Rear delt exercises

Why the rear delt falls out of the plan

Three reasons at once, and none of them is laziness. First, you do not see this head in the mirror, so nothing reminds you it is there. Second, it picks up some work on every row, except the lats and upper back run out much later, so the set is over before the rear delt ever becomes the limiting factor.

Third, there is no number to beat here. Reverse flyes get done with a light weight, and the instructions in this atlas say so themselves, which makes it hard to treat them as a lift you measure anything on. Front delt training happens by accident on every press. Rear delt training happens by accident on nothing.

So the list below is short and pretty repetitive. We did not try to pad it out, because the same exercise in a fifth setup does not become a new exercise.

Flyes, rows or face pulls?

Reverse flyes are the closest thing to clean rear delt work: the arm is nearly straight and travels out to the side, which makes the lever long and the weight, of necessity, small. The rear delt row flips that around. A bent elbow shortens the lever and lets you use noticeably more load, but the upper back joins the movement right along with the weight.

The face pull sits in between and has one thing the other two do not: an end position you can check yourself. Hands land beside your face, upper arms parallel to the floor, shoulder blades pulled together. As long as that picture holds, the movement is going where it should.

That leaves the question of torso position. Bent over with a free weight is the hardest on your lower back, because the spine has to hold flat for the whole set. The seated version with your chest resting close to your thighs, TRX, and pulling a band to your face while standing solve it three different ways, and the rear delt does more or less the same work in all of them.