Chest press machine

What it is

Sit in the machine with your back against the pad and the handles at about chest height. Adjust the seat until they are — this is the setting people skip and it decides where the load lands.

Press the handles away until your arms are extended, then return under control until your hands are at about chest level.

What it demands

Pressing strength from pectoralis major, the front of the deltoid and triceps brachii.

Nothing else. The machine fixes the path, supports your back, and takes away any need to balance two independent weights.

That is the whole trade: the least skill of any pressing movement here, and the least transfer to pressing anything that is not this machine.

What usually goes wrong

Seat height wrong. Handles too high push the shoulder into an awkward position; too low turns it into a decline press. Set it first.

Going too deep. Some machines allow the hands well behind the chest. Range is a means, not a target, and the bottom is where shoulders complain.

Slamming the stack at the end of each return.

Assuming the number means something. As with the leg press, a machine's load is not comparable to a free-weight movement and does not translate.

Where it sits

The most accessible horizontal press, and a legitimate choice — while learning, when training alone without safety pins, or when a shoulder will not tolerate a free bar under a clinician's guidance.

Its limit is precisely its appeal. A push-up asks the trunk to hold a line; a dumbbell bench press asks each side to control its own weight; a barbell bench press asks for both plus a plan for failing. This asks for none of it.