Lat Pulldowns for Pull Up Training page

[Warmblood58]

Hi, three weeks in and enjoy this way of life -40lbs to go! I am going to start incorporating Lat Pulldowns into my circuit training so that I can start to muscle up for pull ups -just read an excellent link promoting Lat Pull Downs as a great muscle trainer/strengthener for the real deal, namely the pull up -hope to be able to do three -6 by the end of April with good form. 40 extra pounds is a lot of weight to pull up and lower!

[Coach Palfrey]

I'm not sure where you read that but IMO you'd be better off with Band/Australian/Jumping Pull Ups. I know plenty of people who can pull their body weight on a Lat Pull Down and can't even do a single pull up.

[jsa23]

Going along with what Coach Palfrey said, different exercises tend to target slightly different muscles - and so generally the best training for standard pullups is going to be some kind of band-assisted pullups, negatives, or the like.

That said, I've been travelling the past few weeks, and while my hotel gym didn't have a bar I could use for pull-ups, they had a lat pulldown machine. It was the next best thing, given the circumstances. Unfortunately, deadlifts tend to be much harder to replace when you're on the road, unless you find a real gym.

[Spinman]

My recommendation is if you are going to do lat pull downs in lieu of pull-ups, make sure you are really intense about it. Don't just stimulate the muscle, overload it and go for complete failure. Check out Body By Science for suggestions.

[pyrosis]

Meh. Lat pulls worked for me when I was learning the pullup, of course I was a thirteen year old boy at the time. YMMV

[szorn]

Hi, three weeks in and enjoy this way of life -40lbs to go! I am going to start incorporating Lat Pulldowns into my circuit training so that I can start to muscle up for pull ups -just read an excellent link promoting Lat Pull Downs as a great muscle trainer/strengthener for the real deal, namely the pull up -hope to be able to do three -6 by the end of April with good form. 40 extra pounds is a lot of weight to pull up and lower!

Lat pulldowns are an open chain exercise, pull-ups are a closed chain exercise. Pulldowns don't generally carry over to pull-ups. If you want to improve your pull-ups, you need to practice the pull-up.Try jump-assist pull-ups, band-assist pull-ups, leg-assist pull-ups, or negative only. Forget the pulldowns unless you are just interested in adding size to the back.

Steve

[curlygirl]

If you can do a body weight row on a dip stand or even a table in your house, that is usually considered a good precursor to a pull up

[Warmblood58]

Found the link online which validated my thoughts about Lat pull downs - I was working out the other day and realizing that Lat pull downs as a precursory muscle training technique in advance of pull ups would be a good tool for me at this point in my conditioning with the tools available to me. I think the jump assist technique would work too as well as the negatives - will try them all and rotate the techniques. I think the loss of the extra 40lbs will help too as 40 extra pounds is a lot of extra weight to pull up on top of my normal body weight -

[Warmblood58]

Hey, found this excellent video for beginners just starting out with pull ups -check it out!

Beginners Pull Up Workout Tutorial Week 1 strength training for pull ups workouts exercises - YouTube

[Al_Kavadlo]

Here's an article I wrote a while back about learning to do pull-ups. It echoes some of the sentiments expressed earlier in this thread.

I've also got a new book about pull-ups coming out soon.