Instructions

  1. Set both pulleys on a dual cable machine to shoulder height and attach a single handle to each.
  2. Grab a handle in each hand and stand centrally between the two cable stacks, allowing the cables to pull your arms out to your sides.
  3. Take one or two steps forward and get into a staggered stance. Your arms should be extended with a slight bend in the elbow and your elbows should be slightly behind your torso.
  4. Lift your chest, pinch your shoulder blades together and down and take a deep breath (this keeps your torso stable throughout each rep). 
  5. Bring your hands together in a wide arc in front of your chest, keeping that same slight bend in your elbows the whole way.
  6. Reverse the movement, letting your arms travel back and out until you feel a deep stretch in your chest.
  7. When you’re finished, step back between the cable stacks and release one handle at a time.

Expert Tips

  • To keep your shoulder blades pinched together and pulled toward your butt, it can help to imagine you’re holding a pencil between your shoulder blades and tucking it into your back pocket.
  • If you’re struggling to feel your pecs working, think about your pecs pulling your upper arms across your body rather than pushing the weight forward. 
  • Lean slightly forward over your front leg throughout each rep. This lowers your center of gravity and makes it much easier to stay stable through each rep.
  • Let your arms travel back until you feel a deep stretch across your chest. If you feel any shoulder discomfort (pain, pressure, pinching), go as far back as you comfortably can and no further. 
  • Keep your torso still throughout each rep. If you find yourself rocking your torso back and forth to finish each rep, the weight is too heavy. Drop it until you can complete every rep without shifting. Quality over quantity. 
  • If you have to bend your elbows more than about 30 degrees, you’re using too much weight. Don’t turn the exercise into a chest press 

3 Cable Fly Workouts to Grow Your Chest

Here are three sample workouts incorporating the cable fly.

Chest Workout with Cable Fly

Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 4–6 reps

Cable Chest Fly: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Chest Press Machine: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Cable Triceps Extension: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Push Workout with Cable Fly

Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 4–6 reps

Dumbbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 4–6 reps

Cable Chest Fly: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Cable Overhead Triceps Extension: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Cable Lateral Raise: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Chest & Back Workout with Cable Fly

Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 4–6 reps

Pull-up: 3 sets of 4–6 reps

Cable Chest Fly: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

One-Arm Dumbbell Row: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

Cable Lateral Raise: 3 sets of 8–12 reps

In most cases, it’s best to do the cable fly as part of a chest, pressing, or upper body workout, and after your main compound pressing exercises like the bench press, incline press, dumbbell bench press, etc. The primary purpose of this exercise is to continue training your pecs after your shoulders and triceps are already fatigued from compound pressing. 

Some people also like to do the cable fly before their heavy pressing as a way to “pre-exhaust” their chest muscles, so that during their sets of heavy pressing, their chest, triceps, and shoulders all hit maximum stimulation around the same time. 

While this approach can work, it’s not worth messing with until you’re already quite strong on exercises like the bench press and are very fastidious about how you apply it. Focus on getting strong before anything else. 

It’s generally best to program the cable fly for 2–3 sets of 8–12 reps. This is one exercise that doesn’t play nicely with heavy weights and low-rep ranges—generally 8 is about the lowest I ever do or recommend. With heavy weights, it becomes difficult to maintain proper form, which makes the exercise less effective and increases the risk of injury. 

Here are several more workouts that incorporate the cable fly: 

Can You Use Cable Chest Flys to Grow Different Parts of Your Pecs?

Not really—with one exception. 

All exercises that involve bringing your upper arms toward your torso (horizontal shoulder adduction)—including fly variations—train your entire pec.

There’s not much you can do to preferentially target the “outer,” “inner,” or “lower” chest, so just focus on training hard with proper technique and your chest growth will take care of itself.

The one exception is the upper chest.

Some research suggests that moving your upper arm toward the midline of your body from a low-to-high angle can preferentially train the upper chest fibers.12 The fly variation that best mimics this is the low-to-high cable fly, where you set the pulleys low and bring your arms up and across your chest rather than straight across.

That doesn’t make the low-to-high variation the “best” cable fly—it’s just another good option, especially if growing your upper chest is a priority. I typically recommend people rotate between the standard shoulder-height fly and the low-to-high version every ~8–12 weeks. This way, you get any theoretical benefits when it comes to upper-pec growth, and it makes your workouts more fun.

The one variation I tend not to recommend is the high-to-low cable fly. While many say it’s the best fly for developing your lower pecs, the other cable fly variations work just as well, and it feels awkward for many people. 

That said, if you enjoy it and it’s comfortable, there’s no reason not to do it.

Standing Cable Fly vs. Bench Cable Fly vs. Incline Bench Cable Fly

The standing cable fly is the most common version for good reason—it’s the easiest to set up. You grab the handles and go.

The main downside is stability—you have to consciously focus on keeping your whole body as stable and stationary as possible during each rep. This becomes increasingly difficult as the weights get heavier. 

One way to fix this is to put a bench between the cable handles and lie on it while doing cable flyes. This makes it even easier to keep your body stable and isolate the pecs. The downside is that it’s often a pain in the butt to wheel a bench around the gym, especially when it’s busy. 

Personally, I almost never bother with this, and I think most people can learn to stabilize their torso plenty well without using a bench, but it’s an option you can try. 

Some people also like to set the bench angle at an incline of around 30–45 degrees to help target the upper pec muscles. Again, another option to play with. I prefer to just set the handles lower and do low-to-high standing cable flyes.

In summary—the standing cable fly is my go-to, but the bench and incline bench fly are also options worth trying, especially if you struggle to keep your upper body stable.

Cable Chest Fly vs. Dumbbell Chest Fly

The key advantage the cable fly has over the dumbbell fly is that it keeps constant tension on your pec muscles throughout the entire rep. In more technical terms, the cable chest fly has a better resistance curve, which refers to how the difficulty of an exercise changes throughout the range of motion.

The dumbbell fly feels hardest at the bottom of each rep, when your arms are spread wide, gets significantly easier as you raise the weights, and for the last ~⅓ of each rep, there’s almost no tension on your pecs whatsoever. 

And in general, more tension on a muscle = more muscle growth over time. 

Side note: At least one study has found no difference in muscle growth between the cable and dumbbell exercise variations (in this case, the lateral raise), which some people claim is proof positive the dumbbell fly is just as good for building your pecs as the cable fly.3 The study only lasted 8 weeks, though, which is simply not enough time for small differences like this to become statistically significant, much less visible.

All of that said, the dumbbell fly still puts significant tension on your pecs through most of each rep and the differences in actual muscle growth are probably small—I like, use, and recommend both. 

But if I had to pick one, I’d pick the cable fly over the dumbbell fly for this reason.

Cable Chest Fly vs. Pec Deck Machine

The pec deck and cable fly are more similar than they are different. Both use a cable-and-pulley system to load the movement, which means both keep constant tension on your pecs throughout each rep.

The pec deck’s main upside is simplicity: it’s stable, easy to set up, and easy to load in small increments over time. The main downside is that they force you into a relatively fixed range of motion and, if your gym only has 1 or 2, are often occupied by other lifters. 

The cable fly’s main advantage over the pec deck is versatility. You can adjust the pulleys to manipulate the line of pull and find a position that suits your body, whereas adjustment is more limited on the pec deck.

If you enjoy the pec deck and don’t find the range of motion limiting, it’s an excellent pec exercise. If you want more control over how the movement feels, the cable fly is the better choice.

Want More Content Like This?

Check out these articles:

Scientific References +