Steps
- Grab a dumbbell in each arm and stand up straight with your arms extended by your sides with a slight bend at the elbows and your back straight. This will be your starting position. Tip: The dumbbell should be next to your thighs with the palm of your hands facing back.
- Use your side shoulders to lift the dumbbells as you exhale. The dumbbells should be to the side of the body as you move them up. Continue to lift it until the dumbbells are nearly in line with your chin. Tip: Your elbows should drive the motion. As you lift the dumbbell, your elbow should always be higher than your forearm. Also, keep your torso stationary and pause for a second at the top of the movement.
- Lower the dumbbells back down slowly to the starting position. Inhale as you perform this portion of the movement.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Tracking it in OneRep
Add the dumbbell raise to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.
Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.
Where the instructions come from
The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.