L-fly

Exercise technique:

Standing in a stable position, feet shoulder-width apart, in profile on a pulley set at the height of your hand elbow flexed 90 degrees, this involves an external rotation of the shoulder. The elbow remains tight close to the body. Here you are performing the movement of the L-Fly standing at the pulley.

Muscles worked:

Main: infraspinatus, teres minor
Secondary: shoulder (posterior bundle)

Interest of L-Fly

It is almost the essential exercise to preserve and work the rotator cuff. The rotator cuff is made up of several muscles that are around the periphery of your shoulder joint.

These muscles are:

The subscapular
The thorny infra
The thorny penny

Its essential function is to ensure the maintenance, the centering and the coaptation of the shoulder joint (coaptation between the humeral head and the glenoid cavity of the scapula), fighting in particular against the powerful subluxing action upwards of the muscle deltoid.

The use of the pulley makes the exercise less traumatic for the rotator cuff and is therefore preferred over the dumbbell version.

L-Fly variants

See the L-Fly exercise sitting at

Danger / contraindication to L-Fly 

The muscles of the rotator cuff are small, rather fragile muscles.

It is useless to want to overload them.

It is therefore an exercise that will be performed with a light load for the sake of muscle strengthening.