Best Side Delts Exercises to Increase Mind-Muscle Connection

Would you like to see a list of the best side delts exercises? If you are a beginner, this is the perfect place for you. The list was shared by Joe Bennett.

Joe Bennett is the face and creator of Hypertrophy Coach, a website focused on helping people build pure muscle. They have a YouTube channel with over 80K subscribers that deliver exercise tips on a regular basis for people looking for muscle growth.

In the video below, Joe Bennett explains the best side delts exercises in his opinion and that will increase your mind-muscle connection and blow up your upper body physique.

To be fair, he explains fairly early in the video that these are not exercises that are better than others, but rather a “great place to start.” Later, as you develop strength or want to focus on improving specific tweaks in your body, then you can begin looking at other exercises.

And why would you want to focus on working on your side delts? “Whether you just want to look good with your shirt off, whether you are a competitive bodybuilder, whatever it is, they really add to this V taper type of thing,” Bennett says.

3 Best Side Delts Exercises

1. Lying Cuff Lateral Raises

“If you’re looking for exercises that are going to be the best or most efficient for building muscle, you want things that typically are going to overload or load a muscle in their mid and lengthened ranges.” And that is precisely what the lying cuff lateral raises can do for your side delts.

Utilising cable, regardless of the exercise, ensures tension throughout the movement which helps build more muscle.

2. Machine Lateral Raise

There are different lateral raise machines, but most of them can help you build muscle a lot for the same reason as exercise number one: it loads your side delts when they are the strongest, from the beginning of the exercises through mid-range of the delt.

3. Chest-Supported Lateral Raise

Another lateral raise in this list of best side delts exercises. Most people do this exercise standing up, or seated, but Bennett chooses the seated version with the chest being supported by the bench. The reason for doing this version is to prevent you from cheating by using momentum to lift the dumbbells.

This exercise goes in the opposite direction from the previous two chosen by Bennett. This movement strengthens your side delts where it is shortest – the tension on your delts is little to almost non-existent at the bottom of the movement, but the hardest at the top of it, when your arms are straightened out to the side.

This is a good exercise if you don’t have access to a lateral raise machine or a cable machine.

If you have questions about how to perform any movement from this list of best side delts exercises, check out Bennett’s video below.