Lateral Raise Machine: How to Use It, Setup and Home Options

A lateral raise machine is a seated, pad-loaded version of the dumbbell lateral raise: you sit with your shoulder lined up with the machine's pivot, rest the pads on your outer forearms and lift your elbows out to the side until your upper arms are level with the floor. It's one of the easiest ways to train the side delts hard, because the machine keeps tension on the muscle at the bottom of the rep and makes it very difficult to swing the weight up. If your gym has one, it's worth using. If you train at home, you don't need one; a cable machine gets you almost all of the same benefit, and we'll cover that further down.

How to set up a lateral raise machine

Setup matters more on this machine than on most, because the arms rotate around a fixed axle. If that axle doesn't line up with your shoulder, the pads slide along your arms as you lift and the movement feels awkward on every rep.

1. Set the seat height first. Sit down and adjust the seat until the centre of your shoulder joint sits level with the machine's pivot point. Most machines mark this with a coloured dot or a sticker; otherwise, look for the axle the arms swing around. Your shoulder should be directly in front of (or beside) it, not above or below.
2. Position your torso. Depending on the model, you'll either face the machine with your chest on a pad or sit with your back against a backrest. Either way, sit tall, keep your chest up and don't slump.
3. Place the pads on your outer forearm. The pads should rest on the outside of your forearms, just below the elbow. Some machines have handles too; hold them lightly, since gripping hard tends to drag your biceps and forearms into it.
4. Pick a light starting weight. The lever arms on these machines make the stack feel heavier than the number on the pin suggests, so start lower than you'd expect and work up.

How to do a machine lateral raise

Once you're set up, the movement itself is simple. The goal is to move only at the shoulder, with nothing else helping.

1. Brace and set your shoulders. Press your shoulders down away from your ears and keep them there for the whole set. Breathe in and lightly tighten your core.
2. Lead with your elbows. Push the pads up and out by driving through your elbows, not your hands. Think of moving your elbows towards the walls on either side of you.
3. Stop at shoulder height. Raise until your upper arms are roughly parallel with the floor. Going higher shifts the work onto your upper traps, and on most machines it's where the shoulder starts to feel pinched.
4. Pause for a beat. Hold the top position for about a second without letting your shoulders shrug up.
5. Lower slowly. Take two to three seconds to lower the pads back down. Stop just before the weight stack touches down so the muscle never gets a rest between reps.

Muscles worked

The lateral raise machine is an isolation exercise for the lateral deltoid, the middle head of your shoulder muscle. That's the head that gives your shoulders width from the front, and it's the one that pressing movements tend to under-train.

The other muscles involved play supporting roles. Your front and rear delts chip in slightly as the arm moves away from your side, and your upper traps and serratus anterior control the shoulder blade so it can rotate as you lift. Because the seat and pad support your body, your legs and core barely work at all, which is the point: nearly all the effort goes into the side delt.

Arm position changes which part of the shoulder works hardest. An EMG study on competitive bodybuilders found the medial deltoid was most active when the upper arm stayed in a neutral position during the raise, while rotating the arm inwards shifted more work to the rear delt, upper traps and triceps (lateral raise variations EMG study). On a machine, keeping your forearms level and your thumbs from tipping down keeps you in that neutral range.

Machine vs dumbbell vs cable lateral raise

All three train the same muscle with the same basic movement. The difference is where in the rep the muscle is loaded hardest.

Dumbbell lateral raise. With a dumbbell, gravity pulls straight down, so the load on your side delt depends on how far your arm is from your body. At the bottom, with your arms by your sides, there's almost no tension at all; it only peaks near shoulder height. Dumbbells are cheap and need no setup, but they're easy to cheat with by swinging. Our lateral raises guide covers the dumbbell version in full.

Cable lateral raise. A cable pulls along its own line rather than straight down, so with the pulley set low and slightly behind you, the side delt is loaded from the very first inch of the rep. You can see the full setup in our cable lateral raise guide.

Machine lateral raise. A good machine uses a cam or lever arm to keep resistance fairly even across the whole range, so like a cable, it loads the muscle near the bottom where dumbbells unload. The fixed path and supported torso also make it the hardest version to cheat on, which is useful late in a set when form usually breaks down.

Does that extra tension at the bottom actually build more muscle? Probably not by much. A 2025 study had trained lifters do dumbbell raises with one arm and cable raises with the other for eight weeks, and side delt thickness grew by a similar amount on both sides, with the data strongly supporting no real difference (dumbbell vs cable lateral raise study). The practical takeaway: pick the version you can do with the cleanest form and push closest to failure. For many people, that's the machine.

Common mistakes

Seat at the wrong height. This is the most common problem by a distance. Too low and the pads force your arms up past shoulder height into your traps; too high and you lose range at the top. Line your shoulder up with the pivot every time, even if you used the machine yesterday.

Shrugging the weight up. If your shoulders creep towards your ears, your upper traps are doing the lifting. Lower the weight and keep pressing your shoulders down.

Pushing with the hands. Gripping the handles and pushing with your hands brings your forearms and biceps into it. Let your hands relax and drive through the elbows.

Going too heavy. The side delt is a small muscle. If you need to lean, bounce or yank the pads to start the rep, the weight is too heavy for the side delt to move on its own.

Rushing the lowering phase. Letting the stack drop wastes half of every rep. Control the way down for two to three seconds.

Sets, reps and programming

The side delt is small, recovers quickly and responds well to higher reps, so it suits lighter loads and more frequent training than your big lifts.

• Muscle building: 3 to 4 sets of 10 to 20 reps, taken to within one or two reps of failure, 2 to 3 times a week. Rest 60 to 90 seconds.
• Finisher or drop set: 1 to 2 sets of 15 to 20 reps at the end of a shoulder session, then immediately drop the pin a plate or two and keep going.
• Beginners: 2 to 3 sets of 12 to 15 slow reps with a light weight, focusing on seat height and keeping your shoulders down.

Place it after your pressing work (an overhead or Smith machine shoulder press, for example) so your heavier lifts get your freshest effort. The NHS recommends strength work for all major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and two or three short side delt sessions fit into that easily.

Lateral raise machine options for a home gym

Dedicated lateral raise machines are commercial gym kit. They're large, heavy, priced for gym owners and only do one thing, so very few people buy one for home. You'll get far more out of a cable machine, which handles a lateral raise brilliantly and covers rows, presses, curls, flyes and pushdowns too.

• Functional trainer. Two independent weight stacks with adjustable pulleys let you set the cable low for single-arm lateral raises. The Body-Solid functional trainer is the premium pick in our reviews, with 36kg per side of effective resistance, which is plenty for lateral raises.
• Cable tower or wall-mounted pulley. A single-column tower or a wall-mounted cable machine takes up much less floor space and does the job well for one-arm raises.
• Multi-gym. Most home multi-gyms have a low pulley you can use for cable lateral raises, though a single stack means one arm at a time. Our best multi gym guide compares the options.

One practical point for home stacks: many move in 5kg jumps, which is a big increase on a lateral raise. Add reps before you move the pin, or use a lighter add-on weight if your machine accepts one. Our best cable machine guide covers the models worth buying, and the home gym hub has everything else.

Recommended reads

• The best cable machine in the UK
• Body-Solid functional trainer review
• The best multi gym in the UK
• Cable lateral raise: how to do it
• Lateral raises: dumbbell form and variations