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The 4 Best Lat Pulldown Alternatives to Build Your Back | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
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11/01/2024
Recreate the Lat Pulldown with These Alternative Exercises | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00
The classic lat pulldown is one of the best, most tried and true ways to grow your back.
00:05
When we think of back training, we think of two ideas.
00:08
We think of horizontal pull moves, that's going to be any kind of row.
00:11
And then we think of those gold standard vertical pull moves, that's going to be your pull ups,
00:16
and yes, the lat pulldown.
00:17
This is something that everybody who goes into the gym, if you're trying to build serious
00:20
back size, you want to do this exercise.
00:23
But what happens if we can't do it?
00:24
What happens if you're training at home?
00:26
Or what happens if you're training in a CrossFit gym where you just don't have access to a
00:29
lat pulldown?
00:30
Thankfully, there are a couple alternatives and these are not easy to find.
00:34
We had to really scour in order to give you guys some options because it is not easy to
00:38
replace the lat pulldown.
00:40
That classic machine that you see in every gym really is the gold standard way to pull
00:45
with load and pull with the machine.
00:47
If you don't have that, we can get it done and we're going to show you how to do that now.
00:51
When we think of the classic lat pulldown, we're getting a couple benefits.
00:55
The two key things that we're training here and the thing we're really trying to attack
00:59
is building our lats and those are responsible for two functions of our upper arm.
01:04
One, it's adduction, so we're going to bring our upper arm in close to our torso.
01:09
And two, it's this idea of shoulder extension.
01:12
So that's bringing our shoulder, bringing our upper arm behind our torso.
01:16
Our lats help us do both of those moves.
01:18
They do some other things too, but those are the two key ideas that no matter the grip
01:23
of pulldown you're using, whether we're going wide grip, whether we're going close grip,
01:26
whether we're going underhand, whether we're going overhand, you're doing some variation
01:30
of those two ideas and that's what we really train with the lat pulldown.
01:33
So that's what we're going to try to replicate with our exercises here.
01:37
Now just remember, none of this can fully replace the lat pulldown.
01:40
That machine is that good and that special, but we can come really, really close as long
01:45
as we're focusing on these ideas and as long as you understand in the exercises that we're
01:49
going to show you exactly what you're playing for and what you want to feel so that you
01:52
can really, really get that good contraction.
01:55
So we've got four options for you and each of these is going to fill the lat pulldown
01:59
hole in your training in a slightly different way.
02:01
We're going to start with a good option that you can also do anywhere and we're gradually
02:05
going to progress to options that bring us more of a full range of motion and challenge
02:09
us in ways that are more similar classically to the whole lat pulldown.
02:13
And the first option, this is your baseline option and this is your most desperation option
02:17
if you're stuck in a hotel and you need to get a little bit of lat training in.
02:20
We're going to do something that I call the seated isometric lat hold.
02:24
You're going to need two chairs or two benches or something that you can drive your elbows
02:28
into and all we're doing on this move, what we're really doing is focusing on that peak
02:33
contraction.
02:34
So when we talked about the functions of what our lats do and what we're trying to get out
02:39
of the lat pulldown, one of those functions is this idea of shoulder adduction, of bringing
02:44
our upper arm, bringing our elbow near our torso.
02:47
And all we're doing in this seated hold is working that peak contraction moment.
02:52
You'll get say two to three reps of this, you're aiming to hold for three to five seconds.
02:57
It winds up being a lot harder than it looks and it places a lot more tension on your lats
03:02
than you may think.
03:04
In addition to that, it's actually a really, really good complementary move to any back
03:08
training you're doing because we focus on that peak contraction and on that squeeze
03:12
moment, which to be honest, when people are doing lat pulldowns, very often they wind
03:16
up skipping or avoiding.
03:17
So you're going to get a really, really good contraction and build a really, really good
03:20
mind muscle connection.
03:21
Now, there is a downside to this isometric idea though, and that is the fact that it
03:26
is literally just an isometric.
03:28
So that means we're just holding that position.
03:30
We're not going to get to take our lats or any of our other back muscles through anywhere
03:34
near a full range of motion.
03:36
But we do get to work on that contraction and maintain that mind muscle connection.
03:40
And if you have no options, if we can't hang from anything, if we can't get our hands on
03:44
a bar or a weight, then this is a great way to make sure we're getting a little bit of
03:49
back work into our routine.
03:50
The second option, this one is going to seem very, very obvious and you're going to think
03:54
it's a lot more effective perhaps than this, is going to be a simple seated banded lat
03:59
pulldown.
04:00
So all we're going to do, we're going to take a looped resistance band.
04:03
We're going to run it through the top of a rack or anything tall.
04:07
Make sure that you trust whatever it is that's tall though so that it doesn't break on you.
04:11
And from there, we're just going to sit down.
04:13
We're going to get ourselves into something very similar to a lat pulldown position, and
04:17
then we're going to pull down just as we would on any lat pulldown.
04:20
That means our core is going to stay tight.
04:21
We're going to think about squeezing our shoulder blades, and we can get a little bit of back
04:25
body lean with this.
04:27
That way we can incorporate muscles other than our lats and we're going to get a pretty
04:30
good contraction for our back.
04:32
The downside is going to be the force group.
04:34
You're going to get a pretty good squeeze at the bottom because that is when the band
04:38
is most stretched.
04:39
That's when it's offering us the most resistance, but at the top you're going to feel next to
04:44
nothing and that can be even worse depending on the structure that you're hanging it from.
04:49
So you're not really going to get a full resistance curve.
04:51
This is going to let you go through the lat pulldown motion though, and it is a good start
04:56
because we are going to get to work through the full range of motion even if we're not
04:59
getting truly challenged through that entire range of motion.
05:02
For the third option, now we're starting to get a little bit more resistance at the start
05:07
of that range of motion in addition to the end of the range of motion.
05:11
And we're going to start actually combining vertical pull and horizontal pull.
05:16
So we're going to take a standard dumbbell row.
05:19
We're going to lace a resistance band around that dumbbell and set it up, anchor it in
05:24
front of us.
05:26
This has instantly changed the dumbbell row in one major way.
05:30
Once we pull far enough back, we have instant resistance on us at the very start of our
05:36
rowing motion.
05:37
That is not something that we always have on our rowing motions when we're doing standard
05:41
dumbbell rows, but now we've got that resistance.
05:44
That's going to let us get a little bit more lat engagement at the very start of our row,
05:49
and it's going to force us to start with that forward resistance.
05:52
That resistance is going to increase as we pull back.
05:55
Yes, you're getting a lot of those mid-back muscles that you're going to get with your
05:58
row, but you're also going to get a chance to really focus on driving your elbow backwards.
06:03
If you're at home, if you're working in your gym, we can start to really load this and
06:06
push our lats through a large range of motion.
06:09
You're still going to catch the mid-back.
06:10
There's nothing wrong with that.
06:12
Now we can load, we can go into a standard, say, three sets of eight to 10 reps and start
06:16
pushing ourselves that way.
06:18
I really, really like this move if you need a replacement for your lat pulldown.
06:21
Your best option to replace the lat pulldown is another classic exercise.
06:25
We can go to the classic pullup or chin-up, and we're getting the exact same vertical
06:30
pull idea that we are on the lat pulldown.
06:33
There are two issues, though, with that classic pullup or chin-up.
06:37
One, many times for people on the lat pulldown, they're not strong enough to necessarily do
06:42
pullups and chin-ups, so we want something that's going to allow us to progress to the
06:47
point where we can do pullups and chin-ups, so we need a little bit of an adjustment there.
06:50
And two, even if you are strong enough to do pullups and chin-ups, often if we're on
06:54
the lat pulldown, we're looking to pile up volume and take ourselves a little bit farther
06:59
to failure without having our entire torso or our core be the mitigating factor, and
07:03
that's another reason to go to the lat pulldown.
07:05
That's why we're going to make one tweak to the pullup or chin-up to make it more accessible
07:08
and to create a situation where we can pile up volume and really feel that pump before
07:13
we get to eight to ten reps and we just can't do anymore.
07:16
How are we going to adjust that?
07:17
We're going to go to a seated pulldown, and you can do this either underhand or overhand.
07:22
You can do this in a rack, or you can do this in a Smith machine.
07:25
If you have access to a Smith machine, try for that because it's going to be a little
07:29
bit more stable.
07:30
You're not going to have a little bit of rotation that happens when we're on a barbell.
07:34
Either way, with the seated pullup or chin-up, what we get to do is go through a full range
07:39
of motion.
07:40
We can get a good stretch on our back.
07:42
We can kind of adjust the position of the machine as we need.
07:45
Remember that lower is better if you're a beginner on this.
07:49
Higher is a little bit better and offers you a little bit more chance to get stretch if
07:53
you're a little bit more advanced on this exercise, but either way, you can still pile
07:57
up volume and we can eventually start to load.
08:01
As you get better at this exercise, instead of keeping your legs on the ground, you can
08:06
move your legs up to a bench and we can actually place a med ball or a sandbag or some kind
08:11
of load across our thighs.
08:12
We're going to get a little bit more load from that.
08:14
We're going to get to challenge ourselves, and then we can do all kinds of stuff.
08:17
We can do drop sets.
08:18
We can do eccentrics.
08:19
We can do a lot of the different ideas that we want to do on the lat pulldown with this
08:24
seated chin-up or pullup.
08:27
We've given you four different options to replace the lat pulldown, and none of these
08:31
truly replace the lat pulldown.
08:33
It is that good of a machine, but if we combine them in smart ways, we can still get a whole
08:38
ton of muscle building and we can still maintain our mind-muscle connection, maintain a lot
08:42
of back strength.
08:44
How are we going to do that?
08:45
What we want to do is think about taking one of those final three exercises, either that
08:49
banded pulldown, that seated chin-up or pullup, or the row option.
08:54
We're going to do, say, eight to ten reps of that.
08:56
Push yourself as far as you can, and then we're going to finish up with one to two reps
09:01
of that iso-hold.
09:03
You wind up getting a very complete push for your lats that way.
09:06
We get that really good squeeze, which again, sometimes people miss on the lat pulldown
09:10
period, and you're still getting to work through a large range of motion.
09:14
That is all you can ask for in a lat pulldown machine replacement.
09:17
There is no way that you can replace the lat pulldown in your gym, but we can still grow
09:22
our lats if we stick with these four approaches.
09:28
you
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