Neutral Grip Lat Pulldown Guide: How-to, Benefits, Alternatives & More

• Our lats won’t be able to engage if our torso is upright and our arms are pointing directly up. Like with pull-ups, we need to lean back slightly so that our shoulder socket is pointing a little upwards, allowing us to better engage the lats.
• When completing a rep, your main focus should be on pulling your elbows down to your sides. This cue will help you to activate your lats more, rather than recruiting other muscles like the biceps to help more than they should

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If you’re training for hypertrophy, aim for 10 – 12 reps for 3 – 4 sets using a 1 – 2 minute rest time. Hypertrophy is best for building mass as it causes the muscles cells to increase in size. That being said, you will also create more muscle fibres which will lead to more strength.

When training for strength, aim for 1 – 5 reps for 3 – 4 sets using a 2 – 5 minute rest time. With strength training, you’ll be creating more muscle fibres compared to hypertrophy training, making you stronger. However, you’ll gain less size as your muscle cells aren’t enlarging as much.

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Are you use the close neutral or the wide neutral grip?

This difference is crucial. The close variation is brilliant for lat activation, but it’s not the best (read below). In fact, 6 times Mr Olympia, Dorian Yates is adamant that the close neutral grip pulldown is the best variation of the exercise.

Now I don’t want to disagree with Dorian Yates, so I’ll leave that to the scientists…

Here’s the answer I think you want: medium-width lad pulldowns are the best out of the close, medium and wide variations for lat activation and strength (see 2014 study). You can use the handle we’ve attached as an example of the width you should be looking for.

This huge muscle on the back is responsible for handling the majority of the load of the pulldown. The lats pull down the humorous (top bone in your arm) from in front of the torso to your sides.

The other muscles involved simply assist the lats in this movement.

The Teres major has a few different functions, such as internally rotating the arm. However, with this exercise it performs a very similar function to lats in that it pulls the humorous down from in front of the body.

In fact, the teres major is so similar to the lats that in some cases, the fibres of the 2 muscles can fuse. This similarity is why some people call this muscle the Lat Little Helper.

In the context of the pulldown, the traps’ function is to stabilise the scapula, keeping the shoulder joint in a fixed position to perform the exercise.

The rhomboids comprise of 2 small muscles that sit in between your shoulder blades.

Function: The primary function, especially during a pull-up, is to retract the scapula and rotate the shoulder socket (Glenoid cavity).

These muscles are located in between your shoulder blade. They help to rotate the Glenoid cavity (shoulder socket) and retract the scapula.

Like the lats and the teres major, the posterior delt helps to move the humorous backwards, pulling our arm from in front of us to our sides, and even further backwards.

Finally, the biceps. The function of the muscle is to close the elbow joint (flexion). In a pulldown, we’re starting with straight arms and our biceps help throughout the entire movement.

That being said, the cue of pulling your elbows back will help you to focus on lat activation rather than cranking the biceps. Leave that for your curls.

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As we’re performing an extremely similar movement, we’re going to be targeting all of the same muscles.

The advantage of this exercise is that you may find it easier to increase the weight vs the neutral grip pulldown. The disadvantage is that we have a smaller range of motion as the elbows have a shorter distance to travel.

I’m a huge fan of this exercise. It’s extremely functional as our core is working to stabilise the torso.

Furthermore, because we have complete control over our body position, we can lean our torso forward to increase our range of motion.