Cable Rear Delt Fly

How to do it

1. Set two cable pulleys at roughly shoulder height and stand between them.
2. Take the left handle in your right hand and the right handle in your left, so the cables cross in front of you.
3. Step back until there is tension, stand tall, and let your arms come together in front of your chest with a soft bend in the elbows.
4. Pull both handles out and back in a wide arc, leading with your elbows, until your arms are level with your shoulders and out to your sides.
5. Squeeze briefly at the end range, then let the arms return under control until they cross in front again.

Common mistakes

• Bending and straightening the elbows, which turns the fly into a pressing movement. Fix a soft elbow angle at the start and keep it.
• Letting the shoulder blades do the movement. Squeezing the shoulder blades together makes it a row for the rhomboids and mid traps — which is fine, but it is not a rear delt fly. Keep the shoulder blades relatively still and let the arms move at the shoulder.
• Using far too much weight. The rear deltoid is small and sits at the end of a long lever; once the torso starts swinging back to help, the exercise is over.
• Skipping rear delt work entirely. Nothing in daily life and very little in a typical program pulls the arm backward and outward, which is why the posterior deltoid is the most reliably under-trained part of the shoulder.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Posterior DeltoidShoulders