These days many of us have fallen in love with pushing exercises in our workouts. Exercises that train the chest, triceps, and shoulders, such as bench press and shoulder presses. However, without balancing it out with pulling exercises, it can lead to muscle imbalances.
Even with general pull exercises such as rows and pulldowns, the muscles in the upper back, lower traps, rear deltoids, and rotator cuffs are generally not targeted as much as they should be. The facepull is an excellent exercise to put in at the end of a pull workout to cover your bases.
The facepull is a simple, yet underrated pull exercise that is great for improving your posture, upper body imbalances, and to look better aesthetically. This is an exercise that most people overlook and generally don’t do enough.
The facepull can be done with a cable machine, or simply with a band. Use a rope attachment as opposed to bars as it will limit the rotation which is an important part of the exercise. Set the height high and so you have to pull the ropes down towards you. Come into a squared athletic stance without leaning backwards, and hold the end of the ropes with an underhand grip with the thumbs pointed backwards, this will allow for more external rotation versus other grips and heights. When pulling the rope, pull it down and towards the face, right towards the nose. Pull with the hands and not the elbows so that the hands reach back first, this is to ensure external rotation of the shoulders. Open up the chest and squeeze close the back.
Add this exercise to the end of your pull day workouts and try it out!
