maratoolV Bar Pull Down
How to do the v bar pull down
- Attach a V bar to the pull down pulley of a cable machine.
- Sitting upright with your abs drawn grasp the bar with an overhand grip, your palms facing in.
- Pull the bar straight down to your upper chest.
- Pause for a moment after touching the chest and then slowly return the bar to 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 mid-back retracts the shoulder blades so the shoulder has something solid to work from; the biceps add force at the elbow.
Every exercise for:LatsMiddle backBiceps
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:
- V-Bar Pullupbody only
- 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.