Cable Crossover | Form Check | Men's Health Muscle

Men'sHealth

29/04/2024

Transcript

00:00 One of the best known exercises to build your inner chest

00:03 is something called the cable crossover exercise.

00:05 And pretty much if you walk into any gym

00:07 and you ask how to build your inner chest,

00:09 some gym bro is gonna tell you

00:11 you've gotta do cable crossovers.

00:12 And you can't really blame them either

00:14 because the exercise sounds awesome

00:16 and it is the most well-known inner chest exercise.

00:19 It is not, however, the best way

00:21 to really train your inner chest

00:22 and it is not the best version of the cable fly,

00:25 especially if you wanna keep your shoulders healthy

00:27 in the long term.

00:28 And if you really, really want that chest development.

00:30 So let's go over the cable crossover

00:32 the way everybody tells you that you should do it.

00:34 And we're gonna show you a better way to do it.

00:36 That way you can really get those chest gains.

00:38 So we've got Brett here to help us demo

00:40 the classic cable crossover.

00:42 And we're gonna use this as an opportunity

00:43 to show you all the reasons

00:45 that this is not the best way to build your chest.

00:47 And all Brett's gonna do,

00:48 we're gonna start with the handles high

00:50 in the traditional cable crossover.

00:51 Brett is going to take a large step forward.

00:54 He's gonna brace his abs

00:56 and lean forward in his torso just slightly.

00:58 Now he's really in position.

00:59 He's gonna squeeze his shoulder blades

01:00 and all he's going to do is fly the cables in front of him.

01:05 And the crossover part comes at the end here.

01:07 Let's show him, Brett.

01:08 He's actually going to cross over his arms.

01:12 In theory, we're doing this

01:13 so that we get a much more aggressive and full contraction

01:16 than we get on our standard cable flies

01:18 and on our dumbbell flies.

01:19 That is supposed to be the advantage of the move.

01:22 In theory, we are taking our chest

01:24 through a truly full range of motion

01:26 when we cross over like that.

01:27 But there are a couple issues with this move

01:30 and we're gonna go over them.

01:31 The first issue, the main issue

01:33 that I have with this exercise is one,

01:35 there's a lack of overall stability

01:37 and there's a lack of consistency in his torso position.

01:40 It's not supported.

01:41 So he can lean forward if he needs to even more.

01:44 That way he can grab a little bit more leverage

01:47 and then he's getting a little bit less.

01:48 He's kind of creating more favorable angles

01:50 so he can get the fly done a little bit more easily

01:54 or he can lean back a little bit more.

01:56 Either way, he's not necessarily gonna be consistent

01:59 from set to set to set and from workout to workout

02:01 so that he can truly chart improvement.

02:03 The bigger issue with this though is the shoulder risk.

02:07 So every single time Brett flies in front of him,

02:09 his humerus and clavicle,

02:10 he's really closing down all that joint space

02:13 on every single rep.

02:14 So this is a recipe for shoulder issues in the longterm.

02:17 And it's also not gonna give us

02:19 the most advantageous chest contraction for another reason.

02:22 That big reason is we're thinking of our arms

02:25 as this giant lever that our chest is adducting across.

02:29 But what our chest is really adducting across

02:31 and the way you really wanna wind up

02:32 thinking about your flies

02:33 is your upper arm is the joint that is being moved.

02:36 And we can think about our elbows

02:38 coming together a lot more effectively

02:40 if we get away from this cable crossover idea

02:43 and we get to something smarter

02:44 and we're gonna show you how to do that now.

02:46 So how are we going to change that classic cable crossover

02:49 to make it better, to make it shoulder safer

02:52 and to help you get more out of it?

02:54 We're gonna bring a bench into things

02:56 and you can technically set this bench

02:58 at any height you want.

03:00 I would say set it at the highest possible incline

03:02 because of how we're trying to set up here.

03:04 And we've taken the cables

03:05 and we've dropped them below the bench.

03:08 And what this is gonna do is instantly

03:09 it's gonna give Brett a lot more stability

03:12 when he's doing his cable flies rather.

03:14 And because he has that stability,

03:15 he's gonna be able to push that much more to fatigue.

03:18 And he's also going to be able to really focus

03:21 on the squeeze on every single contraction

03:23 'cause he doesn't have to worry about anything else.

03:24 So Tal is breaking into position himself here.

03:26 He's gonna get in front of the bench.

03:28 He's not going to sit down on the bench though.

03:31 Instead, he's going to maintain his position.

03:33 We're just using this bench for stability

03:35 and to add some consistency to the fly.

03:37 He actually wants to make sure

03:39 that his shoulder blades also are off the bench.

03:42 So he's gonna set up high.

03:44 Now, why do we want our shoulder blades off the bench?

03:46 That is the one thing that the cable crossover

03:48 does very well is it allows the free movement

03:50 of the scapula, which is something we really want

03:53 on our pressing exercises and on our adduction concepts.

03:55 And we still have that here.

03:57 The other great thing with this bench

03:59 is he can lean back a little bit

04:01 and he can think about opening his chest

04:03 when he's in that stretch position.

04:05 When he does that, that's really setting him up

04:07 to get a better stretch on his pecs.

04:09 And then he's going to just simply from this position

04:12 while still squeezing his shoulder blades

04:14 and still getting a little bit of lean back,

04:16 thinking about keeping his shoulders behind his chest

04:19 relative to that bench, all he's gonna do is that fly.

04:23 He's not going to cross over on this.

04:25 We wanna pay attention to a couple of things

04:27 that he is doing instead of crossing over.

04:29 The first thing, stay right here, Brett, and just hold that.

04:32 You'll notice that he's leading with his pinkies

04:34 and almost getting a little bit of scoop in there.

04:36 That's gonna help him ensure that the idea

04:39 that's driving this fly is chest adduction

04:42 and it's nothing else.

04:43 The other thing he's gonna do,

04:44 let's give him another rep, Brett.

04:46 He's gonna stay long through his arms.

04:48 And as he drives forward,

04:50 he's thinking about driving his elbows together

04:53 as hard as he can.

04:54 So we're not crossing over pointlessly

04:56 and we're not losing the entire integrity

04:59 of our shoulder capsule.

05:00 Instead, what we're doing is we're just thinking

05:02 about squeezing in that position.

05:04 So we're gonna actually wind up getting

05:06 a much better chest contraction out of that.

05:08 Now, the great thing about this fly on top of that

05:11 is again, he's got the bench for stability.

05:13 So let's give them a couple of reps, Brett,

05:15 and let's really push.

05:16 So we can take this set to true technical fatigue

05:20 for our chest.

05:21 And this is an exercise that is meant to be taken

05:23 to technical fatigue.

05:24 You can really push it and you can really exhaust yourself

05:27 while doing it very, very safely

05:29 and while keeping all of the stimulus on your chest,

05:32 which is the entire idea of the cable fly.

05:35 So instead of doing your cable crossovers,

05:37 you wanna execute them like this on the high bench

05:40 with your torso slight with your shoulder blades

05:42 just off of the bench and really focusing on that squeeze

05:45 on every single rep.

05:46 And that will give you a much better chest pump

05:49 and much better chest gains than all the cable crossovers

05:51 that the gym bros are telling you to do.

05:53 So that is both the cable crossover and the improved version

05:56 that will truly help you get chest gains.

05:58 And there are multiple ways

05:59 that you can use this in the workout.

06:00 The prime way and the way you're gonna see most guys use it,

06:02 we're gonna put it at the end of our chest workout

06:05 or at the end of an upper body day.

06:06 It's a really, really good exercise.

06:07 We can hit say three sets of 10 to 12 reps.

06:10 You get a really good pump on that inner chest

06:12 after you've done your heavy lifts already.

06:14 The other more advanced way you can use it

06:17 if you've been in the gym for a while

06:18 and if you're really, really prepared,

06:19 we can use this as a pre-fatigue exercise.

06:22 So what you're gonna do is you're gonna do say

06:24 three to four sets of a super set

06:26 and we're gonna lead off that super set

06:28 with eight to 10 reps of cable flys.

06:32 And that is going to then fatigue our chest a little bit,

06:34 leave us a little bit tapped out,

06:35 then we will go to a multi-joint exercise

06:37 like an incline dumbbell press

06:39 or a flat bench press, something like that.

06:41 You can hit that for six to eight reps.

06:43 You're gonna really, really get

06:44 a nasty chest pump out of that.

06:45 Again, it's a very advanced way to use the cable fly.

06:48 Either way, stay away from the cable crossover exercise.

06:52 It's a hyped exercise,

06:53 but if you really, really want gains,

06:55 stick with the version that we showed you

06:57 and your chest will keep growing.

06:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Cable Crossover | Form Check | Men's Health Muscle

Category

Transcript

Recommended