Weighted Pull Ups
How to do the weighted pull ups
- Attach a weight to a dip belt and secure it around your waist. Grab the pull-up bar with the palms of your hands facing forward. For a medium grip, your hands should be spaced at shoulder width. Both arms should be extended in front of you holding the bar at the chosen grip.
- You'll want to bring your torso back about 30 degrees while creating a curvature in your lower back and sticking your chest out. This will be your starting position.
- Now, exhale and pull your torso up until your head is above your hands. Concentrate on squeezing yourshoulder blades back and down as you reach the top contracted position.
- After a brief moment at the top contracted position, inhale and slowly lower your torso back to the starting position with your arms extended and your lats fully stretched.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the latissimus dorsi, which pulls the upper arm down and back toward the ribcage.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the biceps add force at the elbow; the mid-back retracts the shoulder blades so the shoulder has something solid to work from.
Every exercise for:LatsBicepsMiddle back
How this movement works
The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
These train the lats too, using equipment this one does not:
- Wide-Grip Lat Pulldowncable
- Wide-Grip Rear Pull-Upbody only
- Bent Arm Pulloverbarbell + bench
- Catch and Overhead Throwmedicine ball
- Latissimus Dorsi-SMRfoam roll
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 45 lats exercises in this database, 14 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.