reckonerSingle-arm high-to-low cable fly
One pulley set high, one handle, and that hand swept down and across your body toward the opposite hip. Bringing the arm down from a raised position is the action that, in a small EMG study, drew most on the lowest part of the chest muscle1. Working one arm at a time also gives your trunk a job: in a chest press, one arm raised trunk muscle activity over two2.
One pulley high, sweep down across the body.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, front delts
- Kit
- Cable
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set one pulley high and stand side on
Put one pulley at the top of the frame and take the handle in the hand nearest it. Stand side on to the cable with your feet a little wider than your hips, and step away until the stack has lifted.
Set the arm and the elbow
Start with the arm raised up toward the pulley, following the cable, with a soft bend at the elbow. That bend stays the same for the whole set.
Sweep down and across
Bring the handle down and across your body toward the opposite hip in one smooth arc. Your shoulder is the only joint moving. Your chest and hips stay facing the same way.
Let the cable draw you back, then switch
Let the cable draw your arm back up slowly along the same arc. Finish your reps on that side, turn around and do the same on the other. Both sides together are one set.
What goes wrong
Turning it into a press
If the elbow bends on the way up and straightens on the way down, the triceps start doing the work and the weight goes up for the wrong reason. Fix the elbow and let the arm swing from the shoulder.
Twisting to finish the rep
When the last reps get hard, the trunk rotates to bring the hand across. It feels like a full rep because the hand gets there, but your body moved instead of your arm. Stay square, and if you cannot, the stack is too heavy.
Letting the cable snap the arm back
The stack wants to pull your arm up and out fast, right where the shoulder is most stretched. Control the way back. A rep that only works on the way down is half a rep.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 7.5 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 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. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 7.5 kg | More reps 9 → 10 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 10 at 7.5 kg | More reps 10 → 11 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 11 at 7.5 kg | More reps 11 → 12 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. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 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 12 at 7.5 kg | Load up 7.5 kg → 10 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 10 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to eight. You are now working 8 to 12. 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
Does a high-to-low fly work the lower chest?
It leans that way. Pulling the arm down from a raised position drew most on the lowest segments of the chest muscle in a small EMG study1. That study is older, in eight men, and measured activation in held positions rather than growth, so read it as a direction rather than a promise.
Is one set one side or both?
Both. Reckoner counts a set of a one side lift as the left and the right together, so three sets means three times on each side, and you log the left and the right inside each set.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Only if you choose it. Reckoner never places it by itself, but you can pick it in the movement picker, take it when a swap for another fly is offered, or find it by name in search. Once it is in your plan it stays there, and the weight climbs in the step your own cable stack has.
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
- Paton and Brown, Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 1994. An electromyographic analysis of functional differentiation in human pectoralis major muscle that the most inferior segments of the pectoralis major were used preferentially in shoulder extension from a flexed position, while shoulder flexion drew on the superior segments; a small, older study of isometric efforts in eight men, cited from its abstract
- Behm and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2005. Trunk muscle electromyographic activity with unstable and unilateral exercises eleven subjects, where a unilateral chest press produced higher activation of all the trunk stabilizers measured than a bilateral one