Key Points: Changing your grip on the lat pulldown (wide, narrow, pronated, supinated, neutral, upright vs. leaned back variations) doesn’t significantly change lat activation, according to a new study. The lats work about the same in all variations.
Learn all the details in our easy-to-understand summary below.
Let’s talk lat pulldowns! It’s one of the most popular gym exercises and a classic for building a wider back. But when you’re standing in front of the lat pulldown machine, staring at the dozen different handles and attachments, which one should you pick?
Wide grip for width? Underhand for a better squeeze? Neutral grip because some influencer said so?
A new study looked at this very thing: how different lat pulldown variations activate the lats (and helper muscles).1
Here’s What They Did
A group of researchers took 40 young men who had been lifting for at least 5 years and had them do a whole bunch of lat pulldown variations:
- Wide Pronated Grip: 1.5× shoulder width
- Wide Pronated Grip: same as above, but with 30° back lean
- Narrow Pronated Grip: shoulder-width
- Supinated Grip: shoulder-width, palms facing you
- Narrow Neutral Grip: shoulder-width, palms facing each other
- Wide Neutral Grip: 1.5× shoulder width, palms facing each other
- Wide Neutral Grip: same as above, but with 30° back lean
Click here for a picture link to the study, with all the pulldown variations.
They hooked them up to EMG sensors to see which muscles fired the most during all these different pulls. They measured the lats, biceps, traps, rear delts, and a few others.
And the Winner Is…
When it came to activating the lats, there was no significant difference between any of the grips.
Wide, narrow, underhand, neutral, it didn’t really matter. The lats worked just as hard regardless of how the participants held the bar.
The study literally says these findings “challenge the conventional assumption regarding the effectiveness of different grip types”.
The only real difference they found was in the rear delts. Using a wide-pronated grip with a 30° lean back activated the rear delts more than a standard wide grip or a wide neutral grip.
Takeaways
So, what do we make of this?
For lat growth, the best grip is likely the one that works best for you; the one that lets you feel the muscle working and doesn’t cause pain.
The researchers concluded that you should prioritize the grip that offers the best “comfort, joint safety, and technical control for each individual.”
If wide grips bug your shoulders, don’t do them. Your lats will be just fine with a neutral or narrower grip.
That being said, even if lat activation is the same, switching up your grips from time to time can still be a good idea. Not always using the same angles is good for the health of your shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and I think it would slightly change the stimulus on your smaller synergistic muscles.
The Best Lat Workout
Even if all these lat variations work your lats pretty much the same, pulling vertically instead of horizontally will hit them slightly differently.
If you’re a beginner, sticking with one lat exercise like the pulldown is plenty, but if you’ve been training for a while and need more stimulus, try our free lats workout:
StrengthLog’s Lats Workouts
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Lat Pulldown (or Pull-Up) | 4 | 6 |
| Seated Cable Row | 3 | 8 |
| Dumbbell Row | 3 | 12 |
| Straight Arm Lat Pulldown | 3 | 20 |
It’s also ideal if you split your back training into width and thickness days (do it on the first back day, for width).
These exercises hit all the fibers of your lat muscles thoroughly. The default lat pulldown is the standard wide-grip pronated, but you can switch it to whichever type you prefer; as this study shows, all variations work great.
And the best way to track the lats workout? The StrengthLog app.
It makes it s super easy to keep track of your weights and reps and make sure you’re on the right track.
You can start the workout right now in StrengthLog.
The app remembers what weights you used in your last session, and automatically loads them into your next session. And trying to improve on your last workout is the key to improving and getting stronger over time.
The workout is 100% free, and so is our app.
Track Your Training. See Real Progress.
Log your workouts in one place and watch your numbers climb, week after week.
- Free to get started
- Fast workout logging
- Cardio and strength training
- Progress over time, personal bests
- Free and premium training programs and workouts for every fitness goal
Download StrengthLog free:
Now go do some pulldowns. Your lats aren’t going to grow themselves.
