reckonerCable Y raise
A lateral raise that keeps going past shoulder height into a Y. Two low cables cross in front of you and you raise your arms up and out, with steady cable tension through the whole arc.
Raise the arms up and out in a Y.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Side delts, rear delts
- Kit
- Cable
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Cross the cables
Stand between two low pulleys with single handles. Take the left handle in your right hand and the right handle in your left, so the cables cross in front of you and pull your arms across your body at the start.
Soft elbows, hands at your hips
Start with your arms down and slightly in front, elbows a little bent. Stand tall, ribs down, so the shoulders rather than the back do the lifting.
Raise up and out into a Y
Lift your arms up and out at an angle, thumbs leading, until your hands are a little above your shoulders and your body makes a Y.
Lower slowly
Bring the handles back down along the same path, slowly, until the hands are back near your hips. The cable keeps pulling on the way down, so the lowering counts.
What goes wrong
Shrugging the shoulders up
Hiking the shoulders makes the hands climb higher, so it feels like a good rep. The traps take over. Keep the shoulders down and let the arms do the rising.
Going too heavy
A heavier stack feels like progress. Heavy cables turn it into a body swing. Light weight and strict reps are the lift.
Arching the back to finish
Arching gets the hands higher at the end of a set, so it feels like finishing strong. The lower back did it. Stop where your arms reach without the back helping.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 5 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 12 at 5 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 13 at 5 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 14 at 5 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 15 at 5 kg | Load up 5 kg → 7.5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the weight on the cable stack goes up 2.5 kg to 7.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to eight. You are now working 8 to 11. |
| 5 | 3 x 8 at 7.5 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 8 at 7.5 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Cable Y raise or lateral raise?
The Y raise goes higher, past shoulder height, and Reckoner counts it for the side and rear delts with the traps helping. The lateral raise stops at shoulder height. Reckoner places the lateral raises and keeps this as a choice.
How heavy should it be?
Light. If the shoulders shrug or the body leans, the cables are too heavy.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. The library already places the lateral raise in its dumbbell, cable and machine forms, so the engine never chooses this variant for you. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap for a lateral raise. Shoulder is recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.