Butterfly chest exercise is the most efficient way to tone and strengthen your chest. For beginners and professionals, the butterfly chest exercise machine is an excellent method to strengthen the chest muscles without worrying about maintaining the necessary balance when utilising a bench, ball, or standing. If you need to avoid standing due to a lower-body injury, this machine can be quite helpful. Targeting the pectoral muscles, it is highly effective and must be done on a weighted machine. In this blog, we will explore the butterfly machine exercise, its numerous benefits, and learn how to add the butterfly chest workout to our routine. 

How to Use the Butterfly Machine?

Making adjustments in the chest butterfly machine is the first step. Adjust the height of the seat pad till the handles reach your chest. Also, check if you can put your feet on the floor and sit comfortably with your spine supported by the back pad. Your elbows and wrists should line up with your shoulders as you extend your arms out to hold the handles—they shouldn’t be higher or lower than that. 

You might also need to adjust the arm levers if your arms are longer or shorter than average. The next step is to select a weight setting. When using a butterfly chest exercise machine for the first time, start with a lightweight and gradually increase the weight. It’s popular to characterise the entire motion as opening and shutting your arms like a butterfly; hence, it is known as a chest butterfly exercise. 

Steps to do Butterfly Machine Exercise

To do this exercise the right way, here are the steps you can follow:

1. Keep your shoulders and neck relaxed and sit up straight. Place your feet flat on the ground.
2. Hold the handles with your palms pointing ahead. Note that a certain chest butterfly machine requires you to press a foot bar to release the handles and move them forward.
3. Slowly and carefully, press your arms together in front of your chest. Keep your wrists relaxed and your elbows slightly bent.
4. Pause once your arms are fully “closed” in front of your chest for one second.
5. Slowly extend your arms to the first position while opening your chest and maintaining a straight, strong posture.
6. While starting this exercise, perform two sets of seven to ten repetitions, taking a short break between sets.

Advantages of the Butterfly Machine Exercise

If you are no longer an amateur in performing the butterfly machine exercise, you must be aware of the fact that it is an uphill battle for the first-time doers of the exercise. Well, butterfly chest exercise is backed with lots of benefits, too:

• The chest butterfly machine targets the pectoralis muscles, which improves movement at the shoulder joint and increases chest strength and muscle growth.
• One of the major benefits of this exercise is that it will give the results swiftly to the body and give you a flat torso, too.
• It is a sure-shot way to increase your chest size and decrease your body’s flabbiness.
• Doing butterfly chest exercise will slim your waist, as your upper body will be in perfect shape.
• The major benefit is that your overall fitness will be enhanced, and you will become stronger.
• The butterfly chest workout may increase base metabolic rate, enhance lean body mass, and improve bone density, just like other strength-building workouts.

Tips for Butterfly Chest Workout

Follow these tips to reap the best results out of this exercise:

1. Breathe in when you open and exhale while closing and moving the handles together.
2. When you perform the butterfly workout, your back should stay against the back of the butterfly machine, and the movement should be slow and controlled for a better feeling.
3. If you notice that you are engaging your legs by pushing your legs on the ground to get power and move the chest butterfly machine, decrease the amount of weight you are lifting.
4. Lift and lower the weight using slow, controlled movements. If you go too quickly, you will be using momentum rather than training your muscles.

Variants of Butterfly Machine Exercise

Here are the two variants of this exercise that you must consider:

• On some machines, you can stretch your arms almost horizontally while holding handles in your hands.
• Screw pulleys or recumbent splits can be the equivalent of the butterfly machine exercise.

Conclusion

The butterfly machine exercise may be a good exercise if you’re looking to build strength in your chest, shoulder, and arm muscles. If you’re a beginner, start with a light set of dumbbells and slowly increase the weight. Combine butterfly chest workout with other chest exercises, like pushups, chest presses, planks, and seated decline cable presses for best results. 

Avoid chest flies if you’re injured or in pain. Butterfly chest exercise will give you the perfect shape and toned chest if you have a flabby torso. Discuss with your gym trainer and start with your butterfly exercise session.