Bodyweight Flyes

🎯 Chest🏋️ E-z curl barIntermediateIsolationAbdominals (2°)Shoulders (2°)Triceps (2°)

How to do the bodyweight flyes

  1. Position two equally loaded EZ bars on the ground next to each other. Ensure they are able to roll.
  2. Assume a push-up position over the bars, supporting your weight on your toes and hands with your arms extended and body straight.
  3. Place your hands on the bars. This will be your starting position.
  4. Using a slow and controlled motion, move your hands away from the midline of your body, rolling the bars apart. Inhale during this portion of the motion.
  5. After moving the bars as far apart as you can, return to the starting position by pulling them back together. Exhale as you perform this movement.

Muscles worked

The prime mover is the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.

Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the abdominals brace the trunk so force can pass between the hips and the shoulders; 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:ChestAbdominalsShouldersTriceps

How this movement works

One joint moves, and it moves the load away from the body. With nothing recruited to assist, the target muscle reaches its own limit rather than the limit of the weakest link in a chain — which makes this useful for adding volume after the heavy compound work, not for opening a session.

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

What you need

The cambered EZ bar sets the hands half-way between palms-up and palms-in, taking strain off the wrist and elbow compared with a straight bar.

Every exercise using:E-z curl bar

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

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.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.