Intermediate

Egyptian Lateral Raise

By holding a rack with one hand and leaning your body away, you drop the working arm below your torso, adding range and keeping tension on the middle delt even at the bottom of the rep. The lean turns an ordinary raise into a longer, harder movement that many lifters feel more directly than the standing version. Treat it as a focused single-side builder and use modest weight.

Equipment
Dumbbell
Body part
Shoulder
Type
Strength
Browse by muscle
Deltoid Middle
Browse by movement
Shoulder Raise
Muscles worked
Target
Deltoid Middle
Secondary
Trapezius Upper
Tertiary
Deltoid Anterior, Deltoid Posterior

How to do it

  1. 1

    Stand beside a squat rack or sturdy upright and grab it with your inside hand.

  2. 2

    Hold a dumbbell in your outside hand and lean your body away until your arm hangs across your midline.

  3. 3

    Set a soft bend in the working elbow and brace your trunk.

  4. 4

    Raise the dumbbell out and up until your upper arm reaches shoulder height.

  5. 5

    Lower slowly all the way back across your body, finish your reps, then switch sides.

Tips

  • Let the arm travel slightly across the front of your body at the bottom to load the stretched position.
  • Keep your torso rigid; the lean should be static, not a swinging pendulum.
  • Go lighter than a standing raise since the added range makes each rep tougher.

Variations

Common mistakes

  • The anchor hand pulls you upright as the dumbbell rises, so the lean shrinks through the set and the extra range you leaned over to get disappears with it.
  • The upright you grab is a loose dumbbell rack or a wheeled machine; hold something bolted down, because most of your bodyweight is hanging off that hand.
  • The wrist turns thumb-down at the top as though pouring a drink, which rotates the shoulder at the very end of a long range for no benefit; keep the hand in line with the forearm.
  • The working elbow straightens out as the arm tires, lengthening the lever exactly when you have least control over it.
  • Only one side gets the deep lean, because the anchor arm on the second side cannot hold the angle; set the lean with your feet rather than with your grip and both sides match.

Frequently asked

How many sets and reps of the Egyptian lateral raise should you do when you are new to the exercise?
Three sets of 12 to 15 per arm with a dumbbell around half of what you use for a standing lateral raise. Long-range work like this responds to reps rather than load, so climb to about 20 reps before you move up a pair, then drop back to 12 and build again. Run it late in a shoulder session, when the weight you need is small anyway and the delts are already warm.
What can I hold on to instead of a squat rack for the Egyptian lateral raise?
A door frame gripped at chest height works, and so does a pillar, a heavy machine, or the newel post of a staircase; the only requirement is that it will not move. If nothing solid is nearby, a cable set at the lowest pulley gives the same long-range tension while you stand upright, and a lying side lateral raise on a bench loads the stretched position with no anchor at all.
What is the Egyptian lateral raise good for?
The lean loads the middle delt where a standing raise gives it almost nothing, which is the bottom few inches, so it suits anyone whose side delts have stopped responding to ordinary raises. Working one arm at a time also exposes the weaker shoulder. It is a poor first raise for a beginner, who has simpler ways to learn the movement, and a poor choice on a day when the shoulder is already irritated, since the deep stretched position is usually the part that complains.

Related exercises

Other movements among FitRay's 2,000+ exercises that load the same target muscle — same equipment and level first.

All Shoulder exercises