How to do Bent Over Lateral Raise / Reverse Fly
Starting Position: Bend forward from the hips and keep your lower back straight while holding dumbbells.
Form: Keep your elbows slightly bent. Exhale and raise your arms out to the sides. Hold for a brief second and then slowly lower to the starting position.
Personal Trainer Tips: In this exercise, you must be mindful of the position of your lower back. Hinge from your hips and keep your back flat.
Try to avoid hunching over and avoid excessive rounding from the lower back.
Use a weight that you can move through the full range of motion. As you bring your arms out to the side, squeeze your shoulder blades together.
Bent Over Lateral Raise – Benefits
- Also known as Reverse Flyes, the Bent Over Lateral Raise is a great back exercise to balance shoulder strength. This exercise works the posterior deltoid (back of the shoulder), and the trapezius and rhomboids in the upper and middle back between the shoulder blades.
The Bottom Line
Strengthening your upper back is important for supporting good shoulder posture and protecting the rotator cuff from injury.
The chest muscles have a tendency to become tight and sometimes training habits can over develop the chest muscles when compared to the upper back muscles. When the chest is far stronger than the upper back, a muscle imbalance occurs that can compromise shoulder function.
Scapular strength is so important for posture, preventing injury, building muscle, and increasing strength, so make sure you work your upper back muscles.
In addition to working the shoulder, it also improves the stability of the lower back and hip muscles.
Bent Over Lateral Raise – Muscles Worked
