Posts by Kyle Risley

Your mid back is the part of your upper back between your shoulder blades. The muscles that live there, mostly your rhomboids and middle traps, pull your shoulder blades together. Strong ones keep your shoulders from rolling forward and give you a stable base for bench pressing, squatting and deadlifting.

Cables are a good tool for this area because the tension stays on the muscle for the whole rep. You also get plenty of control over angle. Changing the pulley height, or switching from a bar to a rope, changes where your elbows travel, and that decides whether a row hits your lats or your mid back. Mid-back exercises also tend to go well with light to moderate weight, so they’re easy on your joints.

Below are the 6 best cable mid-back exercises, with the benefits and exact steps for each one. After that I put together a cable-only mid-back workout, then a look at the anatomy and the questions I get asked most. If you want a broader list, see our cable back exercises roundup.

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Your obliques wrap the sides of your midsection and do three jobs: they rotate your torso, bend it sideways, and keep it from twisting when something pulls on it. Most lifters train them with crunches and Russian twists, and both work fine. A bodyweight twist has almost no load behind it, so it’s hard to progress, and a weighted twist usually turns into swinging a plate around with your arms.

A cable fixes that. The stack gives you a measurable load that pulls at a fixed angle, so you can add 5 lbs next week and know exactly what you did. You can also put the pulley high, low, or at chest height, which lets you train rotation, side bending, and anti-rotation as separate qualities. Dumbbells can’t do that, because gravity only pulls one way.

Below are the 6 cable exercises I’d actually program for the obliques, from the woodchop to the Pallof press. If you want the whole midsection on a cable, see our cable ab exercises roundup. If you’d rather skip the machine for the Pallof press or the twist, we’ve got Pallof press alternatives and Russian twist alternatives. Each pick gets how-to steps and a demo video, followed by a sample workout and a quick look at the anatomy.

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The seated chest press machine is the easiest way to train your chest hard without thinking about much else. You sit against a pad, grab the handles, and push along a path the machine controls. Selectorized and plate-loaded versions both train the pecs, front delts and triceps, and the back support takes balance and setup out of the picture.

The reasons to want a swap are pretty practical. The machine is taken, or your gym doesn’t have one, or the fixed handles start at a spot your shoulders don’t like. Some lifters also just want to train one arm at a time to fix a weak side, and many machines make that hard.

Here are the 8 alternatives I reach for most, picked for how closely they copy what the machine gives you: a stable, supported press that’s easy to load and easy to take close to failure. If you’re comparing the machine to the barbell, read our bench press vs chest press breakdown. This page is about replacing the machine itself.

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The seated hip adductor machine is the classic way to train the inner thigh. You sit down, pad your knees against the pads, and squeeze your legs together against a weight stack. It isolates the adductor group, which includes the adductor magnus, longus, and brevis, plus the gracilis and pectineus. Those muscles help your squat out of the bottom, keep your knees stable, and protect your groin.

There are plenty of reasons to skip it. Maybe your gym doesn’t have one, or the line for it is always long. Maybe you train at home. Maybe the seated, hips-open position bothers your hips, or you simply want to train the adductors in a way that carries over to the barbell. I’ll be direct about it: the machine is fine, but it’s not the best way to train the adductors, and a few of the options below are better.

These are the 8 alternatives I’d actually use. I picked them for how well they load the inner thigh, how easy they are to progress, and what gear they need. I’ll tell you when each one earns its spot and how to do it.

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The seated hip abduction machine is the classic way to isolate the glute medius, glute minimus, and the upper part of the glute max. You sit down, push your knees apart against a pad, and feel the outside of your hips burn. It’s simple, and plenty of lifters like it for building shelf-like glutes and hip stability.

But plenty of gyms don’t have one, it’s often taken, and a home gym almost never has the space. The good news is that the same muscles respond to a bunch of other setups. A cable, a mini band, or just your bodyweight will do the job.

Here are the 8 alternatives I’d pick, ranked roughly by how well they replace the machine. I chose them for how directly they hit the outer glutes, what equipment they need, and how easy they are to add weight to. If you’re also looking for a broader glute list, see our glute bridge alternatives and cable glute exercises.

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The seated leg curl is one of the best machines for hamstring size. You sit upright with your thighs pinned under a pad, and curl your heels down and back. Because your hips are bent, the hamstrings are stretched at the start of each rep, and that long position is why this machine works so well for growing them.

The problem is that not every gym has one, and the ones that do tend to have a line. Maybe you train at home, or the machine hurts your knees, or it’s the wrong size for your legs. Whatever the reason, a handful of exercises can give you most of the same hamstring work.

Here are the 8 alternatives I’d use, picked for how much hamstring work they give you, how easy they are to find equipment for, and how well they hold up without a machine. If you’re after the lying version of the machine, see our lying leg curl alternatives. This page is about the seated machine.

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The overhead tricep extension is the best exercise I know for the long head of the triceps. Your arm sits above your head, the long head crosses the shoulder joint, and that position stretches it harder than any pushdown or skull crusher can. Since the long head is the biggest of the three heads, this is the lift that adds the most size to the back of your arm.

It also gets cranky for plenty of people. Holding a dumbbell or bar behind your head can irritate the elbow, and a tight shoulder or thoracic spine makes the overhead position awkward or painful. Some lifters just don’t have the gear: no cable stack, no bench, or only a pair of heavy dumbbells that are too awkward to get into position.

Here are the 8 alternatives I’d reach for. Every one of them keeps the long head under a real stretch, and I picked them for how well they do that, how easy they are on the elbow and shoulder, and what equipment they need. If you want other angles on triceps training, see our skull crusher alternatives and tricep pushdown alternatives.

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The bicep curl is the standard arm exercise for a reason. It trains the biceps brachii, the muscle on the front of your upper arm, plus the brachialis underneath it and the forearm muscles that help hold the weight. Most of us start with a dumbbell or barbell curl and never think much about it.

But you might need a different option. Maybe your elbows or wrists complain about the straight bar, you only have bands at home, or your arms stopped growing from the same curl you’ve done for two years. A different curl or pull can fix all three.

Here are the 8 alternatives I’d actually use. I picked them for how well they load the biceps, how kind they are to your joints, and what equipment they need. Some of these are straight swaps, and some change the angle on purpose. Keep reading to find the one that fits your situation.

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The one-arm dumbbell row is one of the best lat and upper back builders you can do with a bench and a single dumbbell. You brace one hand on the bench, hinge forward, and row the dumbbell toward your hip. Because you train one side at a time, each lat gets full attention and you can see right away if one side is weaker. It also hits the rhomboids, rear delts, and biceps along the way.

There are plenty of reasons to swap it. The dumbbells at your gym might top out before your lats do. Your grip may give out on the heavy ones. Your lower back might complain from holding that hinge, or the one bench in the dumbbell area is always taken. Or you’re training at home and only have a pair of adjustable dumbbells and a band.

I picked these 8 based on how directly they train the lats and upper back, how easy they are to load, and what equipment they need. Most are unilateral or supported, so they keep the best parts of the dumbbell row. If you’re looking to replace the barbell version instead, see our bent-over row alternatives page.

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The single-leg Romanian deadlift (RDL) is a unilateral hip hinge. You stand on one leg, push your hips back, and lower a weight toward the floor while your free leg extends behind you, then squeeze your glute to stand back up. It trains your hamstrings and glutes one side at a time, and it builds hip stability and balance that a two-legged hinge never asks for.

It’s also an annoying lift to load. Balance usually gives out before your hamstrings do, so you end up stuck with weights that are too light to build much. Throw in a bad ankle, a cranky grip, or a gym that’s full of people using the only dumbbells you need, and it’s easy to see why people look for a swap.

Here are the 8 single-leg RDL alternatives I’d actually use. Some keep the one-leg hinge and make it easier to load, some trade the balance demand for a more stable setup, and a couple hit the same muscles from a different angle. If you want the two-legged version, we already have a page on Romanian deadlift alternatives, so this list stays focused on the single-leg lift.

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The seated machine shoulder press is the lift most lifters reach for when they want to hit their delts hard without thinking about balance. You sit against a pad, grab a pair of handles, and press along a path the machine controls. Pin-loaded and plate-loaded versions both train the front and side delts and the triceps, and the back support takes your lower back and legs out of the equation.

The reasons to want a swap are practical. The machine is taken, or your gym doesn’t have one, or the fixed path pinches your shoulder, which happens when the handles start at a spot your shoulders don’t like. Some lifters also want to train one arm at a time to fix a weak side, and that’s hard on many machines.

Here are the 8 alternatives I reach for most, picked for how closely they copy what the machine gives you: back support, a stable or guided path, and easy loading. If you want standing and barbell options, see our guide to barbell overhead press alternatives. This page is about the seated machine.

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Your front delt is the part of your shoulder sitting right under your collarbone, and it’s already doing heavy work every time you bench press, overhead press, or push a door open. It’s the prime mover any time your arm goes up in front of your body, and it kicks in as a secondary driver on nearly every pressing exercise you already do. This page covers 6 cable exercises built specifically for that muscle, from a basic front raise you can load heavy to a rotation variation most lifters have never tried.

A cable keeps tension on your front delt through the whole rep instead of losing it at the top or bottom the way a dumbbell does. That matters more here than on most muscles, since your front delt is already getting plenty of indirect work from pressing, and the last thing you want is another exercise that only loads it hard for half the range. Direct cable work lets you finish the job at a controlled, joint-friendly angle instead of just adding more heavy pressing to your week. You also get angles a barbell can’t touch, like the cross-body path and the deep behind-the-body stretch, both covered below.

Below are the 6 cable exercises I’d actually program for the front delt, starting with the basic raise and working through the straight-bar, single-arm, cross-body, and rotation variations before finishing on a compound press. Every exercise gets real how-to steps and a demo video, plus a sample workout and a look at the anatomy behind it. If you want lateral and rear delt options on the same page, see our cable shoulder exercises roundup instead. This page sticks to the front delt only.

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Your side delts are the lateral head of your deltoid, and they’re the muscle that turns narrow shoulders into wide ones. A big chest and thick lats help your frame, but nothing widens you from the front the way a well-built lateral head does. Most lifters chase that with dumbbell lateral raises, and dumbbells work fine, but the resistance goes slack the second your arm passes your hip on the way down. Your side delt gets a break right when it should still be working.

A cable fixes that. The pulley pulls at a fixed angle instead of straight down with gravity, so your side delt stays loaded through the whole rep, from the bottom stretch to the top of the raise. You can also set the pulley low, high, or route it behind your back, which gives you angles a dumbbell can’t touch. That’s why a cable lateral raise, in one form or another, shows up in almost every shoulder session I write, and why this list is worth having on its own instead of buried in a general shoulder roundup.

Below are the 6 cable exercises I’d actually program for the lateral head, starting with the standard version and working through less common setups like the leaning raise and the double cable raise. If you’re after the rear delts instead, we’ve got a separate cable rear delt exercises guide, or see our cable shoulder exercises roundup if you want all three heads on one page. Every exercise here gets real how-to steps and a demo video, plus a sample workout and a look at the anatomy behind all of it.

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Your lats are the widest muscle in your back, running from your upper arm all the way down to your pelvis and spine. Their job is to pull your arm down and in toward your body, which is why almost every pulling exercise hits them to some degree. A well-built set of lats is what gives you that wide, tapered look from the front and thick stripes of muscle running down your back.

Cables keep tension on your lats through the whole range of an exercise instead of just at the point where a barbell or dumbbell feels heaviest. You can also change the pulley height and angle to shift where the resistance hits hardest, something you can’t do with a fixed bar. Many cable lat exercises let you train one arm at a time too, so you can fix a side-to-side imbalance that a two-handed pulldown or pull-up would hide.

I’m covering the 7 best cable lat exercises below, with the benefits and exact steps for each one. After that, I built a cable-only lat workout you can run start to finish, plus a look at lat anatomy and the questions I get asked most about training this muscle. For cable exercises across your whole back, not just the lats, see our cable back exercises roundup.

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Your trapezius isn’t one muscle doing one job. The upper fibers run from the base of your skull down to your collarbone and shoulder blade, the middle fibers pull your shoulder blades together across your upper back, and the lower fibers run all the way down to your mid-back and pull your shoulder blades down and in. Most lifters only train the upper third with a shrug and call it a day, which is why so many people have traps that look thick from behind but do nothing to support the shoulder blade during a press or a pull.

Cables are one of the best tools for fixing that. A barbell or dumbbell shrug only loads your traps straight up and down, but a cable stack lets you pull from behind you, above you, or out to the side, and it keeps tension on the muscle through the entire range instead of just at the top of the rep. That matters a lot for the middle and lower traps, since both respond best to pulling the shoulder blade through a full range rather than just shrugging it up. Cables also tend to be easier on your lower back and grip than heavy barbell pulls, since the load path is fixed and you’re not fighting to keep a bar balanced.

Here are the 7 cable trap exercises I use most, covering all three regions of the muscle. I’ll give you the benefits of each one, exactly how to perform it, and a demo video, plus a sample cable-only trap workout and a rundown of trap anatomy at the end.

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Your calf is really two muscles stacked on top of each other, the gastrocnemius and the soleus, and both of them have a reputation for being stubborn. Some of that is genetics you can’t do much about, but much of it comes down to lifters training calves the same lazy way every session, a few sets on whatever machine happens to be free, with no real plan for tension or progression. A cable machine fixes the tension problem better than almost anything else in the gym.

A dumbbell or a standing calf raise machine goes slack for a split second at the top of the rep, right where you’d want the most squeeze. A cable doesn’t. It pulls on your calf through the entire range, from the deepest part of the stretch at the bottom to full lockout at the top, and you can set it up standing, single leg, bent over, or hands-free depending on what your gym has and what you’re chasing that day. It’s also one of the easier tools to use when the standing calf raise machine is taken, since almost every cable stack in the building can be turned into a low pulley in about ten seconds.

Below are the 5 cable calf exercises I’d actually put in a program, the benefits and step-by-step setup for each, a sample cable-only calf session, a quick anatomy rundown, and answers to the questions I get most about training calves with cables. For more ways to hit your lower body on a cable stack, see our full cable leg exercises roundup.

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The quadriceps are the biggest muscle group on the front of your thigh, and they’re the muscle doing most of the work every time you squat, lunge, step up, or walk up a flight of stairs. A cable machine isn’t the first tool most lifters reach for when they train quads. The barbell squat and the leg machines at your gym usually get that job. But a cable stack has one thing neither of those gives you: constant tension. The resistance pulls on your leg through the entire range of motion, from the bottom of a squat to the top of a lockout, instead of going slack at the point where a barbell or a machine would let up.

That constant tension changes how your quads experience a set. A cable can also load your leg from an angle a barbell can’t reach, like pulling you forward into a deeper squat or resisting your knee as it locks out on a single leg. That makes cable training a genuinely useful addition to a quad routine on its own, well beyond something to fall back on when the squat rack is busy. It’s also one of the friendlier ways to train quads if your knees or lower back need a break from carrying a bar, since you’re not loading your spine the way you would with a back squat. You can push a set close to failure on a cable without worrying about bailing out from under a loaded bar, which matters more than people give it credit for once the reps get hard.

I picked the 6 cable exercises below because each one trains your quads through a real, useful range of motion. You’ll get the benefits, the step-by-step setup, and a demo video for every exercise, plus a sample cable-only quad workout, a quick anatomy rundown, and answers to the questions I get most about training quads with cables. For more ways to hit your legs on a cable stack, see our full cable leg exercises roundup.

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The stiff leg deadlift trains your hamstrings from a dead stop on the floor, with your knees staying close to straight for the entire rep. You set up like a conventional deadlift, but instead of driving hard through your hips out of the bottom, you focus on the stretch you feel on the way down. The bar travels from the floor to your hip, and your knee angle barely changes the whole time. That near-locked knee position is what separates it from a regular deadlift, and it’s why the stiff leg deadlift builds so much hamstring size for 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps at a time.

People mix this up with the Romanian deadlift a lot, but they’re not the same lift. A Romanian deadlift starts from the top with the bar already in your hands, and you lower it to about knee height or a little below before you reverse the rep, with a soft bend in your knees the whole way. A stiff leg deadlift starts from a dead stop on the floor every single rep, keeps your knees straighter than an RDL, and gives your hamstrings a deeper stretch at the bottom because of that extra range. That deeper stretch is also what makes the stiff leg deadlift harder on your lower back, since you’re pulling from the floor with almost no knee bend to help share the load.

You might want an alternative for a few reasons. If your lower back tends to round or ache pulling from the floor, that dead-stop start with straight knees is exactly the part that bites you. Not every gym has a bar free, and if you train at home you’re probably working with dumbbells or bands instead. Or your hamstrings have just stopped responding to straight-leg pulls from the floor and you need a new angle to keep growing. I picked the 8 alternatives below for how well they recreate that same floor-to-hip hamstring stretch, how much safer they are on your lower back, and what equipment they need. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The belt squat, also called the hip belt squat, loads a squat pattern from your hips instead of your spine. You stand on two elevated platforms, clip a harness around your hips, and squat against a load that hangs below you from a weight stack, a loaded pin, or plates on a trolley. Because the resistance pulls straight down through your hips and legs, none of it travels through your spine the way a barbell does on your back. That makes it one of the only squat variations that trains your quads and glutes hard without loading your spine at all.

Most commercial gyms don’t have a belt squat machine. It’s specialty equipment, and you’ll mostly find one in powerlifting gyms, physical therapy clinics, or facilities built for serious strength athletes. If you’re rehabbing a back injury, recovering from a disc issue, or just came off a heavy squat block and your spine needs a break, you still need a way to train your legs hard. Coaches lean on the belt squat for exactly that reason, and if your gym doesn’t have one, you need substitutes that get you as close to that spine-sparing training effect as possible.

I picked these 8 alternatives based on how much load they take off your spine, how well they train the same quad-and-glute-dominant pattern the belt squat trains, and what equipment they actually need. A few of these, like the hack squat and leg press, come close to matching the belt squat’s spine-unloaded profile. Others still put weight on your back or in your hands, so I’ll tell you exactly where each one lands and who it’s best for.

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