Written on Monday, November 10th, 2008 by Miroslav Nikolov

Narrow hands pull-down – а pinch of exercise diversity

Narrow hands pull-down – а pinch of exercise diversity Narrow hands pull-down is a bit different than normal pull-down. It helps you to separate lateral muscles of shoulders and pumps more blood in these areas. Do this exercise only for diversity?

No. It is actually quite different than normal pull-down. It is right exercise for weight loss training, because this pull-down shapes your lateral muscles better and also can help you if you have problem with fat amount in these areas.

Many men (I include myself too) have more fats in the area between lateral muscles and chests. If you are one of these men then this exercise won’t be just diversity, but also good tool to achieve Spot reduction (”Spot reduction - weight loss training” describes how to train to achieve it).

Narrow hands pull-down exercising.

Stand in front of the pull-down machine with stride width as your shoulders;
Take standard pull-down bar or long straight bar and catch it with normal hands position. Your hands width has to be as your shoulders width and narrow arms;
The start position is – the bar is on your shoulder level, narrow arms and parallel with the floor;
Your back has to be with its normal bend position, bend a bit your knees, bend your body toward and take a breath;

Start moving.

With your narrow hands pull the bar to your legs and remember that movement has to done by your lateral muscles;
Breath out when you are in the middle of the movement and squeeze lateral muscles at the bottom;
Go back to the starting point slowly and under control. Stop when your arms become parallel with the floor;

Helpful advices.

1. If you want to deliver more blood in the lateral [tag-tec]muscles/[tag-tec] – do this exercise as preexhausting exercise before complex exercises like bent-over, or as last exercise in your back training;
It is also good to warm up your body for about 10 min - Veloergometer is best for that.
2. Make your lateral muscles do all the work. Escape bending the elbows – this engages your triceps in the movement;
3. Do not use inertia to help you start next repeat – this reduces lateral muscle loading and can cause injuries, especially when the weights are heavy;
4. If you want stronger stretching for your lateral muscles bend a bit more your body and start with arms above your head – this will increase the movement amplitude;

What narrow hands pull-down will give you.

Despite hard back training with complex exercises like bent-over, deadlift
Narrow hands pull-down is a bit different than normal pull-down. It helps you to separate lateral muscles of shoulders and pumps more blood in these areas. Do this exercise only for diversity?
and pull-down, which burn more fats, it is hard to separate lateral muscles and shape them. With this exercise you can work lateral muscles with no fear about involving shoulders or triceps.

This exercise is not one of these Top 10 weight loss myths you have probably tried.

With more practice narrow hands exercise will shape your lateral muscles, give you V shape you want in the end of your weight loss diet.

Muscle action

The main muscle, which does most of the work, is the wide back muscle (latissimus dorsi). It moves the arm from in front of the body position to at the side of the body position. This movement also includes teres major and pectoralis major as assisting muscles.

Rhomboid muscle turns the blade-bone. In this movement it has assisting muscle too – pectoralis minor.

How to include narrow hands pull-down into your training.

Learn “How to apply back training to help you lose weight“.

When: as preexhausted or last exercise in the back training day.
Together with: dead lift, normal pull-down, half-gradient bent-over, sitting bent-over.
How: do 2-3 sets with 10-15 or more repeats under control.

This pull-down is my favorite pull-down along with normal variant. It is not tough exercise and helps you feel your lateral muscles better.

What do you think about this exercise? Is it your favorite one too? I think you can experiment here and do lot of different variants. May be you have your own.

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Used tags: diversity, exercises, muscles, pull-down, training, weight loss, Weight loss exercises