Want to cash in on building muscle with the lat pulldown? There are five key elements you need to be mindful of.
You can find a lat pulldown in just about every gym — and in every gymgoer’s back workout as well. It’s one of the best back exercises out there, but if you want to squeeze every morsel of muscle out of your lat pulldowns, make sure you’re hitting these five marks:
5 Tips for Muscle Growth on the Lat Pulldown
Bodybuilder, coach, and content creator Jeff Nippard turned his usual fare into a game show on Aug. 21, 2024. Approaching a gymgoer, Nippard offered the man $500 for every technical element he hit during a set of lat pulldowns.
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We’ll run through all five and see if there’s any scientific evidence to support these tips when it comes to building muscle or increasing strength.
1. Using a Full Range of Motion
“I’m always looking to see people get a big stretch on their lats at the top,” said Nippard. He’s referring to using a full range of motion and allowing your shoulders to drift up toward your ears during the lat pulldown’s eccentric phase.
A 2020 systematic review noted, “performing resistance training with a full range of motion confers beneficial effects on hypertrophy versus training with partial ranges of motion.” (1)
The authors were primarily discussing lower-body exercises, however, muscle is muscle.
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2. Controlling the Negative
Strength training exercises have two distinct phases; the lifting, or concentric portion, and the lowering, or eccentric — also referred to as the lift’s ‘negative’. When it comes to a cable back exercise like the lat pulldown, squeezing all the juice out of the lowering phase is essential for maximizing muscle growth.
In 2017, a systematic review and meta analysis determined, “eccentric training demonstrates greater effects on strength, hypertrophy, and power compared to traditional resistance training (i.e., concentric training)…” (2)
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Credit: Nikolas_jkd / Shutterstock
3. Keeping an Upright Torso
“I was impressed by how you maintained an upright [torso] without excessive swinging,” Nippard told his guest. Cheating your form has its place, even in bodybuilding, but most of the time you’re doing more harm than good by heaving back and forth.
Studies tell us that compound lifts like the lat pulldown activate more muscle. (3) While beneficial, having more muscle at your disposal can also increase your tendency to swing weights around haphazardly instead of focusing on a good contraction.
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4. Using the Knee Pad
When it comes to maximizing muscle growth, stability is key. The more stable your body is, the harder your back can contract. On the lat pulldown, Nippard says this takes the form of wedging your thighs against the station’s knee pads.
One study comparing the lat pulldown vs. pull-up, a less-stable but similar back exercise, showed similar activation in the lats but the pull-up demanded more core stability. (4)
Dedicating effort to contracting your abdominal muscles while trying to train your back isn’t exactly a recipe for success.
Credit: Reshetnikov_art / Shutterstock
5. Pushing Past Failure
Make no mistake, you don’t need to train to failure in all cases to build muscle. (If you’re new to bodybuilding, ‘failure’ generally refers to performing reps until you physically cannot lift the weight).
“You pushed the set hard and actually went beyond failure to do a couple lengthened partials,” Nippard told his guest while handing him another Benjamin.
Emerging research shows that a majority of muscle growth occurs when the muscle is stretched out under high amounts of tension. (5)
The lat pulldown is one of the best exercises for long-length partials because the first half of the movement is much easier than the second half.
Once you can no longer bring the bar down past eye level, you can continue to do only the first half of the range of motion and build additional muscle in the process. Jackpot.
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References
Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J. Effects of range of motion on muscle development during resistance training interventions: A systematic review. SAGE Open Med. 2020 Jan 21;8:2050312120901559. doi: 10.1177/2050312120901559. PMID: 32030125; PMCID: PMC6977096.
Schoenfeld, Brad & Ogborn, Daniel & Vigotsky, Andrew & Franchi, Martino & Krieger, James. (2017). Hypertrophic effects of concentric versus eccentric muscle actions: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 31. 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001983.
Bernárdez-Vázquez R, Raya-González J, Castillo D, Beato M. Resistance Training Variables for Optimization of Muscle Hypertrophy: An Umbrella Review. Front Sports Act Living. 2022 Jul 4;4:949021. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2022.949021. PMID: 35873210; PMCID: PMC9302196.
Hewit, Jennifer. (2018). A Comparison of Muscle Activation during the Pull-up and Three Alternative Pulling Exercises. Journal of Physical Fitness, Medicine & Treatment in Sports. 5. 10.19080/JPFMTS.2018.05.555669.
Pedrosa GF, Lima FV, Schoenfeld BJ, Lacerda LT, Simões MG, Pereira MR, Diniz RCR, Chagas MH. Partial range of motion training elicits favorable improvements in muscular adaptations when carried out at long muscle lengths. Eur J Sport Sci. 2022 Aug;22(8):1250-1260. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2021.1927199. Epub 2021 May 23. PMID: 33977835.
Featured Image: Reshetnikov_art / Shutterstock
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