Face Pull Alternative: 9 Swaps for Bands, Dumbbells and the Gym

The best face pull alternative at home is the banded face pull, or a band pull-apart if you've got nowhere to anchor the band, because a resistance band copies the cable's horizontal line of pull better than anything else you can buy for under £20. In a gym where the cable stack is taken, the reverse pec deck is the strongest swap for the rear delts. Dumbbell users should lean on the prone Y-T-W raise and the bent-over rear delt fly. Whatever you pick, add one external rotation exercise, because that's the part of the face pull most substitutes leave out.

Quick answer: match your kit to the best swap

Kit you have	Best face pull alternative	Pair it with
Resistance bands only	Banded face pull	Band external rotation
Bands, nowhere to anchor	Band pull-apart	Band pull-apart with external rotation
Dumbbells	Prone Y-T-W raise	Side-lying dumbbell external rotation
Gym machines	Reverse pec deck	Cable external rotation
Cable, no rope	High row to the face with a bar or two handles	Cable external rotation
Nothing at all	Prone Y-T-W raise (bodyweight)	Wall slides

If you only buy one thing, buy a set of loop bands. They cover the two best options on this list and cost less than a month of gym fees.

What the face pull actually trains

A face pull looks simple, but it's doing three jobs at once. Pulling the rope towards your face with your elbows high works the rear deltoids through horizontal abduction. Squeezing the shoulder blades together brings in the middle traps and rhomboids, with the lower traps helping to keep the blades down. Then the finish, where your hands rotate back so they end up beside your ears, is external rotation, handled by the infraspinatus and teres minor.

That's why one swap often isn't enough. A rear delt fly hits the first job hard and the second job a bit, but does almost nothing for external rotation. A band external rotation is the reverse. Think of the face pull as a bundle and rebuild it with one or two exercises that cover all three jobs between them.

The research backs up picking exercises by job. In one EMG study of trained men, the reverse pec deck produced more posterior deltoid activity than either the seated row or the lat pulldown (Franke et al., 2015). Rows are good for the back, but they aren't a rear delt exercise in disguise.

Resistance band alternatives

Bands are the closest home copy of a cable face pull. Our best resistance bands UK guide covers which sets suit pulling work, and the full list of moves is in our resistance band exercises guide.

1. Banded face pull

Loop a light band round a post, a squat rack upright or a door anchor at roughly face height. Hold one end in each hand with your thumbs pointing back towards you, step back until there's tension, and pull your hands towards your eyes, elbows high and flaring out. Finish with your hands beside your ears and your knuckles pointing at the ceiling.

This copies the cable version almost exactly. The only real difference is that bands get harder as they stretch, so the end of the rep is the hardest part, which happens to be where you want the squeeze anyway.

• Cue: pull the band apart as you pull it in. That outward pressure brings the rear delts into it.
• Sets and reps: 3 sets of 15 to 20.

Check Gritin resistance bands on Amazon

The Gritin set is the loop band set we've looked at most closely; our Gritin resistance bands review covers the five resistance levels and how long the latex tends to last.

2. Band pull-apart

Hold a light band at shoulder height with straight arms and hands about shoulder-width apart, then pull it apart until it touches your chest. Control it back in. No anchor needed, which makes it the easiest swap to do anywhere, including at your desk between meetings. Our band pull-apart guide covers grip widths and variations.

• Cue: keep your shoulders down, away from your ears. If they shrug up, the band is too heavy.
• Sets and reps: 2 to 3 sets of 15 to 25.

3. Band pull-apart with external rotation

Start like a normal pull-apart, but hold the band with palms up (underhand). As you pull it apart, let your elbows bend slightly and rotate your forearms back, finishing with your hands out to the sides at shoulder height. The underhand grip and the rotation bring in the external rotators, which plugs the main gap between a pull-apart and a face pull.

4. Band external rotation

Anchor a band at elbow height, stand side-on to it, tuck a rolled towel between your elbow and ribs, and rotate your forearm outwards away from your stomach, keeping the elbow pinned. It's a small movement and you'll need the lightest band in the set. Do it after your main swap rather than before, so the rotator cuff isn't tired for the bigger exercise.

Dumbbell alternatives

Dumbbells can't truly copy a face pull, since they only resist you downwards. But by lying face down or hinging over, you turn that downward pull into something close to the right angle for the rear delts and upper back.

5. Prone Y-T-W raise

Lie face down on an incline bench set to about 30 to 45 degrees, holding very light dumbbells (1 to 4 kg is normal; this humbles people). Raise your arms into a Y shape overhead, lower, then a T straight out to the sides, then a W with elbows bent and squeezed towards your back pockets. That's one rep. The Y leans on the lower traps, the T on the rear delts and mid traps, and the W on the external rotators and rhomboids, so this single exercise covers most of what a face pull does.

• Sets and reps: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 10 of each letter.

No bench? Lie face down on the floor and do the same shapes with no weight. It's harder than it sounds.

6. Bent-over or chest-supported rear delt fly

Hinge forward, or lie face down on an incline bench, let the dumbbells hang and raise them out to the sides with a slight bend in the elbows. Use a neutral grip, palms facing each other. In a study on the reverse fly machine, a neutral grip produced more posterior deltoid and infraspinatus activity than a palms-down grip (Schoenfeld et al., 2013), and the same logic carries over to dumbbells. Our rear delt fly guide has the full form breakdown.

7. Side-lying dumbbell external rotation

Lie on your side with a light dumbbell in your top hand, elbow bent at 90 degrees and pinned to your ribs. Rotate the forearm up towards the ceiling, then lower slowly. This is the dumbbell answer to the external rotation part of the face pull. Go light; 2 to 5 kg is enough for most people.

Cable and machine alternatives

8. Reverse pec deck

Sit facing the pad of a pec deck machine with the handles set to the rear position, grip them with a neutral grip and sweep your arms back until they're in line with your body. It's the most direct rear delt exercise in the gym and, per the Franke study above, beats rows for posterior deltoid work. It lets you load the rear delts heavier than any band, though it skips the external rotation finish. Setup is covered in our pec deck guide.

• Sets and reps: 3 sets of 12 to 15, with a one-second hold at the back.

9. High row to the face (no rope)

If the cable is free but the rope attachment has gone missing, which happens in most gyms, clip on two single handles or a straight bar set at upper chest height. Pull towards your face with your elbows high and wide. With two handles you can still rotate your hands back at the end; with a bar you lose that, so add a set of cable external rotations afterwards.

Common mistakes with face pull swaps

Going too heavy. These muscles are small. If you have to lean back or jerk the weight, your lats and lower back are taking over. Drop the load until you can pause for a second at the end of each rep.

Shrugging. When the shoulders creep up, the upper traps do the work you wanted from the mid traps and rear delts. Think about keeping a long neck throughout.

Skipping external rotation. Most swaps (pull-aparts, rear delt flys, reverse pec deck) cover the rear delts well but leave the rotator cuff out. One short set of external rotations fixes it.

Rushing the lowering phase. Let the band or weight return over two seconds. Half the benefit of this kind of work comes from controlling the eccentric.

How to programme your face pull alternative

Treat it exactly as you'd treat face pulls: accessory work at the end of an upper body or pull session, two or three times a week. For most people that's 2 to 3 sets of 12 to 20 reps, with 45 to 60 seconds' rest. These muscles recover fast, so you can train them more often than your bigger lifts.

A simple home routine with one band and a pair of light dumbbells could look like this: banded face pulls for 3 sets of 15, prone Y-T-W raises for 2 rounds, then band external rotations for 2 sets of 15 per side. It takes about ten minutes. At the gym, swap the face pulls for reverse pec deck and keep the rest. If you want more ideas for this muscle group, our rear delt exercises guide goes further.

Progress by adding reps before load. Once you hit the top of the range on every set with a clean pause, move to the next band or add a kilo.

Recommended reads

• Face pulls: how to do them, muscles worked and form tips
• Band pull apart: how to do it and benefits
• Pec deck: setup, muscles worked and the reverse fly variation
• The best resistance bands in the UK
• Gritin resistance bands review