Muscles worked
With a close handle, your elbows travel down tight to your body rather than out to the sides, and the movement tends to be slightly longer. The latissimus dorsi does most of the work, helped by the teres major and the lower traps, which keep your shoulder blades down. Your biceps and brachialis do more than with a wide grip, especially with palms facing each other or up. A cable station usually offers a V-handle, a narrow parallel handle or a straight bar for a close underhand grip. Your lats do roughly the same job with all three, so let your shoulders and elbows decide.
Common mistakes
- Leaning a long way back. With a close handle it is tempting to lie back and pull towards your stomach, which turns it into a row. Lean back only slightly and pull to your upper chest.
- Crunching down to the handle. At the end of the pull, many people round their upper back and bring their chest down to the handle. Keep your chest up and let the handle come to you.
- Letting the handle fly up. The way up is half the exercise. Let the handle rise over two to three seconds and feel your lats stretch before the next pull.
Variations and alternatives
- The wide grip cable pulldown at the same station, when you want your elbows further out.
- Chin-ups are a bodyweight pull with an underhand grip, a goal to work towards once your pulldown is strong.
- The straight arm pulldown trains your lats with straight arms and no biceps, useful if your arms tire before your back.
Sets and reps
Most people can pull a little more with a close grip than a wide one, so 6 to 10 reps works if you want to go heavy. To build muscle, 8 to 12 reps over three or four sets is the usual choice, and 12 to 20 reps suits endurance or the end of a back session. The guide to sets and reps has more.
The simplest way to apply progressive overload is to add reps before you raise the weight. Another is to add a set, but keep an eye on how many sets your back gets across the week. The guide to sets per week gives some benchmarks.