Should You Go "Pinkies Up" On Lateral Raises?

Video Description

Should you do your lateral raises with your pinkies up? Or is it better to do them with your thumbs up? If you point your thumbs up, you’re going to shift tension away from your side delts and onto your front delts. That’s because when you point your thumb up, what you’re actually doing is externally rotating your shoulder. This places the front delt fibers in the path of resistance and shoves the side delt fibers out to the side. If you’re trying to grow wider shoulders, I wouldn’t do this one. If instead, you point your pinkies up, you’ll do the opposite. Now your rear delts fibers are more in line with the dumbbell, depending on just how much you crank your pinkies up. If you only tilt your pinkies up about 20 degrees, you’ll still mainly hit the side delt fibers, with a slight emphasis toward the rear aspect. That’s what I do personally, but if you feel shoulder pain with the pinkies up cue, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing them with a neutral palm either. Both the pinkies up variation and the neutral palm variation will grow your side delts to a very similar degree!