Reverse Machine Flyes

🎯 Shoulders🏋️ MachineBeginnerIsolation

How to do the reverse machine flyes

  1. Adjust the handles so that they are fully to the rear. Make an appropriate weight selection and adjust the seat height so the handles are at shoulder level. Grasp the handles with your hands facing inwards. This will be your starting position.
  2. In a semicircular motion, pull your hands out to your side and back, contracting your rear delts.
  3. Keep your arms slightly bent throughout the movement, with all of the motion occurring at the shoulder joint.
  4. Pause at the rear of the movement, and slowly return the weight to the starting position.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.

Every exercise for:Shoulders

How this movement works

One joint changes angle and the resistance travels toward you along a single arc. Nothing is positioned to help, so tension stays where you aimed it and the usable load drops sharply against a multi-joint pull for the same muscle. Protect the range of motion; buying weight by shortening the arc defeats the point.

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 machine fixes the path, removing the balance demand and letting you train close to failure without a spotter. The cost is the stabilising work a free weight would have made you do.

Every exercise using:Machine

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

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 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 74 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

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

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