reckonerIncline reverse fly
Chest down on an incline bench, two light dumbbells hanging, and you sweep them out and back. Isolating the back of the shoulder is the whole point, and single-joint work is where the posterior deltoid has been measured working hardest1.
Soft elbows, squeeze the blades.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Rear delts, upper back
- Kit
- Dumbbell, incline bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 1 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Very low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the bench at a low incline and lie face down
Around thirty to forty-five degrees, chest flat on the pad, chin clear of the top, feet braced. Everything below your shoulders is now out of the exercise.
Hang the dumbbells with soft elbows
Arms straight down, palms facing each other, a small fixed bend in the elbow. Soft elbows, squeeze the blades, which is the cue on your wrist, and that bend does not change all set.
Sweep the arms out to the sides
Take the dumbbells out and up in a wide arc until your arms are roughly level with your shoulders. Think about moving your elbows away from each other rather than lifting your hands.
Lower slowly to a full hang
Take longer coming down than going up, and let the arms return all the way. Pooled comparisons favor the full range on every outcome measured2.
What goes wrong
Bending the elbows to move more weight
The elbows fold, the arc shortens, and it becomes a wide row that the mid back does most of. The bend is set at the start and stays there. If it will not, the bells are too heavy.
Shrugging at the top
The shoulders climb towards the ears as the arms rise and the upper traps take a lift the rear delts were meant to have. Keep the shoulders down and away from the ears as the arms travel.
Taking anything like a pressing weight
This is the lightest movement most people do, and the step in the fact block above is small for that reason. If the numbers look embarrassing, the movement is working.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 8 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 8 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 8 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 8 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 8 kg | Load up 8 kg → 9 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 1 kg to 9 kg and reps reset to twelve. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 9 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 9 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
Do I need this if I already row?
Rows do train the rear deltoids, and single-joint work loads them harder: a reverse pec deck produced significantly greater posterior deltoid activation than either a seated row or an inclined pull-down1. Whether that extra is worth the sets is a volume question.
Bench or bent over?
The bench, if there is one. Standing bent over means holding a hinge for the whole set, and the lower back tends to end the set before the shoulders do. The library entry is the supported version for that reason.
Should my palms face down or in?
Facing each other is the position this entry is written for and it is easier on the shoulder for most people. Turning the palms down adds internal rotation at the top, which is a fussier finish for no benefit anybody has demonstrated.
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
- Franke and colleagues, Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 2015. Analysis of anterior, middle and posterior deltoid activation during single and multijoint exercises twelve trained men compared across an inclined lat pull-down, a seated row and a reverse pec deck, with posterior deltoid activation significantly greater in the single-joint reverse pec deck than in either of the two multi-joint pulls
- Wolf and colleagues, International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, 2023. Partial vs full range of motion resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis a meta-analysis reporting a trivial standardized mean difference of 0.12 in favor of full range training, with every outcome favoring full range but all effects between trivial and small