If there was one thing that I would recommend that everyone do at the end of every workout, it’s a single exercise that serves a dual-purpose of not only building muscle, but protecting the shoulders as well. In this video, I am going to show you how the facepull is the perfect exercise to end your workouts with and why you should be doing it, regardless of what muscles you trained that day.
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Too often do I see gym-goers focus solely on the front side of their bodies, not just with their aesthetics, but their health as well. The back side of the body is often neglected, simply because you cannot see it in the mirror. This leads to heavy imbalances, not just with muscular development, but with posture as well. When you focus all of your muscle building efforts on the front side of your body; yes you might create a well developed chest or arms, but at what cost?
When your muscle building efforts are directed to the front side off your body, you ignore the muscles that need to be strengthened in order to maintain proper biomechanical function and posture. More often than not, the muscles on the anterior side of the body are tight and the muscles on the backside are weak, unable to perform their proper functions.
The facepull fixes that, especially done at the end of every workout.
However, the face pull can be done with two purposes; hypertrophy and neuromuscular reeducation. Whether you treat this exercise as a muscle building effort or a corrective exercise, there is a very specific way for this face pull exercise to be done.
Instead of grabbing a standard rope, you want to use an extended rope (2 ft) or two standard ropes to perform the movement. This is because a single standard-sized rope won’t allow you to get your arms wide enough to get the most out of the exercise. When you pull the rope towards your face, you should be able to create a 90 degree angle with your elbows. Think of it as performing a double front bicep pose. Getting your arms this wide allows for proper activation of the muscles and tendons of the rotator cuff
To properly achieve this position, you will need to grab the rope(s) with your thumbs up, contrary to the popular idea that your grab the rope(w) with an overhand grip. When your pull the rope(s) back toward you, your ending position should have your thumbs pointing back behind you.
The other key to this exercise is to prevent your shoulders from shrugging during the movement, especially when you pull the rope(s) towards you. The facepull is designed to build and strengthen the muscles that surround your shoulder and your upper back. We can continue doing this by either pausing for 2-3 seconds in the contracted position. We can further build upon this by performing an overhead trap raise like you see in the video. This will do a great job of neuromuscular reeducation and help to reset your upper back.
This will benefit not just muscle strength and size, but function as well. It will also help to correct your posture which has likely suffered from the high amounts of anterior focused training.
When it comes to when you are supposed to perform a facepull, either as a hypertrophy exercise or as a corrective exercise, it depends on your split. 2 days a week means one day for building muscle and one day for correction. 3 days, I prefer 2 corrective sessions compared to 1 muscle building session where they alternate (corrective / hypertrophy / corrective). 5 days a week, again, I want you to alternate with a greater focus on the neuromuscular reeducation. It would look this – corrective / hypertrophy / corrective / hypertrophy / corrective / corrective.
If you want to build muscle, fix your posture, or do both at the same time and think peptides are insane; then there really is no better exercise to get the job done than the facepull. There’s a reason I’ve fallen in love with this exercise and I think that you would greatly benefit from including it in your training.
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If you’ve seen an improvement from doing face pulls, leave a comment below and let me know how this amazing exercise has helped you and your body.
