How to Pull down a bar properly?

Pulling a bar down to your chest isn’t as simple as it may appear. To give your back muscles a workout and to protect yourself from injury, you need to make sure that the bar travels in a specific path.

Pulling down a bar the right way
Here are tips for performing a perfect lat pulldown. Choose a weight that’s challenging but not so heavy that you feel like you’re dangling off the end of a helicopter ladder. Sit down — taking the bar with you — and wedge your thighs under the thigh bar. Now lean just a few inches backward and keep your abdominal muscles pulled in to support your lower back. Pull the bar toward the top of your chest, lifting your chest to meet the bar. Take your time so that the bar remains level throughout the movement. Don’t sway back and forth: Rock and roll is dead here. When you’ve completed your set, stand up and gently deposit the bar back where it belongs. If you open your hands and let the weight plates come crashing down, you’ll startle everyone else in the weight room and you may damage the equipment. The exercise isn’t finished until you’ve completely lowered the weight stack with control. See photo B.

Pulling down a bar the wrong way
One common mistake — a mistake that places your shoulder joint and muscles in jeopardy — is pulling the bar straight down toward your lap rather than toward your chest. A second error occurs when you pull the bar down unevenly — one end of the bar may be 6 inches lower than the other. But perhaps our biggest pet peeve is leaning way back as you pull the bar down and then rocking forward as the bar travels upward. Generating this type of momentum helps you move a lot of weight, because you’re using your body weight instead of your muscles to help you pull down the bar. Because you’re not using your muscles to move the bar, this “trick” doesn’t improve your back strength. See photo A.