If you need a workout that will not irritate your lower back while still working on your upper back, the first thing for you to do is to learn how to do a lateral pulldown. This piece of gym equipment is not just for experienced lifters — it is a very efficient exercise that can be used by beginners to build a wide and strong back, providing them with a better posture as well.
So, What Is the Lateral Pulldown All About?
This action is mainly focused on the latissimus dorsi, which are the large muscles alongside the human vertebral column. By executing the pulling part of the pulldown movement in the right manner, you can also get your trapezius, deltoids, biceps, and even your forearms involved. The exercise belongs to the pull category as it ensures a balanced development of both pushing and pulling muscle actions, where the push actions are usually dominant in our everyday lives.
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First off, what you want to do is the following: get hold of a wide bar, then sit at the pulldown station. Take the bar in your hands just beyond the width of your shoulders, and place your palms away from you. Always remember to keep your chest up, brace your core, and also, slowly, go back. Pull the bar down until your upper chest, expecting your elbows to sag out a bit. Without relaxing, pull the bar up, and bring it to the top, over a few seconds time.
Tips on Some Nice Techniques to Do the Movement Better
Often, we try to lift too much and that can be detrimental to progress, so concentrate on execution instead of weight. Pick a weight that allows you to do a controlled and concentrated motion. Focus on the elbow movement, not your hand. When a loss of grip becomes apparent quickly, or you find your arms doing most of the work, loosen the grip on the bar. It should be your back that’s activated, not your back muscles that are getting the impact.
One more thing: hold yourself up straight but don’t go too far back. Once you start involving the weight or using the swing, the muscles become less tense and, therefore, less useful for the purpose of developing them. Instead, make a uniform and continuous movement and keep the shoulders engaged (that is, downward and backward) all along the repetition.
Things You Should Avoid
If you feel that you’re raising your shoulders to your ears or your exercise form gets worse during the set, then you must stop and make some changes.
It will be the case of… offences quickly, and increase the risk of injury.
If, by any chance, you happen to have a ‘silent’ problem with your back (for example, with your lats), the situation is very critical and dangerous. If you now and then carelessly swing the bar too far up as if you just consciously want to get those elbows locked and feel stupid enough to do so, you forego a lot of benefits that steady and slow movement offers.
Reasons Why You Need to Do the Lateral Pulldown
Not only does the workout enable you to get the lats’ 8, it also helps you maintain a straight body position and eliminate the existing imbalances of muscles. Most of the household tasks done on a daily basis require the use of pushing muscles – such as those in typing, driving, and lifting – that we overuse and that leads to tightness in the chest and weakness in the upper back. The workout is a remedy for this muscle imbalance.
Give These Alternatives a Go
Change your grip if you really feel you have hit a wall and a lot of progress has become a pipe dream. Of course, you are free to try other tools as well, instead of just using a different grip. A neutral grip (palms close) trains your lats’ inner part, a reverse one (palms facing you) your lower lats, and your biceps. Having the eccentric or phase of recovery longer will allow you to have your muscle under tension for a longer period, thus making it appropriate for muscle development.
In fact, lateral pulldown isn’t just for your back. It’s a basis of your strength exercising the upper part of your body and keeping your joints healthy. The change resulting from the movement bearing them over the course of the week is quite visible whether you’re in search of a more shaped physique or simply trying to stand in a more upright posture at your desk.
