Cable Machine Workouts: 3 Cable-Only Sessions for Every Muscle

The best cable machine workouts cover a squat or lunge, a hinge, a push, a pull and some core work in one session, using 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 15 reps per exercise and stopping each set a rep or two short of failure. Do that three times a week on nothing but a cable stack and you'll train every major muscle. Below are three sessions you can run today (full body, upper body, lower body with core), each with the pulley height and attachment listed so you aren't guessing between sets.

Full body cable workout

Seven exercises, roughly 45 minutes. If you only train two or three days a week, repeat this one and ignore the split.

Exercise	Sets x reps	Pulley height	Attachment
Cable squat (held like a goblet squat)	3 x 10 to 15	Low	Rope or straight bar
Cable chest press	3 x 8 to 12	Chest	Two D-handles
Seated cable row	3 x 8 to 12	Low	V-handle
Cable pull-through	3 x 12 to 15	Low	Rope
Cable lateral raise	2 x 12 to 15 each arm	Low	D-handle
Tricep pushdown	2 x 10 to 15	High	Rope
Cable crunch	2 x 12 to 15	High	Rope

Rest 90 seconds after the first four moves and 60 seconds after the last three.

Upper body cable workout (push and pull)

The order alternates a pull with a push so one muscle group recovers while the other works, which lets you keep rests short without the weights dropping off.

Exercise	Sets x reps	Pulley height	Attachment
Lat pulldown	3 x 8 to 12	High	Wide bar
Cable chest press	3 x 8 to 12	Chest	Two D-handles
Single-arm cable row	3 x 10 to 12 each arm	Chest	D-handle
Cable fly	2 x 12 to 15	Shoulder	Two D-handles
Face pull	3 x 12 to 15	Eye level	Rope
Cable Y raise	2 x 12 to 15	Low	Two D-handles or none (hold the cable ends)
Cable bicep curl	2 x 10 to 15	Low	Straight or EZ bar
Overhead tricep extension	2 x 10 to 15	Low	Rope

Want a pure cable arm workout? Lift the last two rows out, add the tricep pushdown and a rope hammer curl, and do 3 sets of each. Four exercises, about 20 minutes.

Lower body and core cable workout

Legs are where cables struggle, because a 70kg stack that feels heavy on a row is a warm-up for a deadlift. The fix is single-leg work and higher reps, both of which make a modest stack go a long way.

Exercise	Sets x reps	Pulley height	Attachment
Cable Romanian deadlift	3 x 10 to 12	Low	Straight bar
Cable reverse lunge	3 x 10 each leg	Low	D-handle, held in the opposite hand
Cable pull-through	3 x 12 to 15	Low	Rope
Glute kickback	2 x 12 to 15 each leg	Low	Ankle strap
Standing cable hip abduction	2 x 15 each leg	Low	Ankle strap
Pallof press	3 x 10 each side	Chest	D-handle
Cable woodchop	2 x 12 each side	High	D-handle or rope

Run the three sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That schedule clears the NHS guideline of muscle-strengthening work on at least two days a week with a day to spare.

Why cables work

A dumbbell only ever pulls straight down. At the bottom of a lateral raise, with your arm hanging by your side, the weight is doing almost nothing to your shoulder; all the difficulty arrives in the top third. A cable pulls along the line of the cable instead, so you can point the resistance wherever you like and keep the muscle loaded through the whole rep, including the stretched position at the start.

That sounds like it should build more muscle, and plenty of gym folklore says it does. The research is less excited. When Norwegian researchers had 24 trained lifters do cable lateral raises with one arm and dumbbell raises with the other for eight weeks, both shoulders grew by 3.3 to 4.6 per cent, and the analysis favoured "no difference" between the two (Larsen et al., Frontiers in Physiology, 2025). A wider meta-analysis of 13 studies and 1,016 people reached the same verdict for free weights against machines in general: no detectable difference in muscle growth, and strength gains that were specific to whatever kit people had trained on (Haugen et al., 2023).

So cables aren't better than free weights, but they're just as good, and that's the useful finding if a cable machine is all you have room for. Their real advantages are practical ones: you change the load by moving a pin, nothing can land on your foot, and one machine covers pulling movements that dumbbells simply can't do standing up.

How to set the pulley height

One rule covers nearly everything: the cable should pull in the opposite direction to the way you're moving.

• High (above your head): pulldowns, pushdowns, crunches, straight-arm pulldowns and high-to-low woodchops.
• Chest to eye level: presses, flyes, rows, face pulls, reverse flyes and the Pallof press.
• Low (by the floor): curls, lateral and front raises, pull-throughs, squats, deadlifts and all ankle-strap work.

Two checks tell you the height is off. If the cable drags across your forearm or shoulder during the rep, move the pulley until it runs clear; and if the weight plates touch down before you reach the stretched position, step further from the machine.

Attachments you need

Five cover all three workouts: a pair of D-handles, a rope, a straight or EZ bar, a V-handle for rows and an ankle strap. Most home machines ship with a bar and a single handle, so the rope and ankle strap tend to be the ones you end up buying. Our cable machine attachments guide goes through what each one does and which sets are worth the money.

Single-stack and dual-pulley machines

The tables above assume a twin-pulley crossover or functional trainer with adjustable heights. Plenty of home machines aren't that, and the workouts still run with a few swaps.

One adjustable pulley (a single column or a wall-mounted cable machine): do the chest press and fly one arm at a time, standing side-on in a split stance. It takes longer, and your core has to work to stop you twisting, which is no bad thing.

High and low pulley only (lat towers, most multi-gyms, and budget plate-loaded units like the TOUSAINS CR63): you lose true chest-height work. Press with dumbbells or press-ups, do the Pallof press half-kneeling from the low pulley, and take face pulls from the high pulley while leaning back slightly. Everything else in the three sessions works as written.

Twin stacks: no changes needed. If you're shopping for one, our cable crossover machine guide explains the footprint and ceiling height they need, and the best cable machines in the UK round-up compares the ones we rate.

The CR63 is one of the cheaper free-standing ways to run most of this at home with no drilling, provided you already own weight plates and accept the high-and-low limitation.

Check the TOUSAINS CR63 price on Amazonaround £230

How to progress

Use double progression. Each exercise has a rep range, say 8 to 12; stay on the same weight until you hit 12 on every set with clean form, then go up one plate and start again from 8.

Stack jumps are the snag. One plate is often 5kg or more, which is a small step on a row and a 25 per cent leap on a lateral raise. For the small moves, widen the range to 12 to 20 before you add weight, slow the lowering phase to three seconds, or buy a 1kg to 2.5kg add-on weight that sits on top of the stack.

Once the leg exercises max out the stack, switch to one leg at a time and add a pause at the bottom of each rep before concluding you need a barbell.

Common mistakes

Standing too close. If the plates clank down between reps, the muscle gets a rest at exactly the point where a cable is supposed to keep it working. Take a step away from the machine.

Leaning the whole body into it. Pushdowns turn into a chest exercise and rows into a lower-back swing once the weight is too heavy. Your torso should stay still while the working joint moves; if it can't, drop a plate.

Letting the stack yank you back. The lowering half of the rep builds as much muscle as the lifting half, so take two to three seconds over it.

Never changing the height. A pulley left at one setting all session means half your exercises have the cable pulling in the wrong direction. Moving the carriage takes five seconds.

Treating it as accessory work. People do endless curls and pushdowns on cables and skip the rows, presses and hinges. Start every session with the big moves while you're fresh.

Recommended reads

1. The best cable machines in the UK
2. Cable crossover machines: what to know before buying
3. Wall-mounted cable machines for small spaces
4. Cable back exercises
5. Cable shoulder exercises