Keep your elbows high and think about squeezing your upper back muscles.

Pull the rope to your face -not your clavicle, not your chest or neck, aim for your nose-separating your hands on either side of your head. Your starting weight shouldn’t be heavy enough to pull your body forward or round your back. Grab each end of the rope in an overhand grip and step back far enough so the weight comes off the stack.įind an athletic stance with your knees slightly bent at hip or shoulder-width apart. Hook up the rope attachment to a cable pulley set at a height just above your head. Horizontal pulling changes the plane of motion, so you’re moving weight from out in front of you into your midline. It’s not as popular and it seems like there are fewer exercises to choose from. This kind of vertical pulling is more shoulder and deltoid dominant.īut horizontal pulling is a trickier movement to include in your program. These are also technically vertical pulling movements, you’re just pulling weight up toward your midline instead of down toward your midline. Then we have the reverse movement on the same plane-think upright rows, high pulls, and even shrugs. Pulling a weight stack or your bodyweight from above your head to face or chest height puts focus on growing ham-slab lats and beefy biceps. Vertical pulling is popular and common-everybody works pull ups, chin ups, or lat pull-downs into their routine. While all pulling movements use your back, where you pull from can change the part of your back that does the work. Pulling from different planes activates different muscles in your back, arms, and core, depending on the angle you take.

Banded face pulls