The dumbbell lateral raise is an excellent exercise for hitting the contraction of the side delts but does nothing for the stretch position at the bottom.
This is a pretty strange one (shocker, I know) but the concept is AWESOME and I found it to be very effective.
Essentially, you're using "garage" magnets strapped to your dumbbells so that they stick strongly together at the bottom of every rep of the lateral raise.
Normally, you get virtually NO resistance at the bottom of the dumbbell lateral raise. This changes that.
When you've got the magnets stuck together at the bottom, you can exert massive tension against the magnetism right at that bottom stretched position. You can pull REALLY hard and they won't pop apart.
If you ARE strong enough to pull the magnets apart at some point, awesome. If you need to, you can push the heads of the dumbbells together to pry the magnets apart and then power up to the top of the lateral raise (I show this in the video).
Then you lower the weights down and snap the magnets back together at the bottom and go again.
Attach the magnet straps to the front part of the handles so that you can use that leverage trick to pop them apart at the start of each up phase.
You can get these exact magnets on Amazon here
Here's what it looks like from the side.
Again, be sure to watch the video to get the best idea of how this is done...still pictures don't really do it justice!
Why not use cables for lateral raises to get this isometric stretch?
You absolutely can...and you can get a somewhat similar effect by doing single arm cable laterals and holding onto the cable itself with your non-working hand to get that isometric stretch at the bottom (then release your other hand and come up).
Personally, having done both, I find using the magnets and pulling against them with BOTH arms at the same time to be much more effective.
Another excellent lateral raise variation is the Barbell Lateral Raise.
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