Lat pulldown
A pull-up done to yourself instead of to the bar — the most straightforwardly scalable vertical pull there is.
- Pattern
- Vertical pull
- Equipment
- Machine
- Space
- A bench or a seat
- Difficulty
- Foundational
- Load
- External load
What it is
Sit at the machine with your thighs under the pads so you are anchored down. Take the bar with an overhand grip a little wider than your shoulders, arms straight.
Pull the bar down to your upper chest, elbows travelling down and back, letting your shoulder blades draw down as they go. Return under control until your arms are straight and your shoulder blades have risen again.
Lean back slightly — perhaps ten or fifteen degrees — and keep that angle. Rocking back and forth is a different exercise.
What it demands
The same pulling action as a pull-up: the arm being drawn down and in, from latissimus dorsi and teres major, with the elbow flexors and shoulder blade muscles working throughout.
At any load you choose, which is the entire point and the reason this machine exists in every gym. A pull-up is fixed at your bodyweight; this is not.
Less trunk work than a pull-up, because you are anchored to a seat.
What usually goes wrong
Rocking. The torso swings back to start the movement and forward to return. It moves more weight and trains less.
Not letting the arms straighten. As with every pull, the top of the range disappears first.
Pulling to the collarbone. The bar comes to the upper chest with the elbows down and back, not up at the throat.
Behind the neck. Pulling the bar down behind your head forces the shoulder into full external rotation and abduction at the same time, under load, with your neck pushed forward. There is nothing this achieves that the front version does not, and it is one of the few variations this site will say plainly is not worth doing.
Where it sits
The most scalable vertical pull, and the honest answer for anyone who cannot yet do a pull-up — more useful than a band-assisted pull-up because the load is even through the range rather than concentrated at the bottom.
It is not a full substitute: a pull-up moves your body through space and asks the trunk to hold still, and this does neither. But as a way to train the pulling muscles at a chosen load, nothing beats it for straightforwardness.