reckonerFace pull
A rope at head height, pulled apart towards your face with the elbows high. It trains the back of the shoulders and the muscles between the blades, and it is the movement with the largest gap between what it is sold as and what anybody has shown.
Pull to the eyes, spread the rope wide.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Rear delts, upper back
- 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
- Low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the pulley at or just above head height
Attach a rope and take one end in each hand, thumbs towards you. Step back until the cable is loaded with your arms out in front.
Stand tall and start with straight arms
Feet staggered, ribs down, arms extended towards the pulley at about shoulder height. Nothing is leaning yet.
Pull to the eyes and spread the rope wide
Draw the rope towards your face, letting the elbows travel out and back and finishing high, hands ending either side of your head with the palms facing forward. Pull to the eyes, spread the rope wide, which is the cue on your wrist. Horizontal extension with external rotation, which is this shape, produced the greatest middle trapezius activity of ten exercises measured together1.
Let it back out under control
Return slowly to straight arms and let the shoulder blades travel forward at the front. Then start again, without leaning back to help.
What goes wrong
Loading it like a row
Too much weight and the elbows drop, the rotation disappears and it becomes a high row done badly. This is a small-muscle movement and the honest working weight is much lighter than the stack next to it suggests.
Leaning back into the pull
The torso tips away from the machine and the cable moves without the shoulders having done much. Feet planted, ribs down, and if the lean is the only way, the pin is one too low.
Expecting it to fix your posture
That is the claim it carries everywhere and there is no research behind it. A coaching review of rear delt exercise selection makes exactly that point, and adds that the measured differences between these exercises have not been shown to predict outcomes2. Do it because it trains the back of your shoulders.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 20 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 20 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 13 at 20 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 14 at 20 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 15 at 20 kg | Load up 20 kg → 22.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 22.5 kg and reps reset to twelve. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 22.5 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 12 at 22.5 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with 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
Will face pulls fix rounded shoulders?
Nobody has shown that they do. The postural and injury prevention claims attached to this movement are not supported by research2. It is a good way to train the rear deltoids and the mid back, which is enough of a reason on its own.
Where should my elbows finish?
High, at about the height of your hands or a little below, with the upper arms roughly level with the floor. If the elbows sink towards your ribs it has turned into a row and the rotation has gone.
How heavy should this be?
Light enough that you can finish every rep with the hands beside your head and the elbows still high. More weekly sets keep buying more, with shrinking returns3, so spend them on reps you can actually complete in position.
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.
Sources
- Ekstrom, Donatelli and Soderberg, Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, 2003. Surface electromyographic analysis of exercises for the trapezius and serratus anterior muscles thirty healthy subjects measured across ten exercises, with the unilateral shoulder shrug producing the greatest upper trapezius activity of all ten, and the greatest middle trapezius amplitudes coming from horizontal extension with external rotation and from an overhead arm raise lying face down, which also produced the greatest lower trapezius activity
- the Barbell Medicine editorial team, Barbell Medicine, 2025. The 6 best rear delt exercises and workouts a coaching review of rear deltoid exercise selection stating that the existing data do not show the measured differences between these exercises predict actual training outcomes, and offering no research behind the claim that face pulls correct posture or prevent injury
- Pelland and colleagues, Sports Medicine, 2025. The resistance training dose response: meta-regressions exploring the effects of weekly volume and frequency on muscle hypertrophy and strength gains sixty-seven studies and 2058 participants, with size and strength both rising as weekly set volume rises and both showing diminishing returns, and weekly frequency compatible with a negligible effect on size once volume is accounted for