How To Do The Cable Crossover For A Stronger Chest

The cable crossover is another name for a chest flye done with two cable pulleys, and it’s one of the most popular chest exercises you’ll see in a gym. Contrary to popular belief, however, it ISN’T an “inner-chest” exercise, so to speak, and it shouldn’t actually be done by crossing one arm over the other. We’ll get into how to do a cable crossover correctly, and all the ways you can use it to build a bigger, thicker, and stronger set of pecs.

Key Takeaways

1. The cable crossover works the pec major and minor muscles, and can be set up to emphasize the upper, middle, and lower divisions of the pecs.

2. The cable crossover works the pecs hardest in their shortened position, and offers more tension throughout the whole range of motion than does a dumbbell flye.

3. Avoid lunging into the movement or using your bodyweight to complete your reps. The crossover works best when you allow it to isolate your chest properly.

What Is A Cable Crossover and What Are Its Benefits?

(See 00:26 in the video above.)

A cable crossover is just another name for a cable chest flye. “The benefit of using a cable versus dumbbells is constant tension,” says Jonny Catanzano, an IFBB pro bodybuilder and trainer in Austin, TX (@jonnyelgato_ifbbpro). That means that the weight on the cable stack is providing resistance throughout the exercise’s entire range of motion, and that makes the target muscles work harder. “When you use dumbbells,” says Catanzano, “as you raise the weight over your chest, the resistance drops off the pecs. When your arm is directly over your chest, your joints are bearing the load, not the muscles, and there’s no force pushing outward against your arm.” Therefore, the dumbbell flye isn’t an ideal exercise for chest development compared to a cable.

“Another big advantage to the crossover is that you can attack the chest muscles in the shortened position,” says Catanzano. In almost any kind of chest press, your pecs work hardest at the bottom, when they’re stretched out and lengthened. The crossover is hardest at the end of the range of motion when your pecs are the most shortened. This makes the cable crossover a nice complement to pressing exercises, helping to develop the chest more completely.

Yet another feature of the crossover is the ability to adjust the angle of the cables to zero in on one area of the chest over another. Assuming your cable station has adjustable pulley heights, you can set the pulleys low to target the upper chest, high to target the lower chest, or at shoulder level to emphasize the middle-pec fibers in mere seconds. To be clear, you can’t completely isolate one area of the chest over another—all the the regions of the pecs will work in any pec exercise you perform—but the crossover height settings will activate more muscle fibers in one region over another.

Catanzano also argues that the arcing flye motion and cable setup can be easier on the shoulders than dumbbell flyes or pressing movements, which often force you to go deep into shoulder extension to get the best activation of the pec muscles. “There’s a lot less shear force on the shoulder joints,” says Catanzano, “and that lets your chest do more of the work.”