Letting your shoulders come up at the very end is full range of motion and actually stretches your lats at the top. It also allows your lower traps to be worked significantly more since you have to pull your shoulders back down to do the next rep. It's just a variation
True. It will be worse if you're goal is true Lat isolation. But it's a nice compound movement, pull ups are the better variant anyway, if you're goal is a compound movement.
@@Necatibeyy that's not the point. The lats may not activate until you pull your shoulders back down again, but it stretches the lats much more, and activates the lower traps WAY more
Exactly, you can't call it a "mistake" to do full ROM. Stretch under load is a huge part of hypertrophy. You can keep tension as long as you can, get the full stretch at the top, then reset your scapulas and regain tension as you start to pull again. But it's just not right to call that a "mistake".
@@dummy999 This is what I do bro, but most people won't know what you are talking about...I have never seen anyone other than myself doing it just how you described.
@@CarlosLopez-qv3cs Yeah, if you go around any gym, you will likely see the majority of average gym-goers doing movements either incorrectly or sub-optimally.. Just gotta worry about doing it correctly yourself
Such an educational video! Great stuff Hanna thanks for the useful tips. One of the biggest things that have helped me build muscle aside from spending time in the gym has been a custom meal plan from Next Level Diet. I use it every week and I love it!
It does give you a better range of motion and also lets you stretch with the weight, it may not be a massive part of the movement but it definitely is worth doing
@@Ethan-fr4jy most FORM POLICE people (which she is) are weak and give HORRIBLE advice. The "big dude, lifting alot of weights" didnt get big by doing it wrong, as she is suggesting.
I like to start my clients with assisted pull ups, this movement translates so good on lat pull down specifically when u tell them to pay attention where his arms and chest are at during the pull up movement
no tension is more important, the muscles have to be under tension to grow and releasing fully removes that tension, just like how when doing lateral raises the bottom part is the most ineffective
Releasing them is good. Stretch under load is what that’s called. By releasing your shoulders you’re stretching your lats under load. That increases the hypertrophic response. For more info watch Mike Israetel and Eric Helms
ABSOLUTLY INCORRECT!!! I let my shoulders come out as FAR as possible to get a tremendous stretch, and then tremendous contraction in my lats. Right now as I type this, my lats are SOO sore from Mondays lat session. ALL from letting my shoulders come out as far as they could go. And this also goes for rowing movements. 007
1st one for sure but the second tip about the shoulders, it’s pulling your lats forcing them to stretch like crazy. It’s great to sit there in a hang for a couple seconds in the hard working sets to really get them burning for the last couple reps. Fills with blood, huge pump.
Form will suffer with last reps anyway. If it doesnt, you finish too soon. Heavier weights gets you to lift heavier weights sooner than clean form. Form is important, but you have to compromise to get the one last rep, which is the most important.
@@prome666form still allows you to gain balanced strength. And in the long run that's what you want. Sure you can keep on adding more and more weights to lift more, but one mistake is enough to give you permanent injury, then what you gained won't even matter. When you add weights, if you have a better form, you'll be able to control your body and strength better, leading to less injuries. The last rep does make it hard to keep the form, but that doesn't mean you let your tiredness compromise your form. You have to pull through to keep the correct posture, because that's how you gain more control of your body. Compromising on your form just because you are tired sounds like an excuse to ego lift or to do a rep just for ego.
@@DipankarGhosh007 whats the purpose tho, if i wanted to train pullups i would have to add weight and thats wayyyyy more effort than just adding weight on lat pulldown. The highest weight i could get with clean reps is a plate for 5 reps
@@hehexd9781 the case with weighted pull ups is u would be doing less and getting more in terms of muscle and strength. Lat pull down is doing way much more volume for very less significant gains for a natty. If u did a study about pull ups vs lat pull downs over 3-5 years keeping similar volume, the pull up wins by a light year in terms of muscle and strength
Yeh my gym buddy does everything wrong constantly but he never listens to me untill someone else then again tells him the same things ... He's like oh I'm gonna do this now I saw it on RU-vid ... I'm like mate I told you that last week
I have a gym buddy exactly like that and worse he keeps upping the weight while his form is bad and i'm telling him how he can improve and how he can avoid an injury...he says yes, but keeps doing the same mistakes and upping the weight. For example in lat pull down he rolls the shoulders to the front because it's too much weight for him and his form is bad...i gave up helping him. I do my set, let him do his set and i don't care anymore.
No it isn’t; You are working upper traps and lats if you do that; This exercise is specifically for lats only; You will find yourself more tired and burn out easier if you do it the other way. I say this cuz I have experienced this and my trainer corrects me all the time on it.
Its like your all tensed up and your shoulders are up and your trying to go down with that movement thats painful lol. Like your pulling more on the upper traps doing that and not really feeling it in the lats.
@@love2shop1996mao this exercise is meant to bias your trees major, rear delts, rhomboids and traps. The lats set are hardly involved as they’re better engaged through shoulder flexion, not shoulder addiction
You should let your shoulders go. It will give your lats a full stretch and take your biceps out of the equation. If you keep your shoulders locked, you feel less lats and more biceps.
I used to absolutely hate this workout because there are so many things you can get wrong and I used to feel nothing in my lats, Now I'm only doing half my bodyweight but with proper form and my lats are getting wide af and I'm loving it.
Wrong; You are more engaging your upper traps with trying to engage your lats. You will tire out a lot faster by doing that…I know cuz I have done this and when I fix it to where my shoulders are relaxed and I pull the bar down my shoulders don’t get as tired. How can you perform a full range of motion for lats when your shoulders are towards your ears? You will most likely feel it in the upper traps and the secondary muscle would be lats.
What’s wrong with getting tired and exhausting the muscle is the whole point and stimulating the muscle and stretching it out. You want to develop the whole body why limit your range of motion when you can get more benefits
If you want you lats to work more you actrually want to do the pull down full range of motion , not moving the shoulders is a variation , but its not benefital if your main goal is to build and train your lats.
When i learned about positioning my scapula correctly it revolutionised my use of the lat pulldown and i started making ACTUAL progress 🎉 form is everything in the gym!!
I just concentrate on opening my chest at the concentric portion of the movement while bring my elbows behind me slightly. I also try to pause the movement at the full contraction portion of the movement. I don't think that one needs to keep tension at the top instead of getting a full stretch at the top of the pulldown. When done right, I get sore the next day which validates that the exercise was performed correctly. Same principle applies to all forms of rowing movements.
When you let your shoulders come up, you get a full stretch so you’re just trying to keep tension on the muscle instead of get a full range of motion which is suboptimal
You’re wrong about the shoulders thing the stretch always gets me a big lat pump, though keeping tension is also valid. But I agree most people do lat pull downs wrong
The 2nd part about the shoulders definitely isn’t a mistake as others have said. It’s a variation that gives more ROM to the lats. Obviously, that part of the stretch needs to be controlled and one shouldn’t let the weight pull you up. The eccentric needs to be controlled to get that good stretch at the top. If you raises your hands in the air, you should feel the stretch on the lats. She’s a pro and I understand she knows what she’s talking about, but other pros have researched that “mistake” and argued that part about the shoulders can actually help with lat activation more and hypertrophy because of the stretch. Definitely try both methods to see which hits your targets better. Do 1 for 2 - 4 weeks (however long your meso program is) and try the other during the other meso. The stretch and full ROM works better for me and getting the connection with my lats as I drive back down
Yes exactly. I like to tell people to pull it down like you’re doing a pull up. You’ll never do a pull up where you’re pulling the bar in front of your belly button. That’d be ungodly strong especially for someone who cannot do one real pull up. When you do a proper pull up, your chest is proud facing upwards towards the sky and you pull your chest up to the bar almost like a row (just not as parallel). And scaps always retracted. Hell. Do a set of scapular retractions. They’re usually underdeveloped on most people anyway
Corrected a young dude this morning for exactly this and he didn’t take me seriously. I walked away with a sigh. Form over weights should be on every door of a gym.
Lifting weights is all about stretching the muscles. Form is very important to me and every time I let the machine pull my arms up and stretch the lateral muscles, I feel that I have done a good workout. That's how I built my lateral muscles.
Ugh, I really saw this the day after back day. I used to do lat pull downs all the time, then lived somewhere were I couldn’t do them for a year because the machine was too tall. Tried a couple weeks ago at a new gym, did fine. It went under construction and I had to move gyms again and finally got the courage to try yesterday. I just couldn’t get it for some reason. So unsatisfying
Not only does letting your shoulder elevate at the top of the set put a full stretch on the lats it also is good for a training the neuromuscular system in the pattern of scapular elevation, with shoulder flexion, which can be beneficial for preventing shoulder impingement as it promotes better scapulohumeral rhythm. Either way is fine. I don’t think it’s very accurate to say you’ll lose the tension on your lats when you put them on a greater stretch, it’s simply just a different range of motion, and as long as you depress the shoulders upon starting the pull down again this is a perfectly fine way to do that exercise
Everything she said is facts. Almost every newbie in the gym does this exercise wrong. Now as for the stretch at the top. When some people say it’s better to let the shoulder disengage to get that extra stretch and it works the mid back / lower traps , sure theres some truth to that. But this is a lat exercise. Why don’t you do your shoulders a favor and keep them stable throughout the lift with little swaying. If you want to make it a focused lower trap movement, then go isolate them and do specific training. They are meant to stabilize your body to keep that good posture and take any kind of pressure off the shoulder. This is even more true with pressing movements. But with this exercise you have gravity trying to pull your mid back up. Which most people take to the extreme and end up only using as they try to shrug the weight back down. I like to make my clients queue their lower back with a small pinch before every rep. Then lower the weight. If you can remember to do that you’ll feel as much lower trap contraction, and much better lat tension. Don’t swing your body and do good form like she explains in this video and you’re golden!
