Overview
This is the upper body compound movement of vertically pulling.
You’re probably coming at this from one of two places.
If you’re still starting out in the first two or three years of intentional lifting, the major movement patterns should be your bread and butter. The standout exercises listed here should be the core part of your programming, rotating every so often (we’re talking months, not weeks). At a certain point we likely get diminishing returns specialising in one or two exercises, but if it’s your first few years in of serious lifting, you are assuredly far, far away from that point.
If you’re an experienced advanced lifter, chances are you’re viewing things through 12 muscle groups or multiple movement slots within each muscle group. Even so, it’s still worth periodically checking your programs aren’t going so far as to neglect all the compounds, and occasionally cycling one of these exercises back in.
For everyone in between, take the middle point between those two parameters.
Description
We’re looking for a compound exercise that targets the lats and traps, as well as supporting muscles like the teres major and rhomboid.
Either with the exercise selection or exercise form, we generally want all three muscle groups to get as close to failure as possible.
In this sense we have the opposite aim when dissecting things from a ‘muscle group’ perspective, where we generally want to isolate a certain muscle.
There are many specific exercises that can work here; there are tens or dozens (depending on how nitpicky you want to be with classifying a different exercise) of exercises that is a vertical pushing motion. There’s not going to much value add in just listing endless options, instead we’ll stick to some key foundational ones that categorically work.
Again, to repeat – if you’re around your second or third year into intentional lifting, your focus should be precisely here. If you’re advanced, you’ll be well aware there are endless variations and these may simply serve as a checkpoint to ensure you don’t have a gap in your training.
Standout exercises
For vertical pulling, there are two standout exercises:
- Lat Pulldown
- Pull-up
Lat Pulldown
This is another easy winner. Pretty much every gym has one, it scales for everyone (you can start with 1 pin), and trains the muscles we want to train.
You don’t ever get too strong for it either, most machines will have enough pins and you can always add on a 10kg plate onto the pins.
A variety of grip attachments exist; broadly speaking all of them are good and should be used. To start off with, the common straight lat pulldown attachment a good choice.
Form cues:
- Squeeze the hands tight, then focus on driving down with your elbows
- Keep pressure in your rib cage. As you pull down, take a breath in and expand your chest.
- As you lower the weight on the eccentric, allow a bit of torso movement backwards but keep the focus on the elbow movement and intra-thoracic pressure.
Pull-up
Another staple bodyweight movement, but there is admittedly a higher barrier of entry compared to the inverted row. For many people, your time will be best spent on the lat pulldown first.
Again as a bodyweight there will be regressions and progressions.
- Pull-up regression: assisted dip/pull-up machine
- Standard pull-up: bodyweight pull-up
- Pull-up progression: weighted pull-up
Pull-up regressions
If you’re currently unable to do a complete pull-up, the best regression is going to be on an assisted dip/pull-up machine if you have access to one. This matches your hand and body position and allows you to work at the appropriate rep ranges.
If you don’t have access to this machine, a pull-up negative is another good option. That is, jumping up to the top part of a pull-up and lowering yourself down under control.
A banded pull-up is not recommended because it makes the portion of the movement we are most trying to train easier. Note that when you’re more advanced a banded pull-up can be a good option in certain circumstances, but those come well after you can rep out bodyweight pull-ups first.
Standard pull-up
Once you have the strength required to perform bodyweight pull-ups, we can really get the ball rolling.
The first thing to get to grips with is your hand position, which will partly depend on what equipment you have access to.
In general the best option for most people will be the multi-grip pull-up bar, either by itself or attached to a cable machine. This will typically have three grips, or at least two, to practise a variety of setups.
The easiest option is the bar, for traditional pronated pull-ups and chin-ups (i.e. supinated pull-ups).
The most flexible option is the gymnastic rings, this will be the most comfortable for your wrists and shoulders. Sadly not every gym will have one. Despite it being the most comfortable though, it’s important to note this doesn’t mean you should proceed to neglect every other grip.
Once you sort out the grip, the form comes pretty easily.
- Start with the elbows locked out, pressing with your shoulders down (scapula depression).
- In one motion, bring your shoulders up (scapula elevation) and drive down with your elbows.
- Keep pressure in your rib cage, and as you pull yourself up breath in, expanding your chest.
- Brace your abs and squeeze your glutes.
Over time, you will notice you can pull yourself further up.
Nose to bar level, chin to bar level, and upper chest to bar level are all good benchmarks to eventually work up towards.
Pull-up progressions
For a lot of general population folks, repping out bodyweight pull-up might already be the end goal (and is a pretty impressive feat already!).
If you can do one set of 10 reps of bodyweight pull-up under control, it’s time to progress onto weighted pull-ups.
Initially, you can squeeze a light dumbbell between your knees or feet; over time you may need a dip belt.
Form remains identical and this is simply a load progression that can continue indefinitely.
As a completely arbitrary rule of thumb, we could say that 10kg is a manageable weight that you can handle between your feet.