Stick to stable exercises with lots of ROM, that are limited by the target muscle group and that you can load properly. For side/rear delts, this includes seal cambered bar face pulls, cable rear delt flies, unilateral cable face pulls, cable upright rows and cable face pulls. You should probably avoid partial ROM delt training if your goal is muscle growth. Cables work really well for the side/rear delts because they allow for a greater stretch. Read on to find out why.

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Rear Delts

Seal Cambered Bar Face Pull

If you have access to both a cambered bar and a seal row bench, you’re lucky. The seal cambered bar face pull is one of the better rear delt exercises out there. Because you’re lying down, the systemic fatigue/axial loading is greatly reduced compared to other free weight face pull exercises. The cambered bar allows you to get a full squeeze instead of being limited by the bar/dumbbells hitting your shoulders or the bench. Moreover, because you’re lying down, it becomes much harder to cheat the lift. The only real downside is that you don’t get a great stretch for your rear delts.

Cable Rear Delt Fly

As far as rear delt isolation exercises go, I think this is the single best exercise I can think of. The simplest way of describing it is probably that it’s the opposite of a full ROM cable crossover for the chest. Find a pair of cable stations. Set up the cables at shoulder height. Grab the left cable with your right arm. Then, step over to the right cable and grab the right cable with your left arm. Then, horizontally abduct your arms until your arms are by your sides. The eccentric should look like you’re hugging yourself. At the end of the concentric, it should look like you’re doing a T-pose. The point of the exercise? You’re literally maxing out the ROM for your rear delts. Instead of stopping when your humerus is in front of you (like in a rear delt DB fly or Barbell Face Pull), you can go all the way and cross over. To give a comparison – it’s the same reason why DB chest flies are probably worse than cable crossovers. In addition to getting more ROM, though, you’ll also be avoiding the hip extensor/lower back fatigue that comes with doing bent over rear delt flies.

Unilateral Cable Face Pull

This exercise is one I came up with (I think). Basically, I was trying to think of a way of increasing the ROM for the rear delts during face pulls. Eventually, I thought of doing unilateral cable face pulls. They don’t really work smoothly when done bilaterally. Set up one cable station at shoulder height. Attach a standard handle. Grab it with one arm. Then, step towards the side of the arm you’re training, and turn/rotate your torso in that direction, so that your arm is crossing over your torso. This is the most stretched position for your rear delt. From that position, do a face pull. It may take some experimenting to find a stable position (I found that getting into a shallow lateral lunge was helpful). As far as compounds for rear delts go, I think this is my favourite exercise – you don’t fatigue your hip/spinal extensors, and you get a full ROM for both the rear delts and biceps.

Side Delts

Upright Rows

The upright row is a compound exercise that takes the lateral delt through a long – though probably not full – ROM. Much like face pulls, it also hits your biceps through a full ROM. Unlike face pulls, though, I don’t think the differences between upright row variations are super meaningful. One notable difference between variations is that DBs may be more comfortable on your joints by allowing movement of both limbs separately and may help with asymmetries. A cable upright row where you cross your arms at the bottom may give you a bit more of a stretch on the lateral delts, which is difficult/impossible to achieve with other upright row variations. On the whole, though, I would select upright row variations that you can do through as full a ROM as possible that doesn’t hurt your shoulders.

Cable Lateral Raises

I think cable lateral raises have two distinct advantages over DB lateral raises. The first is that the resistance curve is a bit better matched to your strength curve. The second is that you can actually set it up so you get a longer ROM (under tension). In my opinion, for most people, those are significant enough reasons to usually prioritize cable lateral raises over DB lateral raises, with the exception of using DB lateral raises for exercise variation.

Why cables are your best friend when it comes to side/rear delt training

Training a muscle at long lengths (i.e. when it’s relatively stretched out) is likely more hypertrophic than training it at shorter muscle lengths. For most muscle groups, like the chest, back and hamstrings, this is easy to accomplish with free weights (DB fly, pull-up and RDL serve as examples, respectively). For side/rear delts, however, very few free weight exercises train the shoulders at long muscle lengths. For this reason, using cables is a great idea. Examples above include the cable lateral raise, the cable upright row, the unilateral cable face pull and the cable rear delt fly.

That wraps up the side/rear delts. More muscle group exercise selection articles on the way!

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