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