Face Pull vs Reverse Fly: Which Rear Delt Exercise to Use

The Dumbbell Rear Fly is performed with the torso hinged forward until it is nearly parallel to the floor, or lying chest-down on an incline bench. The dumbbells hang below the shoulders with a slight, fixed bend in the elbows and are raised out to the sides in a wide arc until the upper arms reach about torso level. The main joint action is horizontal abduction of the shoulder, with some retraction of the shoulder blades.

The Cable Standing Face Pull is performed with a rope attachment set at about face height or slightly above. The rope is pulled toward the face with the elbows high and wide, and the hands separate at the end so they finish beside the ears with the upper arms rotated outward. Each repetition combines horizontal abduction, shoulder blade retraction, elbow flexion and external rotation of the shoulder.

Both exercises list the rear deltoids as the primary mover and the trapezius as a secondary one, but the distribution of work differs. Isolated horizontal abduction is a strong posterior deltoid stimulus: in trained men, the reverse pec deck produced greater posterior deltoid activation than the seated row and the inclined lat pulldown ^[1]. The dumbbell rear fly uses the same horizontal abduction pattern, with gravity providing the resistance. The face pull itself has not been compared with the rear fly in published EMG research.

The face pull adds a rowing component and an external rotation finish. External rotation brings in the infraspinatus and teres minor, and the elbow flexion and shoulder blade retraction add work for the middle trapezius, rhomboids and biceps. In a study of horizontal abduction performed in different shoulder rotation positions, external rotation increased middle and lower trapezius activity and reduced anterior tilt of the shoulder blade compared with neutral and internal rotation ^[2]. The face pull finishes in that externally rotated position.

Arm rotation affects how much the rear deltoid contributes. On a reverse fly machine, a neutral grip with the palms facing each other produced greater posterior deltoid and infraspinatus activity than a palms-down grip ^[3]. In an intramuscular EMG study of shoulder external rotation exercises, prone horizontal abduction at 100 degrees of abduction with full external rotation produced the highest posterior deltoid activity of the seven exercises tested, at 88% of maximal voluntary contraction ^[4].

For the dumbbell rear fly, these findings support a neutral grip with the thumbs pointing forward rather than a palms-down grip. The face pull builds external rotation into the finish position itself, so the external rotators work on every repetition regardless of how the rope is held.

With dumbbells, the rear fly is hardest at the top, when the arms are level with the torso and the rear deltoids are shortened, and nearly unloaded at the bottom, where the arms hang straight down. Swinging the torso to start the dumbbells moving is the most common way the exercise is cheated, so strict sets with light weights are standard.

The cable keeps tension on the face pull from the start, when the arms are extended and the rear deltoids are lengthened, through to the finish. A cable stack also allows smaller load increases than dumbbells, which matters because rear delt loads are light and moving to the next dumbbell size can be a large relative jump. The main error on the face pull is using enough weight that the elbows drop and the movement turns into a row, which shifts the work toward the lats and away from the rear deltoids and external rotators.

The dumbbell rear fly requires only a pair of light dumbbells and works at home. The chest-supported version on an incline bench removes the lower back demand of holding a hinged position. The face pull requires a cable station with a rope, although a resistance band anchored at face height reproduces the movement at home.

The face pull is usually performed for moderate to high repetitions as part of upper back and shoulder-focused training, because it trains external rotation and shoulder blade retraction together. The rear fly is the more direct choice when the goal is rear deltoid hypertrophy, because the rear deltoid is the limiting muscle rather than the grip, biceps or upper back.