Instructions

  1. Adjust the seat so the handles are roughly level with your chest and adjust the handles so that they’re slightly behind your shoulders.
  2. Grab one handle and bring it in front of your chest, then grab the other and bring it alongside the first.
  3. Lift your chest, pinch your shoulder blades together and down, and slightly bend your elbows.
  4. Let your arms travel out to the sides until your upper arms are slightly behind your torso and your hands are roughly level with your chest.
  5. Bring your hands together in front of your chest, keeping the same slight bend in your elbows the whole way.
  6. Squeeze the handles together for a brief moment, then return to the starting position and repeat for the desired number of reps.
  7. When you’re ready to end your set, lower one handle first, let go, and then lower the other handle (the reverse of what you did at the start of your set).

Expert Tips

  • The number one mistake people make with the pec deck is excessively bending their elbows to make the exercise easier. This shortens the range of motion and increases activation of your triceps and front deltoids—essentially turning the pec deck into a sloppy chest press. Good for the ego, not for your pec gains.
  • The second most common mistake is not getting a full range of motion. You want to lower the handles until your hands are roughly level with your chest and your elbows are behind your torso, and bring the handles all the way together at the top of each rep.
  • Don’t force your arms back much past this point, though, as this can irritate your shoulders and isn’t meaningfully better for muscle growth.
  • Lower the handles under control and then push them together as hard and fast as possible. It’s fine if you bang the weights a few times. Squeeze them together hard, then lower them under control.
  • 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.
  • To find your starting position, extend your arms out to the sides, and then set the handles so they’re just one pin further back. Your chest should support the weight throughout each rep, and the weight stack should stay suspended by the cables. Don’t set the handles so far back that you can’t quickly and safely drop the weight if necessary.
  • Keep your butt on the seat, your back against the pad, and your shoulder blades back and down during the entire rep. The only parts of your body that should be moving are your arms.
  • If your machine offers a choice of different grips, I recommend a pronated (palms-down) grip. This positions your upper arms so your pecs can pull them across your chest more directly.
  • If your machine has elbow pads instead of handgrips, adjust the seat so your elbows are at shoulder height. Place your forearms against the pads with your elbows bent about 90 degrees, and then perform the exercise just as you would with regular handles.

Workout Programming

Program the pec deck as part of a chest, push, or upper-body workout, usually after your main compound pressing exercises, such as the barbell bench press or incline barbell bench press.

Or, if you’re specifically focused on developing your chest, you can also do the pec deck as one of your first exercises.

A good default is 3 sets of 8–10 reps. Take each set 1–2 reps shy of failure—the point where you can’t move the weight with good form despite giving your maximum effort—and rest 1–2 minutes between sets.

Mike’s Take

The pec deck is an underrated chest exercise for a few reasons:

  1. It’s very effective at isolating your pectoralis major (your main chest muscle) and isn’t limited by the strength of your triceps and shoulders. While this isn’t an issue for everyone, a common problem with compound pressing exercises like the barbell or dumbbell bench press is that your triceps and shoulders can hit failure before your chest, forcing you to end the set before your pecs are fully trained. The pec deck doesn’t have that problem.
  2. It allows you to train your pecs through a long range of motion, in a stretched position, and add weight in small increments over time, all of which is good for muscle growth.
  3. The seat and back pad keep your body stable, so you can focus on contracting your pecs and safely take sets close to—or all the way to—failure. With a standing cable chest fly, keeping your body still gets harder as the weight increases.

While some people treat the pec deck as the bench press’s understudy, research from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse shows it produces about 98% as much chest muscle activity as the barbell bench press in trained weightlifters.1

And while muscle activation isn’t a perfect proxy for muscle growth, it’s a strong sign that the pec deck is an effective chest builder. Anecdotally, I’ve also found this to be true: So long as you use good form (as explained above) and sufficient volume and intensity, the pec deck can be just as effective for building your chest as the barbell bench press.

There are a few downsides to the pec deck:

  1. Some machines force you to add weight in large increments, which can make progressive overload more difficult. This isn’t a fault of the exercise itself so much as the machine.
  2. Likewise, it’s possible to become so strong on the pec deck that you run out of weight to add. It’s a nice problem to have, but at that point, you would need to switch to another exercise to keep progressing.
  3. Being a pec isolation exercise, it doesn’t train your lateral deltoids (side delts) or triceps the way most pressing exercises do. That’s easily solved with some cable side raises and triceps extensions.

Pec Deck Alternatives

  • Dumbbell Chest Fly. This is my preferred alternative, as it’s easy to set up and comes with almost all of the same advantages of the pec deck. The main downside is that the exercise feels significantly easier at the top of each rep than it does at the bottom, but I doubt this makes a major difference in terms of muscle growth. You can program this interchangeably with the pec deck.
  • Cable Chest Fly. Basically the same exercise, but it gives you a bit more adjustability than the pec deck. I favor the pec deck since it fits most people’s anatomy just fine (you probably don’t need the additional adjustability) and the cable chest fly is a major pain in the butt to set up, especially if you’re using a bench. And if you aren’t using a bench, it’s harder to stay stable and keep the focus on your pecs.
  • Low-to-High Chest Cable Fly. This is very similar to the cable chest fly, but better targets the upper chest muscle fibers, which aren’t always adequately trained by horizontal chest pressing exercises.
  • Machine Chest Press. It’s easy to learn, doesn’t require much balance or skill to perform, and allows you to safely push very close to muscular failure without risk of dropping a weight on your chest or neck. It also trains your triceps and front delts, which is both good and bad. Good in that it’s more time efficient, bad in that if these muscles fail before your pecs, your pecs aren’t trained as effectively. This is true of all compound pressing exercises, including the barbell and dumbbell bench press.

3 Pec Deck Workouts

Here are three sample workouts that show how to program the pec deck on a chest day, a push day, or an upper-body day.

Chest Workout with the Pec Deck

Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets | 4–6 reps | 2–3 min rest
Incline Dumbbell Press: 2 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Pec Deck: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Cable Lateral Raise: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest

Push Workout with the Pec Deck

Incline Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets | 4–6 reps | 2–3 min rest
Pec Deck: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Cable Lateral Raise: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Triceps Pushdown: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest

Upper-Body Workout with the Pec Deck

Incline Dumbbell Press: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Chest-Supported Machine Row: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Pec Deck: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Lat Pulldown: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Cable Lateral Raise: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest

To progress these workouts, use double progression: use a weight that allows you to work within the given rep range, take each set 1–2 reps shy of failure, and once you hit the top of the range for your first set, add weight.

More Chest Exercises

Scientific References +