Steps
- Lie on incline an bench facing away from a high pulley machine that has a straight bar attachment on it.
- Grasp the straight bar attachment overhead with a pronated (overhand; palms down) shoulder width grip and extend your arms in front of you. The bar should be around 2 inches away from your upper thighs. This will be your starting position.
- Keeping the upper arms stationary, lift your arms back in a semi circle until the bar is straight over your head. Breathe in during this portion of the movement.
- Slowly go back to the starting position using your lats and hold the contraction once you reach the starting position. Breathe out during the execution of this movement.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Tracking it in OneRep
Add the cable incline pushdown to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.
Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.
Where the instructions come from
The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.