Underhand Grip Lat Pulldown

What the underhand lat pulldown actually trains

An underhand grip lat pulldown is a vertical pulling movement performed seated at a cable pulldown station with the palms facing you, drawing the bar down to the upper chest.

This is a back exercise. The latissimus dorsi and teres major produce most of the force, the lower trapezius and rhomboids control the shoulder blades, and the posterior deltoid assists. The biceps brachii, brachialis and brachioradialis flex the elbow under a heavy load throughout, which is why the exercise is filed under biceps in most libraries and why your arms are what fail first when the weight is honest.

Do not let the filing mislead you. Programme it as a vertical pull, judge it by whether your lats are working, and treat the arm stimulus as a bonus that saves you a curl.

The supinated grip does two things. It puts the biceps brachii in a mechanically strong position to flex the elbow, so more of the load goes through it. And it naturally keeps the elbows closer to the body, which means the pull happens more in front of you and the lats work through more adduction and extension rather than pure abduction.

Lehman and colleagues examined muscle activation across traditional latissimus dorsi exercises and found that grip and bar position change the picture in real but bounded ways. Dickie and colleagues found the same pattern across pull-up variations: differences exist, they are modest, and none of them turn one movement into a different exercise.

The practical implication is that you do not need both an overhand and an underhand pulldown in a programme. You need one vertical pull you can load progressively, done through a full range, for enough sets. Pick the grip your elbows tolerate.

Setting up and executing

Set the thigh pad tight enough that you stay in the seat when the weight gets heavy. If you are rising off the bench, the exercise ends.

Take a supinated grip on the bar at roughly shoulder width. Wider than that with the palms up puts the wrists and elbows in an awkward position for nothing.

Sit down and let the arms straighten fully overhead, allowing the shoulder blades to rise at the top of each rep. That reach is part of the range.

Set a slight backward lean and then keep that torso angle fixed for the whole set.

Pull the shoulder blades down to begin, then drive the elbows down and back towards your ribs until the bar reaches the top of your chest. Pause for a beat with the chest tall.

Return over about three seconds until the arms are straight again.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Leaning back through the rep is the fault that ruins this exercise, and it is easy to miss because the weight goes up. Once your torso is rocking from upright to forty five degrees under load, you are doing a poorly braced row on a machine designed for a pulldown. Set a slight lean at the start and hold it.

Pulling with the hands turns the movement into a heavy curl with a lat garnish. Marcolin and colleagues compared curl variants and found meaningful differences in elbow flexor loading between them, but none of those variants is a pulldown. If your biceps do all the work here, you are wasting the machine. Think about driving the elbows down, not bending them.

Skipping the top stretch is where most people lose range. Pallarés and colleagues found full range training beat partial range training for strength and hypertrophy, and on a pulldown the reachable extra range is at the top, where the arms straighten and the shoulder blades rise.

Gripping too wide with the palms up strains the wrists and elbows and shortens the pull. Shoulder width is the sensible default.

Racing the return throws away half the rep. If the stack is pulling your arms up faster than you chose, the weight is too heavy.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

This is a primary movement, so treat it like one.

For muscle gain, four sets of eight to twelve with two minutes rest. For strength, four sets of six to eight with three minutes. In a fat loss phase, three sets of twelve to fifteen with ninety seconds.

The great practical advantage over chin-ups is precise loading. You can add five kilos, you can drop the pin for a drop set, and you can take a set to genuine failure without needing to let go of anything above your head. That makes it easier to accumulate high quality volume than the bodyweight equivalent.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy. Because this movement banks back and biceps volume at once, it is one of the more efficient ways to hit both without adding session time.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping a rep or two short of failure produces comparable growth to going all the way, so the last set is where you spend your failure, not every set.

Where it fits in your split

Early in a pull or back session, as the vertical pull.

On push, pull and legs it goes on pull day, either as the main vertical pull or straight after chin-ups. On an upper and lower split it fills the vertical pull slot. On a bro split it is first or second on back day. On a full body programme it is a strong choice, since it covers back and biceps in one exercise.

If you also do chin-ups, do not do both underhand. Doma and colleagues compared chin-ups and pulldowns and found overlapping muscle demands, which is exactly what you would expect from two versions of the same pattern. Use a chin-up for the heavy work and an overhand or neutral pulldown for the higher rep work, or the reverse, but avoid running the identical movement twice in a session and calling it variety.

Twice a week suits most people.

Variations worth knowing

The overhand lat pulldown reduces the biceps contribution, widens the pull and is the more common default for back training.

The neutral grip pulldown, palms facing each other on a V handle, is the most elbow friendly option and sits between the other two in emphasis.

The close-grip chin-up is the bodyweight version, harder overall and harder to load in small increments, but excellent when you can do it well.

The single arm pulldown, using a handle, allows more rotation and a slightly longer range and exposes side to side differences a bar hides.

The kneeling cable pulldown at a high pulley is a practical substitute when the pulldown station is occupied.

And the straight arm pulldown removes the elbow flexors entirely, which is the right choice when you want lat work without an arm tax.

What the evidence says

Lehman and colleagues examined muscle activation across traditional latissimus dorsi exercises and found that grip and bar position alter activation in real but bounded ways, which is the basis for choosing a grip on comfort rather than on a supposed hierarchy.

Doma and colleagues compared chin-ups with lat pulldowns and reported substantial latissimus dorsi and biceps involvement in both, confirming that the supinated pull is a back movement with a heavy elbow flexor demand.

Dickie and colleagues analysed muscle activation across pull-up variations and found modest differences between grips, which supports doing one vertical pull well rather than collecting several that overlap.

Marcolin and colleagues found that curl variants differ in how they load the biceps brachii and brachioradialis, useful context for understanding what a supinated pull does and does not substitute for.

Pallarés and colleagues found full range training beat partial range training for strength and hypertrophy, supporting the full reach at the top of every rep.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and muscle growth, which is why a movement that pays into two muscle groups is worth its slot.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping short of failure produces comparable hypertrophy, which lets you keep most sets clean and spend the failure on the last one.

Common questions

Is this a biceps exercise?

Not really. It is a vertical pull for the lats and teres major that loads the biceps heavily as a by-product. If you feel nothing in your back after a hard set, your technique is the problem rather than the exercise.

Underhand or overhand grip?

Underhand raises the biceps contribution and keeps the elbows closer to the body; overhand reduces it and widens the pull. The difference in back development is small. Choose the one your elbows and wrists prefer and load it properly.

How is this different from a close-grip chin-up?

It is the same movement pattern with the machine holding the weight instead of the earth holding you. The pulldown loads in small increments and takes you safely to failure; the chin-up is harder, more skill dependent and better if you can already do a dozen clean reps.

Should I lean back?

A little, and then keep it fixed. A slight lean puts the bar path in front of your face and lets the elbows finish behind the torso. A lean that changes during the rep is a row in disguise.

Do I still need curls?

If your only goal is arm size and you are pulling hard through a full range twice a week, you can get a long way without them. Two or three direct sets a week is still a cheap addition, and a hammer or reverse curl covers the brachialis and brachioradialis work that a supinated pull leaves on the table.