maratoolStraight Arm Push Down
How to do the straight arm push down
- Grasp wide grip pull down bar with a wide grip so your hands are on the portion of the bar which curves down.
- Stand erect with your abs drawn in.
- Keeping a slight bend in your elbows and your wrist steady pull the bar down from the starting position to your upper thighs.
- With a controlled motion bring the bar back up to starting position.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the latissimus dorsi, which pulls the upper arm down and back toward the ribcage.
Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.
How this movement works
Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
A cable holds tension for the whole range, including the point where a free weight would go slack. Moving the pulley changes the angle the resistance arrives from without changing the movement.
Every exercise using:Cable
These train the lats too, using equipment this one does not:
- Upright Band Rowsbody only + band
- Bent Arm Pulloverbarbell + bench
- Catch and Overhead Throwmedicine ball
- Latissimus Dorsi-SMRfoam roll
- Leverage Iso Rowmachine
Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.