Cable Seated Lateral Raise
Also works: Middle Back · Traps
You sit on the end of a bench between two low pulleys, fold your chest onto your thighs, and raise both arms out to shoulder height with the cables running under your knees. Resting the torso on the legs makes cheating physically impossible — there is nothing left to swing with.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Set both pulleys to their lowest position and place a flat bench between them, narrow end towards you.
- Sit on the edge of the bench with your feet planted well in front of your knees.
- Fold forward from the hips with a flat back until your chest rests on your thighs and stays there.
- Take the left handle in your right hand and the right handle in your left, so the cables cross under your knees — ask someone to pass them if you cannot reach.
- Let the arms hang with palms facing each other and a fixed 10-30 degree elbow bend.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Exhale as the arms rise, inhale as they lower. One second up, one second held at horizontal, two to three seconds down. Do not brace hard — with your chest on your thighs, a big held breath just makes it harder to stay folded.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Start with the lightest plate on each stack, usually 2.5 kg, and expect a working load well under what you use standing — the folded position removes every source of momentum. Add reps up to 20 with a still torso before moving the pin, and treat the chest staying on the thighs as the pass condition for every set.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Pick a load light enough that your ribcage never leaves your legs. That contact is the only reason to choose this variation over a standing raise.
Stop when the upper arms are parallel to the floor. Set the shoulder blades down away from your ears before each rep and keep them there.
Fix the elbow angle at setup and treat the arm as one rigid piece from shoulder to handle. Film a set from the front if you are not sure.
Slide back until the lines run cleanly under your knees with the arms hanging, then check the full arc once unloaded before adding weight.
Why bother
Every standing raise has a cheat available: a small hip snap, a lean back, a bounce off the bottom. Folding your chest onto your thighs takes all three away at once. The only joint that can move is the shoulder, which is why the weight you can honestly use here is often half what you were putting on the stack standing up.
The folded torso also changes what you are training. With your chest on your thighs, raising the arms out to the sides is closer to a rear-delt path than a side-delt one, and the cables crossing under your knees keep tension on from the very bottom of the arc. Treat it as posterior-and-lateral shoulder work, not as a swap for a standing side raise.
Where it fits
Late in a shoulder session, 12-20 reps, two to three sets, once or twice a week. The setup is fiddly — you usually need a hand passing you the second handle — so it works best as a fixed finisher rather than something you rotate through. If the station is busy, do it single-arm from one pulley instead.
If this one isn't it
No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.
Same job, different kit
When this gets easy
Asked and answered
Does this train the side delt or the rear delt?
Mostly the rear, with the side head contributing near the top. Once your torso is folded onto your thighs, an arm raised out to the side is travelling backward relative to your body, which is the rear delt's line of pull. If you want the side head specifically, do a standing or seated upright raise instead.
Should I do these before or after standing lateral raises?
After. Standing raises are the heavier side-delt movement and deserve fresh shoulders; this is the folded, strict, rear-biased finisher that works fine on a tired delt because the load is small anyway. Putting it first blunts the standing raise for no gain. The one exception is if you cannot feel a standing raise in the delt at all — two light sets of this beforehand will show you what the muscle contracting is supposed to feel like.
Do I really need two pulleys and a helper?
No. A single pulley one arm at a time gives you the same effect with a much simpler setup, at the cost of doubling the time per set. The two-cable version is worth the faff only if the station is free and you want both sides loaded simultaneously.
Can I do this with dumbbells instead?
You can, and it becomes a seated bent-over lateral raise, which is a perfectly good exercise. What you lose is tension at the bottom — a dumbbell hanging straight down gives the delt almost nothing, while the crossed cables are already pulling before the first millimetre of movement.