]

@patdude832 I don't think something like this would be very controversial at the top levels. I understand some pros have given up on PPL or UL and just do full body every day, which in practice does not mean "full body" but instead working out every muscle that feel fully recovered. It's a terrible strategy for a beginner, but seems to work for people with years of experience who know their bodies well.

Beginners are prone to inventing their own bad programs, and I think many lifters overlearned "just use a proven split."

 

[patdude832]

@shiner222 Yeah well put. I also tried "full body every day" to some effect, and thru trial and error figured out which muscles like (and need) which frequencies.

Menno Henselman is an example of a natural I respect who does the full body every day training:

I really like the idea in theory, but in practice I find it too difficult to achieve consistent progression for most muscle groups.

 

[lavender111]

@patdude832 I find it harder not easier to push through workouts for full body instead of get legs over and done with.
What do you mean I have to do them everyday.

How do I get a user flair

 

[dawn16]

@patdude832 I did laterals delts like 4-5 times per week with various volume and intensity and they blew up. I also got rotator cuff impingement so be careful lol

 

[rrob692326]

@dawn16 Impigement is terrible if it's bad, you could get surgery and it will change your life, also it could be harmfull to your tendons if it's bad and you don't treat it. Speaking of personal experience, finally got surgery done after 6 years and i wish i did it earlier. Just a heads up

 

[mitchell]

@patdude832 Old post but worth a shot, I’ve actually decided to do side lateral raises everyday this month just to see what happens, question, how many sets and reps did you do each day ? I was thinking 5-6 sets everyday and 1 day I will go really light and slow 20 reps, the other day I will go heavier and maybe 15 reps

 

[patdude832]

@mitchell I think 3 sets is fine. Track em and try to progress adding reps every week, and eventually weight, though that will be much slower for lateral raises.

I was thinking recently, maybe I could get some very light wrist-strap weights so I don't have to progress in 5lb increments, or rely on the 2.5lb increment weights to be available (commercial gyms... you never know when some old lady gonna be hip thrusting the 27.5s for an hr).

 

[rogerwilson]

@patdude832 If using cables, use the pin to attach a 2.5 plate to the stack.

 

[mitchell]

@patdude832 Oh 3 sets only ? Yeah the weight increase is much slower, 7kg dumbbells this week 3 sets and 20 reps, next week I will move up to 8kg and maybe 15 reps 3 sets, the wrist strap is a smart move, you still working your side delts everyday ? And have you noticed a huge increase in mass compared to the more normal 1-2 sessions per week ?

 

[shiner222]

@patdude832 Every day might be a bit much, but that's not far from what Dr. Mike suggests. I know he's controversial around these parts, but his view is that some smaller muscles (he cited side delts and biceps) heal pretty quickly, and many people could benefit from training them as much as every other day.

 

[amachristian]

@ronyrana He's a bottomless pit of great info

 

[ronyrana]

@amachristian lol good one fr tho it’s kinda crazy how much free and great information he’s put out

 

[shows]

@amachristian Just don’t look at his channel where he talks about social and economic issues. Yikes. Mike is genius - in exercise science, most economists would take issue with his views.

 

[dawn16]

@shows His other channel is just full of shocking, shocking takes. A random Instagram guy put it best: "best fitness guy. Worst everything else guy"

 

[shows]

@dawn16 As I said in another comment, he is shockingly poorly read on economics, even if you don’t agree with socialism or communism as systems, his takes on them are many times literally factually incorrect. Super frustrating since all the comments are sucking him and capitalism off and the vibe is totally different than the comments of his exercise science channel.

 

[happyhopej]

@shows I think the context is the quality of life him and his family had in Russia which is understandable to cause some bias but yeah I agree with you regarding his economics takes.

 

[shows]

@happyhopej Yeah, unfortunately from the perspective of historical fact, the state of Russia at that point was primarily due to Western imperial interference and totalitarianism. This is well documented; the CIA went to great lengths to poison the well of a worker democracy. The wealthy owning class in the west was terrified of workers unionizing against exploitation. It led to what we have today in Russia, a oligarchic capitalist authoritarian nation.

Edit: I'm really not sure why this is getting downvoted, this is just what happened. The USSR before it became marred by capitalist interference and totalitarianism raised millions out of poverty, educated millions, developed a huge amount of technology we still use today, and resisted western imperialism and colonialist powers for decades. We can talk discuss negatives as well but not a single individual that has downvoted has used a real historical argument in their reasoning. I'll list of historically accurate achievements they made, all academic sources below.

"USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US.

Ended famines.

Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.

Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.

Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.

Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The "continuous" part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.

USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960 USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996.,

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.

All education, including university level, free.

99% literacy

Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.

Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.

Combatted (systemic) sex inequality.

Ended (systemic) Racial inequality.

Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.

Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China's in 2014.

Eliminated homelessness

And the list goes on and on

The fall of the USSR also led to the greatest drop in life expectancy ever, millions dead and millions more homeless, etc."

Sources:

University of Oxford | Farm to Factory: A Reassessment of the Soviet Industrial Revolution https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Williams College | Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union: An Analysis Using Archival and Anthropometric Data https://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf

University of Warwick | Review of "Farm to Factory" https://www.jstor.org/stable/25149595

Oxford University Press | The Health Crisis in the USSR https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/6/1384/660149

University of Munich | Declining Life Expectancy in a Highly Developed Nation: Paradox or Statistical Artifact? https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-95874-8_22

University of Melbourne | The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Mass Killings and Repressions http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf

American Historical Review | Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf

CIA (Freedom of Information Act) | Report on Soviet Gulags https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf

Slavic Review (Cambridge University Press) | On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Response to Robert Conquest on the USSR https://www.jstor.org/stable/2499177?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Yale University Press | Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bw0h

Village Voice | In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A Fifty Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/vv.html

EH Reviews | The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 https://eh.net/book_reviews/the-years-of-hunger-soviet-agriculture-1931-1933/