How I Do Lat Pulldowns — My Grip, Form and Technique

The way I look at a lat pulldown is pretty simple: it’s a vertical pulling movement in the same broad family as a pull-up. If I can do clean pull-ups, fantastic — I’ll do them. But I still use the lat pulldown because I can control the weight, change my grip and concentrate on exactly what I’m trying to feel in my back.

When I talk about building the “width” of my back, I’m mainly talking about the lats — the big muscles that run down the sides of the back. That’s bodybuilding shorthand, because a pulldown isn’t literally isolating one strip of muscle. My biceps and other upper-back muscles are helping as well.

That control is one of the reasons I still like machines even when I can do the free-weight or bodyweight alternative. I’ve talked about that before in Free Weights vs Machines.

How I Set Up on the Lat Pulldown

First thing I do is get myself properly anchored. I sit under the thigh pads and bring them down until they’re snug over my thighs. I want them tight enough that the weight stack isn’t pulling me out of the seat, but I’m not trying to crush my legs underneath them.

Once I’m secure, I normally work from a wider overhand grip towards a narrower grip, then finish underhand. That’s just the sequence I like because it lets me feel the same basic pull in a few slightly different ways.

Lat Pulldown Video Demonstration

1. Wide-Grip Overhand Lat Pulldown

I start overhand with my hands comfortably wider than shoulder width. I’m not trying to hold the absolute ends of the bar just for the sake of saying it’s wide.

I keep my chest up, my torso mostly upright with a small natural lean, and I pull the bar down in front of me towards the upper chest. The cue I use is simple: I think about driving my elbows down towards the floor rather than trying to drag the bar down with my hands.

At the bottom I squeeze, then I control the bar back up. I want the stretch at the top, but I don’t want the weight stack ripping my shoulders upwards.

One little habit of mine is putting my thumb on the same side of the bar as my fingers. People sometimes say that “takes the forearms out”, but I wouldn’t put it like that. My forearms are still gripping the bar. For me it’s just a cue that helps me think less about my hands and more about my elbows. If I don’t feel secure, I wrap my thumb around normally.

One thing I’ve changed my mind on: I used to talk about the wide grip as if wider automatically meant more lat. The evidence doesn’t really support that. Research comparing narrow, medium and wide pronated grips found broadly similar lat activation overall, with a medium grip showing some small advantages. So now I use a width that feels strong and lets me keep the movement clean rather than chasing the widest grip possible. ^[1]

I Don’t Want to Turn It Into a Row

I see this a lot. Someone starts fairly upright, then every rep they lean further and further back until the pulldown has basically become a high cable row.

A small amount of lean is fine. I’m not trying to sit bolt upright like a statue. What I avoid is deliberately reclining a long way and sending my elbows behind me just so I can move more weight. If I want to row, I’ll row. I’ve got a separate guide on how I barbell row because, to me, they are different movements with different intentions.

For a lat pulldown I want the movement to stay mainly vertical and I want the bar travelling in front of my body. A 2026 review of pulldown research found that an anterior — in-front-of-the-body — bar path was the setup most consistently associated with greater latissimus dorsi EMG, while grip-width findings were inconsistent. EMG is an acute measurement, not proof that one variation will build more muscle long term, but it backs up why I keep the basic movement simple. ^[2]

2. Medium-Grip Overhand Pulldown

After the wider grip, I move my hands in. If I’m using a normal curved lat bar, I’ll often sit my hands somewhere around the bend.

The movement doesn’t suddenly change. I still want my chest up, the bar in front of me and my elbows travelling down. Because my hands are closer together I normally get a comfortable range of motion and I can really concentrate on the squeeze at the bottom.

If I have to throw myself backwards to finish the rep, the weight is too heavy for what I’m trying to do.

3. Close-Grip Underhand Lat Pulldown

My last one is normally underhand, with my palms facing towards me and my hands closer together.

Here my elbows stay tucked close to my sides. I pull down, squeeze, then control it back up. I usually feel this one differently through the sides of my back, and because it’s underhand my biceps are obviously doing a lot of work as well.

I used to describe this as hitting the “base” or “lower” part of the lat. I’d word that more carefully now. A grip can change how the movement feels and change the mechanics, but I’m not cleanly isolating a separate lower-lat muscle just by turning my hands around.

One EMG study found greater lat activity with a pronated grip than a supinated grip under the conditions they tested, while the tested grip widths made less difference. That doesn’t make the underhand pulldown useless. It just means I don’t pretend there’s a magic grip. I keep it because I like the movement, I can control it and it gives me another way of training the pull. ^[3]

How Many Sets I Do

When I’m using all three variations as a lat-focused block, I’ll normally do about three sets of ten on each, sometimes three or four sets on the first overhand movement.

That isn’t a rule for everybody. Bearing in mind, I’ve often already done the rest of my back work by this point, so the weight and total volume depend on how much I’ve already done. If I’m already properly fatigued, I’ll cut the volume down. I’m not trying to win the lat-pulldown machine. I’m trying to get good reps and actually feel the muscle working.

And when I do want to progress the movement, I still use the same principle I use everywhere else: add load or reps without letting the exercise fall apart. I’ve gone into that in more detail in my progressive overload article.

Why I Sometimes Superset Biceps

On the final underhand pulldown my biceps are already heavily involved, so sometimes I’ll go straight into a biceps exercise.

That’s a superset. Basically, instead of taking my normal full rest, I pair the pulldown with another exercise. I’ll go into supersets properly in another article because there are different ways to use them and I don’t want to turn this into an article about something else.

Pull-Ups or Lat Pulldowns?

I don’t think it needs to be one or the other.

If I can do good pull-ups, fantastic. They’re a brilliant movement. If somebody can’t do them yet, pulldowns and assisted pull-ups let them train the same broad vertical-pulling pattern at a load they can control.

Even when I can do pull-ups, I’ll still use pulldowns because I can change the load in small jumps and concentrate on the contraction without having to move my whole bodyweight every rep.

What I Think About One-Arm Lat Pulldowns

I used to be more dismissive of these than I am now.

You’ll see people doing one-arm pulldowns, letting one side stretch high and then pulling the elbow down towards the hip. I’ve tried them plenty of times.

I still wouldn’t make that the foundation of my back training, but I don’t think they’re pointless. They can be useful if I want to concentrate on one side, find a comfortable pulling path or really control the stretch and contraction.

What I don’t like is when somebody sees a bodybuilder with a massive back doing one very specific isolation variation and assumes that one exercise built the whole thing.

You’re seeing one movement from one session. You’re not seeing the years of rows, pulldowns, pull-ups and progressive training that came before it.

Isolation work can have a place. I just don’t confuse the finishing work with the foundation.

My Take-Home From the Lat Pulldown

• I get myself anchored under the thigh pads without crushing my legs.
• I keep the bar in front of my body.
• I think about driving my elbows down rather than just pulling with my hands.
• I use a grip width I can control instead of assuming wider is automatically better.
• I control the stretch at the top and squeeze at the bottom.
• I don’t turn the movement into a row just to move more weight.

That’s basically how I look at the lat pulldown. It isn’t complicated, and there are loads of variations I can play with later — neutral handles, single-arm work, pullovers and different attachments.

But I’d get the basic vertical pull right first.

Once I can feel my lats working and repeat the same clean reps, then I start worrying about the fancy stuff.

If a grip or range of motion gives me actual shoulder or elbow pain, I change it. Pain isn’t a cue I try to train through just to keep an exercise looking a certain way.

Sources

[1] Andersen V, Fimland MS, Wiik E, Skoglund A, Saeterbakken AH. Effects of grip width on muscle strength and activation in the lat pull-down. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2014;28(4):1135–1142. PubMed.

[2] Di Fonza D, Di Claudio G, Colantuono G, et al. Electromyographic Analysis of Latissimus Dorsi Activation During Common Resistance Training Exercises: A Narrative Review. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology. 2026;11(3):315. PubMed.

[3] Lusk SJ, Hale BD, Russell DM. Grip width and forearm orientation effects on muscle activity during the lat pull-down. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2010;24(7):1895–1900. PubMed.

Illustration Credit

Featured anatomy illustration: Anatomography / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.1 JP. Exercise illustrations: Everkinetic / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.