Face Pulls Form: Rear Delts vs External Rotation, and How to Do Each

Good face pulls form is simple to describe and surprisingly easy to get wrong. Set a rope on a cable at about eye level, pull toward your face with your elbows high, and either stop with your hands at eye level (more rear delt) or rotate your hands back toward your forehead (more external rotation). Both are legitimate, they just aim at slightly different targets.

This article is the full technique breakdown for the lift. For the wider picture of how rear delts fit into shoulder training, start with our complete shoulder and delt training guide.

Why do face pulls get two different explanations?

Ask three coaches and you will hear three answers. One says “go heavy, hit the rear delts.” Another says “keep it light, it is for posture and your rotator cuff.” A third says it is a shrug in disguise.

They are all describing real variations of the same movement. The difference is where your elbows go and what your hands do at the end of the pull. Once you see that, the argument mostly disappears.

How to do face pulls properly: setup and steps

Most of the quality is decided before the first rep.

Cable height. Eye level or a little above. Too low and the pull becomes a row with a shrug. Too high and you lean back to find the line.

Attachment. A rope lets your hands separate and rotate. A straight bar locks your wrists and takes away the rotation finish. If your gym has dual ropes or a V-handle on a high pulley, those work as well.

Stance. Stand tall with a slight knee bend and your ribs down. Take two or three steps back so the weight stack is lifted before you start. Your torso should be a stable post.

The pull. Think of pulling the rope apart as it comes toward your face. Your elbows stay high, roughly in line with or slightly above your hands.

The finish. For the rotation version, your knuckles turn up and back, so your hands end beside or just behind your ears. Pause for a second and squeeze your shoulder blades gently together.

The return. Let the weight go back slowly with your arms reaching long. Do not let the stack yank your shoulders forward.

If your gym setup is awkward, our guide to cable pulley heights and angles covers how to set the line of pull properly.

Rear delt version vs external rotation version

Here is the practical split.

	Rear delt version	External rotation version
Finish	Hands at eye level, elbows wide	Hands rotate back beside the ears
Cue	“Pull the rope apart”	“Pull, rotate, pause”
Load	Moderate	Light
Reps	10-20	12-20, slow
Best for	Rear delt size	Cuff and upper back work

Treat the table as a coaching framework, not a prescription from one trial. Nobody has run a head-to-head study of these two cable variations that I could find.

What does the research say about face pulls?

I will be direct: I did not find an EMG study of the cable face pull itself in PubMed. What exists is research on exercises that share its ingredients, external rotation and horizontal abduction. So everything below is an inference from related movements, mostly in small groups of healthy young people.

In a lab study with intramuscular electrodes in 10 healthy people, side-lying external rotation with the elbow at the side produced the highest activity for the infraspinatus (62% of maximal voluntary contraction) and teres minor (67%). The highest activity for the supraspinatus (82%), middle deltoid (87%) and posterior deltoid (88%) came from prone horizontal abduction at 100 degrees with full external rotation (Reinold et al., 2004).

Why does that matter for you? The face pull’s finish, elbows high with the hands rotating back, looks a lot like that second exercise. So it plausibly hits the rear delts and the cuff together, which fits why people feel it in both places. That is a reasonable guess, not a measured fact for cables.

The takeaway is a trade-off. If you want maximum rotator cuff isolation, a face pull is not the cleanest tool, because high elbows invite the posterior deltoid. If you want a combined rear delt, cuff and upper back movement, the face pull is a sensible compromise. For more targeted cuff work, see rotator cuff strengthening and shoulder health.

Do face pulls fix posture?

This is the part most content overstates.

Scapular retraction, squeezing the shoulder blades back, matters in rowing and pulling patterns. An older EMG study of 9 healthy people identified rowing among the four exercises that make up a core scapular strengthening program, alongside scaption, push-up with a plus and press-up (Moseley et al., 1992). A review also notes that compared with scapular protraction, scapular retraction has been shown to increase subacromial space width and improve supraspinatus force production during elevation (Escamilla et al., 2009).

On the posture question itself, a 2024 meta-analysis of 22 studies in people with upper crossed syndrome found that therapeutic exercise, including strengthening, stretching and shoulder-based programs, was effective in improving forward head, rounded shoulder and thoracic kyphosis angles (Sepehri et al., 2024). Note what that does and does not tell us. It supports exercise in general, usually in programs that combine several things. It does not show that face pulls specifically fix posture.

My practical read: face pulls are a good part of a posture-friendly program, alongside rows, chest and lat mobility work, and not sitting hunched for eight hours. Do not expect one movement to change how you stand.

If you also want to understand the squeeze itself, our guide to scapular retraction versus depression explains what each cue does.

Should face pulls be heavy or light?

Both camps have a point, and the answer depends on your goal.

For rear delt growth, you want enough load that sets are challenging. A review of loading research argues that muscle adaptations can be obtained across a wide spectrum of loading zones, rather than only in a narrow “hypertrophy range” (Schoenfeld et al., 2021). For a small muscle like the rear delt, that supports sets of 12-20 reps taken close to failure with clean form.

For the rotation version, lighter is better. Heavy loads make you lean back, shrug and lose the rotation. Control matters more than the number on the stack.

A useful rule: if the pull would still look the same on rep 15 as on rep 1, the weight is right.

Where do face pulls fit in your week?

Think of them as a finisher or a warm-up primer, not a main lift.

• Sets and reps: 2-4 sets of 12-20 slow reps.
• Frequency: 2-3 times per week is realistic because they are light and recover quickly.
• Placement: end of push day to balance pressing, or end of pull day after rows. Our push day and pull day plans show where an exercise like this slots in.
• Progression: add reps first, then a small weight jump, and only when the rotation finish stays clean.

If your gym is crowded and the cable station is always taken, a resistance band anchored to a rack gives you a similar pattern for a few hundred rupees.

For comparing face pulls with the reverse pec deck and other rear delt choices, see rear delt training: reverse pec deck vs cables vs face pulls.

Common face pull mistakes

• Elbows dropping. When elbows fall below your hands, you lose the rear delt and rotation emphasis. Keep them high.
• Shrugging. Your upper traps take over. Lower the weight and think “shoulders away from ears.”
• Leaning back. Fix by stepping closer, ribs down, and glutes lightly braced.
• Using a straight bar. It blocks the rotation. Use a rope.
• Rushing the return. The slow return is half the exercise.
• Pain-pushing. A mild burn in the rear delts is normal. Sharp or pinching shoulder pain is not.

If face pulls or pressing leave you with a pinching shoulder, see subacromial impingement and lifting solutions for how to adjust training.

When to see a doctor

Sharp pain, pain at night, a clicking shoulder that catches, weakness, or numbness or tingling down the arm should be checked by a doctor or physiotherapist before you keep training through it. Face pulls are not a treatment for an injury, and this article cannot diagnose one.

The bottom line

Face pulls are a small exercise with an outsized reputation. Done well, with the cable at eye level, a rope, a still torso and elbows high, they train the rear delts, the external rotators and the upper back together. Choose the eye-level finish for rear delt growth and the rotate-back finish when you want more cuff and scapular control.

The research behind them is indirect: small studies of related movements in healthy people, not trials of the cable face pull. Be modest about the claims, keep the weight honest, and use them as a finisher, not a replacement for rows. If you want a plan that includes this lift, try the free training plans, and use the RIR and RPE calculator to judge how close to failure your sets are.