If lateral raises bother your shoulders, bore you, or just aren’t in your program right now, several other exercises can target the same muscles effectively. The side (medial) deltoid, which is the primary muscle lateral raises train, is active during any movement that lifts your arm away from your body between roughly 15 and 100 degrees. That gives you a surprising number of ways to work it.
Why You Might Want a Swap
People look for lateral raise alternatives for different reasons, and your reason shapes which substitute works best. Some lifters experience shoulder pinching or impingement during the standard dumbbell version. Others find the movement awkward to load progressively, since jumping from a 15-pound dumbbell to a 20-pound dumbbell is a massive percentage increase for a small muscle working in isolation. And some simply want compound movements that hit the side delts while also training other muscle groups, making their workouts more time-efficient.
There’s also a biomechanical reason to reconsider the classic dumbbell lateral raise. Gravity only creates meaningful resistance when your arm is near horizontal, which means the bottom half of the movement is essentially unloaded. The muscle gets its hardest challenge at its shortest length, near the top, and almost no challenge at its longest length, near the bottom. That resistance curve isn’t ideal for muscle growth, and it’s one reason cable and other variations can outperform the dumbbell version.
The Overhead Press: Your Best Compound Option
The standing or seated shoulder press is the closest compound substitute. EMG research measuring muscle activation found the overhead press activated the medial deltoid at about 28% of maximum voluntary contraction, compared to 30% for the lateral raise. That’s a remarkably small gap, and the press also hammers the front deltoid (33% activation) and works the triceps and upper traps as secondary muscles.
What makes the press practical is that it’s far easier to load progressively. You can add small plates each week in a way that’s nearly impossible with isolation work. If you’re short on time or building a minimalist program, the overhead press alone covers a large share of what lateral raises would give your side delts, plus it trains pressing strength you’ll actually use.
Cable Lateral Raises: A Better Version, Not Just a Substitute
If your issue with lateral raises is specifically the dumbbell version, switching to cables may solve the problem entirely. A cable set low and to the side pulls your arm toward the machine throughout the full range of motion, meaning you get resistance even at the very bottom of the rep when the dumbbell version has almost none. This creates peak tension when the muscle is in a lengthened position, which researchers speculate is more favorable for hypertrophy.
A 2025 study in Frontiers in Physiology directly compared dumbbell and cable lateral raises and highlighted this difference in resistance profiles. The dumbbell version maximizes torque at the top (shortened muscle), while the cable version can be set up to maximize torque at the bottom (lengthened muscle). If you’ve been doing dumbbell lateral raises and feel like the muscle isn’t growing, cables are the first thing to try before abandoning the movement pattern altogether.
To set it up: stand with the cable at your opposite hip, grab the handle with the working arm, and raise out to the side. Lean slightly away from the machine to shift the resistance curve even further toward the stretched position.
Scaption: The Shoulder-Friendly Alternative
Scaption is the exercise physical therapists reach for when standard lateral raises cause impingement pain. Instead of lifting your arm directly out to the side, you angle it about 30 degrees forward, placing it in what’s called the scapular plane. This angle gives the rotator cuff tendons more clearance under the bony arch of the shoulder, reducing the pinching sensation many people feel with traditional lateral raises.
The form is straightforward: stand with your arm at your side, thumb pointing up (not pinky-up like a classic lateral raise), angle your arm roughly 30 degrees forward of your body, and raise it in a pain-free range. The Hospital for Special Surgery recommends starting with a water bottle or very light weight and working up to about five pounds, performing three sets of 10 reps. For healthy lifters using scaption as a training exercise rather than rehab, you can load it heavier, but the thumb-up, slightly-forward position stays the same.
Scaption still recruits the medial deltoid because you’re abducting the arm. The angle change is small enough that the side delt stays involved, but large enough to take pressure off irritated structures.
Upright Rows: Effective but Technique-Dependent
The upright row targets the side delts and upper traps simultaneously, making it a solid two-for-one movement. Using a wider grip (hands outside shoulder width) shifts more work to the deltoids and reduces the internal rotation that gives this exercise its reputation for causing shoulder problems.
The key is to stop pulling before your elbows rise above your shoulders. That top portion is where impingement risk spikes. Pull to about chest height, pause, and lower under control. A barbell, dumbbells, or cable attachment all work. If you’ve avoided upright rows because of shoulder concerns, the wide-grip, limited-range version is a meaningfully different exercise from the narrow-grip, pull-to-your-chin version that earned the bad reputation.
Bodyweight Options When You Have No Equipment
Training the side delts without any equipment is genuinely difficult because the muscle’s job is to lift your arm against resistance, and your arm alone doesn’t weigh much. That said, a few options exist.
Wall slides involve standing with your back against a wall, arms bent at 90 degrees and pressed into the wall, then sliding them up overhead. These primarily build shoulder mobility and endurance rather than strength, but they do activate the deltoids. Pike push-ups, where you set up in a downward-dog position and press your body up and down, mimic an overhead press and load the side delts more meaningfully. The steeper the angle (feet elevated on a chair, for example), the closer the movement gets to a vertical press and the harder the delts work.
For a more direct side-delt challenge, try side-lying floor raises: lie on your side, extend your bottom arm straight, and raise it off the ground against gravity. The load is minimal, but the medial deltoid is the primary mover. You can hold a filled water bottle or backpack to add resistance.
How to Choose the Right Substitute
Your best alternative depends on what drove you away from lateral raises in the first place:
- Shoulder pain during the movement: Start with scaption. The 30-degree forward angle and thumb-up grip reduce impingement. If that’s pain-free, you can gradually work back toward a standard lateral raise angle over time.
- Want fewer isolation exercises: The overhead press covers the medial deltoid at nearly the same activation level while also building pressing strength. Add wide-grip upright rows if you want extra side-delt volume without another pure isolation movement.
- Plateaued on dumbbell lateral raises: Switch to cables. The improved resistance profile loads the muscle through a fuller range, and cables allow smaller weight jumps for smoother progression.
- No gym access: Pike push-ups are your best bet for meaningful deltoid loading. Progress toward wall-assisted handstand push-ups as you get stronger.
The medial deltoid responds to the same principles as any other muscle: progressive overload, sufficient weekly volume, and training through a full range of motion. Lateral raises are one effective tool for that, but they’re far from the only one. Any movement that abducts the arm against resistance will get the job done.