How to do the Seated Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise

Steps

1. Place a couple of dumbbells looking forward in front of a flat bench.
2. Sit on the end of the bench with your legs together and the dumbbells behind your calves.
3. Bend at the waist while keeping the back straight in order to pick up the dumbbells. The palms of your hands should be facing each other as you pick them. This will be your starting position.
4. Keeping your torso forward and stationary, and the arms slightly bent at the elbows, lift the dumbbells straight to the side until both arms are parallel to the floor. Exhale as you lift the weights. (Note: avoid swinging the torso or bringing the arms back as opposed to the side.)
5. After a one second contraction at the top, slowly lower the dumbbells back to the starting position.
6. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

Tracking it in OneRep

Add the seated bent-over rear delt 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.