I am not going to sit here and say lateral raises guarantee huge delts, but I think they add an important exercise to your regiment. I think you're missing out if you don't have them added at all too. They work the delts and RC in ways that can benefit other lifts. Again, I also don't believe lateral raises should be done heavy. In the 12-15 rep range, IMO, is more optimal over anything under 10
Shortz...trust me...I'm not missing out on not doing lateral raises.
I see people doing those movements in the gym and their delts have looked the same
for years. I'll stand there doing overhead presses next to some girl or guy that's
trying to hit their rear delts with a rear db swing movement. They've been doing
this same shit for years and I stand there with striations and veins popping
out of my shoulders while they crouch over and swing this db around with hardly
anything to show for it. Now, I can appreciate hitting those areas with DBs or cables.
I do once a week but it's typically either a warm up exercise or a cool down.
It seems to me the most muscle fiber recruitment exercises are compound movements.