Lat pulldown: how to do it and how much you should lift

Muscles the lat pulldown works

The lat pulldown works the latissimus dorsi (the lats) hardest. These are the wide, flat muscles that run from your upper arm down to your lower back. The teres major, a smaller muscle below the shoulder blade, works with them. The biceps and the forearms bend your elbow and hold the bar. The rear of the shoulders, the middle and lower trapezius and the rhomboids pull your shoulder blades down and together. Your lower chest helps a little.

Most of that comes from studies that measure electrical activity with skin sensors (EMG). EMG shows which muscles fire, not which ones grow. A 2026 review of 23 EMG studies of pulling exercises found one steady pattern on the pulldown: a bar pulled in front of the face fired the lats most consistently.

No study has measured lat growth from the pulldown, only arm growth. In a 10-week study of 29 untrained young men, a program of only lat pulldowns and bench presses grew the elbow flexors by 6.5%. Adding curls and triceps work gave about 7%, and the 2 groups did not differ.

How to do a lat pulldown

1. Sit facing the machine. Set the thigh pad so your thighs fit snugly under it, with your feet flat on the floor.
2. Stand up and grip the bar overhand, about 1.5 times your shoulder width, thumbs wrapped around it. Sit back down with the bar in your hands.
3. Start with your arms straight overhead. Let the weight lift your shoulders a little, so your lats start on a stretch.
4. Lean back slightly, enough for the bar to pass your face. Keep your chest up.
5. Pull your shoulders down, away from your ears. Then drive your elbows down to your sides until the bar touches your upper chest, near your collarbones.
6. Let the bar rise under control until your arms are straight again. The plates on the stack should only touch lightly between reps.
7. Breathe out as you pull the bar down, and breathe in as it goes back up.

Keep the same torso angle from the first rep to the last. If you rock further back each rep, the weight is too heavy.

Which grip: wide, close, overhand or underhand?

Grip matters less than gym talk suggests. An overhand grip about 1.5 times your shoulder width, pulled to the front, is a good default. After that, pick the grip that feels best on your shoulders and elbows. Shoulder width here means the distance between the bony tips of your shoulders.

The largest study had 40 men with at least 5 years of training try 7 versions, with different grips, widths and torso lean. Lat activity did not differ between them. A 2026 review came to a similar view: grip width effects were inconsistent, and only pulling in front stood out.

All of this is EMG, measured over a few reps. No study has compared back growth between pulldown grips.

A cue may matter more than the grip. In a study of 8 women new to lifting, spoken instructions on pulling with the lats raised lat activity. Biceps activity stayed the same. A common cue: pull your elbows down towards your back pockets.

Where the advice differs

Most pulldown rules are coaching habit, not tested in studies. Where coaches disagree, the right answer depends on your shoulders and your goal.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Sets, reps and rest for the lat pulldown

There is no single right number. The table is a starting point built on the research on lifting in general. None of these studies tested the pulldown on its own.

What the studies show:

• Heavy weights build more strength. Muscle grows about as well with light or heavy weights, if the sets go close to failure.
• More weekly sets bring more muscle, up to a point. Strength gains level off sooner.
• Your biceps help on every rep. A 2026 review of 67 studies found that such sets count best as half a set for the helping muscle. So 2 pulldown sets make about one biceps set.
• With the same weekly sets, training a muscle 2 or 3 times a week does not add size over once.
• You do not need to reach failure. On the pulldown, a failed rep is safe: the bar just rises back up. That makes it a good lift to take close to failure.
• Rest longer before heavy sets. Rests of 3 minutes built more strength than 1 minute in trained men. For muscle size, rests past 90 seconds made little further difference.

For longer answers, read how many sets and reps build muscle and how long to rest between sets.

Warm-up sets before the lat pulldown

One or 2 lighter sets on the stack are enough before your working sets. For example, do 10 easy reps at about half your working weight, then 5 reps at about 80%. A stack moves in fixed steps, so pick the nearest pin.

Only the 80% set has some study support. In 15 men, a warm-up set of 5 reps at 80% of the working weight led to more total work than warm-ups at 40% or 60%. Their session included the wide-grip pulldown, but the clearest gain was on the bench press. A study of the squat and bench press found much the same. Another found that the kind of warm-up made no difference to reps.

The half-weight set and the rep counts are habit. No study shows that warm-up sets prevent injury.

If you did pull-ups or rows earlier in the session, your back is already warm. One set at about 80% is usually enough.

How much should you lat pulldown for your weight?

The table shows where each level starts, as a one-rep max (1RM), for ages 18 to 29. 1RM is the most weight you can pull once. These are Trackist's own strength standards, the same ones the strength calculator and the app use.

Trackist scores the lat pulldown in one pulling group with rows, pull-ups and chin-ups. They all meet the same lines. Pull-ups and chin-ups count your whole body weight plus any weight you add. The standards were written from published coaching tables, rounded, and they describe people who train, not everyone.

After 29, the lines drop: by 5% in your 30s, 12% in your 40s, 20% in your 50s and 30% from 60. The strength calculator adjusts for your exact age and scores all 4 main lifts.

A 60 kg woman reaches the intermediate level at 45 kg (100 lb), 0.75 times her body weight. An 80 kg man reaches it at 87.5 kg (195 lb), 1.1 times his.

How this compares with other tables:

• Strength Level builds its table from 2 million pulldowns its users logged. For a 60 kg woman, its 5 levels start at 23, 33, 46, 60 and 76 kg. Ours start at 25, 32.5, 45, 60 and 77.5 kg.
• For an 80 kg man, its levels start at 47, 64, 85, 108 and 133 kg. Ours sit 0.5 to 7 kg higher at every level.
• Its lines rise more slowly with body weight than ours. So for heavier lifters our lines sit higher, and for lighter ones a little lower. For a 100 kg man, its intermediate line is 98 kg and ours is 110 kg.
• Each table uses a different group of people and different cut-offs, so a level in one does not match a level in another.

The same line is harder to reach on the pulldown than on the pull-up. In a study of 35 men and 23 women at college, the max pull-up, counted with body weight, came out higher than the max pulldown. Men pulled 1.16 times their body weight on the pull-up and 0.93 times on the pulldown. Women pulled 0.73 and 0.55 times. A pull-up figure under 1 means that, on average, the women needed help for a single rep.

Machines differ too. Pulleys, cams and friction change how heavy the same pin feels, so one machine can feel lighter than another. Your numbers compare best on the same machine, and the table works as a rough guide.

Under 18? The table is for adults, and it sets no target for teenagers. For a young lifter, clean reps and slow, steady progress matter more than any number on it.

Find your lat pulldown max

You do not need to test a true one-rep max on the pulldown, and few people do. Type a set you did, and the calculator estimates your max with 7 formulas. Sets of 10 reps or fewer give the closest estimate. For more detail, open the 1RM calculator.

Formulas may run a little low on the pulldown. Two of these formulas, Mayhew and Wathen, were tested in 23 men and women. They underestimated the true max on the pulldown and the seated cable row by about 2 to 7 kg.

Lat pulldowns and your shoulders

The pulldown is one of the gentler back exercises: you sit, nothing rests on your spine, and a failed rep just lets the bar rise. Three things keep it that way.

Behind the neck. Pulling the bar behind your head turns your upper arms out with your elbows high, the so-called high-five position. In a study of 159 men, those who did behind-the-neck pulldowns or presses more often showed signs of a loose, unstable shoulder. That is a link, not proof of cause, and the authors called for trials to test it. In 3 studies, the lats worked as hard or harder with the bar in front as you pulled down. So pulling in front costs you no lat work.

The thigh pad. Set it so your thighs fit snugly under it, with your feet flat. Once the weight on the stack nears your body weight, the pad is what keeps you in the seat. Set too high, it lets you rise with the bar.

On the way up. Let the bar rise under control and your arms reach overhead. Do not let the stack yank your arms straight, because the top is where your shoulder is most stretched. That is mechanics, not a measured result. At the end of a set, let the bar rise all the way before you let go of it.

When the lat pulldown hurts

Pain is a reason to change something, not to push through. Diagnosis and treatment belong to a physiotherapist or a doctor. Up to 36% of the injuries recorded in weight training are at the shoulder, so take shoulder pain seriously.

• Front of the shoulder: pull in front, never behind the neck. Try a slightly narrower grip or a V-handle, and stop the bar a little higher for a few weeks.
• Elbow or biceps: try the other grip. Some lifters find a neutral or underhand grip easier on the elbow, others overhand. Straps take load off your forearms.
• Neck: stop pulling behind the neck, and keep your chin from poking forward to meet the bar.
• Numbness, tingling or weakness down an arm needs a doctor soon.

For lasting pain, read what to do when a lift hurts.

Lat pulldown variations and alternatives

In Trackist's exercise library, the lat pulldown sits in one group with 6 other pulls from overhead: the wide-grip lat pulldown, the neutral-grip lat pulldown, the pull-up, the wide-grip pull-up, the chin-up and the assisted pull-up. The app's lat pulldown page lists them as similar movements. When you swap the pulldown for one session or for the rest of your plan, the picker puts that group first, then other lat exercises, starting with those your equipment and joints allow.

How Trackist runs your lat pulldown

Trackist is an AI personal trainer for the gym. It writes your plan, and the lat pulldown gets this from the app:

• From your second session of the pulldown, Trackist suggests what to try from the last time you logged it. When every set at your top weight reached the top of the rep range, it adds 5 kg (10 lb). Inside the range, it keeps the weight and asks for more reps. There is no suggestion in a deload week.
• When you fall short of the reps, it keeps the weight, takes about 5% off or leaves the call to you, depending on how far short you fell and how hard the sets felt.
• From your second session, it logs a personal record when you beat your heaviest weight, your most reps at a weight or your best estimated max.
• The exercise page shows 4 form cues, the muscles worked and the joints the pulldown loads: the shoulder and the elbow. From your second session, it adds a chart of your estimated one-rep max.
• When your elbow hurts on the pulldown, you report it and rate it from 1 to 5. Trackist swaps the pulldown for a lat exercise that spares the elbow, such as the straight-arm pulldown or the machine pullover. Your profile remembers that pulling hurts the elbow, so later plans leave out pulls, rows and curls that load it, and keep your presses.
• When your shoulder hurts on it, the library has no lat exercise that leaves the shoulder out. Trackist picks a replacement from the exercises your profile still allows, or lets you pick one. Later plans leave out pull-ups, pulldowns, bent-over rows and other pulls that load the shoulder. Rows where a pad, a bench or a seat holds your torso stay, such as the chest-supported row, the machine row and the seated cable row.
• Your lat pulldown counts towards your Strength Score in the pulling group, with the same standards as the table above, adjusted for your age.