Do Lat Pulldowns And Cable Rows Work Different Muscles – Do pull-ups and lats work for your biceps? Or should you add specific biceps exercises for maximum muscle hypertrophy?
In today’s post, I’d like to look at the other side of the arm and look at some interesting research on how compound exercises like lat pulls and rows affect bicep growth.
Do Lat Pulldowns And Cable Rows Work Different Muscles
If compound lifts turn out to work well for your biceps, it can save you time.
How To Do The Seated Cable Row For A Bigger Back
The muscle closest to the bone is the brachialis, and above it is the biceps. These two muscles are the same size and have overlapping functions, but they need to be named correctly.
. Since “biceps” is a more common term and people tend to search for information about it, I tend to use that term more often.
How do stacked lat pull-specific exercises compare to barbell curls in terms of biceps development?
Twenty-nine untrained young men trained with pull-ups or barbell rings only twice a week for 10 weeks. Perform 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps until failure, increasing the weight if you can do more than 12 reps. Training is supervised.
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Lat pull-ups are performed with an overhand grip (palms away from the body) and twice shoulder width apart. Barbell curl done standing.
Before and after training, the thickness of the biceps muscle was measured using ultrasound, and the muscle strength of the biceps muscle was measured using a dynamometer.
Training lat pull-ups or barbell curls twice a week for 10 weeks resulted in similar increases in biceps thickness.
I also train bench press and triceps, but since I only measure the thickness of my biceps, I’ll only cover that part.
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Both groups trained twice a week for 10 weeks, performing three sets of eight to 12 repetitions of each exercise until failure. This means that the biceps training volume is twice as high with a group exercise of both lat pulldowns and bicep curls than with a lat pulldown group exercise alone.
Adding barbell rings to lat pulls did not increase biceps growth in these untrained men over 10 weeks of training.
The fact that they don’t train may come into play here. For these people, 6 sets per week (3 sets of 2 reps) may be sufficient, but more volume may be helpful as they become more comfortable with the training. But for the question at hand, this is absolutely correct. Adding bicep curls doesn’t really do anything to develop the biceps of an untrained person already doing lat pulldowns. At least not during the first 10 weeks of training.
So, looking at this study alone, it appears that lat pulldowns with a wide grip and brace work well for the biceps. At least as good as barbell curls. This probably means that pulldowns as well as other lat pulldowns (back grip and narrower lat pulldowns) are good for training your biceps.
Impulse Pl9002 Lat Pulldown/seated Row
It’s worth noting that these two studies come from the same research group, and we hope other teams will replicate them.
A study by another research team looked at how muscle growth and strength gains differed from dumbbell rows or dumbbell curls.
The method of this study is slightly different from previous studies. The researchers recruited just 10 untrained young men, but rather than splitting them into two groups, each performing the same exercise, each participant trained dumbbell rows with one arm and dumbbell rows with the other. and
-Suddenly “double” the group size while eliminating confounding variables like genetics and diet.
Lat Pull Down Machine Multifunction Low Row Bar Cable Fitness Body Workout Gym
So participants trained dumbbell rows with one arm and curls with the other. They do 4-6 sets x 8-12 reps per arm, twice a week for 8 weeks.
Biceps thickness was assessed using ultrasound before and after the training period, and strength of both arms (at 10RM) was tested for both exercises.
Unlike lat pulls, rows don’t seem to work like bicep curls. Biceps thickness increased by 11.06% in the arm trained with dumbbell curls, while it increased by about half (5.16%) in the arm trained with dumbbell rows.
After eight weeks of training in these untrained men, dumbbell curls more than doubled bicep thickness compared to dumbbell rows.
Underhand Vs Overhand Lat Pulldown
It has been shown that gains in strength are exercise dependent. Arms that train rows will get stronger for rows and vice versa for curls. There’s nothing strange about this. Now, as your strength increases, you tend to train a lot.
So can light lat pulldowns and rows completely replace barbell rings and dumbbells when you’re pursuing the big guns?
Young, untrained men can maximize their biceps growth by initially training only lat stretches. This can be an advantage in that training times are initially shorter as trainees develop exercise habits.
But what about the long term? Because the study only lasted 10 weeks, no conclusions can be drawn about optimal exercise over the long term. I don’t think curls have any chance of being useful in the long run. This is because it allows for at least some form of variation (less uniformity and lower risk of injury), and twisting is generally less expensive than stretching because it uses fewer muscles at once. Would focusing on your biceps while doing curls ultimately result in a greater workout benefit?
Lat Pulldown Standards For Men And Women (lb)
Rows definitely seem to work the biceps less than curls, which is similar to what I feel and see in my personal training. But I wouldn’t remove it completely. Because with more experience the work can be directed to other muscles. Once you have a good mind-muscle connection, you can consciously choose how much you include or exclude your biceps during pull-ups and rows, which can affect the effectiveness of your workouts. shape.
Well-developed biceps, as well as your entire upper body, is the safest way to do anything.
An example of a “back & biceps” exercise would be to start with an up and down exercise, move to rows, and then finish with a bicep curl exercise. And while you’re at it, why not vary the load and frequency?
Another alternative is to exercise your biceps separately by performing compound lifts on a “back day” (e.g. after deadlifts) and then curls on a separate “arm day.”
Best Lat Pull Down Alternatives For Back Muscles
Daniel has 10 years of experience in powerlifting, is a certified personal trainer, and holds a Master’s degree in Engineering. In addition to competing for his self-improvement, he also trains in the basics at both beginner and international levels. Click here to learn more about Daniel.
Thank you! To receive your free guide, please confirm your address by clicking the confirmation link in the email we just sent. Rows are great for creating a wide, thick back. They affect all lat regions, as well as other back muscles such as the middle trapezius, rhomboids, and teres major.
Pull-ups and open pull-ups are one of the best exercises for building wide lats due to their high elasticity and downward movement of the arms.
One study found that trained lifters used more muscle fibers in their lats when performing wide-grip overhand pull-ups than when using an underhand grip or a neutral V-bar grip. A study from the Canadian Memorial College of Chiropractic (Toronto) directly compared lat activity in wide-grip pull-ups with row activity. When subjects performed seated cable rows, lat activity increased by more than 40% compared to when they performed wide-grip pull-ups.
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Rows seem to be a better exercise as they stimulate more lat fibers and help build bigger buttocks.
Starting most back exercises with rows will help place more load on your lats (and thus increase muscle mass). Although the Canadian study used seated cable rows, it is recommended to use barbell or dumbbell rows at the beginning of the exercise when you are most powerful and incorporate other row versions later in the exercise. You should also do a variety of stretches and/or stretches, and sometimes start your back exercises with stretches or stretches. If you can’t do more than 10 pull-ups, make sure you do enough reps early in your workout (before you get tired) to promote muscle growth. This article was written by one person. Written by verified writers and fact-checked by experts. Throughout the article, numbers in parentheses (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.) are reference links to the studies reviewed.
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