maratoolUnderhand Pull down
How to do the underhand pull down
- Sitting upright with your abs drawn in grasp a Pull Down bar with and underhand grip shoulder width apart.
- Pull the bar down till the bar reaches your upper chest, keeping your elbows close to your body.
- Slowly return the bar to the starting position.
- Repeat.
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 biceps add force at the elbow.
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.