Dépense estimée selon votre poids
Mouvement d'isolation · 3 s par répétition
| Répétitions | Dépense estimée |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0,23 kcal |
| 10 | 2,3 kcal |
| 20 | 4,6 kcal |
| 50 | 11,5 kcal |
| 100 | 23,0 kcal |
Estimation à partir des équivalents métaboliques (MET) du Compendium of Physical Activities. La charge, le tempo et la durée des repos font varier le résultat du simple au double : à lire comme un ordre de grandeur, pas comme une mesure.
The cable face pull in one sentence
You pull a rope attached to a cable pulley toward your face, elbows high and flared. Your hands finish outside your shoulders, palms up. It's a horizontal pull with an external rotation of the shoulder added on top.
That combination is rare. Most back exercises pull toward the chest or the navel, elbows low. Here, the movement hits an area the classic rows leave alone — and that's exactly why it earns a spot in your week.
Muscles worked: what does the face pull actually train?
The work lands on the rear shoulder and the upper back. The rear delt starts the movement, the mid traps and lower traps pull the shoulder blades together, and the rotators (infraspinatus, teres minor) finish the rotation.
- Rear delt: prime mover of the pull.
- Mid and lower traps: retracting and depressing the shoulder blades.
- Rhomboids: stabilising between the two shoulder blades.
- Rotator cuff: controlling the rotation at the end of the range.
These muscles worked are the ones holding your posture together when you spend eight hours sitting down. I've never seen a serious plan skip them: programmes built around the upper back nearly always slot this movement in somewhere during the week.
High pulley face pull: the reference setup
This is the most searched version, and the most logical one. A pulley set at head height or slightly above forces the hands down and toward your face, which keeps the elbows high without you having to think about it. Start here.
Setting up the machine
Set the pulley somewhere between chin and forehead height. Step back twice so the cable is under tension with your arms straight. Stagger your feet, one in front, brace lightly: your torso doesn't drift back during the pull.
Doing the movement
Pull the rope toward your nose while spreading your hands apart. Elbows stay at shoulder height, never lower. Hold for a second at the end, then come back slowly over three seconds and let the shoulder blades spread.
Nine lifters out of ten load it too heavy and turn the face pull into a behind-the-neck pull driven by the biceps. The rope drops, the elbows drop, and the rear shoulder stops doing anything at all.
High pulley, shoulder height or low pulley
The anchor height changes the target. No version is wrong: they simply don't train the same thing.
| Pulley height | Main target | Technical difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| High | Rear delt | Low |
| Face height | Mid traps | Low |
| Chest height | Rhomboids | Medium |
| Low | Lower traps | High |
The low version, pulled up toward the forehead, demands a lot of control. Save it for later.
Seated or standing cable face pull
Standing, you handle the load with your legs and trunk. Convenient, but the cheating creeps in fast: the torso leans back on every hard rep.
Seated, back supported or not, your hips are locked in. The work goes back to the rear shoulder and the upper back, with nothing to compensate with. Take this version if you're unsure about your technique, or at the end of a session when fatigue shows up.
Cable face pull with a rope: which attachment
The rope is the best choice by a wide margin. It lets your hands separate freely at the end of the movement, which a bar makes impossible. A long rope gives you even more range.
- Standard rope: enough in 90% of gyms.
- Individual straps: each arm follows its own path.
- Straight bar: avoid it, it blocks the rotation.
Load, sets and reps
The face pull isn't a strength exercise. Go for 12 to 20 reps across 3 to 4 sets, with a load you control through the whole range. In practice, 15 to 25 kg on the stack for an intermediate lifter.
Two or three times a week is enough to build the area up. Put it after the heavy pulling work, or as a warm-up before bench press.
That leaves the real problem: where to fit it in the week? The app places this kind of movement at the right point in the cycle, with a video of the movement in front of you during the set.
Face pull vs rear delt fly: what's the difference
The rear delt fly isolates the rear delt with the elbows almost straight, no rotation. The face pull adds shoulder blade retraction and external rotation, so more traps and more cuff.
The two complement each other. If you can only keep one, keep the face pull, no hesitation: it covers more muscles for the same time spent. The full library of 1,800 filmed exercises lets you compare the two paths side by side.
The mistakes that come up most
Elbows dropping below shoulder line turn the movement into a pull to the chest. A torso that leans back takes all the tension off the rear shoulder. Letting the weight snap back in half a second? That wipes out half the eccentric work.
Fix it by cutting the load by 30%, then working back up in 2.5 kg steps once you hold position on every rep.