 Next question is from party boo hat. What's the difference and or benefits between doing side raises with straight arms versus bent elbows? Oh good question. Yeah, so, okay The action so we're doing laterals, right or side lifts for the shoulders The action of the delt is the same whether my arm is bent or straight because the action of the deltoid is to lift up the Humorous which is the upper part of my arm. So then why would I keep my elbows bent versus straight? Well? Really straight arm lengthens the lever. So whatever weight. Yeah, whatever weight you're using is be much heavier The problem is when you start to really straighten the arm out Some people start to feel tension in the top of the elbow and it just doesn't feel as comfortable as good And it also tends to if you know, and I've seen people do laterals like this It tends to encourage this external rotation at the hand Whereas a bent elbow allows the hand to fall a little bit and helps counter that tendency to want to turn it into this Kind of like upright, you know row or this upper back type exercise now Do you guys ever play with how bent or not bent your elbow is like do you have sometimes where you'll go? Heavier and bend the elbow and then other times you'll go go lighter really light Like yeah, is there not so much anymore are you stupid now? It's almost always with a slight bend my elbows. Do you guys how about you? Yeah, I'll play with it and that's exactly how I'll decide on how if it's a day where it's like I'm just really either touching the laterals or I'm gonna just I'm going real light or just Kind of chasing a pump and I'm not lifting heavy I'm gonna go straight arm slow controlled and all I'm doing is really trying to pump blood into that muscle Now if it's a day where I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna go a little heavier on my laterals even though I don't recommend going really heavy on laterals because how many people Incorporate their traps when they do that. I will all occasionally go heavy on them or heavy in comparison to the straight arm And that's the time where I'm gonna bend my elbows a little bit in order to do it I think mainly it's to protect some of those supporting muscles like for example like a fly Yeah, a fly you keep your arms slightly bent to now if I straighten my arm out The peck is doing the same thing in a fly too, but the tension at the bicep gets you a tension the ligaments Yeah, and so when you have a straight arm lateral I you know and I've done this with I've seen clients come to me and tell me their elbow hurts when doing laterals And I watch them do is they owe you bend your elbow a little bit and then they'll have less less pain So I think that's really the main reason why you almost always tend to see it with the bent I wish you we could like break down like because here's the thing as as you go from, you know Almost completely straight to here to here to here to here as you go in, you know this like so let's say this is 15 pound laterals are hard difficult completely straight 15 pounds completely straight is like doing 25 pounds here or doing 40 pounds here You know saying so, you know a lot of people are fooled into thinking that oh, you know I can I'm doing super heavy laterals But it's like well, you could also cut the weight in half That's a good point and go completely straight and get just as good of a lift on your on your delts as you are On your laterals as you can with the heavy yeah, there's something about I think you're locked out joints Like I'm a little cautious to you know train that way very often Like I always keep a bit of a soft knee or a bit of a soft elbow and most things just to keep that kind of cushion and Allow for the force to Distribute a little more effectively But so even when I'm locked out or like I'm a straight arm and it's not completely I agree. I'm the same way too like when I say straight arm straighter. Yes straighter It's almost all the way out But there's always like a five to ten degree but I do see I used to see this with clients that if their arms are too Straight it was really easy for them to do this to rotate Extra only rotate when the elbows a little bent because now the resistance is in front of the arm It puts them in a more. I guess advantageous position for what we're trying to target. I should say right well now Can you explain that to you because you know somebody that's not as much of a bodybuilder or like isolated focus guy Like I know that there was like emphasis on like kind of turning the thumbs down at the top was that yeah So this this right here this this rotating of the wrist has nothing to do with the shoulder This is this the shoulder does not see but what this does is it turns the elbow? Yes So that that cue of pretend like you're I think it's an old Arnold cue I want it is where you pretend like you're dumping out milk or whatever like that Yeah, all that is doing is it's keeping the elbow from doing what he was saying because if you look at the Where the side deltoid connects at the at the humerus. It's here. So this would be direct Resistance when my hand is when my arm is slightly rotated down as they rotate up now It's more of front delt right in fact an old school Nobody does this anymore, but an old school front delt exercise. What's actually called a standing fly Well, I used to do those. Yes Palms like facing up and you come down and come up like this is a front delt exercise And it's all about where the delt attaches at the humerus So when you externally rotate this way you're gonna get more front delt And if you start to go heavy then you start to shrug and squeeze the upper back and you start to get more traps Which if you're interested in power if you're an athlete that's probably better, right? Because you want that that strong what they call a yoke right up in your upper back Yeah, but if you're sculpting and you're trying to hit the side delt or whatever Well now it's all about connecting and feeling the target area in which case it makes more sense And I know there's people online that say things like don't hold the dumbbell that way It's bad for the shoulder. What no no, listen if you can do it with good stability and strength control. It's fine It's any exercise done without good stability starts to become dangerous that one just requires a little bit more stability Well, that's the cue that Justin bro I actually really like that cue for especially teaching like beginners It's it's harder to explain like internal external rotation to them or try to break down the position of their elbow It's easier to give a cue like pretend like you're holding gallons of milk and you're pouring it out as you get up Like that just it's a one of those great I think trainer hack cues that is just it's not It's not technical, but it's a great cue to get people to do what you want them to do Hey, if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe