Bent Arm Pullover

Muscles worked

Two muscle groups share the work: the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body and the latissimus dorsi, which pulls the upper arm down and back toward the ribcage.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:ChestLatsShouldersTriceps

How this movement works

The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

A bench fixes the torso angle and gives you something to drive against, which is what lets the load go up without your position wandering.

Every exercise using:BarbellBench

These train the chest and lats too, using equipment this one does not:

• Bodyweight Flyese-z curl bar
• Bosu Ball Push Upexercise ball
• Butterflymachine
• Cable Chest Presscable
• Chest Dipsbody only

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 105 chest exercises in this database, 22 are listed at intermediate level.