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The Pulldown exercise or the Cable Lat Pulldown is a compound exercise designed to stress and develop the Latissimus dorsi (Lat). To feel this muscle in its motion, stand with your elbow in the air 45 deg from vertical above and in front of your shoulder. Rotate it through in a smooth arc down and back until it stops and is pointing down and back towards the floor at a 45 deg angle. The bunched up feeling in your back, where your arm hits, this is your Lat.

Pulldowns are a compound exercise because it does not completely isolate the Lat, the full range of the motion required by the exercise also works the biceps muscle in the arm and the muscles of the middle back. The exercise is useful when the weight to be used is larger or smaller than the bodyweight of the individual performing the exercise or, there are other mitigating factors that prevent the use of the chinup as effective for this muscle group. This is an excellent exercise for beginners to back work because it is a compound exercise. Ask your gym personnel or an experienced weight lifter for assistance in setting up and correct form.

Form is very important to weight training. Improper form will not stress the correct muscles, which will minimize the impact of performing the exercise and/or can result in injury if not performed safely. Try to concentrate on working the primary muscle involved when perfoming any exercise. If performing this exercise in the same workout as another that will stress the biceps, perform this one first (if the training of the Lat is your primary concern), in order to ensure full exhaustion of the Lat rather than failing due to the biceps, which can be more effectively isolated by other exercises such as biceps curls.

To properly accomplish this exercise the athlete sits on a bench as part of a Lat pulldown machine. The feet should be flat on the floor and knees tucked under a padded bar, to keep the athlete seated firmly. Depending on the desired width of the grasp (moving hands closer, or farther apart will stress different parts of the muscles) grasp the overhead bar in a pronated, sometimes called overhand grip (hands facing away from you towards the front, knuckles up and toward the rear) pull your shoulders straight down towards the floor and pull smoothly downwards on the bar. The move should be executed by concentrating on attempting to bring the shoulder blades together in the back and your elbows as far towards the floor as possible. Do not lean back and use your body weight to pull the bar down. Arch your back in the middle and complete the downward move by touching the center of the bar to the collarbone area or upper chest. Hold in this position briefly, concentrating on form and bringing the shoulderblades close and contracting the Lat. Slowly and in a controlled manner, return the bar upward until your arms are straight, then move your shoulder blades wide and shoulders up high as if you are shrugging and allow the pull of the bar to stretch the muscles in your back that were contracted performing the exercise. Relax for a second, pause and repeat the exercise until repetitions are complete or muscle is exhausted, according to your plan. The finish, at the top of the reach and the downward shoulder movement at the beginning, is very important in ensuring complete muscle involvement and maximizing benefits derived from performing the exercise. [1].

This exercise can be varied by changing two major positions involving the grip. Different widths of the hands from nearly twice as wide as shoulder width to as close as inside the shoulder, and changing the position of the hands from overhand, to supinated, to parallel will alter the path the elbows take and thus stress different portions of the muscle. In addition the use of multiple cables are used by advanced bodybuilders to escape the motion limitations imposed by the use of a single bar.

1. ^ The Weider System of Bodybuilding. Joe Weider, Bill Reynolds , Contemporary Books ; May 1983

• Additional Lat pulldown exercises and videos
• Another nice discussion on the finer points of form
• Pulldown behind neck animation