TRX Face Pull
This pulls the handles toward your forehead while rotating the knuckles up, loading the posterior delts, mid-traps, and external rotators in one clean movement. It is one of the best shoulder-health drills you can do with only straps, and the load auto-adjusts with body angle. Use it for prehab volume or to finish an upper-body day.
- Equipment
- TRX
- Type
- Strength
- Browse by muscle
- Deltoid Posterior, Infraspinatus
- Browse by movement
- Horizontal Pull
- Target
- Deltoid Posterior, Infraspinatus
- Secondary
- Trapezius Middle, Trapezius Lower
- Tertiary
- Biceps Brachii Long Head, Erector Spinae
How to do it
- 1
Grip both handles with palms facing each other and walk the feet forward into a lean-back plank.
- 2
Start with arms straight and shoulder blades relaxed.
- 3
Pull the handles toward your eyes, spreading your hands apart as you go.
- 4
Rotate your forearms so the knuckles finish pointing up and back.
- 5
Pause and squeeze the rear delts and upper back briefly.
- 6
Return along the same path with control and reset the shoulder blades.
Tips
- Lead with the elbows high and wide, not with the hands.
- Keep the reps slow; this is a control drill, not a max-load pull.
- Reduce the lean angle if you cannot finish the external rotation cleanly.
Variations
Common mistakes
- The hips sag toward the floor as the pull gets hard, turning a shoulder drill into a lower-back exercise.
- Leaning back too far for your current strength forces you to muscle the handles in with the arms instead of finishing the external rotation cleanly.
- Shoulder blades stay pinned back at the start instead of relaxing, which shortens the range and hides how far the rear delts actually travel.
- Once the rep count climbs, the pull turns into a fast bounce off the bottom instead of a controlled straight-arm-to-bent-arm pull.
Frequently asked
- How many sets and reps of the TRX face pull should you do when you are new to the exercise?
- Start with 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 12 slow reps at a lean angle shallow enough to finish the external rotation without the hips sagging. Progress by walking the feet forward to increase the lean angle before you add reps, since a steeper angle raises the load more than extra reps do.
- What can you do instead of the TRX face pull without a suspension trainer?
- A doorway-anchored band face pull trains the same pull-and-rotate pattern if you have a resistance band; without either a TRX or a band, lie face down on a bench and do a prone reverse fly with light dumbbells or just body weight, squeezing the shoulder blades together at the top.
- What is the TRX face pull good for, and when should you skip it?
- It is a shoulder-health and posture drill that builds the rear delts, mid-traps, and external rotators to balance out pressing work, and the adjustable lean angle makes it easy to scale for rehab or prehab. It will not build much size or strength on its own because the resistance is limited to your body weight and lean angle, so treat it as an accessory rather than a primary pull, and shorten the lean if you feel pinching at the front of the shoulder.
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