maratoolIncline Cable Chest Press
How to do the incline cable chest press
- Adjust the weight to an appropriate amount and be seated, grasping the handles. Your upper arms should be about 45 degrees to the body, with your head and chest up. The elbows should be bent to about 90 degrees. This will be your starting position.
- Begin by extending through the elbow, pressing the handles together straight in front of you. Keep your shoulder blades retracted as you execute the movement.
- After pausing at full extension, return to the starting position, keeping tension on the cables.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.
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.
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
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 cable holds tension for the whole range, including the point where a free weight would go slack. Moving the pulley changes the angle the resistance arrives from without changing the movement.
Every exercise using:Cable
These train the chest too, using equipment this one does not:
- Incline Dumbbell Bench With Palms Facing Indumbbell
- Incline Dumbbell Fly'sbench + dumbbell
- Incline Push-Upbody only
- Leg-Over Floor Presskettlebell
- Leverage Chest Pressmachine
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 105 chest exercises in this database, 63 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.