Cable Fly Exercise – What you need for Attractive Chest Muscles

Cable fly is not redundant with any workout contrary to many people’s beliefs. You can do this exercise to build muscles on your pecs. It is what cable fly changes in your body.

Cable fly is one of the variations of chest fly. But you cannot compare it with a dumbbell fly or pec fly. The movement for this workout will improve your muscles on your pecs and forearms.

Before going through with cable fly, let us define first what chest fly is? Chest fly indeed is one of the best exercises when it comes to building muscles in your chest. It teaches you to have a more scapular reaction. Scapular reaction means to pinch your shoulder blades with combatting poor posture from sitting hunched over a desk all day.

What muscles involve in chest fly workout? The muscles involved with this one are your chest and shoulders. Triceps are also included. When your muscles in your chest are already build up, doing push up will be a lot easier. If you are not working correctly with your muscles, then you will end up injured. And that is what we are avoiding.

But the main event in cable fly is not only doing the chest exercise but also feeling it in your chest. You can feel it with the number of weights you are lifting every time you are doing the chest exercise. You can also add some challenge or upgrade your cable chest fly.

Why cable fly?

There are benefits of cable fly like, for instance, that can replace bench press due to joints pain. It could also change the angle of the movement enough to limit the potential stress on the joints. In doing this exercise, you will have lots of tension on the muscle through the entire range of motion. The cable fly setup gives your muscles almost uninterrupted time under strain and a massive pump of pressure to improve muscle growth.

Focus Muscles

The muscles involved in cable fly are the pectorals. The pectorals are your muscles in the chest—major and minor. The primary muscles are those that visible, powering the adduction of the arms and making inward rotation and elevation. The small muscles are located a layer deeper and draw the shoulder blades down and forward.

The major pectoral muscles have two functions. One is that it uses for the upward angle of movement to emphasize the upper portion of the chest. You can have low to the high motion of the cable fly exercise so that you can target the upper part of the chest. Then the other one is the lower angle that emphasizes, the lower portion of the muscle.

How to Do Chest Fly vs Cable Fly

As we have mentioned earlier in this article, cable fly is a variation of chest fly. So what will be the difference between the two? How will you do it?

Chest Fly

Step 1: Lie faceup on a flat bench with a dumbbell in each hand, resting on the tops of thighs with palms facing in.

Step 2: Then, use your legs to assist in raising the weights. Lift the dumbbells to hold them directly over the chest.

Step 3: Press them up, so your arms are extended over the center of the chest, with palms facing in to start.

Step 4: Keeping your elbows slightly bent, inhale and slowly lower both arms out to the sides. But keep your shoulder blades retract naturally.

Step 5: Hold the position when dumbbells reach shoulder height.

Step 6: Exhale and squeeze through the chest to pull dumbbells back together over the chest to return to the starting position.

Step 7: Repeat this workout for 15 repetitions and 3 sets.

Cable Fly

On the other hand, cable fly has different ways to achieve perfect pectorals.

Step 1: Before anything else, make sure that you set the pulleys on a dual-cable machine to chest height.

Step 2: Then, your starting position is to stand between the two stacks and grasp the handles.

Step 3: Keep your back straight and core engaged while raising your arms out to your sides, palms, facing forward.

Step 4: Next, walk a step or two forward to create tension on the cables. Stand with one foot in front of the other.

Step 5: Make sure your elbows are bend slightly and keep them away from your shoulders.

Step 6: The next thing you will do is pull your hands toward each other in wide arcs in front of you.

Step 7: Hold this position for a few seconds before bending your elbows. Make sure of your foot to forward alternate with each set.

Other Variations of Cable Fly

Cable fly also has variations that you can choose from if you decide to build your pecs.

Cable Fly using Cable Machine

The cable machine is a dual pulley machine that use to perform different exercises like rows, flyes and presses. Traditional dumbbells and barbells efficiently replicate the rows and presses. However, the cable fly is more difficult to do with dumbbells, and impossible to do correctly with kettlebells or barbells.

Cable Flyes using Neutral Grip

The good-looking chest is a visible image of being active. When you have perfect shape chest, cable fly can work much better in the single-arm variation. Given this, you can angle your body to achieve much more muscle engagement. When you are doing bodybuilding, time under tension becomes a critical component. The short-range of motion and simplicity of this exercise lends itself nicely to long 90 second sets.

One Arm Cable Flyes

One arm cable fly exercise means that it is better to perform at a time. Doing it at the same time will give you fewer results. But if you have lesser time to do cable fly, you can try doing the low to mid fly as it will provide you with a move that can be done bilaterally. Also, performing single alternating arm 90-second chest flyes will build enough amount of rest automatically for each arm, so you don’t even need to track your rest time.  Cable flyes for chest are slow, regular exercise.  But if you want to develop and sculpt your chest, they are one of the best activities available.

Standing Cable Fly or Seated Cable Fly

Standing cable fly has more control of your core and your upper body weight. But if you can’t hold your body weight while standing, you can opt to do the seated cable fly. You can use a bench with a back that can provide additional stability so that you can focus on muscle in your chest.

How to do cable flyes properly?

Like other workouts, you cannot avoid some mistakes in doing cable fly.

Step 1: Make a slight bend in your elbows and lock it. Maintain this position while doing the repetitions.

Step 2: Then, fully extend your arms to begin the cable crossover flyes. While doing this, make sure your hands will remain together and in a forward position. You should see your hands in the arched path, not in a straight line.

Step 3: If you want to do another position like a side-by-side foot stance, you need to have balance as you move your arms forward. Split position, on the other hand, can help you adapt to the center of gravity. Make sure your rear foot to be in more sideways.

How to avoid the stress to your shoulder?

Try to slow down.

Doing slow down motion is necessary when you are in full extension. Make sure your weights will not pull your arms backward and lose control of your directions. Also, the movement you will make to your left will be reflected in your right. You will observe that this is more beneficial to your cable flyes exercises.

Try different angles and an extensive range of motion.

There are different angles for your cable flyes exercise. To try it, you should consider raising and lowering both pulleys. Then try to change the point where you will point the handles together. It can be high, low or in between. Make sure your both hands will be meeting and crossing each other while doing a different angle of cable flyes exercise.

Have control.

Take control of any exercise. It is essential because you will need to maintain your strength for the whole duration of your workout. Not only for cable flyes exercise, but you also have other routines to be performed, so taking control of your strength and movement is essential. It will also allow you to divert your focus in every method, which is good because you will have time to explore many workouts.

In a nutshell

When doing cable fly, it looks like a straightforward exercise. But you will need to have a firm grip and control over the cable. Properly doing this exercise can make your pec more good looking and attractive. When doing cable fly, especially when doing the incline cable fly, you should gear yourself with proper form. Your body must be prepared before doing any workout.