A hybrid hook attached to a dumbbell and cable delivers even tension throughout a lateral raise, unlike traditional cables that peak at the top or dumbbells that peak mid-range. Grip the hook behind your arm to pull the shoulder blade back and reduce cheating, use a support hand for stability, and drop the weight slightly to account for the added load.
How to optimize the lat raise. So on a traditional lat raise, on a cable lat raise, this— on the strength curve, the most amount of tension you have is at the top range. So when, as you pull it, highest tension point is at the top, lowest tension point is at the bottom. If we look at a dumbbell, highest tension point is mid lowest tension point is top. So one of the tools that I really like to optimize a lat raise is to overcome this, is to make tension throughout the movement even, is a hybrid hook. So putting the hybrid hook on a dumbbell and cable, what this enables us to do is have the best of both worlds. So grabbing, you can either grab it in front or behind. I personally like it behind because it pulls the shoulder blade back and allows for less cheating. I like to grab onto something as support, that way I'm more stable. And as I pull through, you can see now that from here there's maximal tension, and at the top there's a lot of tension. Actually, I'm gonna go even a little bit lighter than that because you do have to compensate for the added load of the dumbbell. So as you can see, when I'm moving through, I have a nice even tension throughout the movement. There's really no hiding when you do it like this. If you add the hybrid hook with the dumbbell, there's no hiding when you're doing your lat raises. So give that a go next workout. These are pretty inexpensive and very easy to fit in your gym bag. It's a hybrid hook. They do have other uses, say bicep curls, but, uh, yeah, one of my favorites to use with the, uh, good old lat raise.
