Butterfly

Starting position:

Sit on the machine with your feet on the floor in a wider position. Take hold of the handles, palms facing each other with radial side up to shoulder height. Your elbows are slightly below your shoulders.

Exercise:

Contract your chest muscles to push the handles together in front of your chest without changing your elbow joint angle. Pull your hands all the way in front of your sternum simultaneously. Breathe in as you go back to the starting position without fully resting your weights (hands maintained at the shoulder level); breathe out as you bring your hands back in front of the chest. Repeat as required.

Note:

Maintain correct body posture throughout the motion. Avoid lower back lordosis (overarching your lower back) when using large resistance.

The exercise is not suitable for people with shoulder problems, namely a rotator cuff injury.

Your elbows are slightly flexed. Do not let the weight drop fully as your arms stretch out.

Recommendation:

As you start, choose an appropriate resistance to master the technique well.

Butterfly is an alternative to the popular dumbbell flyes and it’s also one of the very few exercises using a machine that are strongly preferable to their free-weight alternative.

There is a problem with dumbbell flyes: they will almost inevitably cause shoulder-joint damage and should be avoided whenever possible. Butterfly also puts strain on shoulders – every chest exercise does. But since the pressure on your rotator cuff is much lower at the beginning of the movement, butterfly is causing less rotator cuff injuries than classical flyes.